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43. It would be highly desirable if the appropriate international organizations, including appropriate UN bodies and regional organizations, were to pool their resources and draw on the most sophisticated surveillance technology available to establish a reliable early warping system for environmental risks and conflict. (See Chapter 12.) such a system would monitor indicators of risks and potential disputes. such as soil erosion, growth in regional migration, ad uses of commons that are approaching the thresholds of sustainability. The organizations would also offer their services for helping the respective countries to establish principles and institutions for joint managment.
4. Disarmament and Security
44. Action to reduce environmental threats to security requires a redefinition of priorities, nationally and globally. Such a redefinition could evolve through the widespread acceptance of broader forms of security assessment and embrace military, political, environmental. and other sources of conflict.
45. A broader approach to security assessment would no doubt find many cases in which national, regional, and global security could be enhanced through expenditures quite small in relation to the levels of military spending. Four of the most urgent environmental requirements – relating to tropical forests, water, desertification, and population – could be funded with the equivalent of less than one month's global military spending. (See Box 11-1.) It is difficult to shift budgetary resources, but individual governments have already shown that transformation is possible, given political will. In some of the countries most seriously affected by environmental stress and poverty, the sums required to alleviate these conditions are small in relation to what is now spent on disaster relief, let alone military activities.[1] However, these sums must be spent quickly, before deteriorating conditions require much larger expenditures.
46. But in terms of the aggregate resources involved in arms spending and the potential threat to the environment from war, the greatest need is to improve relations among those major powers capable of deploying weapons of mass destruction. This is needed to achieve agreement on tighter control over the proliferation and testing of various types of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear and non-nuclear including those that have environmental implications.[2]
47. A substantial number of agreements already show the potential for negotiated, multilateral solutions. President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev made substantial towards strategic arms agreement, which must be carried to reverse the alarming trends of several decades. Apparently, the two major powers came close to agreeing on intermediate range systems in Europe, to be followed by agreements banning forward deployment of shorter range systems. It would alleviate significantly the pressures exercised by nuclear weapons on the security order in Europe, In addition, they are moving toward a 50 per cent reduction agreement on strategic systems, followed by total elimination agreements. They also need co agree on effective measures to prevent an arms race in space. Successful
- ↑ The amount that the United Nations has recently budgeted for Ethiopia to cater for anti erosion, reforestation, and related measures under its Anti Desertification Plan suggests that no more than $50 million a year would have been required to counter much of the highlands' problem if the investment had been undertaken in due time. By contrast, the amount required to counter Ethiopia's famine during 1985 amounted to $500 million for relief measures alone. Between 1976 and 1980 Ethiopia spent an average of $225 million a year on military activities.
- ↑ Among international treaties specifically designed to protect the global commons from militarization are the Antarctic Treaty (1959); the Moscow Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water (1963); the Outer Space Treaty (1967); the Treaty of Tlatelolco (1967); the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Sea-Bed Treaty (1971).
