Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
released in the very same month as the
Australia in the Asian Century
White
Paper, envisaged Australia playing a continuing role as a major fossil fuel supplier
to Asia and other 'growth markets', with continuing strong growth in coal and
gas production (including onshore and offshore LNG projects and coal seam gas)
(Australian Government, 2012b).
There is little point in offering a comprehensive framework of 'sustainable
security' for the region if some of the core elements in the framework - such as
Australia's economic, energy and trade policies - are pursued in ways that ignore
or directly undermine other elements, such as food security, human security and
the security of natural systems in Australia and the region. The primary virtue of
adopting a broader security framework is to make connections between different
security referents (individuals, states, regions, natural systems), to identify
conflicts and synergies between different policy responses in support of each
referent and to develop and pursue an integrated response that maximizes those
synergies.
The failure to make these critical connections is perpetuated in the Gillard
government's national security strategy -
Strong and Secure: A Strategy for
Australia's National Security
- released shortly after the
Australia in the Asian
Century
White Paper in January 2013 (Australian Government, 2013). The
strategy draws a sharp distinction between human and national security, and
returns to a narrow conceptualisation of national security as 'primarily concerned
with the protection of Australia's sovereignty, population and assets, and shaping
a favourable international environment' (Australian Government, 2013: 230).
The new strategy gives special prominence to cyber-security, terrorism, trans-
national crime and corruption, and border security but relegates climate change
in a shopping list of broader global challenges with national security implications
(31). Yet it offers no specific details on how this particular 'broader challenge'
might be addressed other than 'Partnering with developing States in our region
to manage the implications of climate change'; 'Working with countries experi-
encing or emerging from natural disasters or conflict' (34); and 'Working with
likeminded regional middle powers to manage proactively the strategic implica-
tions of shared global challenges, including climate change, and food and energy
security' (39).
Even from a traditional national security perspective, both the Rudd govern-
ment's 2009 White Paper and the Gillard government's national security strategy
miss the mark by providing no assessment of the risks of climate change to the
Australian Defence Forces' (ADF) capabilities. Climate change will compromise
the ability of the ADF to discharge its traditional role in safeguarding Australia
given the expected rising cost of transport fuels and the increasing risk of damage
to critical infrastructure and other assets, including coastal and inland bases from
rising seas, storm surges and forest fires. For example, the major forest fires that
accompanied Russia's heatwave in July 2010 caused severe damage to a naval
logistics base at Kolomna outside Moscow, destroying headquarters, warehouses
containing aeronautical equipment and vehicles, and reportedly torching 200
aircraft (Agence France-Presse, 2010).
