Desecuritizing the Water Issue in Singapore—Malaysia Relations

Abstract

********** A number of scholars have argued that water may be a determining factor sparking armed conflict between Singapore and Malaysia. They highlight Singapore's dependence on Malaysia for half of its water needs (a supply guaranteed by two compacts signed in 1961 and 1962), and speculate that Malaysia prematurely abrogates the agreements, water-stressed Singapore will have no qualms about invading its neighbour to secure access to the water stocks. This article examines Singapore's water situation and argues that the prevailing scholarship is too alarmist. It maintains that Singapore has the means to achieve a measure of water self-sufficiency and is not vulnerable to Malaysia's use of the water link as leverage. Consequently, scholars should begin to regard the water issue between Singapore and Malaysia as desecuritized. Introduction Within the past decade, a burgeoning studies literature coalescing around the phrase security has emerged. The deluge of articles and books calling for the redefinition of beyond the confines of military threats to include the environment has generated a lively debate within academia. (1) Within this broad environmental school, two distinctive standpoints on the scope of the scholars' or policy-makers' concerns have emerged. One has tended to view the environment as a dependent variable for analysis, such that thus takes on the meaning of of the environment. (2) The other posits the environment as an independent variable and is interested in the conflict dimension of interstate relations as they crop up in political, economic, diplomatic, or military confrontations stemming from environmental antagonism, be it local, regional, or global in nature. (3) Security studies of the latter genre argue that resource scarcity or one state's forcible deprivation of a resource from another plays an important contributory role in inducing wars. Analysts taking the latter approach and studying the linkage between nation-states, water security, and conflict, in particular, have generated insightful hypotheses about the respective independent! dependent variable relationship between a renewable resource like fresh water and war. They argue that, assuming water is fundamental to a country's survivability, sovereignty, economic development, and, social and political stability, any attempt to curtail that state's access to the resource may trigger violent retaliation. (4) As Peter Gleick contends, if water provides [a state with] a source of economic or political strength... ensuring access to water provides a justification for going to war, and water-supply systems can become a goal of military conquest. (5) Informed by fresh theoretical perspectives, a number of case studies focusing on the links between water scarcity or deprivation and interstate conflict have appeared. Indeed, scholars advancing the water agenda have added an important dimension to scholarly understanding of how access to water resources may influence geopolitical events in the water-stressed Middle East, or the humid Mekong region in tropical Southeast Asia. (6) The clarion call for more attention to be given to a state's water could not have been timelier for those concerned about the situation in Singapore. In recent years, a number of scholars examining bilateral tensions among member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have suggested that water may be a determinant factor sparking violent conflict between Singapore and Malaysia. (7) The central assumption behind that assertion is that Singapore is bereft of sufficient domestic water reserves and is highly reliant on Malaysia for at least half of its water supply, a provision guaranteed by two compacts signed in 1961 and 1962 and expiring respectively in 2011 and 2061. (8) Although Singapore separated from Malaysia in August 1965 under acrimonious circumstances, the water links continued. …