COVID-19 AND MEDICAL WASTE: A New Opportunity for Environmental Security?
Picture: Ibrahim Boran
The use of medical equipment has increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from face masks, hand sanitizers, to personal protective equipment (PPE). Over time, there has been a buildup of medical waste in many countries due to the sharp increase. In the long term, medical waste has the potential to threaten local ecology and biodiversity. Therefore, many parties argued that medical waste could be categorized as an imminent environmental security threat. In this article, I argue that the medical waste problem has not become an environmental security issue because of the lack of securitization by state and/or policymakers. However, I argue that this issue should be taken seriously and even could be dealt without securitization.
To discuss environmental security more comprehensively, we need to discuss the logic of security itself. The logic of security evolved during the end of the Cold War with the rise of Constructivism and Post-Structuralism. Both approaches view security—and insecurity—as a social construction. Humans as rational beings hold a crucial role in shaping an issue into a security one. With the rise of both approaches, non-state-centric and non-high politics issues could now be categorized as security issues. Environmental security itself is still a debated issue among academics, with most of them are still debating its logic, approach, territoriality, and causations. This debate has not been resolved yet given the wide spectrum of environmental issues, in which each problem has a different approach.
The issue of COVID-19 medical waste is not yet an environmental security issue due to the fact that no large-impacted policy has been taken. According to Allenby (1998), environmental issues are interlinked with security issues. However, environmental issues could only be declared as security issues if there are large-scale policies taken by states as the main actor in international relations. Furthermore, many states have not securitized this issue. I argue this happened for several reasons. First, there are no clear parameters on how this issue could be hazardous. By now, policymakers should have already known that millions of medical wastes are being dumped every day. What they do not know is how dangerous it could be and what is the upper limit that is considered “safe” or “unsafe”. Second, medical waste does not affect human life, or at least it has not. Securitization can only be carried out on issues that are considered to be threatening to the existence of a state or the people within it. The issue of medical waste has not yet threatened both, so no securitization can be carried out.
The issue of medical waste during the COVID-19 pandemic will have a greater chance to be resolved without securitization. By not viewing the issue as a security threat, the solution will be free from politicization which often slows down the resolution. Furthermore, the improvement of local governance could solve this issue without having to labelling it as a security threat. For example, it is necessary to improve the management of medical waste involving the Ministry of Forestry, Ministry of Health, private companies, health facilities, and the local communities.
To conclude my views, medical waste is not an environmental security issue due to its lack of fulfillment of the requirements to become a security issue. However, it can be dealt with seriously improving the management and governance of medical waste. All actors from communities to state actors must provide a cohesive response to sort, separate, incinerate, and manage medical waste in a regulated manner.