The Age of Scarcity

The current financial crisis has shown the terrible effects of wanton risk taking and resource gluttony (in this case other people's hard earned monies). The resulting credit scarcity has devastated individuals, families, communities and businesses. Yet, the credit scarcity is but one of many that will force changes in everything from the life styles of the poor and the wealthy, to the geopolitics of nations.

In short order there will be a range of other resource scarcities to contend with - food, fuel, water, shelter, raw materials, labor, etc. We are entering a period of time that will be shaped by pressures felt not only at the individual level, but more critically at the community and national levels - from the lack of water in many parts of the world through to the lack of energy sources in others. Individually, these scarcities will impact nations in different ways, but the impact will be felt globally. The disruption brought about by scarcity in one region will be felt elsewhere as our interrelated and systems based world no longer allows us the luxury of geographical immunity. Geopolitics will be shaped by those nations that have resources and by those that clamor for them. Competition for resources will occur at the individual level and the global level with dependencies on other nations for the provision of resources (of any kind) creating a whole new dimension of security risks. Some have suggested that water will be the next oil. That is to look at the issue far to narrowly - think rather of the global scarcity of sustenance and shelter! What is certain is that the insidious politics of oil provide but a foretaste of the politics of scarcity.

The question for our times is now how will we address the inevitable and endemic resource scarcity that individuals, communities and nations will face, possibly for the foreseeable future?

Further reading: The Guardian, BusinessWeek

Environmental security - the (not so) new national security

Perhaps this is not obvious, but it should be - a nation's security is undermined by its dependencies on energy resources from other nations. This is not new: in 2006 the Council of Foreign Relations published a report on the "National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency" that should be read and re-read by policy-makers because it has become all the more relevant as fuel prices soar and the political stability and "friendliness" of those nations that have been gifted energy reserves become increasingly questionable.

Environmental security is an area of study that has been largely focused on the impact of natural disasters, and the mis-use of the environment and natural resources. It should become an increasingly relevant area of study: a nation's environmental security is directly threatened by excessive dependencies on external energy sources, no matter the nature of the relationship between the nation and the resource provider.

And if the impact of global warming is such that the physical nature of a nation is threatened - changes in climate resulting in significantly reduced arable land, coastal destruction and other dramatic alterations to our physical space that will cause massive human misery and economic loss - then Environmental security becomes even more relevant. The CFR report notes that reducing both energy dependencies AND energy consumption are critical to a nation's security. Until these are addressed we are knowingly contributing to actual or potential (depending on your political/scientific leanings) systems weaknesses that could prove disastrous to the nation state in the medium to longer term.

Environmental security is, and should be, an integral component of the security considerations of any country. "Save the planet to save ourselves" takes on a whole other meaning!

(Oh and subsidies for bio-fuels? Guess what, they increase a nation's external dependencies for the basic raw materials for food!)