global vulnerabilities and threats to “human security” why, as early as 1969, the german...

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Back in the late 1960s, long before the catch-word “globalization” was on everyone’s lips,scholars in International Relations, observ-ing the increasingly complex and intensiveconnections between states and societiesworldwide, began to develop the theory ofComplex Interdependence. John W. Burton(1972), who introduced the World SocietyApproach into the international debate,played a key role in this process when hebroke away from the “billiard ball model”of international relations – a state-centric,pragmatic view in which sovereign nation-states at best influence each other throughdiplomatic pressure – towards a cobweb

model of interactions. According to thismodel [see Figure 1], international relationsconsist of myriads of linkages and activitiesat many levels of interaction and decision-making, involving state actors but also non-governmental organizations, private busi-ness and international organizations.

One outcome of this involvement ininterdependent structures at many levels ofinteraction is that with the globalization oftrade and capital markets, environmentalrisks and the digital revolution, the nation-states are increasingly forfeiting their deci-sion-making power, which is progressivelyshifting towards transnational systems. This

I. Introduction: Risks and Challenges

Global Vulnerabilities and Threats to “Human Security”Franz Nuscheler, Tobias Debiel, Dirk Messner

Figure 1: Multilevel politics, diversity of actors and different models of governance

23okt_umbruch 23.10.2006 15:22 Uhr Seite 9

is why, as early as 1969, the German politicalscientist Ernst-Otto Czempiel (1969) wasalready describing national sovereignty –still the “sacred cow” of international lawand diplomatic rhetoric – as “anachronistic”.At around the same time, the concept of“world domestic policy” (Weltinnenpolitik)emerged for the first time – a prelude to the debate about a “world state” that wouldtranscend the nation-states.

The theory of interdependenceand the concept of vulnerability

A number of the world’s challenges (such asthe social polarization of world society, glob-al population growth, the pressure of migra-tion from poor regions, climate change, in-ternational terrorism and instability in theinternational financial markets) can poten-tially have spillover effects and cause crises in global systems. The globalization of theeconomy, technology, communications andtransport systems means that negative dev-elopments are also felt worldwide. Problemsin apparently remote regions can thus have aknock-on effect at regional and sometimeseven at global level.

The extent to which individual actors’autonomy is constrained by this growinginterdependence and the declining role ofthe nation-state as a result of globalizationprocesses is determined by their economic,political and military power, their adaptivecapacities and their level of vulnerability to the interactions within the cobweb. Pro-tagonists of interdependence theory distin-guish between sensitivity and vulnerability,according to actors’ options and their capac-ities to respond flexibly to international cri-ses, minimize their costs, and identify alter-natives.

The vulnerability of two CIS states(Ukraine and Georgia) was recently high-lighted when Russia cut off gas supplies tothese countries in a dispute over price in-

creases. Unlike Ukraine and Georgia, theWestern European gas-importing countrieswere able to respond to the acute shortageand the prospect of long-term scarcity bydrawing on their reserve stocks and diversi-fying their sources of supply. Of course, ris-ing oil and gas prices have affected the in-dustrialized countries’ economies, sharemarkets and price stability as well, but it isthe least developed countries (LDCs) whichhave been hit hardest. They have to spend ahigher proportion of their foreign exchangereceipts on energy imports, making it moredifficult for them to finance other essentialimports and service their foreign debt. Bycontrast, Germany, for example – the world’sleading export nation – has benefited fromthe substantial foreign exchange holdings of, and increased imports by, the “new rich”in the oil- and gas-producing and exportingcountries. There is thus considerable in-equality in the distribution of sensitivitiesand vulnerabilities.

Even hegemonic powers are not immune to external shocks

In their classic analysis of complex inter-dependence, Robert O. Keohane and JosephS. Nye (1977) provide a wealth of examplesto illustrate the difference between sensi-tivity and vulnerability. They showed thatback then, a hegemonic power such as theUSA was less vulnerable than many de-veloping countries which are dependent,for better or worse, on drip-fed foreign aid.This deceptive feeling of invulnerability was based on the USA’s military and tech-nological superiority and encouraged itsshift towards unilateralism. But then disas-ter struck, triggering geostrategic develop-ments which forced Mars America – thehyperpower whose global and military pre-eminence was lauded by unilateralists suchas Robert Kagan (2003) – to acknowledge its own vulnerability for the first time. Many

Global Vulnerabilities and Threats to “Human Security”

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other OECD countries underwent a similarexperience.

The terrorist attacks of 11 September2001 abruptly ended America’s belief in itsown invulnerability. It also confronted therest of the world with the reality of “global-ized insecurity”, which became all too ap-parent when attacks occurred elsewhere in the world as well. The events in New York and Washington, Madrid, London,Mumbai or Java revealed the vulnerability of technical civilization, with a high level ofexpensive intelligence and surveillance nowbeing required to protect countries every-where. “9/11” radically changed internatio-nal relations: the global “war on terror” waslaunched because these intermittent acts of transnational terrorism revealed the vulnerability of the global system. Withinternal security now taking overriding pri-ority, fundamental principles such as therule of law and human rights are becomingvulnerable everywhere, even in establisheddemocracies. Meanwhile, local terroristattacks against tourist destinations have hada disastrous effect on tourism – the mainsource of foreign exchange and employmentin many places – and on the airlines that flyto at-risk destinations and regions.

The number of attacks is worth not-ing: according to statistics from the US Na-tional Counterterrorism Center, approxima-tely 11,000 terrorist attacks occurred in 2005and resulted in over 14,600 deaths. The ma-terial damage caused by the 9/11 attacks isestimated at above US$ 30 billion (Krugman2004, p. 2), and the increased vulnerability is reflected in higher insurance premiums.The death toll and material impacts are considerable. Nonetheless, the figures are far lower than the human and material“costs” of natural disasters or armed conflict.For example, the tsunami which hit Southand South-East Asia at the end of 2004claimed around 250,000 lives, while morethan 85,000 people died in the earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005. According to

epidemiological studies, the long-runningwar in the Democratic Republic of Congohas led to the loss of some four million lives.

Against this background, it is not justthe actual extent of the destruction but thefeelings of uncertainty and the reminders of modern societies’ vulnerability whichmake terrorism the number one threat tosecurity at the start of the 21st century from the industrialized countries’ perspec-tive. A widespread need for security, ratherthan the facts, plays a key role: many peoplereact sensitively to a “ubiquitous threat” syn-drome which they are reminded of daily bythe media and security policy experts.

Vulnerability in disaster, environmental and development research

Vulnerability has been a central concept indisaster and climate change research sincethe 1990s. Different scientific disciplineswith their specific approaches have beeninvolved in these fields of research (see Dietz 2006, p. 14 ff.). Depending on the dis-cipline in question and its particular focus of interest, a distinction was made betweenthe economic, environmental or social vul-nerability of a region, country or populationgroup. The systemic relationships betweenhuman communities and the environmentwere then explored as the next interdiscipli-nary step.

The mainly natural-science-basedfield of disaster research, with its NaturalHazard Approach, has tended to treat naturaldisasters as environmental events whichcause technical and administrative follow-up problems, and has generally disregardedsocial and political-economic aspects. Bycontrast, political ecology, environmentaleconomy and human geography have coun-tered this natural determinism with a SocialVulnerability Approach based on a multidi-mensional concept of vulnerability whichattempts to take account of the links be-


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tween vulnerability and political, institu-tional and socio-economic structures. Thisis exemplified by the following definition of vulnerability as a “multi-layered andmulti-dimensional social space defined bythe determinate political, economic andinstitutional capabilities of people in specificplaces at specific times” (Watts/Bohle 1993,p. 43). This definition also includes an aspectwhich is especially important in vulnerabil-ity research, namely the capabilities of peo-ple and societies to mitigate their exposureto environmental crises by means of copingcapacities. Strategies to manage environ-mental crises have focussed mainly on theconcepts of exposure, mitigation and adap-tation.

Important pioneering work on themultidimensionality of vulnerability wasundertaken by Amartya Sen (1981, 1984),who drew attention to the vulnerability-poverty-development nexus. Sen develop-ed the notion of entitlements as a means of explaining famines and starvation; in his view, setting aside natural factors (suchas prolonged droughts), famines and star-vation were often the outcome of a lack ofentitlements to land, water, knowledge andavailable technologies as well as unequalendowment with production opportunities.Other authors – such as John Friedman(1992) – also defined vulnerability as a lackof power and political rights in the domes-tic arena, work and politics. The chance toreduce vulnerability therefore logically liesin social and political empowerment.

Robert Chambers (1989) established a closer connection between vulnerabilityand poverty. He defined vulnerability as “defencelessness, insecurity, and exposure to risk, shocks and stress” and was thus able to demonstrate easily that vulnerabil-ity defined in this way reduces the capabili-ties of people and societies to break out ofpoverty.

Vulnerability has remained a centralissue in climate research. However, climate

research itself has increasingly been integrat-ed into development research and is nowfocussing more on how climate change impacts on conditions of life (see Dietz2006). The reports produced by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) have made major contributions to developing the concept of vulnerabilityand ensuring that it is properly recognizedin development policy. They also advocat-ed the formation of the Vulnerability andAdaptation Resource Group (VARG), aninformal network of UN organizations andbi- and multilateral development institu-tions. The World Bank has also discoveredthe paradigm of vulnerability in the contextof climate change (see Sperling 2003; seealso section 5 of this chapter).

The “économie dominante” as a factor in global economic instability

It is not only transnational terrorism whichhas shattered the West’s belief in its owninvulnerability. With its energy-guzzlingeconomic model, which is profligate in itsuse of its own energy supplies and increas-ingly dependent on energy imports from allover the world, the West has been forced toacknowledge that resource security has be-come the Achilles heel of its prosperity,economic and security policy. Energy andsecurity expert Michael T. Klare (2004) haswarned “oil junkie America” that the sensi-tivity that has already resulted from thesoaring costs of oil imports could be trans-formed into dangerous vulnerability be-cause the American way of life is increas-ingly dependent on oil imports, most ofwhich come from unstable regions. What’smore, in these regions, other oil junkies arecompeting for access to the increasinglyscarce lubricant of the global economy. Atpresent, they are still doing so through di-plomacy (e. g. the acceptance of corrupt au-tocracies) and various types of incentives


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(loans, arms deliveries), but there are alreadysigns of a willingness to resort to conflict,prompting many observers to speak of a“new Cold War”. Europe will also be affectedby this trend [see Figure 2].

The USA’s dynamic growth, which is dependent on energy imports, is not only a driver but also a factor of instabilityfor the global economy, which responds sensitively to fluctuations in the US econ-omy. It is said that when the New York Stock Exchange sneezes, stock exchangesthroughout the world catch a fever. On theone hand, the US market – which has beenbooming for years – plays a key role as adriver of demand and growth for the EUand the emerging countries, even though its own current account deficit has reach-ed dizzying heights. On the other hand, aslowdown in growth as a result of furtherenergy price hikes, higher interest rates orcrises in the property market due to privaterefinancing problems could have seriousknock-on effects throughout the globaleconomy. Here, interdependent sensitivi-ties and vulnerabilities become apparent –the undesired but hard-to-avoid side-effects of globalization.

Globalized insecurity and “renuclearization”

The “globalized insecurity” which is nowbeing felt in almost every region of theworld as a result of transnational terrorismis reinforced by new vulnerabilities that re-late to nuclear weapons. The “renucleariza-tion” of international relations is now re-garded as a given. The issue of nuclear vul-nerability dominated the East-West conflictfor decades but slipped into the backgroundin the 1990s after the end of the Cold War.Progress was also made on controlling weap-ons of mass destruction (WMD). Argentina,Brazil and South Africa have shelved theirnuclear weapons programmes. As recom-pense for rejoining the international com-munity, Libya has also abandoned its WMDprogrammes, and in Iraq, the ousting ofSaddam Hussein has put paid to WMD proj-ects for the foreseeable future.

Nonetheless, North Korea’s and Iran’snuclear weapons programmes and the pos-sibility that terrorists and criminals coulduse radioactive substances to manufacture a “dirty bomb” show that the nuclear threatis still very real (High-level Panel on Threats,

Figure 2: Development of the world market price for Brent oil 1992–2006 US$/barrel

Source: www.handelsblatt.com


Challenges and Change 2004). And despite a diplomatic rapprochement, the India-Pak-istan conflict with its nuclear component isstill one of the most potentially explosive situations in the world. A further issue ofconcern is that the use of nuclear weapons –unlike biological and chemical weapons – is not regulated in international law.

The “Janus head” of globalization

The proliferation and intensification oftransnational economic activities mean that almost every economy is now integrat-ed into a set of global interdependences,narrowing the scope for national economicpolicy. The once-familiar concept of the“national economy” has become obsolete:major decisions on trade and financial policy are now taken by international orga-nizations (such as the EU, ECB and WTO)and influenced by clubs like the G8. Inter-dependence means greater integration,but it also means vulnerability to externaldecisions and developments. Less diversifiedresource-based economies are especially vulnerable to demand and price fluctua-tions on the commodities markets. Un-predictable price fluctuations here canimpact on every aspect of these countries’economic life, including their financial policy and debt service capacity.

The increasingly integrated worldmarket is akin to a benchmark test thatinfluences the woes and wellbeing of nationsand judges their competitiveness. Even theestablished industrialized countries andtheir traditional industrial sectors havecome under growing pressure to adapt and become more competitive, in line withthe adage: Adjust or die! While this compe-titive pressure forces countries to adaptstructures which are no longer competitiveand encourages technological change andeconomic dynamism, it has high social costs.

Many countries are concerned about theireconomic survival, putting national politi-cal systems under pressure to justify thechanges that are taking place. While thewealthier countries have the scope to mod-ernize as well as financial resources to cush-ion social problems, the least developedcountries (LDCs), especially in sub-SaharanAfrica but also many middle-income eco-nomies in Latin America, are failing to keeppace with global competition.

Opportunities and risks, winners and losers of globalization

The positive and negative aspects of global-ization, its opportunities and risks are con-tentious issues, as is apparent from thereport of the German Bundestag’s StudyCommission on “Globalization of the WorldEconomy – Challenges and Responses”.Reports by international organizations alsofail to agree on whether globalization is agood or a bad thing: while the InternationalMonetary Fund and the World Bank, theWTO and the OECD emphasize its positiveeffects, reports by UN organizations tend tofocus on the negatives. The apologists forglobalization proclaim that they bring goodnews: liberalization of markets has the effectof encouraging growth, and more growthmeans a better standard of living. The criticsof globalization – especially Attac, the trans-national movement at the forefront of theanti-globalization campaign – protest thatits blessings only extend to the powerful inthe world economy, is merely of benefit to afew emerging countries, and then generallyonly to the minority of their population. It is certainly the case that the economic bene-fits of globalization are being distributedmore and more unequally: in 2003, annualaverage per capita income in the industrial-ized countries was almost 23 times higherthan the average for the LDCs, comparedwith just 16 times higher in 1981. Against


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this background, critics of globalizationhave received powerful support from NobelPrize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz(2002), who contends that the majority ofdeveloping countries and their populationsare living in the “shadow of globalization”.

The economic and social geographerFred Scholz even introduced the term “NewSouth”, as a universal social category, to des-cribe the “rest of the world”, and hence the“mass of the world population”, who are ex-cluded from globalization. The Human De-velopment Report 1999 speaks of “global-ization without a human face” that deniesmuch of the world’s population a decent life.

The difficulty is that the two sides have a plethora of data with which to backup their claims. Globalization has winnersand losers, both at state level and within so-ciety, both in the OECD countries and in thedeveloping world. On the one hand, it offerscompetitive emerging countries fresh op-portunities in the increasingly deregulatedworld market, and on the other, it threatensto marginalize whole regions economicallyand politically to an even greater extent.Globalization means integration and frag-mentation, inclusion and exclusion, global-ism and parochialism – that is, a reaffirma-tion of local particularities and strengths(“glocalization”).

According to forecasts by the WTOand the OECD, almost all groups of coun-tries will benefit from the liberalization ofworld trade at some point – with the pos-sible exception of the raw-material produc-ing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, whichcan generally only export these raw materi-als after low-level processing, with propor-tionately little added value. Nonetheless,the chapter entitled International Raw Mate-rials Markets: Rising Prices and GrowingConflict Potential shows that Africa too hasbenefited from the growing demand formineral resources. The demand pull fromChina and India is driving up world marketprices, but risks casting Africa back into its

colonial role as a source of raw materials – a role which development policy has soughtto overcome.

While the successful growth anddevelopment in the Far East are largely dueto the export of competitive industrial goodsand services, the raw-material producingcountries are becoming increasingly decou-pled from the expanding world economy.Sub-Saharan Africa has also been largely un-able to take advantage of the preferentialtrading arrangements granted to the ACPcountries by the EU under the Lomé Con-vention. But this decoupling is not the resultof the forces of globalization; rather, it is theoutcome of internal conditions in most ofthese countries, notably their dilapidatedpolitical structures and their ensuing inabil-ity to overcome the colonial legacy and holdtheir own in global competition.

In other words, globalization cannotbe blamed entirely for the impoverishmentand exploitation of people worldwide. Butwhile globalization should not be demo-nized wholesale, there is justification in thecriticism of its social injustices voiced by theUnited Nations Development Programme(UNDP) and the World Commission on theSocial Dimension of Globalization (2004,p. X), which stated that the global imbal-ances generated by globalization are “mor-ally unacceptable and political unsustain-able”: “The current process of globalizationis generating unbalanced outcomes, bothbetween and within countries. Wealth isbeing created, but too many countries andpeople are not sharing in its benefits.”

Human security in a fragmented world

The “globalization without a human face”,mentioned above, denotes fundamental vul-nerability and the loss of human security.The term encompasses both the guarantee ofthe individual’s physical and psychologicalintegrity (freedom from fear) and the satis-


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faction of basic socio-economic needs (free-dom from want) (Commission on HumanSecurity 2003). Human security enhancesthe concept of “human development” byfocussing on radical deteriorations in peo-ple’s living conditions which require a res-ponse from the international community. Inother words, human security relates vulner-ability to the individual and makes him/herthe normative and empirical reference point.

The threat to “human security” isespecially apparent from the fact that one-fifth of the world’s population – more than one billion people – still lives in abjectpoverty on less than one US dollar a day.Nor does merely creating formal workingconditions do much to improve this situa-tion: 2.85 billion workers in the world donot earn enough from their formal employ-ment to lift themselves above the US$2 a day poverty line. Nonetheless, there is a pos-itive trend: the percentage of people living in abject poverty has fallen from 27.9% to21.1% since 1990 – although this is almostentirely due to progress achieved in Chinaand East Asia, whereas stagnant and evenretrograde trends predominate in other re-gions of the world [see the chapter on Glo-bal Social Policy and Development].

Chronic malnutrition is one of themost basic violations of human security.Even today, 842 million people worldwideare still chronically malnourished, withSouth Asia and sub-Saharan Africa beingworst affected. The food situation tends todeteriorate further in times of war. In An-gola, for example, food production declinedby 44% during the war. A positive develop-ment, however, is that in all regions of theworld, the under-five mortality rate has de-creased since 1970, even in sub-SaharanAfrica, where it has fallen from 24% to 17%.

People in “fragile states” – in which thestate’s monopoly of force has eroded andpublic institutions are increasingly failing todeliver core functions to the majority oftheir populations – are especially hard hit by

the negative effects of a fragmented worldorder. Figures from the UK’s Department forInternational Development (DFID 2005)demonstrate the gravity of the situation:child mortality in fragile states is two timeshigher and maternal mortality is actuallythree times greater than in other poor countries. Around one-third of the popula-tion is malnourished. Fragile states are mostoff-track in relation to the attainment of theMillennium Development Goals; the proba-bility that they will achieve these MDGs ontarget is less than 20%.

Globalized “casino capitalism”: causing sensitivities in some places and vulnerabilities in others

In the 1990s, seven regional financial crisesoccurred which caused massive turbulencein the international financial markets, pri-marily because no effective regulatory sys-tems for these dynamic but highly unstablemarkets have yet been established. The vari-ous figures from the international orga-nizations show that the banking crises whichoccurred in the late 1990s wiped out almost20% of gross domestic product (GDP) inMexico, more than 50% of GDP in Indone-sia, 35% in South Korea, 40% in Russia and as much as 60% in Argentina. While the Western banks experienced losses, theirsurvival was not at risk, but in Indonesia andArgentina in particular, the financial crisestriggered grave economic and social criseswhich these countries have still not recov-ered from. The German Bundestag’s StudyCommission on Globalization of the WorldEconomy (2002, p. 77) summarizes the eco-nomic, social and political costs of financialcrises as follows: “National and above allinternational financial crises are associatedwith major economic, social and politicalcosts which can only partly be expressed inmonetary terms. The life of society changes,even though statistics show that after some


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time, the drop in growth and share prices,employment and incomes caused by thefinancial crisis evens out ... Indeed, somepoor groups and sectors may actually bene-fit from a financial crisis (if, for example,the demand for informally produced agri-cultural goods increases), while others areadversely affected. Financial crises thus dif-ferentiate between poor and rich, and alsobetween the various sectors of the poor.”

The crisis-prone nature of speculative“casino capitalism” – which is largely de-coupled from real economic activity, is nolonger primarily concerned with financingtrade and services and is mainly about theliterally boundless hunt for speculative prof-its – conflicts with the rules of “fair global-ization”. Even the major financial speculatorGeorge Soros (1998), faced with the impactof the 1997/1998 Asian crisis, spoke of the“capitalist threat” of unbridled “casino capi-talism”. And in its 2002 Global Financial Sta-bility Report, the International MonetaryFund talked about the “key risks” to whichthe international financial system continuesto be exposed.

These risks include the threats posedto financial integrity and stability by money-laundering. With the liberalization, deregu-lation and globalization of the financialmarkets, this has become a major problemon a global scale. Not only has the extent of this problem increased; so too have theassociated risks to the economy, society andpolitics. 9/11 showed that the deregulatedfinancial markets are not only a vehicle forgreater prosperity in the world; they can also be misused as a means of financingorganized crime and terrorist networks [see Figure 3].

So there are good reasons why IngeKaul (2003), UNDP’s lead analyst on globalpublic goods, and her colleagues in the In-ternational Task Force on Global PublicGoods defined the stability of the interna-tional financial markets as one of the globalpublic goods to be protected: global finan-cial crises not only shake the foundations of the international financial system – thebackbone of the world economy – but canalso plunge many millions of people intopoverty. It was the 1997 Asian crisis which

Figure 3: Daily foreign exchange market transactions

Source: BIS 2005


prompted Japan and other like-mindedcountries at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 to call for the establish-ment of a Commission on Human Security;they also demanded that the internationalfinancial systems be made less crisis-prone.

Even so, the managers of the interna-tional financial markets – both governmentand private – have failed to introduce a newinternational financial architecture whichregulates the risks and distortions associatedwith financial crises, with all their grave eco-nomic and social costs. That being the case,since the Asian crisis, the East Asian coun-tries, including Japan, have built up foreignexchange reserves totalling some US$ 2500billion – mainly in US dollars. But this pro-tective measure itself could destabilize theUS economy. China alone, with its foreignexchange reserves amounting to US$ 900billion, is capable of deliberately disruptingthe US financial markets.

As the report by the German Bundes-tag’s Study Commission on Globalization of the World Economy demonstrates, thereis no shortage of proposals on how the prob-lems of international speculation and cur-rency manipulation, money-laundering and tax evasion – all of which overstretchindividual countries’ regulatory competence– could be addressed through internationalcooperation. However, international banksare powerful bodies, and it is in their inter-ests to be subject to minimal national andinternational regulations. That is why onlyminor reforms have been undertaken todate, largely based on proposals from theFinancial Stability Forum.

Normative standards and democratization

The “interdependence of interdependences”involves not only economic and social but also political and cultural interactions,to say nothing of the environmental sensi-tivities and vulnerabilities which will

be discussed later in this paper. The authorsof the bestseller The Global Trap (Martin/Schumann 1997) demonized globalizationas an “assault on prosperity and democracy”.According to the two authors, in the attemptto square the circle between competitive-ness, social justice and democracy, it is theformer which threatens to triumph. RalfDahrendorf also recognized the inherentrisks of “unbridled globalization” – namelygrowing social disintegration and politicalinstability, which in turn could encouragepeople to turn to authoritarian solutions.Examining the situation from a democratictheory perspective, political scientist KarlKaiser (1998) did not rule out the possibilitythat “the triumph of democracy at the endof the 20th century could be followed in the21st century by its gradual erosion as a resultof massive globalization”. He argued that theinterdependence of modern societies under-mines the democratic control mechanismsof the traditional territorial state.

Human rights groups fear that glo-balization could undermine much of theprogress made on the normative develop-ment of human rights, with social rightsbeing eroded as living and working condi-tions worsen in the global competitionbetween locations, women’s rights dimin-ishing due to even greater exploitation infactories producing for the world marketand international trafficking of women,and child rights decreasing as a result of agreater reliance on child labour. Researchersworking on women’s issues also blame glob-alization for subjecting “the globalized wo-man” to even more burdens and problems(Wichterich 1998).

The German Bundestag’s Study Com-mission on Globalization of the World Eco-nomy drew on a number of reports on thesituation of women in the globalization process, all of which lamented the “genderblindness” of economic theories and statis-tics. The Study Commission’s own conclu-sions and predictions are also pessimistic,


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as the chapter on Gender Equity in its reportbears out. Although gratifying progress has been made in some areas (such as educa-tion), women still suffer from a high level ofhuman insecurity. In the domestic arena inparticular, women are still vulnerable to vio-lence – studies undertaken in more than 50countries over the last decade show that thisaffects between 20% and 50% of women.

The opening up of markets for capi-tal, goods and services, and globalized com-petition between locations, have weakenedthe ability of states to impose minimum so-cial standards and have strengthened thebargaining power of multinational corpo-rations. Their transnational structure andexit option if host countries attempt to con-trol their activities have also weakened thepower of national trade unions to organise.The WTO’s efforts to drive forward global-ization are aimed at dismantling barriers totrade in goods and international investment,but take no account of the competitive con-ditions in which these goods are produced.According to the UN’s Committee on Eco-nomic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR),too, “globalization risks downgrading thecentral place accorded to human rights bythe United Nations Charter in general andthe International Bill of Human Rights inparticular”.

At the same time, however, economicglobalization in combination with the emer-gence of a world public allows more atten-tion to be paid to the problems of humanrights, labour and environmental standardseven in remote regions of the world. As aresult, multinational companies which seekto circumvent the industrialized countries’national regulatory systems by relocating tothe global south are being held to account byinternational non-government organiza-tions (NGOs), the media and internationalorganizations.

So globalization is an extremely am-bivalent phenomenon, facing both ways likea head of Janus. It offers fresh opportunities

but also creates risks. This also applies to thequestion whether globalization poses athreat to human rights and the survival ofdemocracies. It has become evident thatglobalization can also stimulate democrati-zation, civil society engagement and interna-tional cooperation: the nation-states andglobally operating companies are beingcalled to account by the international com-munity because their activities are increas-ingly being measured against standardswhich apply worldwide. This process is safe-guarded by the media, which report from all over the world and which have created acritical world public, and the NGOs, whichare increasingly networking and operatingtransnationally. They too utilize global tele-communications and the Internet in theirvarious campaigning activities.

The “open skies” of global communi-cations – the “communications guerrillas” –now even place dictatorships under pressureto justify themselves. The world has changedsince the Congress of Vienna: states can nolonger interact through exclusively diploma-tic channels because world society and theworld public opinion have become powerfulinfluences in international relations. It couldbe said that these impacts and influences areakin to a positive form of sensitivity.

This trend is reflected in an increasein democratic government – borne out by empirical observations – which mainlytook place between 1985 and 1994. Thehuman rights situation has also noticeablyimproved. In 2004, 18% of countries fea-tured in the two worst categories of the five-point Political Terror Scale (PTS); in 1990,the figure was 29%. At the same time, demo-cratization processes are often at risk offailure: the State Failure Task Force (2003)found the odds of conflict and state failureto be seven times as high for partial democ-racies (states in transition from authoritar-ian to democratic rule) as they were for fulldemocracies or, indeed, autocracies. Peoplein one-fifth of the world’s countries still suf-


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fer from a lack of political freedom andgrave human rights violations.

The rise of China and India: new instabilities in the international system?

Many observers agree that the rise ofChina and India in the world economy and politics will permanently change theinternational system in the coming decades.Both countries are achieving long-termgrowth, reminiscent of the economic mira-cle which took place in the “Asian Tigers”such as South Korea, Taiwan and Singaporein the 1970s and 1980s. Nowadays, however,it is the world’s two most populous nationswhich are coming to the fore in the worldeconomy and global governance architec-ture and changing the basic patterns ofthese systems. Over a period of just a fewyears, China has emerged as the world’sthird largest export nation; it holds the sec-ond largest foreign exchange reserves in the world and is also one of the major CO2 emitters. With a time lag of around ten years, India is now following suit. Bothcountries are playing an increasingly signi-ficant role in global climate policy, in theWTO, and – as key raw materials importers– in world politics. These structural changescould cause new instabilities in the interna-tional system, but offer fresh opportunitiesat the same time:3 If China and India successfully continue

their economic rise, a shift away fromthe quasi-unilateral structure of the glo-bal system towards a multipolar systemof power relations would result. The his-tory of the rise and fall of old and newpowers shows that phases of power tran-sition in international politics generallycause turbulence, conflict, and some-times even war. The West – especially the USA – will have to learn how to dealconstructively with China’s and India’s

claims to power. Western leaders willrealize that the phase of “global domi-nation” (Brzezinski) by a single super-power was merely a brief moment in history and that new forms of interna-tional cooperation must be developedwhich are suited to the new global dis-tribution of power.

3 China and India face a key challenge: toidentify their new role as global gover-nance actors in the field of tension be-tween their own interests, traditionalexpectations that they will act as the“spokespersons of the global south”,and their growing global responsibili-ties. In this transition away from a West-ern- and towards a more Asian-domi-nated world order, the instabilities in the international system are likely toincrease at first because old power struc-tures and established international orga-nizations will lose significance – an issuecurrently being debated intensively with-in the Bretton Woods institutions, forexample. At the same time, new actors,such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), in which China,Russia and India coordinate their energyand resource policies, will increase in relevance. If a balance of interests can be achieved between the USA, Europe,China and India during this transitionalphase, the world could be more stable in2020 than it is today. An equally strongprobability, however, is a revival of therivalry between the major powers as theyjockey for the dominant position in glo-bal politics.

3 Although China and India are emergingas relevant actors in the global system,half the world’s people living in abjectpoverty live in these two countries. The“human security” of around 400 millionChinese and Indians remains precarious:even now, one in three Indians lives inabject poverty, surviving on less thanUS$1 a day. At the same time, rapidly


20


modernizing, competitive and export-oriented industries in China and Indiaare increasing social insecurity in otherregions of the world. In a globalizedworld, these two dynamics are closelylinked. For example, if social polariza-tion in China unleashed a crisis of thestate’s legitimacy and serious unrest,this could trigger political and econo-mic turbulence and instability through-out Asia and the wider world. At thesame time, the flow of exports fromChina and India is prompting protec-tionist efforts by the industrialized countries, not least, which could put the world trade regime at risk.

3 So social and political progress in Chinaand India is important in order to con-tain the vulnerabilities in these twocountries’ political systems while re-ducing their potential to destabilize theinternational architecture at the sametime. What applied to the USA for a long time now applies increasingly toChina and India too: the domestic poli-cies of these two giants have a directimpact on international politics. Againstthis background, European decision-makers would be well-advised to developtheir strategies towards these two coun-tries – which until now have focussedprimarily on traditional developmentcooperation and foreign trade promo-tion – in a way which takes account ofthe new realities.

The changing role of China and Indiaalso means that the competition for access toenergy supplies and other key resources forindustrial production will become increas-ingly intense.

A new Cold War over resources?

Some years ago, the water crisis – alreadyacute in some regions of the world, andlikely to become global in years to come –

was used to develop hypothetical scenariosof future “water wars”. According to head-lines at the time, in future, water will be-come scarcer and more precious than oil;indeed, one of the vice presidents of theWorld Bank predicted that the wars of the21st century will be fought over water, thebasis of all life and economic activity. Thewater crisis has not been defused, and con-flicts are flaring up in many different locali-ties and between states over access to thisscarce resource, either to supply a growingpopulation with drinking water or for theirrigation of farmland. The World HealthOrganization (WHO) estimates that two billion people worldwide are already facedwith water scarcity; this includes 1.1 billionpeople who do not have access to cleanwater. According to the World Water Devel-opment Report (UNESCO-WWAP 2003), bythe middle of this century, at best two billionpeople will still be water-scarce, and atworst, the figure could rise to seven billionpeople.

Nonetheless, attention has now shiftedaway from the threat of “water wars”; the key issue now is the threat of “energy wars”.The German news magazine Der Spiegel(No. 13/2006), in a series of opinion-form-ing articles, talked about a “new age of ener-gy conflicts”: “The age of dramatic conflictsover access to increasingly scarce but alsoincreasingly sought-after resources, in whichinternational relations will be increasinglydetermined by energy security issues. Thecards for the potential winners and losers inthis new scenario are now being dealt”.

Notwithstanding Spiegel’s customaryhyperbole, cooler-headed analysts and fore-casters have described their view of presentand future global developments in very similar terms. Frank Umbach (2006) fromthe German Council on Foreign Relations(DGAP) reflects on “Europe’s Next ColdWar”, while Michael T. Klare (2001) talksabout “The New Landscape of Global Con-flict” shaped by resource scarcity. These


21



22

prophets of a “new Cold War” assume thatthe global competition for resources, espe-cially oil and gas, will determine geostrategicplanning in future and change the powerrelations between states. Every country andgroup of countries which are crucially de-pendent on energy imports now give maxi-mum priority to securing their energy sup-plies. This applies to the EU as well (Um-bach 2006). In the Far East, Japan – still theworld’s second largest economic power, butheavily dependent on resource imports – iscompeting with the upcoming economicand political power China, still by diploma-tic means at present but sometimes withmore or less overt threats, over disputedmaritime zones and access to Siberia’s na-tural resources.

Vulnerability acquires fundamentalsignificance because energy is the lifebloodof industrial production, the Western life-style and development. As a result of theenergy price rises shown in Figure 2, manydeveloping countries which are already suf-fering from energy poverty have becomeeven more vulnerable than the industrial-ized nations because they have even feweralternatives and are generally unable to pro-fit from the purchasing power of the “new

rich” who are buying up factories and indus-trial plant, luxury goods and arms. Table 1shows that due to its meteoric economicgrowth and surging motorization in the 15years from 1990 to 2004, China has almosttripled its oil consumption; oil consumptionin India doubled over the same period. Bycontrast, Germany’s oil consumption actu-ally decreased, while Japan’s showed a veryslight increase[see Table 1].

Energy wealth as a new power resource and Achilles heel

The availability of exportable energyresources will significantly influence role allocation in global politics and theworld economy and create a new geopoliti-cal situation. This notion – long ignored oreven a taboo subject among German politi-cal scientists – has undergone something ofa renaissance in the debate about resourcesecurity. One reason is that around 70% ofthe world’s oil and gas reserves are located ina zone which extends from the ArabianPeninsula via the Caspian region to thenorth of Russia [see Figures 4 and 5]. As

Table 1: The world’s top ten oil consumers (in millions of tones)

Ranking Country 1990 2000 2004

1. USA 779.0 887.8 927.3

2. China 116.6 219.8 308.6

3. Japan 247.7 255.0 250.5

4. Russia 198.8 123.5 131.8

5. Germany 125.6 129.4 123.2

6. India 57.9 98.0 115.3

7. Brazil 58.4 100.1 101.7

8. Canada 78.4 93.0 100.1

9. South Korea 49.5 99.3 99.1

10. France 89.4 95.2 95.2

World 3,130.2 3,539.2 3,780.1

Source: BP 2005



23

with other natural resources – such as ironore, platinum, nickel and aluminium – theoil markets have an oligopolistic structure.The geostrategic location of the reserves,and the dependence on a small number ofsupplier countries, are changing securitydoctrines and foreign policy priorities. Theyalso protect autocrats from political sanc-tions: Saparmurat Niyazov in resource-richTurkmenistan, a dictator who cultivates abizarre personality cult, and his equally cor-rupt colleague Ilham Aliyev, the currentpresident of Azerbaijan, who controls thestarting point of the world’s most expensiveoil and gas pipeline from Azerbaijanthrough Georgia to the Turkish port of Cey-han, are prime examples.

The Chinese government has showneven fewer ideological scruples in its globalefforts to safeguard its access to energy sup-plies. It blocked UN efforts to sanction Su-dan over human rights abuses because it isexploiting the oil wells in the south of thecountry, with Chinese soldiers protectingthe uninterrupted flow of oil from Sudan.It also granted Angola a $2 billion loan inexchange for a stake in the country’s oilfields– money which the World Bank wanted to

make conditional on anti-corruption meas-ures. China is investing in natural resourceprojects in Africa and Latin America, whereit shows little regard for social or environ-mental standards.

Anyone who has access to energysources has not only a source of wealth butalso greater bargaining power. Oil has be-come a political weapon once again. In LatinAmerica, President Hugo Chavez of Vene-zuela has had the temerity to ally himselfwith Fidel Castro and keeps Cuba runningwith a supply of cheap oil from Venezuela’srich oilfields. He also repeatedly provokesthe “big brother” with all kinds of verbalassaults. Chavez can launch these broad-sides against the USA with impunity be-cause it too is reliant on oil supplies fromVenezuela and would find it hard to replacethem with other sources of supply.

However, it is not only the importingcountries which are vulnerable to disrup-tions in the energy markets; so too are theproducing and exporting countries. Theinternational primary product markets areextremely sensitive to the impacts of “globalinsecurity”. Already, oil installations andpipelines, which often cross several coun-

in millions of tones

Saudi Arabia35,423 (25%)

Canada24,071 (16%)

Iran17,199 (12%)

Nigeria4,784 (3%)

Libya5,140 (3%)

Russia8,163 (6%)

Venezuela10,801 (7%)

United Arab Emirates12,851 (9%)

Kuwait13,717 (9%)

Iraq15,430 (10%)

Figure 4: Distribution of oil reserves, 2004 (among the world’s 10 oil-richest countries)

Source: BP 2005



24

tries, are frequently the target of attacks byrebel groups and terrorist organizationswilling and able to hit a vital nerve of thepolitical regimes. In the Niger Delta, for ex-ample, a local rebel group is carrying outattacks on the multinational oil installationsin an attempt to force the Nigerian centralgovernment to grant it a share of oil rentsand regional autonomy. Terrorist acts in Iraqhave prevented that country from achievingits pre-war volume of oil production, whichcould finance reconstruction and thus fulfilone aim of the war. Saudi Arabia’s crum-bling regime – no stranger to “homegrown”terrorism despite a massive investment inthe military and the presence of US troops –is viewed as especially vulnerable to Islamistterrorism.

In almost every country where oil revenue forms the political regime’s eco-nomic base, democracy and human rightstend to suffer. Oil revenue is a vehicle for

what are essentially feudalistic autocracies,but it is also their Achilles heel. Keen tomaintain and protect their own positions of power, they cannot turn off the oil orclose down the gas pipelines, for this supplyinfrastructure is the highly vulnerable nervecentre in their system of rule. The “resourcecurse” – the diamonds, coltan, high-tradetimber or drugs which bankroll the “newwars” [see the chapter on Fragile States andPeace-building] – operates in a different wayin the case of oil: political stability is guaran-teed in most cases, but oil hinders democ-racy (Basedau/Lacher 2006). And yet thewealth derived from natural resources canalso be managed constructively, as the exam-ple of Norway shows. To ensure the wellbe-ing of future generations, Norway invests itsoil export revenue into a pension fund on amedium- to long-term basis, and scores veryhighly against democracy, governance andeconomic indicators.

Gas: in 1,000 billion m3, oil: in billions of barrels

CanadaOilGas

16.81.6

USAOilGas

29.45.3

MexicoOilGas

14.80.9

VenezuelaOliGas

77.24.2

BrazilOilGas

11.20.2

ChinaOilGas

17.12.2

IndonesiaOilGas

?2.6

MalaysiaOilGas

?2.5

AlgeriaOilGas

11.84.5

LibyaOilGas

39.11.3

NigeriaOilGas

35.35.0

SudanOilGas

0.60.1

UKOilGas

4.70.7

NorwayOilGas

9.72.4

RussiaOilGas

72.348.0

KazakhstanOilGas

39.63.0

TurkmenistanOilGas

0.32.9

Americas EUAsiaCIS

Africa

Saudi-ArabiaOilGas

262.76.7

UAE

KuwaitOilGas

99.61.5

QuatarOilGas

15.217.9

Middle East

IraqOilGas

115.03.1

IranOilGas

132.524.8

WorldOilGas

1,188.6179.5

OilGas

80.35.9

Figure 5: Estimated oil and gas reserves

Source: BP, www.welt-in-zahlen.de



25

Energy superpower Russia: a revitalized role as a key player on the world stage

Oil and gas have become power-politicalinstruments which can also be used as a po-litical weapon and a means of extortion.Russian President Vladimir Putin is using hiscountry’s energy wealth in a targeted way torestore his country’s status as a key player onthe world stage as well as an energy super-power (Rahr 2006). In pursuing these great-power interests, his main instruments are the energy corporations Lukoil (for oil) andGasprom (for gas), which extract and mar-ket Russia’s massive energy reserves and nowoperate in almost every regional energy mar-ket. The Kremlin is also entering into agree-ments with the resource-rich CIS states (Ka-zakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) inan attempt to safeguard Russia’s control overthe pipeline networks – the energy markets’arteries which transport the oil and gas tothe consumer countries in Europe and Asia.

These networks, which run throughRussian territory, could be interrupted, put-ting Europe’s energy supply at risk. For thatreason, security of supply is now a key prior-ity for the EU as well, especially after Russia’sattempt to bring political pressure to bear onrebellious Ukraine. However, the EU has yetto embed this priority in its security con-cept. The concept of “comprehensive secu-rity”, which was thoroughly documented ina study by the Federal Academy for SecurityPolicy (BAKS 2001) is likely to focus on re-source security to a greater extent in future.

The geostrategic machinations ofenergy-powerful Russia go even further.The Kremlin is pressing for an enhancementof the status of the Shanghai CooperationOrganization (SCO), a forum in which ma-jor powers Russia, China and India cooper-ate with various regional powers. The aim is to make the SCO a kind of “new OPEC”which would soon oust OPEC itself from itskey energy policy role, with the SCO thusemerging as a new major player on the world

Table 2: Oil and bad governance: the world’s 10 oil-richest countries (in millions of tones)and their performance against democracy and governance indicators

GHRV Freedom2004 Index 2006

Ranking Country 1990 2000 2004 (1 to 5) (1 to 7)

1. Saudi Arabia 35,164 35,259 35,423 3 6.5

2. Canada 779 634 24,071 1 1

3. Iran 12,694 12,263 17,199 3 6

4. Iraq 13,417 15,095 15,430 5 5.5

5. Kuwait 13,097 13,024 13,717 2 4.5

6. UAE 12,892 12,851 12,851 2 6

7. Venezuela 8,257 10,750 10,801 3 4

8. Russia 6,760 6,609 8,163 4 5.5

9. Libya 3,005 3,888 5,140 3 7

10. Nigeria 2,320 3,053 4,784 4 4

...

... World 135,734 139,626 173,338

GHRV = Gross Human Rights Violations

Source: BP 2005; Freedom House 2006; Gibney 2006



26

stage. Frank Umbach (2006, p. 21 f.) explainsthis possible shift in position and roles in the world energy market as follows, pointingout that it will have far-reaching effects onworld politics: “9/11 gave the SCO the ne-cessary security policy impetus. Now thatenergy supplies to the world market fromthe Persian Gulf and the old OPEC count-ries have become less secure as a result ofthe growing threat of Islamist terrorism,the new OPEC around Russia and the Cas-pian region is the only alternative source ofenergy for the industrialized countries ofEurope, America and Asia.”

The threat of global resource conflicts

The current and foreseeable developmentson the world energy markets, which willresult in power shifts in global politics, areexcellent paradigms of the distinction be-tween sensitivity and vulnerability postu-lated by protagonists of interdependencetheory. However, under the conditions of

the “old” Cold War, they could not have fore-seen that the OECD world, which at mosthas tended to respond sensitively to globaleconomic trends, could also become so vul-nerable as a result of its energy hunger – ahunger which can only be sated by imports.A glance at the gas pipelines of relevance toGermany illustrates very clearly where theweak points might lie [see Figure 6].

An insight into one’s own vulnerabil-ity can have a positive learning effect. Eventhe Bush Administration, known to haveclose links with oil interests, is now promot-ing renewable energies and energy-saving.Nonetheless, the conflict scenario outlinedby Michael T. Klare (2001) is still realistic:the energy-guzzling military superpower –and others too – could be tempted to usetheir military capabilities, which can be de-ployed worldwide, in order to safeguardenergy supplies. The threat of global re-source conflicts therefore remains consider-able. Water may be essential for life, but en-ergy is the lifeblood of economic activityand modern lifestyles. It was the industrial

Figure 6: Gas-pipelines as the nerve system of global security

Source: Scholl 2006, p. 26


use of energy which started the IndustrialRevolution, and it is these energy reserveswhich are now becoming increasingly scarce.

Environmental sensitivities and vulnerabilities

Environmental groups from around theworld have united behind the critics of glo-balization because they believe that unfet-tered free trade will exacerbate global andlocal environmental problems. Jean Ziegler(2003, p. 113), one of the foremost critics ofglobalization, is especially outspoken: “Theinvisible hand of the globalized market notonly destroys human societies. It also wreakshavoc on nature”. Globalization’s green crit-ics highlight the following trends:3 The expansion of world trade leads to far

more transport activity by land, sea andair. The revolution in transport has re-duced the costs and time required fortransportation, but has increased dam-age to the environment through higherCO2 emissions, which are one of themain causes of the greenhouse effect and hence climate change.

3 Increased international competition maylead to “eco-dumping” if lower spendingon environmental protection can give aparticular location a cost advantage. Do-mestic and foreign businesses are thenable to produce with little environmentalexpenditure and to export more cheaply.This is a distortion of competition, mak-ing eco-dumping a competitive advan-tage and penalizing those who invest inenvironmental protection. China is aworrying example. The conflict of inter-est between free trade and environmen-tal protection will only cease if the exter-nal costs of environmental damage arereflected in prices, i. e. “costed in”.

3 The liberalization of international tradein agricultural products promises ex-porting countries higher profits but

causes them to develop ecologically dis-astrous monocultures, to overexploittheir natural means of survival, and toneglect the domestic provision of foodfrom their own resources.

3 For the tropical destination countries,the growth of long-haul travel generateshigher foreign exchange revenue andcreates more jobs than their export sec-tors in many cases, but it also increasesair traffic and the consumption of natu-ral and environmental resources. Socialgeographer Karl Vorlaufer (1996, p. 229)is extremely critical of “tourism by therich to the countries of the poor” fromboth an ecological and global perspec-tive: the damage that increased long-haul tourism causes to local ecosystemscould make a mockery of the assump-tion that tourism promotes sustainabledevelopment.

3 The OECD countries are responsible formost of the waste of resources and globalclimate change, which increases the fun-damental vulnerability of the poorestcountries. Climate researchers and theadvocates of sustainable global develop-ment therefore refer with good reason toan ecological North-South conflict oreven “ecological aggression by the Northagainst the South”. But the “Asian ele-phants” – China and India – are catchingup. According to the World Watch Insti-tute, 75 % of the Earth’s biological ca-pacities are now consumed by the USA,the EU, Japan, China and India (Flavin/Gardner 2006). Global environmentalpolicy is a policy field in which the de-veloping countries, especially the dy-namic emerging countries, have gainedmore bargaining power because theNorth is reliant on their cooperation innegotiating and implementing the envi-ronmental agreements that it views asimportant (Biermann 1998).

3 China’s and India’s “successful” market-oriented development is fuelling global


27


climate change even more quickly thanpredicted in the 1990s. By 2030, thesetwo countries’ contribution to globalCO2 emissions could be as much as 50%,unless growth is successfully decoupledfrom CO2 emissions. Without effectiveclimate policies, global warming could,by the end of the century, be well abovethe two-degree Celsius ceiling which cli-mate experts say must not be exceeded.This development would exacerbate in-ternational food crises, unleash incal-culable storms and weather dynamics,speed up the process of desertification,and cause freshwater crises. The vulnera-bility of individuals, affected countriesand the international system as a wholewould significantly increase as a result of this process. Economic globalizationcan only be stabilized and its benefitsutilized if economic activities becomeenvironmentally sustainable.

Findings of vulnerability research

The impacts of climate change are amplydocumented by the reports from the UnitedNations Environment Programme (UNEP)and the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC), which brings together theworld’s climate experts to assess the scien-tific, technical and socio-economic infor-mation relevant to climate change, its poten-tial impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. Scientific models and evensome feature films depict horrific scenariosin which entire island groups are submergedand no region of the world is spared. This isfundamental, human-induced vulnerability.

The chapter on Climate Change andGlobal Health Risks shows that health sys-tems in all the world’s regions, albeit to dif-fering extents, have become vulnerable andare likely to become more so as a result ofthe long-term effects of climate change, pri-marily because the spread of infectious dis-

eases will change. The effect is most dra-matic in relation to the spread of malaria,the world’s major tropical disease, and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) which occurs inEurope. According to the WHO, approxi-mately 40% of the world’s population – 2.4 billion people – is at risk of contractingmalaria. Climate change is likely to increasethis figure.

Natural and social scientists engagedin vulnerability research – an offshoot ofdisaster research – distinguish three dimen-sions of vulnerability:3 Geophysical vulnerability, as the tsuna-

mi disaster and numerous earthquakesworldwide have shown, deals with theexposure of a social system or region tonatural disasters. Natural disasters mayevolve into social disasters, especially in poor societies which can only affordrudimentary disaster risk management.But even the USA, a wealthy society,failed to respond effectively to the de-vastation caused by Hurricane Katrinaalong the Gulf of Mexico. We witness not only a growing number of naturaldisasters, especially after extreme wea-ther events caused by climate change,but also a growing need for humanitar-ian and emergency relief to mitigate theimmediate vulnerability caused by thesedisasters.

3 Social vulnerability means the specificvulnerability of poor groups to environ-mental crises and their low coping ca-pacity. A particularly significant factor is that around half the world’s LDCs areamong the world’s most disaster-pronecountries, with two-thirds of disaster-related deaths occurring here. Earth-quakes are also described as class quakesbecause they hit the poor hardest, whocannot afford safe housing and tend to live in especially at-risk areas. Theyare also particularly affected by lack ofdrinking water and food during pro-longed droughts, progressive desertifica-


28


tion and soil erosion. They are vulnera-ble because their prospects of copingwith various types of environmentalcrises, e .g. through mitigation or rapidadaptation of their production patternsand lifestyles, are very limited. They haveno freedom of choice, which Amartya Sen,the Nobel Laureate in Economics, de-fined as the purpose of development.

3 Differential vulnerability focusses on the varying extent to which regions andgroups are affected by environmentalcrises. According to figures from theUnited Nations Environment Program-me (UNEP), there are now more envi-ronmental than war refugees. Expertspredict an alarming increase in environ-mentally- related causes of flight, espe-cially as a result of desertification, whichwill affect entire nations. The United Na-tions University (UNU-EHS 2005) pre-dicts that by 2010, the world will need tocope with as many as 50 million peopleescaping the effects of environmental de-terioration. Differential and social vul-nerability overlap and reinforce eachother.

In 2005, the various vulnerabilitiescollided, which is why some experts havecalled it the “disaster year”. Total relief pro-vided amounted to around US$ 12 billion –roughly twice as much as the average for2002–2004. This was largely due to the tsu-nami disaster in Asia and the Pakistan earth-quake, but the appalling refugee crisis inSudan also absorbed a substantial share ofemergency relief.

The 2005 Report by the German Advi-sory Council on Global Change (WBGU)presented the findings of vulnerability re-search in more detail and provided convinc-ing reasons why pollution of the Earth’s at-mosphere and the oceans, the destructionand increasing scarcity of natural resourcesand above all climate change should be des-ignated risks to human security alongsideeconomic, political and health factors.

Spatial, temporal and systemic interdependences

Spatial interdependences arise when regio-nal economic and financial crises impact onthe global economy or local wars spill overto neighbouring countries. They also arise asa result of intra- and intercontinental migra-tion and refugee movements, which are in-creasingly perceived as a threat to internalsecurity, or as a result of the impacts of glob-al environmental change on regions andcontinents.

Temporal interdependences alsooccur: today’s actions and omissions in vari-ous areas of politics and life will have an im-pact in the near and more distant future.Overexploitation of natural resources todayputs the life chances and development op-portunities of future generations at risk.Today’s sensitivity may become tomorrow’svulnerability if finite resources are squan-dered. The stresses on the Earth’s ecosystemshave potentially fatal consequences for theentire planet and the societies which it sup-ports. Systemic interdependence is apparenthere, which may impact on the survival ofthe planet. When ecosystems become vul-nerable, so do the human communities sup-ported by them, regardless of where they liveand how they are organized. There is an un-breakable “interdependence of economic,social, and institutional phenomena”, asGunnar Myrdal showed; he was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize for Economics for hisidentification and analysis of this concept.

Summary and Conclusions

The management of interdependence, themitigation of vulnerabilities and the guaran-tee of human security require a revival ofmultilateralism, tailored to the conditions ofglobalization. Global governance at the startof the 21st century is characterized by a frag-mented UN system, increasingly hegemonic


29


unilateralism on the part of the world’s onlysuperpower, the USA, and a failure to inte-grate the buoyant Asian countries. The par-ticipation of non-state actors is restricted toa few selected areas (notably human rightsand social development); private economicactors are beginning to define new responsi-bilities in the globalization processes. None-theless, the “partial privatization of multilat-eralism”, as promoted in the Global Com-pact, lacks legitimacy and is tending to cre-ate corporatist structures rather than demo-cratically controlled politics.

The mixed relationship between regu-lation and deregulation varies considerably in and between the various fields of action ofglobal governance. In the global economy,for example, significant progress was made in the past on the institutionalization andjuridification of economic relations throughthe World Trade Organization (WTO). At thesame time, essential reforms to reduce vul-nerability in the international financial mar-kets have yet to be adopted, prompting Asiain particular to resort to self-help measuresinstead. As regards world peace, the establish-ment of ad hoc tribunals (for the formerYugoslavia and Rwanda) and special courts(for Sierra Leone and Cambodia) and the cre-ation of the International Criminal Court aremilestones in international law. These devel-opments go hand in hand with more inten-sive standard-setting that aims to establish aresponsibility to protect (ICISS 2001), borne bythe broader community of states in cases ofgrave human rights violations and closelyassociated with the concept of freedom from fear which is integral to the concept ofhuman security (Human Security Centre2005). But there is still a clear need for regu-latory action in relation to weapons of massdestruction. The USA, the United Kingdom,France and Russia do not rule out a nuclearfirst strike if hostile states deploy biological or chemical weapons or threaten a terroristattack. Experts have now identified 15 coun-tries around the world where military pro-

grammes to manufacture NBC weapons areunder way. Pakistan, North Korea and Iranare especially critical cases. The USA’s securitypolicy hegemony has been unable to avert anincrease in the potential for vulnerability.

Ultimately, the normative frame ofreference for new global governance ar-rangements is the wellbeing of the individ-ual facing actual or potential vulnerability.The increasing importance of the “humansecurity” approach was reaffirmed in theoutcome document of the Millennium +5Summit, held in New York in 2005 (UN2005). The Commission on Human Security(2003) – whose establishment was primarilyinitiated by Japan – made it clear in its re-port, entitled Human Security Now, that theaim of human security can best be achievedthrough a combination of effective multi-lateralism (top-down) and empowermentof at-risk individuals (bottom-up). In short,the task is to protect people from seriousthreats, both natural and social, and to em-power individuals and communities to makean informed choice between different op-tions and act on the basis of individualresponsibility (Ogata/Cels 2003, p. 274).

In light of the growing health andenvironmental risks, this type of empower-ment means strengthening the coping ca-pacities of individuals and institutions sothat they can respond appropriately to newrisks, thereby reducing their social vulnera-bility. Education and training play a key rolein this process. At the same time, empower-ment in a globalized world increasinglymeans that people even in the marginalizedregions of the world should have access tothe Internet. At present, 5.4 billion peopleare excluded from this core opportunity toparticipate in the globalization process.Closing this “digital divide” will be one ofthe major challenges in the coming decade,as access to knowledge increasingly deter-mines who is able to utilise the opportuni-ties afforded by globalization and who willsuffer under its burdens and risks.


30


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