By IRNA
London : Threats to national security do not only come from the possibility of a terrorist attack but from other emerging frontline issues, including climate change, energy and disease and bio-security, the British government was told Wednesday.
A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), affiliated to the ruling Labour Party, argued that in the past national security has been too narrowly defined in the UK from a military or terrorist attack and this definition is now out of date.
“The world has changed and notions of security that helped protect us in the 20th century are no longer able to protect us in the 21st century,” said the report’s author Ian Kearns, who is deputy chair of IPPR.
IPPR said that a new national security strategy must address the full range of threats and risks facing the UK such as the impact of climate change and energy insecurity as the country moves from being an exporter to an importer of supplies.
Energy supplies will increase Britain’s vulnerability to decisions taken elsewhere, such as Russia, the Caspian Sea region, central Asia, Nigeria, and Algeria and at a time when competition is likely to increase, it warned.
Other issues seen as affecting national security were global poverty, disease and bio-security to prevent and contain epidemics and what it called critical national infrastructure, the interdependence of power, water, transport and communications.
“Terrorism is a very real threat but we must not allow it to dominate discussion about national security. The frontline in the battle for security today is more complex than ever before,” said Kearns, who has a doctorate in International Political Economy.
How Britain deals with the threats posed by climate change, energy insecurity and infectious diseases, he said, “must now be at the forefront of any national security strategy.”