Key differences between security, trade and environmental diplomacy

Security, trade and environmental diplomacy are quite different areas of diplomacy which can be overlapping especially environmental and trade diplomacy.

Security diplomacy is mostly carried out in secret. It has a long tradition in history and is part of the ‘old diplomacy’. The advantages are that parties can negotiate more widely without receiving pressure from the media and/or the public. As an example of the success of secret diplomacy is the Northern Ireland conflict. Where negotiation in the public would have had a negative impact of the solution of the conflict but without negotiations the conflict could not have been solved. Secret diplomacy is carried out within an exclusive circle, mostly made up of politicians and diplomats and which involves various tasks like negotiation, propaganda, spreading, soft power, etc. Secret diplomacy lacks legitimacy and openness. In some cases NGOs are involved, for example the Mozambican crisis in 1992 by the community of Sant’Egidio. This occurs in very few cases and its called Track II diplomacy. NGO’s play a minor role in security diplomacy. In the majority of the cases security diplomacy is carried out through secret diplomacy and back channel diplomacy. 

Trade diplomacy has gone through a transition. It is concerned with the world economy, where the aim is to bring wealth, development and stability into the system. Trade diplomacy was relatively narrowly defined. Most comparisons are made with the period after the establishment of GATT in 1948. It consisted primarily of border measures. In trade diplomacy countries are negotiating on a multinational, bilateral and regional level. Through the process of globalization, the number of actors or interests increased, as a consequence that trade policy makers must deal now with a wider range of domestic actors, thus has lead to a more complex and more transparent trade diplomacy. Actors in trade diplomacy are states, MNCs, NGOs and bodies like the EU and is in contrast to secret diplomacy, more open and in the public interest, for example the G20. Because of these, trade diplomacy went through a process of deepening and widening. It shifted from national treatment to policy harmonization, which leads to the problem that trade diplomats have less scope to reject calls from sector interests for bilateral negotiations and/or dispute settlement cases to be initiated in, for example, the WTO. Trade diplomacy nowadays has more overlapping with environment diplomacy.

Environmental diplomacy is fairly new in contrast to security and trade diplomacy. Still not every country recognize that there are serious issues concerning the environment in future  issues like global warming. The problem here is that environmental diplomacy refers to something what will happen in the future and therefore is not exactly predictable. And even scientists do not agree to which degree the global warming will effect the planet. In environmental diplomacy NGOs play a big role, because they have bigger resources and better knowledge as for example states or the UN. In environmental diplomacy states, MNC and NGOs play a role. Because environmental diplomacy has mostly negative effects on trade, especially on the national interest basis, environmental diplomacy often fails. It seems that the true way for change is not present and therefore extremely complicated when coming to an agreement. Environmental diplomacy will become a more important issue of security policies in the future. The problem of limited resources and the differences between the developed countries and the less developed countries are big future issues of environmental diplomacy.