A ‘sustainable security’ approach prioritises the resolution of the interconnected underlying drivers of insecurity and conflict, with an emphasis on preventative rather than reactive strategies.
Current approaches to global security are characterised by the ‘control paradigm’: an approach based on the premise that insecurity can be controlled through military force or containment, thus maintaining the status quo. The central premise of a sustainable security approach is that we cannot successfully control all the consequences of insecurity, but must work to resolve the causes. In other words, fighting the symptoms will not work; we must instead cure the disease.
ORG identifies four interconnected trends that are most likely to lead to substantial global and regional instability, and large-scale loss of life, of a magnitude unmatched by other potential threats:
- Climate change: Loss of infrastructure, resource scarcity and the mass displacement of peoples, leading to civil unrest, intercommunal violence and international instability.
- Competition over resources: Competition for increasingly scarce resources – including food, water and energy – especially from unstable parts of the world.
- Marginalisation of the majority world: Increasing socio-economic divisions and the political, economic and cultural marginalisation of the vast majority of the world’s population.
- Global militarisation: The increased use of military force as a security measure and the further spread of military technologies (including CBRN weapons).
While there are many other factors that can threaten the security of humans around the world (such as radicalisation, rapid increases in the global population, the shortcomings of current forms of global governance etc.), these four drivers represent something new. Never before has humanity faced a world as interconnected yet so socio-economically divided, where environmental limits are so apparent and where traditional approaches to war-fighting and the use of force are so counter-productive.
The programme aims to develop the sustainable security concept and promote it to a wide international audience, ensure that voices from the global South play a central role in its development, and define specific options for sustainable security policies. These aims are achieved via in-depth research, dialogues with analysts and decision makers and providing new avenues for creative thinking and discussion on the real threats to global security in the 21st century.
Staff
Benjamin Zala
Ben Zala is the Manager of the Sustainable Security Programme at ORG. He is also a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of Birmingham and Editorial Assistant for the academic journal Civil Wars (published by Routledge). He holds a Bachelor of International Relations with first class honours from La Trobe University, Melbourne.
He has previously worked at Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) in the Energy, Environment and Development Programme and the La Trobe University Centre for Dialogue where he was also the editorial assistant for the journal Global Change, Peace and Security. He has also previously worked for the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia). He has worked on security issues for a number of years and has published and spoken at conferences on issues of non-traditional security threats, arms control and disarmament and multilateral institutions.
Hannah Brock
Hannah Brock joined ORG as part of the Quaker Peace and Social Witness Peaceworker Scheme, which funds one-year placements with peace-making charities. She works as Project Officer for the ‘Sustainable Security and the Global South' project, ensuring that perspectives from ORG’s network in the global South continue to influence the programme's work.
Hannah also works with ORG’s supporters and funders, and to build relationships with Quaker supporters and organizations. She holds a first class degree in Sociology, and an MSc in Development Anthropology, both from the University of Durham. She joined ORG after working in development agencies: firstly, volunteering with Kenyan Network of Women with AIDS in Nairobi, then working for a year in Christian Aid’s Oxford office.
Paul Rogers
Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, and Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group. Professor Rogers has worked in the field of international security, arms control and political violence for over 30 years.
He lectures at universities and defence colleges in several countries and has written or edited 26 books, including Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010) and Why We're Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2008). He writes monthly briefings analysing the international security situation for the Oxford Research Group website and since October 2001 has written a series of ORG Briefing Papers on international security and the 'war on terror', including Global Security After the War on Terror (November 2009) and Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects (July 2010). Paul is also a regular commentator on global security issues in both the national and international media, and is openDemocracy’s International Security Editor.
Advisors
Chris Abbott
Chris Abbott is a freelance writer and researcher and Executive Director of Open Briefing. He is an honorary Sustainable Security Consultant at Oxford Research Group, and was the organisation's Deputy Director and Director of our Sustainable Security Programme until June 2009 (a programme he initiated in 2006 and remains on the advisory board for).
During his time at ORG he founded SustainableSecurity.org and was the author or co-author of numerous sustainable security publications, including An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change (ORG, 2008), Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World (Rider, 2007) and Global Responses to Global Threats: Sustainable Security for the 21st Century (ORG, 2006). Since leaving ORG he has been appointed as an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and written a second book, 21 Speeches That Shaped Our World: The People and Ideas That Changed the Way We Think (Rider, 2010).
Amitav Acharya
Amitav Acharya is Professor of International Relations at American University, Washington, DC. His books include: Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (2007);The Age of Fear: Power Versus Principle in the War on Terror (2004), and Whose Ideas Matter: Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (2009). His current affairs commentaries have appeared in Financial Times, Foreign Affairs (Online); International Herald Tribune, Straits Times, The Nation, Jakarta Post, Canberra Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, Japan Times, and YaleGlobal Online covering such topics as Asian security, the war on terror, and the rise of China and India.
Mariano Aguirre
Mariano Agurre is founding Director of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (NOREF) founded to support peacebuilding efforts by networking a variety of governmental and non-governmental experts who are able to contribute to operations through analysis, advice and monitoring. Previously he was Director of Programmes for Peace and Security at the Ford Foundation of America, and from 2005-9 he was Director of the Peace, Security and Human Rights Programme at the Madrid-based policy research institute FRIDE. He worked for many years as a journalist and has been a regular contributor to El Pais, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the BBC. He writes widely on international affairs.
Professor Carolina Hernandez
Carolina G. Hernandez is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines and the holder of its Carlos P. Romulo Professorial Chair in International Relations. She is founder and President of the Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, an independent, non-profit think tank on foreign policy, domestic politics, and security concerns and development issues. Dr. Hernandez is widely published in international, regional and Philippine academic journals such as the Asian Survey, Pacific Review, Third World Quarterly, and Public Policy, in the fields of regional security and foreign relations; military in politics, democracy and development, and Philippine domestic politics and foreign policy. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Political Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo where she wrote a pioneering study on Philippine civil-military relations.
Isabel Hilton
Isabel Hilton is London based international journalist and broadcaster, and is Chief Executive of China Dialogue, the world's first fully bilingual website devoted to the environment. She began her career in journalism with Scottish Television, then worked for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times before joining the launch team for The Independent in 1986. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC's flagship news programme, The World Tonight and a columnist for The Guardian. In 1999 she joined the New Yorker as a staff writer. She has reported from China, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe and has written and presented several documentaries for BBC television. She has authored and co-authored several books and holds an honorary doctorate from Bradford University.
Bassma Kodmani
Bassma Kodmani is the Executive Director of the Arab Reform Initiative. She is also senior adviser on international cooperation to the French national research council (CNRS). From 1999 to 2005 she headed the Governance and International Cooperation Program at the Ford Foundation office for the Middle East and North Africa. Here she had special responsibility for initiating and supporting joint Israeli-Palestinian projects, including track II meetings. Previously, she established and directed the Middle East Program at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris and was Associate Professor of International Relations at Paris University.
Laurie Nathan
Laurie Nathan is a visiting fellow at the University of Cape Town and the London School of Economics. He has served on the Carter Centre’s International Council for Conflict Resolution, the African Union’s mediation team for Darfur and the Ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence in South Africa.
Michael Renner
Michael Renner is a Senior Researcher at the Washington, DC-based Worldwatch Institute. His work has mostly focused on the linkages between environment, resources, and conflict, post-disaster peacemaking, and connections between employment and environment. Before joining Worldwatch in 1987, Michael was a Corliss Lamont Fellow in Economic Conversion at Columbia University (1986-87) and a research associate at the World Policy Institute in New York City (1984-86). He serves on the board of the Global Policy Forum (New York) and is a Senior Advisor to the Institute for Environmental Security (The Hague/Brussels).
Jürgen Trittin
Jürgen Trittin is a member of the German Bundestag, and is currently Deputy Chair of the Green Party's Policy Working Group on Defence and Security. From 1998-2005 he served as Federal Minister for the Environment. In this position he was responsible for the decision to abandon the use of nuclear power by 2020. From 1990 to 1994 he was the Lower Saxony Minister for Federal and European Affairs and the Head of the Lower Saxony State Mission to the Federal Government.
