Defending our regional environmental security

Juwono Sudarsono, Jakarta | Tue, 04/10/2012 10:47 AM A | A | A | - Clipping The Jakarta Post

I commend the Ministry of the Environment and United States Pacific Command (PACOM) for jointly organizing and hosting a recent gathering representing 17 nations, including service personnel of ASEAN defense forces.

The meeting on “Southeast Asia Regional Environmental Security” was an integral part of our commitment to address the consequences of climate change on regional and global security. It is a practical forum to provide ideas in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in mid-June 2012, which will be a defining global benchmark.

Numerous seminars and conferences have expressed the urgency for governments, businesses, NGOs and communities to adapt and prepare for climate change as a result of population growth, global warming, rising sea levels, high temperatures, deforestation, coastal inundation and the exploitation of the world’s land and undersea resources.

We seek practicable solutions on how best we consume the world’s fuel, energy and water linked to the defense of our environment, including the defense of local communities throughout Southeast Asia.

This meeting focused on the application of military resources and organizations to assist governments, societies and communities mitigate environmental degradation.

The military and security services have specific skills and resources in strategic planning under conditions of uncertainty. These organizations reinforce “whole of government” assets to engage global, regional, national, provincial and local dimensions of decision-making to provide a timely emergency response and humanitarian assistance.

USPACOM commands the strategic and the environmental dimensions of much of the world’s commons. PACOM’s critical role as “first responder” was underlined by the timely efforts it made in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.

Without PACOM’s ships, planes, helicopters, resources and emergency supplies, the defining moment of disaster response in the 21st century would not have been possible. PACOM is continuing to manage trans-regional cooperation together with ASEAN’s disaster management and humanitarian agencies gained support from China, Japan and Korea.

The ASEAN defense ministers meeting (ADMM) also commits itself to sustain long-term efforts at enhancing regional environmental security.

ASEAN is at an intersecting point of balancing major power political, economic and security interests and must ensure that ASEAN’s own institutions safeguard our individual and collective environmental security.

How will future environmental security cooperation fit into the above trends? What combination of “hard” and “smart” powers must leadership groups in the government, in the military, in private business and in civil society command in order to collaborate in the coming 10, 20, 30-year time horizons?

Can regional environmental security remain a central commitment among all powers that have an interest in Southeast Asia’s oil, gas, timber, water and mineral resources critical to their economic growth and to the region’s environmental sustainability?

That is the challenge facing Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines and our South Pacific neighbors.

What will be the role of traditional “military power” compared to the growing importance of “non-military capability” such as the need to develop brain-ware, creativity, ideas and innovation, including in the vital area of environmental sustainability?

What is the optimum mix matching the ability to secure military targets with the ability to “recapture, reuse and recycle” natural and environmental resources, including promoting effective alternative energy?

How can our military officers retain our joint commitment to better interface the planning of “security” over physical space with the “non-traditional security” of environmental sustainability vital to determining Southeast Asia’s ability to thrive in a safer and peaceful regional environment?

The Indonesian doctrine of “total defense and security” is encapsulated in our officers’ and enlisted personnel’s abiding commitment that the TNI is at once “a people’s force, a fighting force, a national force and a professional force.”

Every Indonesian soldier, sailor, airman and marine is duty bound to respect and preserve the values, assets and human resources of all of our diverse cultural and belief systems.

Defense of cultural resilience is central to our conviction that the diversity of cultures resonate in the hearts and minds of all Indonesians from Sabang to Merauke.

Our notion of “total defense and security” provides “cultural space” in each locality, thereby replenishing our national commitment that “Unity in Diversity” be preserved by all Indonesians across all cultures in the islands, waterways, valleys and forests of our vast archipelago.

My distinguished compatriot, the Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya, hails from Papua, the most culturally diversified of provinces in Indonesia.

Papua has over 300 tribal and language groups, each with its unique affinity to the natural endowments at hand: timber, oil, gas, copper, marine and aquatic resources.

At the same time, the diversity of Papua’s cultural make-up constitutes an abiding challenge to ensure that the heritage of all tribal people in those hills and mountains, valleys, rivers, gorges and coastlines remain protected through our provincial and national commitment to sustain environmental security and should be replicated throughout Indonesia.

I am convinced that future generations of military leaders and defense managers will ensure that the shared responsibility to secure the environmental resilience of all Indonesians within each cultural cluster be respected and duly protected by all soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines that constitute the Indonesian National Defense Force.

This article is based on the keynote address presented at the Regional Environmental Security Conference, recently held in Jakarta, which was jointly organized by the Indonesian Environment Ministry & the Honolulu based US Pacific Command. The writer, a former defense minister & former environment minister, is professor emeritus of International Relations & Geo-Politics, University of Indonesia.

Juwono Sudarsono, Jakarta | Tue, 04/10/2012 10:47 AM A | A | A | I commend the Ministry of the Environment and United States Pacific Command (PACOM) for jointly organizing and hosting a recent gathering representing 17 nations, including service personnel of ASEAN defense forces.

The meeting on “Southeast Asia Regional Environmental Security” was an integral part of our commitment to address the consequences of climate change on regional and global security. It is a practical forum to provide ideas in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in mid-June 2012, which will be a defining global benchmark.

Numerous seminars and conferences have expressed the urgency for governments, businesses, NGOs and communities to adapt and prepare for climate change as a result of population growth, global warming, rising sea levels, high temperatures, deforestation, coastal inundation and the exploitation of the world’s land and undersea resources.

We seek practicable solutions on how best we consume the world’s fuel, energy and water linked to the defense of our environment, including the defense of local communities throughout Southeast Asia.

This meeting focused on the application of military resources and organizations to assist governments, societies and communities mitigate environmental degradation.

The military and security services have specific skills and resources in strategic planning under conditions of uncertainty. These organizations reinforce “whole of government” assets to engage global, regional, national, provincial and local dimensions of decision-making to provide a timely emergency response and humanitarian assistance.

USPACOM commands the strategic and the environmental dimensions of much of the world’s commons. PACOM’s critical role as “first responder” was underlined by the timely efforts it made in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.

Without PACOM’s ships, planes, helicopters, resources and emergency supplies, the defining moment of disaster response in the 21st century would not have been possible. PACOM is continuing to manage trans-regional cooperation together with ASEAN’s disaster management and humanitarian agencies gained support from China, Japan and Korea.

The ASEAN defense ministers meeting (ADMM) also commits itself to sustain long-term efforts at enhancing regional environmental security.

ASEAN is at an intersecting point of balancing major power political, economic and security interests and must ensure that ASEAN’s own institutions safeguard our individual and collective environmental security.

How will future environmental security cooperation fit into the above trends? What combination of “hard” and “smart” powers must leadership groups in the government, in the military, in private business and in civil society command in order to collaborate in the coming 10, 20, 30-year time horizons?

Can regional environmental security remain a central commitment among all powers that have an interest in Southeast Asia’s oil, gas, timber, water and mineral resources critical to their economic growth and to the region’s environmental sustainability?

That is the challenge facing Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, The Philippines and our South Pacific neighbors.

What will be the role of traditional “military power” compared to the growing importance of “non-military capability” such as the need to develop brain-ware, creativity, ideas and innovation, including in the vital area of environmental sustainability?

What is the optimum mix matching the ability to secure military targets with the ability to “recapture, reuse and recycle” natural and environmental resources, including promoting effective alternative energy?

How can our military officers retain our joint commitment to better interface the planning of “security” over physical space with the “non-traditional security” of environmental sustainability vital to determining Southeast Asia’s ability to thrive in a safer and peaceful regional environment?

The Indonesian doctrine of “total defense and security” is encapsulated in our officers’ and enlisted personnel’s abiding commitment that the TNI is at once “a people’s force, a fighting force, a national force and a professional force.”

Every Indonesian soldier, sailor, airman and marine is duty bound to respect and preserve the values, assets and human resources of all of our diverse cultural and belief systems.

Defense of cultural resilience is central to our conviction that the diversity of cultures resonate in the hearts and minds of all Indonesians from Sabang to Merauke.

Our notion of “total defense and security” provides “cultural space” in each locality, thereby replenishing our national commitment that “Unity in Diversity” be preserved by all Indonesians across all cultures in the islands, waterways, valleys and forests of our vast archipelago.

My distinguished compatriot, the Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya, hails from Papua, the most culturally diversified of provinces in Indonesia.

Papua has over 300 tribal and language groups, each with its unique affinity to the natural endowments at hand: timber, oil, gas, copper, marine and aquatic resources.

At the same time, the diversity of Papua’s cultural make-up constitutes an abiding challenge to ensure that the heritage of all tribal people in those hills and mountains, valleys, rivers, gorges and coastlines remain protected through our provincial and national commitment to sustain environmental security and should be replicated throughout Indonesia.

I am convinced that future generations of military leaders and defense managers will ensure that the shared responsibility to secure the environmental resilience of all Indonesians within each cultural cluster be respected and duly protected by all soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines that constitute the Indonesian National Defense Force.

This article is based on the keynote address presented at the Regional Environmental Security Conference, recently held in Jakarta, which was jointly organized by the Indonesian Environment Ministry & the Honolulu based US Pacific Command. The writer, a former defense minister & former environment minister, is professor emeritus of International Relations & Geo-Politics, University of Indonesia.