Environmental
Security and Public Health:
Steps Toward a New Theoretical Framework
Tee L. Guidotti, MD, MPH, John M. Balbus, MD, MPH
The connections among ecosystem viability, sustainability, and state or civil
security have been a minor theme of the modern environmental movement since its
inception. Only within the past decade, however, has the idea of environmental
security become an organizing principle of the academic study of international
relations [1]. Recent wars, the effects of unrestrained economic
globalization, and concerns about population growth, scarcity of resources, and
global warming have given the concept an immediacy and relevance it previously
lacked. As a result of some carefully focused research and analysis over the past
several years, the concept of environmental security can now be generalized beyond
individual cases to provide a useful theoretical framework for analyzing issues
and anticipating events [2-7]. The evolving definition
of environmental security has two broad themes: 1) the response to strategic military
assaults on public health and the environment, and 2) security issues associated
with environmental disruption. The oilfield fires in Kuwait at the end of the
Gulf War; the destruction of military and industrial facilities and of natural
ecosystems during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and elsewhere;
and fears of bioterrorism have prompted renewed interest in a concept of environmental
security that brings operational issues of environmental health together with
issues of state security and sustainability, national defense, civil unrest, and
terrorism. The groundwork has been laid for a much more rigorous and thoughtful
approach to these issues, and a modern field of “environmental security”
is emerging that encompasses: - destruction of public health and the
environment as a military strategy;
- the effects of “environmental
warfare” on combatants and non-combatants alike; and
- threats to national
and international security posed by severe environmental degradation.
Waging
Environmental War Aggressive destruction of the environment during war
is at least as old as the seeding of the farmlands of Carthage with salt by the
victorious Romans. During the Cold War, the risk of global nuclear devastation,
including the prospect of nuclear winter, was the subject of a large and well-documented
public and professional literature [8-12]. The tactical use
of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction to threaten public health
has received increasing scrutiny in recent years [13,14].
Strategic defensive ecological destruction--a second way in which the environment
is targeted during war--can be traced back at least as far as the scorched earth
policies of ancient retreating armies, and through World War II and beyond. At
the end of the Gulf War, we were reminded that outlaw regimes may be prepared
to wage a military endgame by intentionally destroying their own environment and
resources, and those of their adversaries, once they have nothing to lose.
Chemical and biological weapons are accessible, easily concealed, and cheap, and
are therefore highly attractive to hard-pressed or marginalized states and to
terrorists. They embody the aggressive use of environmentally hazardous toxins
and are a particularly sinister use of the biomedical sciences. Since control
of these weapons is dispersed, and disseminating them globally is relatively easy,
the tactics required to deal with them must be very different from the measures
that reduced the threat of nuclear annihilation [15].
An examination of bioterrorism, in particular, illuminates crucial features of
the overall emerging concept of environmental security. The relationship between
public health agencies and the military and police is particularly important and
has the potential to be troublesome. The FBI and--if the threat comes from outside
the country--military agencies have a mandate to take the lead role after a bioterrorist
attack in the US. It can hardly be otherwise. Public health agencies will not
be able to control the security aspects of such operations, but they will have
a role thrust upon them that will be simultaneously indispensable and uncomfortable.
Despite the fact that the norms of public health clearly provide for constraining
individual behavior during a public health crisis, public health agencies have
been understandably reluctant to exercise their statutory policing powers in the
modern era. Open discussion among all the stakeholders in government, the health
professions, and civil society is essential before the first such event occurs. Combatantand
Non-Combatant Casualties Gulf War Illness, health effects associated with
Agent Orange, and other health problems presented by combatants in recent wars
may or may not be direct outcomes of particular environmental exposures. Nevertheless,
as the weapons and military technologies employed on battlefields become increasingly
exotic, and as the ecological dimensions of war widen, health concerns related
to environmental exposures can only take on new urgency, not only for combatants,
but for noncombatant civilians, refugees, and observers. As with Gulf War veterans,
the challenge of sorting out the effects on combatants and on the traumatized
noncombatant population will be in part exposure assessment and in part population
profiling, because persons who have such a traumatic life experience are not easily
comparable to other populations. Environmental degradation and risks to health
among noncombatant workers in military production facilities--especially at nuclear
weapons testing and production sites--must not be overlooked [16,17].
War is about intentional destruction, and also involves collateral damage to the
environment, even if not intended. Ecological management of the distressed environment
is a fundamental step to recovery after the shooting stops and the immediate task
becomes rebuilding the economy and civil life. Widespread ecological destruction
left behind after the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars and after numerous other conflicts
in Central America, the former Yugoslavia, Africa, and elsewhere underscore the
point that while such damage may eventually be managed and overcome, it can result
in prolonged consequences for health, nutrition, public safety, and security [18]. Environmental
Origins of Conflict Connections between the natural environment and national
security have long been recognized but are incompletely documented [19].
The notion has nevertheless entered mainstream thinking that environmental stresses,
including population pressure and conflict over resources, may lead to military
conflict between states or may destabilize societies and lead to civil conflict.
The connection between national security interests and access to resources, particularly
strategic resources such as oil, is self evident. Population control advocates
have been particularly disposed to put demography forward as a fundamental reason
for civil and interstate conflict, but they have tended to ignore technological
changes that have affected the magnitude of human impact on the environment.
Conflicts over water are likely to become more frequent and more contentious during
the present century [20]. At least 48 countries are expected
to face severe water shortages by the year 2025 [21]. Eroding
water quality, due to pollution or saline intrusion associated with sea level
rise, will compound regional problems of water scarcity, especially under conditions
of global climate change. Water scarcity in areas fed by the Jordan, Nile, Tigris-Euphrates,
and Ganges River systems, historical focal points of conflict over water resources,
could exacerbate regional conflicts and pose new threats to international security.
Ecosystem degradation on a massive scale, such as may be associated with global
climate change, could conceivably precipitate interstate and civil unrest. The
actual evidence that environmental degradation--as opposed to the need to secure
resources--has been a major reason for war, however, is weak. Recent archeological
findings suggest that theories linking the decline of some civilizations with
the depletion of resources are incomplete, though they have captured the popular
imagination. It is not clear that population pressures and environmental degradation
lead directly and necessarily to armed conflict. What is clear is that scarcity
of necessary resources and a large population burden add to other political and
social pressures that may lead to or exacerbate conflict. Far more study of the
relationship between global environmental stresses and the causes of conflict
is essential. The Need for a Coordinated Approach
To understand the entire range of environmental security issues requires coordinated
research and development. The needs include: - robust and specific methods
of surveillance that can function in the absence of a modern public health infrastructure;
- “dual
use” systems that are cost-effective in normal times and that provide needed
public health services between the major events they were designed to handle;
- forensic
methods that can be incorporated into public health practice;
- advance
planning and operational coordination between public health agencies and military
and civilian security agencies;
- prevention, through the application of
the same approaches that have proven effective against other public health threats;
- education, both to “harden” the target and to ensure that public
health agencies are capable of coordinating their efforts with security and military
services without compromising the essential values of public health.
At the turn of the twentieth century, public health research was often oriented
toward maintaining colonial rule and military occupation in tropical regions.
Some visions of “environmental security” have tilted toward racism and
tribalism, offering persistent, negative images of penurious, foreign immigrants
swarming into affluent societies in the US and Europe and overwhelming their civilizations.
As we enter a new millennium, the emerging theory and practice of environmental
security is far more positive, based on technical assessments of imminent threats
and on management of the response for the public good. Environmental security,
as presently understood, has the potential to add new and valuable dimensions
to the public health enterprise. This vision of environmental security
proposes areas of study that will lead to a more secure society--one that has
the confidence to protect its environment and to maintain its commitment to sustainable
development. A siege mentality, in the face of real and pervasive security threats,
would displace environmental sustainability as a political and social priority
and would obstruct the progress we can make. A proper concern for real problems,
and the development of appropriate responses, can ensure that environmental security
threats do not overwhelm us and distort our decision making, as the balance of
nuclear terror so often did. References
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Westing AH (ed). Environmental hazards of war: Releasing dangerous forces in an
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12. International Physicians for the Prevention
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13. Guidotti TL. Bioterrorism and the public
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14. Franz DR, Jahrling PB, Friedlander AM, McClain DJ, Hoover
DL, Byrne WR, et al. Clinical recognition and management of patients exposed to
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15. Committee on R&D Needs for Improving Civilian
Medical Response to Chemical and Biological Terrorism Incidents, Health Science
Policy Program, Institute of Medicine; and Board on Environmental Studies and
Toxicology, National Research Council Chemical and Biological Terrorism: Research
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[Return to text]
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Hu H, Yih K. Nuclear wastelands: A global guide to nuclear weapons production
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text]
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and ecological interdependence. Global Governance (Academic Council for the United
Nations), July-September 1999;5(3):359-377. [Return to text]
20. Postel S, Aldinger C. “World Facing Water Crisis
in 21st Century,”, Reuters, March 19, 1996. [Return to
text]
21. Hinrichsen D, Robey B, Upadhyay UD. Solutions
for a water short world. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
1998. [Return to text] TLG and
JMB are on the faculty of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health,
School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University
Medical Center, Washington, DC USA. Address correspondence to Tee L. Guidotti,
MD, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health
and Health Services, George Washington University Medical Center, Washington,
DC USA 20037; e-mail: eohtlg@mail.gwumc.edu.
Copyright © Medicine & Global Survival, Inc. 2000
SidebarEnvironmental Security at GWU The George Washington
University Medical Center (GWUMC) has adopted environmental security as one of
its designated departmental themes for emphasis in education and research. The
field is seen as conceptually integrated, but in practice it remains a response
to a loosely connected set of issues. Bioterrorism was the issue that first
consolidated the Center’s institutional thinking on environmental security,
reflecting GWUMC’s unenviable position as the single health care provider
in the United States most likely to serve a population that has experienced a
chemical or bioterrorist attack.
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