Blog Ahmad Dzakirin

 “It is difficult to get a man to understand something that his salary depends on his not understanding.” (Al –Gore)

His statement reflects the situation that the threat of the environmental degradation was basically understood by the policy makers but the eminent threat of environmental depletion was intentionally swollen by the diverse interests of policy makers that are mostly shaped politically and economically or at least is still considered to be a secondary issue due the different extent of assessment or perhaps interest. In the US itself - for example, the idea of the environmental security that was adopted by the Clinton administration as a part of Unites States national security was still deemed to be controversial both conceptually and politically. The strong Isolationist trend of Republicans threatens to reverse the progress of definition already made.

The dimension of the “national security” is still highlighted by a traditional concept that primarily concerned the issue of conflict, threat or cooperation. Gareth Porter have significantly developed the new outlook that the environmental problem itself addressed two distinctive issues, that has a close relation with the issue of national security, either the environmental factors are necessarily behind the violent conflicts or the impacts of global environmental degradation. For example, the scarce natural resources and international conflicts have been an issue now that estimated to be likely outbreak of conflict among interstates while the impact of global environmental degradation has been depriving many countries in the world due to the potential loss of GDP, productivity and biological richness.

The problems exist then that the largest contributors of the deteriorating global environmental degradation –global warming- are the US and second China. So it can be induced that the likelihood of denial of the problem –not to draw as part of national security issue- is not basically stemmed from the not understanding of its eminent problems but much more likely the other interests behind, i.e. economy.

(Ahmad Dzakirin)