Initialising Environment and Security: Consultations on the road to Kiev

In January 2002, the UNDP, UNEP and OSCE issued a joint document titled “Background paper:

Environment and Security: A Framework for Cooperation in Europe”, in which they introduced their cooperation as a concrete project under the title Environment and Security Initiative or ENVSEC. The document was drafted in preparation for the Ministerial Conference “Environment in Europe”, held in May 2003 in Kiev, where the initiative was to be officially launched. In Kiev, the partners also presented

123 Interview with Frits Schlingemann 21 April 2016 (By Skype); Interview with Marc Baltes 25 April 2016 (By phone).

124 Interview with Frits Schlingemann 21 April 2016 (By Skype)

125 Interview with Frits Schlingemann 21 April 2016 (By Skype); Interview with Marc Baltes 25 April 2016 (By phone);

Interview with Kaj Bärlund 15 May 2015 (By phone).

126 Interview with Marc Baltes 25 April 2016 (By phone).

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a conclusive document “Environment and Security Initiative Addressing Environmental Risks and Promoting Peace and Stability – The post Kiev process”¹²⁷.

At this point, the goal of ENVSEC was to identify and evaluate the security risks related to the environment in the South East European and Central Asian regions while also mobilising both national and international support to address these issues. In addition, the aim was to promote institutional cooperation and create a regional network of contacts to work further on environmental security. The expected outcomes of the preparation phase of the project were to come up with ‘[r]egionally-appropriate definitions of the environment and security linkages of greatest relevance in both South Eastern Europe and Central Asia, through multi-stakeholder consultations and dialogue’, as well as to prepare thematic maps of these linkages and finally to present the results at the conference in Kiev.¹²⁸

A major element of the project plan were two regional consultations held in South Eastern Europe¹²⁹ and Central Asia, respectively, that would engage local experts, officials and the civil society and give them an opportunity to express their environmental security concerns. The idea was also to mutually agree on the objectives of the project, identify obstacles such as political realities and discuss the communication of the results to all relevant parties.¹³⁰ The aforementioned thematic maps of environmental risks were to be based on these consultations.¹³¹

The objectives and activities were based on an elaborate rationale that in many ways coincided with the one explored in the OSCE Economic Forums. One of its guiding principles was the potential of environmental issues to generate cooperation and ‘bring diverse groups together’.¹³² Now, however, environmental security was described more precisely than before as an ‘analytical approach – allowing identification of those environmental investments with the greatest social “added value”; and a powerful argument that appropriate attention to the environment is often a question of basic security, rather than

127 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP: Environment and Security Initiative Addressing Environmental Risks and Promoting Peace and Stability – The post Kiev process. 24 April 2003. (OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 24 May 2003) Available at https://www.iisd.org/pdf/2003/envsec_post_kiev.pdf (Last visited 20.9.2016).

128 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP: Environment and Security: A Framework for Cooperation in Europe. Revised Draft Background Paper, 8 Jan 2002, 7-8.

129 ENVSEC: Meeting summary: An Environment Agenda for Security and Cooperation

in South East Europe and Central Asia. First regional meeting on Environment and Security in SEE, 3-4 December 2002, Belgrade. (ENVSEC regional meeting on Environment and Security in SEE, 3-4 December 2002), 1-2. Available at http://www.envsec.org/publications/ENVSEC.%20An%20environmental%20agenda%20for%20security%20and%20co operation%20in%20SEE%20and%20CA.%201st%20regional%20meeting%20in%20SEE_December%202002.pdf (Last visited 6.5.2015)

130 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 4.

131 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 7.

132 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 6.

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a luxury.’¹³³ Upon closer examination, this complicated formulation positions environmental security distinctly within the core of the security sector, rather than as a supplementary or conditional feature of it.

As ‘[p]roof of [the] coalition-building potential’ of environmental security, the document cited the inter-agency partnership behind ENVSEC itself, suggesting also that the combination of their respective fields was ideal for addressing the issue. In addition, while acknowledging environmental problems as a global challenge, the document suggested that regional efforts could ‘be better adapted to “local” realities’ and therefore ‘more effective at integrating environmental action with peace-building’.¹³⁴ This was the reason that a regional approach had been chosen as a defining feature of ENVSEC.

In particular, ENVSEC aimed to influence policy-making where the environment and security ‘are addressed in isolation from each other’, as the environment was ‘until now only rarely taken into consideration in foreign and security policy’.¹³⁵ . It underlined that the combination of fields provided by the partnership behind ENVSEC could ‘provide important impulses for inter-sectoral cooperation in the field of security policy and resource management would make it possible to better integrate the environment and security into political practice’.¹³⁶ Both the regional consultations and the environmental security mapping exercise can be seen as ways to directly engage with the policy community and thereby enhance the policy-relevance of the initiative. Likewise, the background paper already went on to consider what kind of policy instruments would be needed to put the ENVSEC approach into practice, further strengthening the notion that the main idea was to influence and implement policy.¹³⁷

At this point ENVSEC refrained from ‘attempting a rigorous definition’ for environmental security¹³⁸, and was to maintain this policy throughout the work of the initiative. According to the key actors involved, this was a deliberate decision based on the acknowledgement that environmental security simply was too wide-ranging and inter-connected to be captured by a single definition. An attempt to come up with one might have been counterproductive by precluding issues that might have turned out to be closely related. According to some of the actors, the necessity of forming a definition could

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sometimes also work as an excuse for inaction and lead to endless discussion without practical application. This was something that ENVSEC wanted to overcome.¹³⁹

Therefore, the background document only spelled out some thematic areas to guide the work of the initiative. Judging by these, ENVSEC at first built primarily upon the conflict perspective on environmental security. Environmental degradation as well as access to and competition over resources were seen as ‘important contributors to conflict’. Environmental cooperation, on the other hand, was ‘a powerful tool for preventing conflict’.¹⁴⁰ This strongly echoes the OSCE formulation of environmental security, which built primarily upon the relationship of the environment and conflict.

However, the definition of conflict chosen to guide ENVSEC was a very wide one. According to the background document, it “can be understood as a continuum ranging from mere differences in the positions of actors, over sporadic use of violence, through to armed conflict’.¹⁴¹ ENVSEC thus saw the use of violence too narrow a restriction because conflicts below this threshold may also have consequences on environmental security. Conflict could also concern instances of ‘severe social tensions and political disruption’.¹⁴² The background document was also particularly careful to point out that environmental factors can hardly ever be discerned as the only cause of any conflict. Instead, they are part of a ‘complex web’ of socio-economic issues, such as poverty, migration and political instability, that combine to either aggravate conflict or, in the ideal situation, generate cooperation.¹⁴³

These were crucial amendments to the conflict approach in that they emphasised the complexity of societal interactions that was always involved in environmental security. By challenging the traditional interpretation of conflict that was mostly limited to armed confrontation between states, ENVSEC was able to bring in a whole range of settings that threatened societal stability through more complex mechanisms. In addition, the critical note on the environment as a direct or sole cause of conflict allowed ENVSEC to look beyond the straightforward causation and consider cases in a more comprehensive way.

This also meant that the actions needed to contain the new kinds of risks were not limited to military means. ENVSEC therefore had to engage with actors outside the traditional security sector. However, it also opened up the possibility of introducing new practices within the margins of security.

139 Interview with Frits Schlingemann 21 April 2016 (By Skype); Interview with Marc Baltes 25 April 2016 (By phone).

140 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 6.

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142 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 12.

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In practice, this meant that ENVSEC’s approach included development policy among the measures necessary to address environmental security, reflecting the multi-sector and long-term character of the work needed to solve problems in the field.¹⁴⁴ The aim was to ‘integrate the links between natural resources and social stability into foreign and development policy’.¹⁴⁵ The connections between the security sectors and others thus ran both ways.

Yet for ENVSEC, conflict remained at the heart of these measures, and the various societal and political factors were considered almost exclusively with regard to their role in inducing or alleviating it.¹⁴⁶ In this sense, ENVSEC did not venture far beyond the positioning of the OSCE in its environmental security approach. The comprehensive but conflict-centred approach is also evident in the discussion of the requirements for the policy instruments for addressing environmental security, captured in the description:

An integrated consideration of environmentally-induced conflicts and, above all, a practical integration of the capacities for action of the actors in the various policy arenas is therefore the most important guiding principle for action in comprehensive conflict and crisis prevention.¹⁴⁷

As a necessary form of action, ENVSEC highlighted cooperation, whether among international organisations, governments, different sectors or ethnic and cultural groups. This would help to create the kind of long-term partnerships and interactions that were considered necessary to both facilitate communications in conflict situations and address slowly evolving environmental threats.¹⁴⁸ In fact, cooperation itself was framed as an instrument that could serve as a ‘supreme principle in preventing and peacefully resolving environmentally-induced conflicts‘.¹⁴⁹ This creates an interesting relationship between conflict and cooperation, with the two opposite poles of environmental security effectively merging into one framework.

ENVSEC envisioned cooperation to take place at a high political level and on a country-to-country basis.¹⁵⁰ Although the documents also highlighted the importance of the local level, it relied on

144 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 15-16.

145 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 3.

146 E.g. OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 2002, 14-16.

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governmental activities perhaps more than environmental or development cooperation traditionally would have. For ENVSEC, high politics was the key to successful implementation. It was the only way to gain the kind of lasting credibility and impact on trans-boundary cooperation that the initiative was after.

In other words, quite contrary to the non-political interpretation of environmental issues, ENVSEC used politicisation to make environmental security effective. This again blurs the line between politicisation and securitisation. In addition, it is another indication of how securitisation was used to raise the environment on the agenda. Security was a way to convince regional governments that environmental issues belonged at the highest political level.

Consequently, the background document stressed the need to involve security and foreign policy actors in environmental security. This was further emphasised by specific policy measures that were suggested to achieve the goal:

Specific foreign policy instruments, such as dispute mediation and the initiation of political dialogs between states bear particular relevance to the channeling of conflicts. Armed forces can be utilised to monitor critical environmental changes and to appraise the risks entailed by environmental problems and their consequential effects.¹⁵¹

Although such statements did not go very far into sketching the implementation of securitisation in practice, they did give examples of concrete practices. This was a step much further than ever before in the environmental security discourse in the Western Balkans.

Regional consultations were one of the ways for operationalising environmental security. According to ENVSEC, the request for a regional meeting in the Balkans came from the countries themselves.¹⁵² The consultation, held in December 2002 in Belgrade, echoed the focus areas of the background document.

It listed a number of environmental stresses affecting the region, such as biodiversity and water contamination, but also pointed out the potential for conflict at the local level and ‘below the threshold of violence’.¹⁵³

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152 ENVSEC: Transforming Risks into Cooperation: The Environment and Security Initiative 2003-2013. ENVSEC 2013b, 7. Available at http://www.osce.org/eea/109428?download=true (Last visited 28.9.2016).

153 ENVSEC regional meeting on Environment and Security in SEE, 3-4 December 2002, 2.

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The role of the past conflict stood out in the report. It was given as one of most important causes for environmental stresses in the region overall, and depleted uranium sites were listed among the potential hot spots the initiative should address.¹⁵⁴ Perhaps because of this, the report also discussed cooperation. In terms of the work to be done in the Western Balkans, it suggested prioritising

‘environmental stresses that are common throughout the region’ and ‘environmental and other cooperation mechanisms that apply to all or most of the countries’.¹⁵⁵

In addition, the report carefully considered potential policy impacts. These were pointed out in the

‘Overall Challenges’: ‘Communicating a few clear messages in Kiev: What options would a policymaker choose based on the results of these maps?’ and ‘Stressing this is the beginning of a process to elaborate an environmental agenda for security and cooperation’.¹⁵⁶

The regional consultations organised by ENVSEC fed directly into a report ‘Environment and Security – Transforming risks into cooperation’, which was published after the Kiev conference and presented the cases of Central Asia and South Eastern Europe.¹⁵⁷ In South Eastern Europe, conflict legacy was discussed as the first theme. In the very first sentence it argued that ‘[e]ven though the UNEP PCAU (Post Conflict Assessment Unit) concluded that the war did not result in an environmental disaster, people in the region perceive war-related environmental impacts as substantial threats to their economy, their health and their livelihoods’.¹⁵⁸ Firstly, this shows that the UNEP assessment still had relevance in the work of ENVSEC. In addition, it specifically refers to the threat perceived by the people, crediting it as a relevant factor along with actual risk assessment. Finally, it once more shows the wide scope of the understanding of environmental security that ENVSEC held, incorporating economic and social factors.

Meanwhile, the conclusive report on the ‘post Kiev process’, which was published after the regional consultations, had begun to increasingly emphasise human security issues. In fact, the outcome of the preparation phase was described as ‘a report on environmental stress affecting human security in Central Asia and South Eastern Europe‘.¹⁵⁹ Conflict was now brought up in terms of its environmental effects and the ways in which measures to reduce environmental stress may also ‘remove economic

154 ENVSEC regional meeting on Environment and Security in SEE, 3-4 December 2002, 2-4.

155 ENVSEC regional meeting on Environment and Security in SEE, 3-4 December 2002, 3.

156 ENVSEC regional meeting on Environment and Security in SEE, 3-4 December 2002, 6.

157 UNEP, UNDP & OSCE: Environment and Security – Transforming risks into cooperation. The case of Central Asia and South Eastern Europe. UNEP, UNDP & OSCE 2003. Available at https://www.iisd.org/pdf/2003/envsec_cooperation.pdf (Last visitied 20.9.2016).

158 UNEP, UNDP & OSCE 2003, 18.

159 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 24 May 2003, 1. Emphasis added.

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incentives for conflict’.¹⁶⁰ In the objectives and activities of the initiative it was only mentioned as a part of policymaking, which should be developed to better include conflict-prevention and early warning.¹⁶¹ In comparison with the detail and attention given to conflict in the previous ENVSEC documents, this seems to mark a change of focus.

The post-Kiev document was intended to chart the following steps of the initiative and therefore primarily technical in character. The focus was on administrative arrangements, which may partly explain the absence of more politicised words. However, it also started to reveal that the practical activities, especially those focused on preventing conflict, required the inclusion of various actors from different sectors, thus encouraging ENVSEC to adopt a wider approach. The shift towards human security may therefore have been partly caused by practical needs rather than a strategic change of vision.

At the same time, the structural outline of ENVSEC shows how environmental security was going to be implemented in practice. It was divided into three core elements or pillars: Vulnerability Assessment &

Monitoring, Policies Development & Implementation and Capacity Building & Institutional Development. All of these included elements that aimed to create new practices and integrate them witin the definition of security. ENVSEC intended to ‘promote vulnerability assessment, early warning and monitoring’ for example through the ‘[d]evelopment of appropriate indicators’, ‘training and education’ and ‘consultation and dialogue’.¹⁶²

Meanwhile, the policy development pillar specifically aimed to ‘[r]aise awareness of environment and security linkages’ to international institutions, donors, NGOs and national governments.¹⁶³ In addition, it intended to integrate ‘[r]isk/conflict assessment into MEAs’ and ‘[s]ustainable resource management and transboundary environmental cooperation in conflict prevention and peace building strategies’.¹⁶⁴ This was further backed up with the capacity building pillar, which intended to prepare national administrations, the expert community and decision-making processes ‘for integrated policy making on the environment, development, social, foreign and security policy’.¹⁶⁵ The resulting securitisation would therefore work in two directions: integrating the environment into traditional security contexts, but also engaging security actors and practices into environmental policy.

160 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 24 May 2003, 1.

161 OSCE, UNDP & UNEP 24 May 2003, 2-3.

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The formulation is significant because it challenges the argument that securitisation of the environment would automatically impose security measures on the environment. At least for ENVSEC, the idea was that security would also be influenced by the environmental sector. Obviously, the actual outcome of this rationale is far more complicated that this relatively simple idea. Between the two sectors there clearly was a power differential, and it seems unlikely that security would have been particularly prone to being influenced by the environmental sector. Any interchange was far more probable to take place in the other direction. Yet this intention shows that it would be incorrect to argue that ENVSEC proposed a securitisation of the environment in the sense of the security sector taking over environment.

ENVSEC was careful to include the target regions in the planning of the initiative from the very start. Not only did it give ENVSEC valuable insight into what were considered the most urgent environmental security issues within the regions, it was also important to get the regional countries to discuss their environmental security problems. According to one key actor involved in the preparatory process, the consultations did not always provide completely unknown information to the organisations. However, the crucial objective was to have the country representatives themselves point out the problems and thus to acknowledge their urgency.¹⁶⁶ This was intended to strengthen the commitment of the regional

ENVSEC was careful to include the target regions in the planning of the initiative from the very start. Not only did it give ENVSEC valuable insight into what were considered the most urgent environmental security issues within the regions, it was also important to get the regional countries to discuss their environmental security problems. According to one key actor involved in the preparatory process, the consultations did not always provide completely unknown information to the organisations. However, the crucial objective was to have the country representatives themselves point out the problems and thus to acknowledge their urgency.¹⁶⁶ This was intended to strengthen the commitment of the regional

In document International Organisations and the Securitisation of the Environment in Post-Conflict Western Balkans (sivua 154-164)