Thinking Outside the Security Box
Non-Traditional Security in Asia: Governance, Globalization, and the Environment
UNU Seminar Sponsored by the Ford Foundation
15 March 2002 - Conference Room 6, UN Headquarters

Register for this seminar

Documents available for download

These documents are only viewable using Adobe Acrobat reader. If you don't have the free reader please download and install it.

Regional Environmental Security Complex Approach to Environmental Security in East Asia Geun Lee (Seoul National University)

ASEAN and the Idea of an "Asian Monetary Fund": Institutional Uncertainty in the Asia Pacific Shaun Narine, Ph.D.

GLOBALIZATION, SECURITY TECHNOLOGY AND CONFLICTS IN SOUTH ASIA Paper as part of the project on "Non Traditional Sources of Security in South Asia", RCSS, Colombo. Dr.Ms.Santishree.D.N.B.Pandit, University of Pune, India

WOMEN AND SOCIAL SECURITY: Impact of Financial Crisis Shao Zhiqin

Non-Traditional Security Issues in Northeast Asia and Prospects for International Cooperation - Tsuneo Akah

Environmental Security in Southeast Asia - Evelyn Goh

 

The events of September 11 were a painful reminder of the need to ‘think outside the box’ of traditional security paradigms.

Over the last three years the United Nations University (Tokyo), the Institute of Defence & Strategic Studies (Singapore) and the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (Sri Lanka) have been conducting research on changing ideas of security in Asia. The Ford Foundation has generously supported this research.

The overarching focus of the project is ‘non-traditional security’ in Asia, with the objective of deepening understanding on non-military and non-state centric security challenges and responses.

Researchers, mostly from within the region, have applied the ‘non-traditional security approach’ to a number of issue areas: the natural environment, socio-economic issues and the Asian financial crisis, governance, and regional institutions broadly defined.

This workshop will present key findings to the New York policy and research community. Members of the audience are encouraged to engage in debate.

The concept of security is being broadened considerably and continuously, to incorporate military, political, economic, societal and environmental dimensions, and the many linkages between them. Traditionally, security has been defined as military defense of territory, within a state system whose chief characteristic is a competition for security based upon (primarily military) power. Yet for most people in the world, the much greater threats to individual security come from disease, hunger, unsafe water, environmental contamination, crime, or even terrorism. And for others – for example the peoples of Kosovo and East Timor – a greater threat may come from their own country itself, rather than from an ‘external’ enemy.

Agenda

9:30     Registration

 

Opening session

 

9:45     Welcome and introduction

Ramesh Thakur, Vice Rector, United Nations University

 

            Non-Traditional Security – an orientation

            Bradford Smith, Vice President, Peace and Social Justice Program, Ford

Foundation

 

10:00   Project overviews

Ramesh Thakur, Vice Rector, United Nations University

Dipankar Banerjee, Executive Director, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies

Barry Desker, Director, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies

Amitav Acharya, Deputy Director, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies

 

10:45   Coffee

 

Session II          The Environment and Security

 

11:00   Environment and Security in South Asia

Adil Najam, Assistant Professor, Dept. of International Relations, Center for

Energy and Environmental Studies, Boston University

 

11:15   Environmental Security Issues in Southeast Asia

Evelyn Goh, Assistant Professor, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies 

 

11:30    Northeast Asian Regional Environmental Security Complex

Guen Lee, Assistant Professor, School of International and Area Studies, Seoul

National University

 

11:45 – 12:30   Discussion

 


Session III         Globalization and Socio-Economic Challenges

 

Chair    Amitav Acharya, Deputy Director, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies

 

14:00   Regional Institutions and Security in Southeast Asia

Shaun Narine, Izaak Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of

International Relations, Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues, University of

British Columbia

 

14:15   Social Security and Women: Impact of Financial Crisis

Shao Zhiqin, Senior Fellow, Institute of Foreign Economic Studies, Shandong

Academy of Social Sciences

 

14:30   Globalization and Security in South Asia

Santishree Pandit, Director, International Centre and Reader-Department of

Politics & Public-Administration, University of Pune, India

 

14:45   Discussion

 

15:45   Coffee

 

 

Session IV         Governance

 

16:00   Institutionalizing Security Regimes in Northeast Asia

Tsuneo Akaha, Director, Center for East Asian Studies, Monterey Institute of

International Studies, California

 

16:15   The Challenge of Governance in Plural Societies

P. Saravanamuttu, Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo, Sri Lanka

 

16:30   Governance in Plural Societies and Security in Southeast Asia

Rizal Sukma, Director of Studies, Centre for Strategic and

International Relations, Jakarta

 

16:45   Discussion

 

17:30   Close