UNDP Asia-Pacific Director Kanni Wignaraja on the Necessity of Redefining Security
In an age of intersectional crises, of threats that bleed across borders and between sectors, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) believes what’s needed is a redefinition of security. In a new report, the UNDP argues that development ought to have a larger role in addressing insecurity – not as it is traditionally understood, but as it actually affects people across Asia and the Pacific.
It’s not about making a binary choice between defense and development, Kanni Wignaraja, UNDP regional director for Asia and the Pacific, told The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz. Instead, what’s critical is getting the balance right, investing in development and prevention, and leveraging development to enhance security.
In pursuit of this, the UNDP proposes in its report a framework of “development circuit breakers” addressing economic insecurity, weak institutions, digital disruption and climate-health pressures that interact and reinforce each other.
“Trust is the one switch that allows all four circuit breakers to work. Each switch depends on trust: between people and institutions, and among the institutions responsible for different parts of the system,” Wignaraja said.
In the following interview, Wignaraja expands on the structural vulnerabilities that define the modern security landscape, puts defense spending trends in context, and urges regional governments to shift their mindset from managing individual crises to managing shared risks.
Kanni Wignaraja, UNDP regional director for Asia and the Pacific.
What structural vulnerabilities define the modern security landscape across Asia and the Pacific? How is the current reality different from previous periods, what’s changed?
A lot has changed in the way we see and feel vulnerability and insecurity today across the region and the world.
Previously, maybe there were more episodic periods of intense pain, wars, for example, but more contained. Now I feel it’s almost like having chronic pain. It’s all of the time and in so many more places. And that is a very different scenario of insecurity and feeling unsafe.
Countries face overlapping shocks, often before they have recovered from the last. The old crisis-recovery-rebuilding cycle is breaking down, putting hard-won development gains repeatedly at risk.
The nature of the threats has changed too: many are not contained within borders. Climate shocks, pandemics, cybercrime, disinformation, supply-chain disruptions and water insecurity move across countries and systems. The scale is enormous. Online criminal economies are estimated at $1.03 trillion annually, with $114.1 billion in losses to cybercrime victims in 2025.
There is also an exponential factor, as these risks now travel faster, connect more quickly and spread like wildfires. Economic insecurity can erode trust; climate shocks destroy livelihoods and strain public finances; weak institutions create space for illicit economies. Sri Lanka illustrates the connections, amid its economic crisis, poverty rose from 11 percent in 2019 to more than 25 percent in 2023, alongside wider social and political unrest. Myanmar shows what can happen when several pressures converge and collide. Conflict, economic decline, poverty, weak governance and criminal economies increasingly reinforce one another. These cannot be neatly separated into security problems on the one hand and development problems on the other.
Our response systems were built for episodic emergencies. They now have to manage chronic, connected insecurity.
Defense spending is soaring across the world, including in Asia, while development budgets have been trimmed down, in some cases dramatically. Do these trends reflect – or do they ignore – the actual threats communities across Asia and the Pacific face?
Today recorded military budgets are close to US$3 trillion. At the same time official development assistance (ODA) has fallen to $175 billion. This is just 6 cents to the dollar if we compare the ratio between the two.
We are not arguing to choose between defense and development but getting the balance of investment right. And to optimize security spending that aligns with development outcomes. The questions is how to use both military and development budgets to invest in common outcomes. That’s the win-win. And how do you leverage one to get more of the other?
Military, police and intelligence institutions remain essential. And their budgets can also be a frontline to ensure dual outcomes that ensure national and people’s safety and well-being.
Investments in technology that enhances wellbeing with protection, early warning and preparedness systems, vaccine production and access, AI integrity and strong rule of law and justice institutions prevent risks from becoming crises.
Wherever the money comes from, we need to invest much more deliberately in prevention, and for the longer term. Each dollar invested in prevention can mean up to $103 in avoided conflict and crisis costs. For example, in the Philippines anticipatory systems can reach 125,000 vulnerable people three days before a Category 4 or 5 typhoon, before assets and savings are lost.
Some of the new risks also require us to work differently. Cyber scams are a good example: they combine cybercrime, human trafficking, illicit finance and organized crime, and in many case promote cross border conflict. No single institution can make a dent in this.
Ultimately, it is about getting a better security return from the investments we make. And where together, one-plus-one can be way beyond two. The opportunity is to find these investments that strengthen both.
What is meant by “the securitization of development” and why is it important to avoid securitizing development as you encourage governments to rethink the connections between development and security?
The risk is that development could come to be seen primarily through a security lens. Development through the lens of human wellbeing must remain an objective in its own right. That is reducing poverty, eliminating major diseases, a full education and decent jobs, affordable energy, water and food for all, protecting rights and enabling people to live with dignity.
The report argues that sustaining security – which is about a safer present and future for all not just a few – cannot be achieved without development defined as improved human wellbeing for all. Investing in people, institutions and resilience is not separate from security but is one of the most effective ways to achieve it. That is different from turning development into a security instrument. Development and security are mutually reinforcing.
Incentives matter. Development should be about enabling people to live free from fear, free from want and in dignity, expanding people’s capabilities, strengthening rights, improving access to services and creating opportunities.
This is why the report places such emphasis on people-centered security. Individuals and communities should be at the heart of both development policy and security decisions. These are not alternative or conflicting choices. Security seen through this lens is about whether people can feel safe in their homes, protect their livelihoods, access justice and basic services, and live without fear. That is very much the human security tradition that UNDP has championed since the early 1990s.
The central message is that if governments are serious about security in the fullest sense, investment in development is non-negotiable. Effective governance, economic opportunity, social protection, digital resilience, climate adaptation and access to justice are not substitutes for security; they are among its most important foundations.
One section of the report states that “Current responses generate the crises they were meant to prevent,” in reference to what’s termed “the response and reactive trap.” Why is it so difficult for regional governments to invest in prevention? How can governments break out of this particular trap?
The fundamental problem with prevention is that when it works, it is often invisible. Political and budget cycles reward visible results, while the return on prevention is often a crisis that did not occur. This makes it easier to finance response and reconstruction than investments that could have reduced the losses in the first place.
We have to make prevention politically meaningful, economically visible and financially viable. That means translating risks into investments with clearer costs, returns and avoided losses. We need to move from paying for disasters to investing in resilience before they happen.
The shift is from managing each emergency to managing compounding risks over time. Countries need the capacity to anticipate and absorb shocks, protect development gains and recover faster, rather than rebuilding over the same vulnerabilities after every crisis.
The public budget leads the way. Finance ministries, local governments and financing institutions increasingly shape resilience through decisions on public finance, regulation and development planning. Prevention needs to become a criterion for allocating public resources, as we are already beginning to see across the region.
A better integrated financing architecture is central to breaking the reactive cycle. UNDP’s Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs) which are being implemented in over 90 countries show how countries can align public and private finance around interconnected risks, making prevention economically visible and investable. Mongolia’s green energy transition where UNDP is supporting implementation of the INFF, illustrates this: a single integrated financing pathway strengthened climate resilience, energy security and economic stability at once.
We need to change the economics and politics of prevention. Making risks, avoided losses and returns more visible makes prevention easier to justify politically and more investable financially. Security is not only about our capacity to respond when something goes wrong, but our capacity to stop disruption from becoming an explosive crisis. Bangladesh and Nepal are recent examples of doing so.
One of the report’s key messages frames governance and institutional legitimacy, digital system integrity, economic security, and climate-health resilience as integrated “circuit breakers.” Can you briefly describe how these are intertwined and why they can’t necessarily be separated?
For too long, I think we’ve run responses, even analytically, looking at some of the big issues, the big disruptors of our times as separate systems. Think of it as a building. If an electrical fire starts in one place, you need to stop it from spreading and burning down the whole house. That is the purpose of the circuit breakers.
The four circuit breakers presented in the report are distinct, but the risks they address do not operate separately. The Big Four address economic insecurity, weak institutions, digital disruption and climate-health pressures that increasingly interact and reinforce each other. The most volatile risks that can set the place on fire often lie in the connections between them.
A shock in one area can quickly travel through the whole system. Climate shocks can undermine economic security; economic insecurity can erode trust; weak governance can enable criminal networks and disinformation; digital harms can deepen social divisions. That is how one vulnerability can become a much wider crisis.
Trust is the one switch that allows all four circuit breakers to work. Each switch depends on trust: between people and institutions, and among the institutions responsible for different parts of the system.
Trusted institutions can avoid or reduce the tensions through which risks escalate. In Pakistan, virtual courts and community access points have improved perceptions of police and justice institutions, while in Bangladesh, village courts help resolve everyday disputes before they grow. These examples show how strengthening trust at the community level reinforces all four circuit breakers.
The same on the digital and this AI spurt. How do we make sure that something like AI does not undermine trust that has been built over time, but it is used as an extender or accelerator on the positive side.
It is about managing these four circuit breakers, but in one system.
The report’s central message is that new approaches to “anticipating, preventing and managing both internal and transboundary challenges” are needed. Can you summarize some of those new approaches?
We need to move from managing individual crises to managing shared risks. Cybercrime does not recognize borders. Neither do climate risks, human trafficking, illicit financial flows or many of the other pressures we face today. No country or institution can address these challenges alone.
It requires a level of multi-country, regional and global cooperation that we have not seen before. And that, I think, is where institutions like the United Nations are so key.
That means cooperation itself becomes a form of prevention. But cooperation works when countries see it in their own interest. Shared interest and self-interest are not contradictory. They can be mutually reinforcing. That requires trust, particularly when countries are being asked to share information, coordinate responses or make decisions whose benefits extend across borders. Subregional cooperation mechanisms, such as ASEAN and the Mekong River Commission, show how countries can move beyond purely national responses and ask: how can we collectively address shared risks?
Institutions of development and security need to work differently together, starting with where outcomes align. The goal is not to expand everyone’s mandate, but to build a shared understanding of risk and clearer responsibilities for managing it in the collective interest.
Ultimately, we need to move to strengthen these connected systems. Success is not only how well we will respond to the next crisis, but how well we prevent a shock from becoming one.
