Environmental Security and Armed Conflict in Jammu and Kashmir

Do environmental concerns are security issue? What is the relevance of environmental security in conflict areas? Are there causal relationship between armed conflict, environmental security, resource exploitation and violation of laws? The armed conflict in the state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1989 has raised the security concerns of the state. Under the broader rubric of state security, the armed conflict has brought up these concerns because it is characterized by armed operations in forest areas, military preparedness activities, inhabitation in the forest areas and usage of military technological installations like motor gola, gun powder and rocket launcher etc. Armed conflict became a strategic tool for illegally extracting the timber to the best possible extent due to lawlessness, failure of state institutions, outlaw of forest laws and encroachment of forest areas. It has linkage with self-determination movement as the rights of the people to dispose off their natural resources were violated that deprived indigenous people of their means of subsistence.