ABSTRACT

In September 1996 Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed the United Nations General Assembly and argued convincingly of broadening the mandate of security, particularly with respect to the concept of “human security.” During that address, Axworthy put forth the idea that human security must include much more than protection against military threat. He argued that the security of the common citizen be extended to include “security against economic privation, an acceptable quality of life, and a guarantee of fundamental human rights.” 1 According to Axworthy, at a minimum, human security must ensure that the basic needs of ordinary people be met, basic needs that include “sustained economic development, human rights and fundamental freedoms, the rule of law, good governance, sustained development and social equity. . . . It recognizes the links between environmental degradation, population growth, ethnic conflicts and migration.” 2 In short, Axworthy was advocating that security goals be primarily formulated and achieved in terms of “human rather than state needs.” 3 This chapter argues that today’s China is not ensuring the human security of its people, as defined by Axworthy, particularly with respect to ecological protection. If basic needs include an acceptable quality of life, then one must question conditions that create polluted air, contaminated water, poisoned foodstuffs, desertification and other forms of environmental degradation. It must question the ecological repercussions of large-scale energy projects, such as the Three Gorges dam, not to mention the consequent displacement of millions of people. These are the same conditions that have accompanied rapid economic growth. Indeed, over the past 25 years, China has achieved industrialization, urbanization and annual increases in GDP of 8–9 percent. It is estimated that this “economic miracle” has lifted some 400 million people out of poverty, but of course the price is a Faustian one. Rapid economic growth, particularly the kind experienced in China that includes export-oriented production on a vast scale, has created ever widening inequality and has produced pollution and ecological destruction. For example, China is currently the largest source of sulfur dioxide emissions in the world 4 and has the greatest ongoing increase in automobile use, leading to rising emission levels of NOx and hydrocarbons. 5 Increased urbanization has accompanied economic development, particularly city-clusters or corridors, dense urban areas that create even greater amounts of air polluting particles. As M. Shao et al. point out, the city clusters in the Pearl River Delta area have been found to have two to three times the levels of concentration of SO 2 and NO 2 found elsewhere in Guangdong. 6