Environment as a part of humanitarian relief and human security

From the point of view of the environmental security discourse, the single most important impact of the UNEP assessment was the inclusion of environmental remediation to the humanitarian appeal. As a policy choice it was a trailblazer, because such a linkage had never been made before in the UN system in such an explicit way. Within environmental cooperation it thus opened grounds for a similar coupling later on. At the same time, it tied the environment closer to the human security perspective. In other words, it presents a new practice that indicates securitisation.

The humanitarian element was involved in the BTF work from the very start. The Task Force was set up partly on the recommendation of the special inter-agency humanitarian field mission to Yugoslavia led by Sergio Vierra de Mello in May 1999.¹³⁷ UNEP was involved in the mission and drew attention to the worsening environmental impact, which thus explicitly came to be included in humanitarian issues. This gave rise to the idea that environmental problems could be addressed with humanitarian assistance. An assessment of the conflict impacts was therefore needed to understand the scale of the damage and estimate the resources needed for reparation.¹³⁸

The idea of the environment as a humanitarian issue became one of the core principles of the BTF work. This had several implications with regard to the messages of the assessment as well as their reception. One was based on the practical consideration of securing funds for environmental remediation. In the FRY case the problem was not only the very possible concern that environmental issues were not likely to be seen as a priority in the post-conflict assistance, but the limitations posed by the international sanctions, which prevented financial assistance to FRY for as long as Milošević was in power. The only exception was humanitarian assistance, which therefore was the only route to channel international financing for environmental remediation in the short term. The BTF team made a conscious decision to use the assessment as a justification for making the environmental sector eligible for humanitarian funding.¹³⁹ After the field missions were started

137 UNEP/UNCHS 1999, 3; GRID-Arendal 11 May 1999.

138 Interview with Pasi Rinne 4.2.2014

139 Interview with Pasi Rinne 4.2.2014.

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and the team started to grasp the urgency of the remediation work, it made the decision to include a direct recommendation in the final report to include emergency remediation within humanitarian assistance. The team was also careful to separate this from measures like the reconstruction of industrial plants, which could be seen as less essential for human security and therefore controversial.¹⁴⁰

However, the humanitarian approach was not just a matter of financial opportunism. There was a strong belief among the BTF team, expressed both in the final report and later by those involved in the assessment¹⁴¹, that environmental quality needs to be taken into account even in harsh and conflict-inflicted conditions, and that a failure to address it would lead to further problems on the path to development. ‘An unhealthy and dangerously polluted environment does not provide a sound basis for the well-being of human populations or for business and trade’¹⁴², remarked the report in its recommendations. This was echoed by the UNEP Executive Director Klaus Töpfer, who in his foreword particularly emphasised how the recommendations

‘highlight the linkage between environmental pollution and humanitarian assistance’.¹⁴³ Moreover, at least in retrospect, those involved in the assessment saw the inclusion of the environment among humanitarian issues in conflict situations as one of the most important messages and legacies of the project.¹⁴⁴

The BTF team indeed made a deliberate effort to influence post-conflict relief efforts on a wider scale. While the original objective may not have been to institutionalise the assessments of environmental consequences quite in the way that UNEP ended up doing, it clearly was understood from early on that the project could have relevance beyond the Kosovo conflict. This is reflected for example in the importance that the team laid on developing methodology for evaluating war damages on the environment, which previously had been nearly non-existent. Although such methods obviously were needed simply in order to get the work done, it can also be seen as a necessary step in understanding post-conflict environments. Little could be done if the actual situation was not known.¹⁴⁵ This was something that the BTF team could contribute to. As Klaus Töpfer suggested, the BTF could provide ‘a management tool for the international community as an integrated part of the needs assessment requirements in the overall emergency humanitarian effort in war-torn areas’.¹⁴⁶

The inclusion of the environment into the humanitarian field is intertwined with the human security perspective. Environmental problems can only be understood as an element of emergency relief if they pose a direct and dire threat to human existence and human welfare. This means recognising them as human security issues. The strategy very clearly correlates with the strand of securitisation that aims to raise an issue on the

140 Haavisto 1999, 126-127.

141 Interview with Pekka Haavisto 10.12.2014;

142 UNEP/UNCHS 1999,72.

143 UNEP/UNCHS 1999, 3.

144 Interview with Pekka Haavisto 10.12.2014; Interview with Pasi Rinne 4.2.2015; Interview with Andjelka Mihajlov 20.1.2014.

145 E.g. Interview with Andjelka Mihajlov 20.1.2014; Haavisto 1999, 93.

146 UNEP/UNCHS 1999, 3.

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agenda in order to emphasise its importance, and the BTF certainly was using security arguments to do this.

In the strict sense defined by the Copenhagen School, the assessment can still not quite be seen as an exceptional measure, as it would require calling for the use of force. However, the governmentality approach suggests that the assessment can be seen as the emergence of a new practice into the security sector and therefore an indication of securitisation. The BTF thus presents an example where a securitising move has consequences that cannot be captured by the fixed threshold for securitisation, challenging the rationale for holding onto such a strict formulation.

While the immediate purpose of the assessment was to provide better information and to clarify the actual size of the threat, it also strongly implied the need to take counter-measures that would not have been possible without the preliminary evaluation of the situation. The expert evaluation, in effect, gave rise to the necessity to take action. The recommendation to include the environment in humanitarian aid – equally unprecedented as the assessment itself – was a concrete measure that emerged as a consequence of the process.

However, at this point the word ‘security’ had hardly been used at all within the entire assessment, especially in the sense of environmental security. In the BTF final report, the concept is not mentioned, and security overall is notably rare in all the press releases and other communications of UNEP. This does not mean that the security aspect was excluded, as it was included in the subject matter of the assessment. Yet it is significant that the word itself was not used. This may have been due to deliberate avoidance, so as not to associate the issue too closely with security policy. In other contexts, environmental security practitioners have observed that the use of the word security can be politically sensitive even in the environmental sphere.¹⁴⁷ Meanwhile, environmental security still was a relatively new concept especially in the policy-making community.¹⁴⁸ Therefore, its omission was not necessarily planned or particularly contemplated, but could simply have been a matter of unfamiliarity with the concept.

Either way, when discussing the events in retrospect, key actors directly involved in the assessment strongly linked the BTF project with environmental security, and particularly the environmental security activities that ensued in the Balkans.¹⁴⁹ Moreover, in light of the impact that the BTF study had on the later cooperation in the region specifically focusing on the environment and security linkage,¹⁵⁰ it is quite evident that the work on the consequences of conflict to the environment yielded a connection to environmental security even if it was not explicitly intended during the process.

Therefore, the security linkage in the BTF case was not deliberately made but rather emerged on its own. The main objective of the mission was to assess the damage to the environment and to propose some measures to

147 Interview with an ENVSEC official 26.5.2015.

148 The history of environmental security as a concept is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2.

149 Interview with Pekka Haavisto 10.12.2014; Interview with Pasi Rinne 4.2.2015; Interview with Andjelka Mihajlov 20.1.2014.

150 This will be discussed in more detail in Sections 4 and 5.

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address it. Human security was acknowledged as a rationale for commissioning the work and probably contributed to the sense of urgency, but it was not the main object of or reason for the inquiry. Instead, the findings of the assessment revealed the severity of the situation and led the BTF team to highlight the urgency of action in the resulting final report. Consequently, the emphasis on the threats posed by environmental problems was the key part of the securitisation, utilised as a way to draw attention to the issue, include it on the post-conflict agenda and to call for specific measures to respond to its urgency. The security argument was therefore presented mostly as an instrumental motivation to make the environmental case more visible and persuasive rather than as a way to advance the environmental security concept.

The audience for the humanitarian argument was mainly limited to the international community; even more so than was the case with the BTF assessment in its entirety. In the final report, for instance, the remark about including the environment in humanitarian aid is located in the introduction and addressed directly to ‘the UN and other donors’¹⁵¹. Here perhaps the most crucial element was convincing a few key actors that in effect had the power to shape the humanitarian agenda and its financing. In particular, Haavisto brought the issue up in meetings with the Secretary General Kofi Annan and with the UN Head of Humanitarian Relief.¹⁵² Such encounters were surely not enough to secure a positive outcome for the humanitarian linkage, but they did add valuable leverage for convincing other international actors to agree to it.

The humanitarian aspect of the BTF had far-reaching consequences. As mentioned above in section 3.2, the mission ended up paving the way for an entire UNEP branch dealing with post-conflict assessment and, later, disaster risk management. The humanitarian appeal had a similar impact: the post-conflict assessments that followed in other parts of the world were often expected to at least inform inter-agency humanitarian needs assessments, and for example in Iraq and Sudan environment was again included in humanitarian assistance.¹⁵³ This approach has significantly influenced the way in which the environment can be taken into account in relief operations in post-conflict and war-torn areas.¹⁵⁴ The BTF assessment played a role in introducing environmental issues into the human security agenda at least within the UN framework.

The link between humanitarian aid and the environment can be described as a success in the sense that the latter indeed was included in the humanitarian appeal. This is significant for securitisation because it suggests that the argument that environmental damage posed an (existential) threat to the population was accepted as justification for the urgency of preventive action. The BTF did not explicitly argue that environment should be included in the security sphere, but it did introduce a new threat into the discourse and propose measures to contain or prevent it. In addition, this argument was turned into a practice that was perpetuated in other contexts

151 UNEP/UNCHS 1999, 11.

152 Haavisto 1999, 145 & 154.

153 Jensen 2012, 37 & 50.

154 Jensen, D. & Lonergan, S.: Placing environment and natural resource risks, impacts and opportunities on the post-conflict peace-building agenda. In Jensen, D. & Lonergan, S. (Eds.): Assessing and Restoring Natural Resources in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, Earthscan, London 2012, 1-11.

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through the UNEP post-conflict assessment unit. The BTF process presented the security implications of the environment in a new way that culminated in the formation of a new practice.