Prepared by Lucy
Stronach, Research Assistant at INSSSL
On Tuesday the 23rd of March 2019,
various academics, diplomats, military officers and distinguished guests met
for a security salon on ‘Traditional and Non-Traditional Security
Challenges in the Indian Ocean’. The Number(ex10th)security
salon was organised by the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka
(INSSSL) and hosted at the Ministry of Defence, attended by guest speaker Dr.
David Brewster, Senior Fellow at the National Security College, Australian
National University.
After a warm welcome from the Director General of INSSSL, Asanga Abeyagoonasekera,I said Include Australia-France report which was released three weeks ago on Environmt Security of Indian Ocean which has come top with a risk map and Brewsters contribution on the the second section was appreciated and Sri Lanka being an Island prone to many environment security challenges should try to engage in such future initiatives.
Dr. Brewster opened his presentation by
introducing two broad areas of discussion: growing major power competition and
environmental security challenges in the Indian Ocean.
For the first section of his discussion, Dr. Brewster
mentioned the changing environment of the world from a unipolar to multipolar
system. The implication on various states was mentioned, including growing
Chinese presence, extended rivalries, a decline of US predominance, and a
change of networks and power structures for the many middle powers in the
Indo-Pacific region.
After these insights, Dr. Brewster moved to the second
area of discussion, primarily regarding non-traditional security challenges in
the region. “The Indian Ocean is one of the world’s least governed maritime
spaces in the world”, said Dr. Brewster, and hence a range of transnational and
environmental security threats have, and will continue to, emerge. According to
Dr. Brewster, climate change, population growth and violent extremism are just
some of the threats that exist or will be amplified in the coming
decades.
His discussion had specific focus on overfishing,
which he considered to be one of the most problematic issues of the region. Sri
Lanka, who relies on fish for 57% of animal protein, needs to be aware of
threats that may cause significant food and economic insecurity. Climate change
(specifically acidification of waters, marine heatwaves and life dead zones),
Chinese vessels being pushed further into foreign waters, and illegal fishing
are likely to increase conflict and competition in the region.
Dr. Brewster then explained how many of these
significant threats are interconnected and have a ‘cascading influence’.
Threats can work to amplify each other, exacerbate themselves and may even
create new issues. Examples include synergies between the activities of
criminal and terrorist groups, the successive consequences of transnational
threats (such as the decline of Somali fishing grounds leading to piracy), the
threat of combination events (such as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of
2011 causing the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear facility), the complexity of
actors in this sphere, and the unpredictable consequences of singular events
(such as the 2004 tsunami leading to the settlement of separatist conflict in
Aceh).
Before concluding, Dr. Brewster gave the audience
three key takeaways: the Indo-Pacific is coming into a period of strategic
competition and instability; non-traditional/environmental security threats are
just as, if not more important, than traditional threats; and non-traditional
and traditional security threats cannot be thought of
separately, as there is significant potential for interaction and escalation
between the two.