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Abstract
This article explores the international measures that can resolve ecological problems in a highly securitised zone, taking North Korea (DPRK) as an example. The main question posed is how effective the available international policy measures for ecological risk mitigation are in a highly securitised country. Irreversible ecological conditions and aggravating humanitarian crises co-influence each other and threaten society as a whole. The main purpose of the article is to suggest ways of mainstreaming the environmental aspect of security in international actions that engage with problematised countries like North Korea. A cross-cutting analysis is provided on the possible approaches – including environmental aid, extended or integral humanitarian exemption, and proactive ecological intervention – for the international community to be engaged in the field of environmental security under three different circumstances: peace, security alert and conflict. The current international measures employed in North Korea demonstrate that available tools are either overused or underused, thereby failing to address the interconnectivity of the triple perils for the economy, human welfare and ecosystem, and further aggravating political tensions.
Acknowledgements
The authors express deep gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Third World Quarterly for providing comprehensive and constructive commentary, thanks to which this paper has been deepened and made more robust.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Knight, “Global Environmental Threats,” 1563; Gleditsch, “Environmental Change, Security, and Conflict,” 187; UNEP, From Conflict to Peacebuilding; and Winstanley-Chesters, “From Dialectic of Nature to the Asian Mode.”
2 D. H. Kim, Chung, and Park, “Land Cover Classification”; and S. H. Lee, “Forest and Other Biomass Production.”
3 For updated US sanctions against DPRK, see The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury, available at https://search.treasury.gov/search?affiliate=treas&query=North%20Korea (accessed October 5, 2020).
4 “The Work Factbook 2020,” available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/one_page_summaries.html (accessed October 23, 2020).
5 Hout, “Between Development and Security”; OECD, Development Assistance and Approaches; OECD, State of Fragility, 16; Lankov, Real North Korea; and Nay, “International Organisations and the Production.”
6 Grzelczyk, North Korea’s New Diplomacy, 106.
7 Lankov, Real North Korea, 211.
8 Nay, “International Organisations and the Production,” 215.
9 OECD, State of Fragility, 83.
10 Allenby, “Environmental Security: Concept and Implementation”; UNEP, Strategic Report.
11 See Winstanley-Chesters, Environment, Politics, and Ideology; Hayes, “Sustainable Security in the Korean Peninsula”; Woo-Cummings, “Political Ecology of Famine”; Buzan and Hansen 2009.
12 Dinar, “Environmental Security”; Trombetta, “Environmental Security and Climate Change”; Hulme, “Environmental Security: Implications for International Law.”
13 For example, Chu, “Security Challenges in Northeast Asia,” 27.
14 King, Modirzadeh, and Lewis, “Understanding Humanitarian Exemptions.”
15 Hayes and von Hoppel, “Ecological Crisis”; KDI, “North Korean Environment: An Overview”; KEI, North Korean Environmental Trends.
16 Joanne M. Foster, “Q and A: North Korea’s Choked Environment,” March 30, 2012, https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/q-and-a-north-koreas-choked-environment/?_r=0 (accessed November 20, 2019). For the famine’s impact, see Smith, Hungry for Peace; Woo-Cummings, “Political Ecology of Famine.”
17 Hayes, “Sustainable Security in the Korean Peninsula.”
18 Smith, Hungry for Peace, 66–76.
19 Bank of Korea, statistics portal on North Korea https://www.bok.or.kr/portal/main/contents.do?menuNo=200091; the Korean National Office of Statistics, portal on North Korea https://kosis.kr/bukhan/ (accessed April 12, 2021).
20 FAO/WFP, “Joint Rapid Food Security Assessment for the DPRK,” May 2019, available at http://www.fao.org/3/ca4447en/ca4447en.pdf (accessed August 18, 2020).
21 WFP, “Inside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” https://www.wfp.org/stories/inside-democratic-peoples-republic-korea (accessed April 12, 2021).
22 UN Needs and Priorities, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/2020_DPRK_N%26P_Overview_Provisional.pdf (accessed April 12, 2021).
23 See DPRK Government, “National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan of DPR Korea,” 2007. Pyongyang, DPR Korea, 58–9 for studies on North Korean environment-related laws and regulations.
24 The National Committee on North Korea’s full text is available at https://www.ncnk.org/resources/publications/kju_2020_new_years_plenum_report.pdf/file_view (accessed August 20, 2020).
25 Bourdais Park and Lee, “Green Paradox.”
26 For legal scrutiny of UNSC’s intervention in environmental and human disasters, see Knight, “Global Environmental Threats”; Penny, “Greening the Security Council,” 55–7.
27 See, for example, Oudraat, “Economic Sanctions and International Peace and Security.”
28 Pape, “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work”; Grauvogel, Licht, and von Soest, “Sanctions and Signals”; Hufbauer et al., Economic Sanctions Reconsidered; Smith, “Ethics of United Nations Sanctions”; Zadeh-Cummings and Harris, “Impact of Sanctions against North Korea.”
29 Winkler, “Just Sanctions,” 136.
30 Peksen, “Better or Worse?,” 74; See also Winkler, “Just Sanctions,” 136; Drezner, “Bargaining, Enforcement, and Multilateral Sanctions.”
31 Winkler, “Just Sanctions,” 147.
32 Macleod, “China’s Security Council Engagement”; United Nations Security Council (UNSC), 2020, Report of the Panel of Experts Established Pursuant to Resolution 1874 (2009). S/2020/151. New York,
https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/S_2020_151.pdf (accessed October 5, 2020).
33 See, for example, Harrell and Zarate, “How to Successfully Sanction North Korea,” for a hardline view on sanctions. By contrast, for an approach favouring engagement over further sanctions, see Gurtov, “Engaging Enemies.”
34 UNEP, From Conflict to Peacebuilding; OECD, Due Diligence Guidance.
35 US Office of Foreign Assets Control – Sanctions Programs and Information (US OFAC 2020); OECD, Due Diligence Guidance; OECD, States of Fragility.
36 United Nations Peacekeeping, “Environmental Impact and Sustainability,” https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/environmental-impact-and-sustainability (accessed September 9, 2020).
37 Buzan, People, States, and Fear, 131–4.
38 Sagar and VanDeveer, “Capacity Development for the Environment”; UNCED (UN Conference on Environment and Development), 1992, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 31 ILM 874, UNCED Doc A/Conf.151/5/Rev. 1. New York: UN; UN GA, Transforming Our World.
39 Interviews and informal discussions with UN aid worker and South Korean government officials in 2017 and 2019; Bourdais Park and Lee, “Green Paradox.”
40 WHO, World Health Statistics 2019, 41.
41 Ibid.
42 UNSC, “Report of the Panel” (see note 32).
43 Korea Peace Now, “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea,” October 2019, https://koreapeacenow.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/human-costs-and-gendered-impact-of-sanctions-on-north-korea.pdf (accessed August 31, 2020).
44 Colum Lynch, “Washington Wants Pyongyang to Choose.”
45 Haggard and Nolan, Hard Target, 171.
46 Ibid., 171–75.
47 Colum Lynch, “Washington Wants Pyongyang to Choose”; Cecilia Lynch and Schwarz, “Humanitarianism’s Proselytism Problem.”
48 On international hard and soft laws protecting the environment during armed conflict, see additionally, “The 1977 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (called ENMOD Convention)”; “Additional Protocol I (1977) to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (Articles 35, 54(2), 55(1))”; “1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Articles 5, 8(2)(b)(iv))”; “UN Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) Iraq–Kuwait, Environment and International Humanitarian Law”; “Guidelines for Military Manuals and Instructions on Protection of the Environment in Times of Armed Conflict”; “International Committee of the Red Cross’s report submitted to the 48th Session of the UN General Assembly 1993”; “Protection of the Environment During Times of Armed Conflict.” See Birnie and Boyle, International Law and the Environment, 148–51; Sands, Principles of International Environmental Law, 307–16.
49 Upadhyay, “Armed Conflict and the Environment,” 115.
50 Ibid., 117.
51 For example, Habib, “Enforcement Problem.”
52 Wood, “Hand upon the Throat of the Nation,” 490.
53 UN SC Resolution 2009 para. 16 (2011).
54 King, Modirzadeh, and Lewis, “Understanding Humanitarian Exemptions,” 10.
55 Malone, “Discussion in the Security Council.”
56 UNEP, From Conflict to Peacebuilding.
57 Lockwood et al., “Governance Principles for Natural Resource Management”; OECD, Due Diligence Guidance; Bojang, “Promoting Good Governance.”
58 “UNEP Marks International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict,” November 6, 2015, https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/press-release/unep-marks-international-day-preventing-exploitation-environment-war (accessed December 10, 2019).
59 General Assembly Debate on the protection of the environment during conflicts, December 2019, available at https://ceobs.org/report-2019s-un-general-assembly-debate-on-the-protection-of-the-environment-in-relation-to-armed-conflicts/ (accessed August 18, 2020).
60 UN News, “Conflict and Natural Resource Management: Panelists Will Highlight the Benefits of Using Environmental Peacebuilding in Conflict-Sensitive Areas to Achieve Rights-Based Conservation Outcomes,” December 18, 2017, https://www.wri.org/events/2017/12/conflict-and-natural-resource-management (accessed January 3, 2020).
61 Hout, “Between Development and Security,” 145; and Helgesen and Christensen, North Korea: Assisting Development and Change.
62 Dijkstra, “Collusion in International Organizations.”
63 OECD, Development Assistance and Approaches, 18.
64 Ibid., 38.
65 See, for example, Hammond and Vaughan-Lee, “Humanitarian Space.”
66 OECD, Development Assistance and Approaches, 36.
67 Bechtol, Jr., “North Korean Illicit Activities and Sanctions.”
68 The World Bank, Tracking SDG 7.
69 Demick, Nothing to Envy; Haggard and Noland, Witness to Transformation.
70 Kütting, “Globalization, Poverty and the Environment”; Habib, “Climate Change and Regime Perpetuation”; November 23, 2019.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
JeongWon Bourdais Park
JeongWon Bourdais Park holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science UK and is currently serving as Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies at KIMEP University (Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan). The author publishes widely and provides consultancy and policy analysis for international organisations and national governments. The author’s main publications include two books, entitled Regional Environmental Politics in Northeast Asia: Conflict and Cooperation (London: Routledge 2018) and Identity, Policy and Prosperity: Border Nationality of the Korean Diaspora and Regional Development in Northeast China (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan 2017), and articles appearing in a number of international journals. The author’s teaching and research concentrate on theories of international relations, environmental politics and Asian security.
Brian Bridges
Brian Bridges is retired Professor from Lingnan University, Hong Kong, now living in Malaysia. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wales, and after working for the BBC and for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), he taught international politics at Lingnan from 1993 to 2014. He served as the founding Head of the Department of Political Science there (2007–2010) and Associate Director/Director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies (2002–2009). He also held an Honorary Professor position at the Education University of Hong Kong (2019–2021). He specialises in the political economy of Northeast Asia, with a particular interest in the Korean peninsula and Japan. His most recent books are The Two Koreas and the Politics of Global Sport (Brill, 2012) and a co-edited volume with Marcus Chu, The Sports Development of Hong Kong and Macau (Routledge 2018).