A Research Strategy to Secure Energy, Water, and Food via Developing Sustainable Land and Water Management in Turkey

Abstract

One of the basic contentions of the neo-realist world-view has been the argument that states have to survive in a dangerously competitive and ruthlessly conflictual environment (Waltz 2002: 29). Accordingly, the need to survive in a risky environment forces states to focus on strategies that maximize their power relative to their rivals. In this context, traditional security policy has been concerned primarily with deliberate military attack from certain enemies. However, post-Cold War global processes have been changing the nature of threat and forcing adaptation of basic strategic princi-ples and the patterns of allegiance associated with them. The world's security problématique have truly changed in the past decade or two. Our thinking about the nature of security must also change, taking account of changes in the nature of threat for survival. There are clearly new and sometimes unexpected link-ages between political, security, and economic con-cerns that challenge the capacity of the state both to recognize and to respond to the new challenges. At the same time, there has been an institutional chal-lenge relating to the adequacy of existing institutions for international action, and to the potential for coor-dination between state and other non-state (transna-tional and sub national) forces. One such area relates to the security of energy, wa-ter, and food. It is now increasingly commonplace to securitize formerly non-security-related issues of pro-duction of food, ownership of water, and continued supply of energy resources (Brauch 2003). In this con-text, energy security can be defined as access to steady supply of cheap, clean, and reliable energy resources, while water security refers to continued clean and steady access to potable and useable water; and food security relates to " access to adequate, safe and nutri-tious food to maintain healthy life " , which include freedom from chronic hunger (Collomb 2003: 777). All of these inevitably include the problem of sustain-ability, which has become more of a problem as a re-sult of realization that neither energy resources, nor food and water, are unlimited commodities in the world, and that their shortages would create security risks. When put together, the security complex of en-ergy, water, and food could be achieved, or at least en-hanced, by improvement of integrated programmes for the sustainable management of land, water, and energy resources 1