Environmental security and development

The development policy community has recently awakened to the importance of security as an important dimension of development policies and a basic pre-condition for their success. This paper seizes the opportunity to highlight the linkage between human security and development, and environmental security. It argues that the link is particularly strong in developing countries where human security is closely tied to peoples' access to natural resources. Drawing on a number of case studies where communities have increasingly endured hardships linked with environmental deterioration and resource scarcity, the author points to the fact that, any efforts to better the lives of peoples may be unsuccessful if they fail to conserve and enhance essential resources and life support systems.1 ?1. See, Khagram, Clark and Raad Khagram, Sanjeev, Clark, William C. and Raad, Dana Firas. 2003. From the Environment and Human Security to Sustainable Security and Development. Journal of Human Development, 4(2): 44–76.  [Google Scholar], ‘From the Environment and Human Security’. View all notes While the security literature often tones down environmental threats as soft, the author points out that they often emerge as major threats in certain contexts where, like wars, they may have detrimental and enduring impacts on peoples' security and development. This paper recommends a broader approach to security that recognises the significance of environmental threats to human security and legitimises its firm integration within the current development policy agenda. Given the crosscutting and trans-boundary nature of environmental threats, the author concludes that any development policy actions designated to mitigate environmental threats may maximise their impacts if they transcend institutional and regional boundaries, and are embedded in broader institutional collaboration.     

Human security and the separation of security and development

This article advances a counter-intuitive argument about what are argued to be the links between security and development in human security. The argument is counter-intuitive because the merging of development and security is explicitly part of the human security discourse. However, this paper will argue that human security can better be understood not through its own discourse, but placed in the context of the changing relationship between the developing world and the developed world after the end of the Cold War. Rather than the merging of security and development it will suggest that human security is representative of a period in international relations in which there is a separation of security and development. The broader international context is one in which the developing world is less of a security concern to the developed than was the case during the Cold War.     

Gender,development, and training: Raising awareness in the planning process

Several decades of development experience have yielded a wealth of findings about the key assumptions, procedures, and practices by which women have been marginalised in development planning. The value of these insights lies not only in highlighting flawed planning procedures, but also in helping to formulate alternative frameworks for thinking about development. This article discusses ways in which such findings can be used in gender-awareness training for development practitioners, and sketches out the main elements of an analytical framework for reconceptualising development from a gender perspective.     

Gender and development: a SAFE recipe

It is argued that an alternative strategy to women's involvement in development is the development of a whole "new dish, prepared, baked, and distributed equally" rather than acquisition of a "bigger piece of the pie." The issues of gender and development (GAD) involve women gaining power and control of the decision making processes. Past development has been too much of a "fixed menu" approach. Feminist development involves the satisfaction of the strategic needs of women, an agenda-setting direction, flexibility, and empowerment (SAFE). Strategic gender needs were conceptualized first by Maxine Malyneaux. Within women's defined roles, there are needs for access to adequate and clean water supplies, nutrition, health care, and income. Women in development (WID) approaches are strong in serving practical needs. The SAFE approach combines both the strategic and practical needs of women. Some argue that a focus on strategic and/or practical needs should be conceptualized in terms of changing women's position within a structurally unequal set of social relations. Some emphasize autonomy. The basic concepts of strategic needs is viewed as including the change in women's status and movement toward autonomy. Aid agencies and development groups have been mainstreaming WID and GAD over the past decade by integrating women and women's needs into administration, decision making, and the project cycle. Gender issues could be built into existing development paradigms or could change the existing development agenda with a gender perspective. It is argued that an agenda-setting approach is needed in order to assure that the strategic needs of women are incorporated. Flexibility and adaptation of approaches means that WID and GAD can be adjusted to all cultures. It is cited by Buvinic and Moser that welfare, equity, anti-poverty, efficiency, and empowerment are five ethical policy approaches. The policy approach of SAFE is that of empowerment or the knowledge and exercise of influence, power, and leadership in some or all social relations.     

The governance of global security and development: convergence,divergence and coherence

This paper discusses the gaps in the present international system that in the final analysis threaten the objectives of conflict management. It asks if there is the interest and institutional will within the international community to close such gaps. It poses this challenge from the perspective of coherence. As noted in companion pieces to this study, the concept of coherence has at least four inter-related and complementary dimensions, i.e. internal, whole of government, harmonisation and alignment.     

Getting savages to fight barbarians: development,security and the colonial present

Development today is a radical and intrusive endeavour. Reflecting the interest of homeland security, it is embarked upon transforming societies as a whole within the global borderland. In attempting to secure the future, however, it is reaching backwards to reconnect and rejuvenate earlier colonial modes of governing the world of peoples. This article is a modest attempt to recover part of this genealogy. The concept of biopolitics is introduced and defined in relation to the differences between developed and underdeveloped species-life. In distinction to the life-supporting technologies associated with mass society, development is a biopolitics of population understood as self-reliant in terms of basic economic and welfare needs. The security function of such a biopolitics is that of bettering self-reliance as a means of defending international society against its enemies: it is the art of getting savages to fight barbarians. To give historic depth to this strategization of power, such a manoeuvre is demonstrated in the relationship between colonial Native Administration and insurgent nationalism. It is then used to provide a critical commentary on the interconnection between development and security, in particular, the relationship between sustainable development and internal conflict that shapes current perceptions of global danger. The conclusion briefly considers the cost of this episodic inheritance: a small part of the world's population consumes and lives beyond its means within the fragile equilibrium of mass society while the larger part is allowed to die chasing the mirage of self-reliance. Rather than addressing these divergent life-chances, the securitization of development is further entrenching them.     

Youths in the interface of development and security

This article interrogates the link between youth, security and development in Africa and argues that the central determinant in the link is ‘governance’, especially as this implies the ability of the state to harness the productive potential of youths and to meet their demands on a number of issues. The article also asserts that the reality of a youth bulge in many African countries presents challenges (as opposed to crises), as much as opportunities for national socio-economic transformation. Besides, youths in many developing countries have been the victims of developmental experiments often tele-guided by international financial and development agencies. In its conclusion, the articles argues that efforts to address the challenges posed by youths must move from platitudinous wish-list into formulation of coherent policy agenda that is consistent with the socio-economic and political realities of individual countries; in which youths themselves active agents; and one which must be incorporated into the wider governance framework of nation-states.

The issue of youth and violent conflict concerns more than youth, it is a reflection of society in crisis and hence of development itself. If a society's values, norms, customs, practices, structures and institutions are under threat and such changes in turn threaten the development of its children into youth and then adults, then that society cannot sustain itself.1 ?1. UNDP, Youth and Violent Conflict, p.12. View all notes

The state … the economy… are predicated on notions of adulthood; they all require the participation of adults in order to function. If youth are unable to fully make this transition to the minimal conditions of adulthood, then such structures are unsustainable and will either fracture or mutate in unforeseen ways. An understanding of the intersections between youth, violent conflict and society is a way of re-examining development and developing societies. Youth, those who engage in violence and especially those who do not, are located at the junctures between development, security, peace and conflict.2 ?2. UNDP, Youth and Violent Conflict, p.13. View all notes     

Vicious circles and the security development nexus in Somalia

The metaphor of the vicious circle is deeply embedded in analysis of protracted conflicts. Yet in at least some instances conflicts that appear to be self‐reinforcing in the short term are in the longer run producing conditions out of which new political orders can emerge. These protracted conflicts are thus dynamic, not static, crises and require post‐conflict assistance strategies that are informed by accurate trend analysis. The case of Somalia is used to illustrate the dramatic changes that occur over time in patterns of armed conflict, criminality, and governance in a collapsed state. These changes have produced a dense network of informal and formal systems of communication, cooperation, and governance in Somalia, helping local communities adapt to state collapse, manage risk, and provide for themselves a somewhat more predictable environment in which to pursue livelihoods. Crucial to this evolution of anarchy in Somalia has been the shifting interests of an emerging business community, for whom street crime and armed conflict are generally bad for business.     

Science,security and spies

Abstract

The national research and development (R&D) base has in the post-cold war era gained increased importance in order to fill new security demands. There is a broadening of the search for security relevant science and technology involving more organizations and interests, scientific disciplines and nations. The question discussed in this article is if the premises of international, free and open R&D will be(come) compromised? Will we see more scientists, in their normal scientific activities, being accused of spying? The article suggests that such risks are not unrealistic to expect. Spy cases in less democratic countries could have consequences for scientists also in other countries. Outcomes depend on, among other things, the relative strengths of academic freedom and a political Identification Friend and Foe (IFF) component. United Nations and European Union resolutions restricting science education for students from Iran and North Korea in an attempt to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons illustrate a strong IFF component. Difficulties with regard to the implementation of these resolutions and other findings are presented in the final section of the article.     

Scotland,NATO, and transatlantic security

This article explores the political and strategic implications of Scottish Independence for existing transatlantic security arrangements. It examines the potential institutional, legal and political obstacles Scotland might face during the transition to independence and discusses the specific challenges in the area of security and defence, including the nuclear issue and the question of what form an independent Scottish Defence Force (SDF) would need to take to allow and facilitate integration in transatlantic security structures. It argues that a number of strategic and political issues could be mitigated in the course of negotiations between Edinburgh and London. Moreover, Scotland's geostrategic position and political orientation make it an important prospective partner in international security cooperation across the Eastern Atlantic, High North and North Sea, which suggests that an advanced partnership with NATO, and eventually full membership, seems like an option that is both politically viable and more likely than any scenario that predicts seeing an independent Scotland (IS) outside these structures. This challenges some of the main strategic and security political arguments against independence and thus seeks to spark a debate about the realistic options for Scotland should it become independent after 2016.     

Ties that bind: DfID and the emerging security and development agenda

The security and development nexus is on the public agenda of policy-makers and analysts as never before. It is becoming an article of faith that security and development are ‘inextricably linked’. The content and confines of the security and development agenda, however, are contested and confused. As one interviewee put it, ‘it's as if security is the new development and development is the new security’. This paper sets out to map the landscape of the development and security agenda in order that it might be navigated better. The focus is on how policy debates in this area are shifting, rather than on how these shifts are being implemented on the ground. Particular reference is made to the Department for International Development and its Strategy for Security and Development—an analysis of which throws into relief the tensions between the two spheres. It is argued that understanding the linkages between security and development must involve more than simply asserting that either one necessarily encompasses, requires or reinforces the other. Statements on security and development must be scrutinised against basic questions, not least whose security is at issue.     

Interdependent Preferences, Militarism, and Child Gender

Selection effects make it difficult to determine whether concern for other people genuinely affects individuals' policy preferences. Child gender provides a conveniently exogenous means of exploring the issue, especially in contexts such as military policy where girls and boys face different risks; in many countries male children are disproportionately likely to become soldiers and thus bear the costs of militarism. This creates divergent effects: those in households with girls generally prefer more hawkish foreign policies than do members of households with boys. Data from the 2004 American National Election Study confirm these intuitions, both in general statements of policy preference and in evaluating the net costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.     

性别、权力政治和国际关系

女性主义是唯一以性别作为理解世界政治的核心的理论。然而 ,以经典现实主义为代表的国际关系理论传统却忽视或否认国际关系中的性别问题。本文通过女性主义视角对权力政治加以重新评价 ,以反映性别与国际关系的关联性。第一部分主要借助汉斯·摩根索的著作来描述权力政治概念 ,揭示现实主义国际关系理论是构建在对政治人、国家和国际体系的男权主义表述上 ;第二部分则依靠性别对经典现实主义加以解构 ,主要从女性主义角度重新定义权力政治概念 ,并且通过对权力的多种来源、多层含义和广泛人性的表述 ,挑战现实主义理论范式 ;结论部分谈到女性主义将性别作为分析范畴引入国际关系研究的意义。     

Redefining development for national security: implications for civil society

The effects of counter-terrorism legislation on civil-society organisations (CSOs) based in the South have received little attention in the wider literature. This article reports on the findings of a series of international workshops to examine the effects of such legislation, held in Lebanon, the Kyrgyz Republic, India, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. The evidence presented at these workshops suggests that counter-terror legislation is undermining the work of civil society in complex and interrelated ways.