Bridging the GAPS between ecology and human security - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 140

resolved, so that the 'freedom from [immediate] fear' aspect of human secu-
rity was addressed, the prevailing ecological conditions in many of these
regions would result in their inhabitants being challenged by high levels of
ecological unpredictability and instability, such as increased drought or crop
failures. This lack of 'environmental security', or, as it is sometimes termed
by ecologists, 'ecosystem health' and 'ecological integrity', will likely be a
contributing factor in determining future political stability, as suggested in
ecological disaster scenarios where future wars will be fought over access to
water (De Villiers 2000).
This connection was well understood by the environmentalists
Shellenberger and Nordhaus (2004:12):
Why, for instance, is a human-made phenomenon like global warming
- which may kill hundreds of millions of human beings over the next
century - considered 'environmental'? Why are poverty and war not
considered environmental problems while global warming is? What
are the implications of framing global warming as an environmental
problem - and handing off the responsibility for dealing with it to
'environmentalists'?
Political and sociological analyses connecting ecosystem health, resource scar-
city and violence have actually gained much currency in the last 20 years:
El Salvador would be a hopeless place even without war. It is a crowded,
deforested, eroding land that has lost most of its fertility and wildlife.
Salvadoran peasants only twenty years ago ate white-tailed deer, arma-
dillo, spider monkey, and cottontail rabbit as inexpensive daily fare;
today, most wild animals except crop-eating rodents are extinct, and corn
tortillas and beans make up the average daily diet.
(Krauss 1991:57)
While these kinds of ecology-security connections are being made with
increasing frequency, until recently political commentators did not usu-
ally implicate ecosystem stability directly in human security. For example,
in Krauss' (1991) broad, comparative survey of Central America, the chap-
ter on Costa Rica, 'Central America's One Democracy', makes no mention
of the country's high degree of forest cover and intact biological diversity
compared with other countries in the region, nor how this may affect its polit-
ical outcomes. When asked about this omission, Cliff Krauss (Pers. comm.,
3 March 2005) agreed that Costa Rica's rainforests and the wealth resulting
from ecotourism was likely closely linked to the country's stable, democratic
government. But, he pointed out that Nicaragua also has a large amount of
intact forest cover, yet nonetheless an appalling record on human rights and
governance. In the latest WWF Living Planet Report (2012), El Salvador was