Environment & Biodiversity Gains Importance as Global Security Issue
2/19/97
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From: ENVIRO@salata.com (Environmental News)
Date: 19 Feb 97 07:17:22 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.save.the.earth
Subject: NEWS-Environment Gains Importance as Issue Of Global
Environment Gains Importance as Issue Of Global Security
Charles Petit, Chronicle Science Writer
Seattle
With little public fanfare, biodiversity and the environment have
moved from the foreign policy fringe to become central national
security issues for diplomats around the world, a Washington insider
told scientists here yesterday.
In a featured lecture at the meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, wildlife biologist Thomas Lovejoy,
counselor for biodiversity and environmental affairs to the secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution, said the environment has joined the
list of more familiar focuses of global diplomacy such as military
preparedness, international trade and human rights.
The link between environmental concerns and old-fashioned diplomacy is
still not fully mature, Lovejoy conceded. Although declining diversity
of species in the world is widely recognized as a fearsome economic
threat -- undercutting the web of life that supports agriculture and
general livability of broad areas -- it seldom generates a distinct
crisis.
"The bigger issue is how to treat something which in the aggregate is
clearly disastrous, obviously a national interest problem and probably
even one of security, but which increment by increment seems of little
or modest import," he said. He quoted environmental scientist Jessica
Tuchman Matthews' warning that, sometimes, "the urgent prevents
consideration of the important."
Lovejoy identified four categories of diplomatic maneuver in which so-
called green issues are becoming paramount factors:
-- Economic Security: Biotechnology industries depend largely on genes
from wild species. Many nations, especially poor ones, are moving
aggressively to protect such genes from exploitation by other
countries and regard unlicensed use of such biological material as
theft. For example, the collapse of the Brazilian rubber industry
earlier in this century after smuggling of rubber tree seeds to
Malaysia, would today be an example of a violation of international
law.
-- Prevention of Wars and Peace-Building: Water disputes are basically
environmental conflicts. They also provide means to bring hostile
nations together. Late last year, one of the first officially
sanctioned rounds of diplomacy between Greek and Turkish factions in
divided Cyprus was over water rights. Similarly, a recent agreement
between Panama and Colombia not to finish the Trans-America Highway
through rain forest on their border not only preserves a vital
biological barrier between South and Central America but gave those
mutually suspicious nations something on which they could agree.
-- Protection of the Health and Wealth of Individuals: Recently, a
major famine in West Africa resulting from a devastating mealy bug
infestation in cassave was averted by importation of an insect
parasite from Paraguay. In Australia and New Guinea, waterways choked
by an alien floating weed were cleared by introduction of a weed-
eating weevil. Floods in Bangladesh are being eased by agreement in
India to control deforestation in the Himalayas. All are examples of
environmental problems tackled through traditional diplomatic
channels.
-- Heightened Sensitivity to Environmental Issues: In the United
States, the rise of the environment as a full-fledged matter for
diplomacy "has really happened in just the past three years or so.
(Secretary of State) Madeline Albright has already identified the
environment as a major foreign policy concern," said Lovejoy, a
confidant to Vice President Al Gore, Under-Secretary of State for
Environmental Affairs Tim Wirth, and former Secretary of State Warren
Christopher.
One reason for the diplomatic rise of environmental issues, he said,
was the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that drew the most world
leaders to one place in history. Although many of that meeting's
specific agreements on global pollution and other matters are not
being honored, it gave the environment a new, higher standing.
Other sessions at the meeting gave plenty of examples of gigantic
environmental problems that for solutions seem to beg for wide,
international cooperation. Two sessions yesterday dealt with the
collapse in recent years of many major ocean fisheries -- by some
estimates, 60 to 80 percent of all the major commercial species of
ocean fish are being caught beyond their capacity to maintain their
populations.
Nancy Lubchenco, president of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and an Oregon State University biologist,
joined several leading marine and fisheries experts in calling for
fully 20 percent of the world's ocean area to be set aside as
permanent biological preserves.
Today, less than 1 percent of the seas are off-limits to fishing. The
diplomatic hurdles to such a preserve system will be immense, it was
stated, but there would be tremendous benefits for people everywhere.
Such marine reservations would guarantee that commercial fish species
would have sufficient refuges in which to breed.
In the few areas where such protected areas exist, said James Bohnsack
of the National Marine Fisheries Service, fish not only rebound in the
protected area but replenish nearby areas as well and maintain jobs
for fishermen.
Nations are learning a basic rule of biology, Bohnsack said. With
fish, as with people, "No mommies, no babies."