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BOX 11–1
Spending on Military Versus Environmental Security
The world spent well over $900 billion on military purposes in 1985, more than $2.5 billion a day. The real cost is What the same resources might otherwise be used for:
- An Action Plan for Tropical Forest would cost $l.3 billion a year over the course of five year;. This annual sum is the equivalent of half a day o military expenditure worldwide.
- Implementing the UN Action Plan for Desertification could cost $4.5 billion a year during the last two decades of this century the equivalent of less than two days of military spending.
- One of the greatest environmental hazards in the Third World is lack of clean water for household use, contributing to 80 per cent of disease. The UN Water and Sanitation Decade, although given only a small fraction of support needed, would have cost $80 billion, in a year during the 1980s. This is the approximate equivalent of 10 days of military spending.
- To supply contraceptive materials to all women already motivated to use family planning would cost an additional $1 billion per year on top of the $2 billion spent today. This additional $1 billion is the equivalent of 10 hours of military spending.
Sources: International Task Force, Tropical Forests: A Call for Action (Washington, PC: World Resources Institute. Dr M.K. Tolba, 'Desertification and the Economics of Survival', UNEP Information 86/2, 25 March 1986; A. Agarwal et al., Sanitation and Health for All? (London: IIED/Earthscan, 1981); World Bank, World Development Report 1984 {New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
organization to deal with desertifiction, and there is emerging a body of successful case histories with respect to river basin development: Witness the joint-manaqement programmes in Africa for the Senegal River Basin.
3. The Importance of Early Warning
42. Since it is often uncertainty and insecurity that prompts international conflict, it is of the utmost importance that governments become aware of imminent environmental stress before the damage actually threatens core national interests. Governments are usually not well equipped with this kind of foresight.
