write a Essay on: Impact of natural disaster on national security
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"Environmental security” was identified as a core component of the definition of human security outlined in UNDP’s 1994 report. Nevertheless, human security debates and policies have tended to focus more on human-made disasters, such as armed conflicts and human rights abuses. At the same time, strategies for disaster risk reduction (e.g. the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015) have largely avoided explicitly referring to human security.
Even so, as recent catastrophes like the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan have clearly shown, the actual threats that people struggle with following a natural disaster are similar to those of a human-made crisis such as armed conflict: “fear” (such as aftershocks and deteriorating social order) and “want” (lack of food, water and shelter). Likewise, many of the same actors are involved in the response, notably the UN and humanitarian NGOs. Indeed, most of the organizations involved in natural disaster relief are working to protect human security, even if they don’t label their work as such.
In post-conflict situations the practical value of the human security approach lies in its ability to focus and coordinate the efforts of many different actors on actual human needs, by providing a holistic and bottom-up perspective.