problem
statement
How do issues related to health, environment, and food intersect to produce more or less insecurity at the level of individuals?
motivation
Until the mid-1990s, security problems were traditionally framed as matters at the scale of nation states, typically addressed via some form of military readiness or action.
In 1994, the United Nations issued a Human Development Report that defined a new conception of security termed “human security” that consisted of seven elements identifying the key “nonmilitary threats to the safety of societies, groups, and individuals”:
- Economic security (e.g., freedom from poverty);
- Food security (e.g., access to food);
- Health security (e.g., access to health care and protection from diseases);
- Environmental security (e.g., protection from climate change, environmental pollution and depletion);
- Personal security (e.g., physical safety from torture, war, criminal attacks, domestic violence, drug use, suicide and even traffic accidents);
- Community security (e.g., survival of traditional cultures and ethnic groups as well as the physical security of these groups); and
- Political security (e.g., enjoyment of civil and political rights, and freedom from political oppression).
Thirty years later, in January 2024, the United Nations issued its fourth report on Human Security:
Multilayered crises, whether stemming from a pandemic, disasters or conflict, are no longer isolated events confined to certain countries or regions. Tragedies taking place a continent away are interacting in new ways, reaching unprecedented scale and testing people on every front. The slow progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals reflects the challenges resulting from geopolitical tensions, widening inequalities, worsening climate crises and emerging gaps in the digital transformation. Although these may seem to be disparate issues, the application of the human security approach offers opportunities to find common ground in addressing the underlying drivers of current and emerging challenges.
In the context of the challenges identified in the UN’s 2024 report, Digitalis Research is focused on understanding the intersection of three of the key areas of human security: health security, environmental security, and food security.
Health Security
Environmental Security
“Environmental security aims to protect people from the short- and long-term ravages of nature, man-made threats in nature, and deterioration of the natural environment. In developing countries, lack of access to clean water resources is one of the greatest environmental threats. In industrial countries, one of the major threats is air pollution. Global warming, caused by the emission of greenhouse gases, is another environmental security issue.” 2
Food Security
“Food security requires that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to basic food. According to the United Nations, the overall availability of food is not a problem, rather the problem often is the poor distribution of food and a lack of purchasing power. In the past, food security problems have been dealt with at both national and global levels. However, their impacts are limited. According to the UN, the key is to tackle the problems relating to access to assets, work and assured income (related to economic security).” 3
curation
PRESENTATIONS
Amartya Sen / Text of presentation at the "International Symposium on Human Security" in Tokyo / July 28, 2000
“What is human security? And why is it important?”
PAPERS
Gary King and Christopher J.L. Murray / Political Science Quarterly / 2002
In this paper, we propose a simple, rigorous, and measurable definition of human security: the expected number of years of future life spent outside the state of “generalized poverty”.
Mary Martin / Citizens’ Network for Peace, Reconciliation and Human Security
Health security is an important dimension of human security, as good health is “both essential and instrumental to human survival, livelihood and dignity”.
next steps
Develop a model of interdependence among health, environment, and food at the level of individuals.
Key antibiotics are no longer manufactured in the US or the EU. How does access to antibiotics impact human health security on a national and global level?
Changes in soil composition impacts the nutritional value of food. How does our influence on planetary health, such as changes to industrial farming, atmospheric CO2, and building density, cascade to deviations in soil composition, nutritional value of food, and human health security.
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