Author: Simon Dalby Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745658474 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
In the early years of the new millennium, hurricanes lashed the Caribbean and flooded New Orleans as heat waves and floods seemed to alternate in Europe. Snows were disappearing on Mount Kilimanjaro while the ice caps on both poles retreated. The resulting disruption caused to many societies and the potential for destabilizing international migration has meant that the environment has become a political priority.The scale of environmental change caused by globalization is now so large that security has to be understood as an ecological process. A new geopolitics is long overdue. In this book Simon Dalby provides an accessible and engaging account of the challenges we face in responding to security and environmental change. He traces the historical roots of current thinking about security and climate change to show the roots of the contemporary concern and goes on to outline modern thinking about securitization which uses the politics of invoking threats as a central part of the analysis. He argues that to understand climate change and the dislocations of global ecology, it is necessary to look back at how ecological change is tied to the expansion of the world economic system over the last few centuries. As the global urban system changes on a local and global scale, the world’s population becomes vulnerable in new ways. In a clear and careful analysis, Dalby shows that theories of human security now require a much more nuanced geopolitical imagination if they are to grapple with these new vulnerabilities and influence how we build more resilient societies to cope with the coming disruptions. This book will appeal to level students and scholars of geography, environmental studies, security studies and international politics, as well as to anyone concerned with contemporary globalization and its transformation of the biosphere.
Author: Matt McDonald Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136645950 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
This book offers an examination of the role of emancipation in the study and practice of security, focusing on the issue of environmental change. The end of the Cold War created a context in which traditional approaches to security could be systematically questioned. This period also saw a concerted attempt in IR to argue that environmental change constituted a threat to security. This book argues that such a notion is problematic as it suggests that a universal definition of security is possible, which prevents a recognition of security as a site of contestation, in which a range of actors articulate alternative visions of who or what is in need of being secured. If security is understood and approached in traditional terms - as the territorial preservation of the nation-state from external threat - then it is indeed difficult to see how environmental issues would benefit from being placed on states’ security agenda. If, however, security is defined in terms of the emancipation of the most vulnerable individuals from contingent structural oppressions, then drawing a relationship between environmental change and security may be beneficial for redressing those environmental issues and prioritising the needs of those most at risk from the manifestations of global environmental change. This book takes the limitations of contemporary approaches to the relationship between the environment and security as its starting point, and seeks to do two things. First, it aims to illustrate the ways in which arguments over approaches to environmental issues can be viewed as contestation over the meaning of 'security‘ in particular political contexts. Central here is the composition and assumptions of the dominant security discourse to emerge regarding those issues: a framework of meaning for the most important forms of action on behalf of a particular group, defining the terms for meaningful contestation and negotiation about security itself within that group. As such, the book attempts to illustrate the dynamics of competition over the meaning of security with reference to environmental issues, particularly focusing on instances of political change in the dominant security discourse through which that issue is approached. In the process the author points to the central role of these dominant security discourses in underpinning the most practically significant actions regarding environmental issues such as deforestation and global climate change. The book employs methodological tools that enable a focus on how particular frameworks of meaning are constituted and become dominant; how they provide a lens through which various issues are approached; and how discourses most consistent with redressing environmental change and the suffering of the most vulnerable might come to provide the framework through which security is viewed in particular contexts. This book will be of much interest to students of Critical Security Studies, geography, sociology, IR and Political Science in general.
Author: Linda Sygna Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136272496 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 570
Book Description
Environmental change presents a new context and new opportunities for transformational change. This timely book will inspire new ways of understanding the relationship between environmental change and human security. A Changing Environment for Human Security: Transformative Approaches to Research, Policy and Action both supports and informs a call for new, transformative approaches to research, policy and action. The chapters in this book include critical analyses, case studies and reflections on contemporary environmental and social challenges, with a strong emphasis on those related to climate change. Human thoughts and actions have contributed to an environment of insecurity, manifested as multiple interacting threats that now represent a serious challenge to humanity. Yet humans also have the capacity to collectively transform the economic, political, social and cultural systems and structures that perpetuate human insecurities. These fresh perspectives on global environmental change from an interdisciplinary group of international experts will inspire readers – whether students, researchers, policy makers, or practitioners – to think differently about environmental issues and sustainability. The contributions show that in a changing environment, human security is not only a possibility, but a choice.
Author: Matt McDonald Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009021486 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 251
Book Description
Climate change is increasingly recognised as a security issue. Yet this recognition belies contestation over what security means and whose security is viewed as threatened. Different accounts – here defined as discourses – of security range from those focused on national sovereignty to those emphasising the vulnerability of human populations. This book examines the ethical assumptions and implications of these 'climate security' discourses, ultimately making a case for moving beyond the protection of human institutions and collectives. Drawing on insights from political ecology, feminism and critical theory, Matt McDonald suggests the need to focus on the resilience of ecosystems themselves when approaching the climate-security relationship, orienting towards the most vulnerable across time, space and species. The book outlines the ethical assumptions and contours of ecological security before exploring how it might find purchase in contemporary political contexts. A shift in this direction could not be more urgent, given the current climate crisis.
Author: Alexander Carius Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 3642602290 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
Does a connection exist between environmental degradation, resource scarcity and violent conflicts? Global environmental changes, such as climate change and sea level rise, shortage of fresh water and rapid soil degradation increasingly highlight the dimensions of environmental change in foreign and security policy. To reverse these negative environmental consequences over the long term, comprehensive and preventive policy approaches are urgently required. This state-of-the-art book contains numerous articles by renown German-speaking experts from different scientific disciplines as well as international and European political advisors and diplomats. Together they discuss the complex causes of environmentally induced conflicts and the political and societal mechanisms for conflict prevention.
Author: Richard A. Matthew Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262258374 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
Experts discuss the risks global environmental change poses for the human security, including disaster and disease, violence, and increasing inequity. In recent years, scholars in international relations and other fields have begun to conceive of security more broadly, moving away from a state-centered concept of national security toward the idea of human security, which emphasizes the individual and human well-being. Viewing global environmental change through the lens of human security connects such problems as melting ice caps and carbon emissions to poverty, vulnerability, equity, and conflict. This book examines the complex social, health, and economic consequences of environmental change across the globe. In chapters that are both academically rigorous and policy relevant, the book discusses the connections of global environmental change to urban poverty, natural disasters (with a case study of Hurricane Katrina), violent conflict (with a study of the decade-long Nepalese civil war), population, gender, and development. The book makes clear the inadequacy of traditional understandings of security and shows how global environmental change is raising new, unavoidable questions of human insecurity, conflict, cooperation, and sustainable development. Contributors W. Neil Adger, Jennifer Bailey, Jon Barnett, Victoria Basolo, Hans Georg Bohle, Mike Brklacich, May Chazan, Chris Cocklin, Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Indra de Soysa, Heather Goldsworthy, Betsy Hartmann, Robin M. Leichenko, Laura Little, Alexander López, Richard A. Matthew, Bryan McDonald, Eric Neumayer, Kwasi Nsiah-Gyabaah, Karen L. O'Brien, Marvin S. Soroos, Bishnu Raj Upreti
Author: Rita Floyd Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0415538998 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
Economic development, population growth and poor resource management have combined to alter the planet's natural environment in dramatic and alarming ways. The field of environmental security has matured in response to improved scientific understanding of the causes and trends of global environmental change. Research conducted in the past two decades has grappled with this core set of questions in a variety of ways, generating findings and hypotheses that have stimulated considerable intellectual and policy activity. This volume takes stock of the research, and organizes it into a framework, described in the first chapter of the volume, that clarifies its achievements as well as identifies its weaknesses and gaps. This is followed by seven chapters representing the various ways in which environmental change and security have been linked, and including the principal critiques of this linkage. A third section explores six key issue areas: water, population, development, food, energy and climate change. The book concludes with a chapter on the future of environmental security.
Author: Hans Günter Brauch Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 364217776X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 1818
Book Description
Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security - Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks reviews conceptual debates and case studies focusing on disasters and security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks in Europe, the Mediterranean and other regions. It discusses social science concepts of vulnerability and risks, global, regional and national security challenges, global warming, floods, desertification and drought as environmental security challenges, water and food security challenges and vulnerabilities, vulnerability mapping of environmental security challenges and risks, contributions of remote sensing to the recognition of security risks, mainstreaming early warning of conflicts and hazards and provides conceptual and policy conclusions.
Author: Mohamed Behnassi Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319456482 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
This volume brings together insights on the interactions between environmental change and human security in the Middle East and Africa. These regions face particular challenges in relation to environmental degradation, the decline of natural resources and consequent risks to current and future human security. The chapters provide topical analysis from a range of disciplines on the theory, discourse, policy and practice of responding to global environmental change and threats to human security. Case studies from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Syria provide empirical evidence, with a focus section dedicated to the critical issue of water resources and water security in the region. The contributions demonstrate above all that the risks posed to human security arise through multiple and interconnected processes operating across diverse spatial and temporal scales. The complexity of these processes requires new ways of thinking and intervening. As a contribution, the current volume provides engaging insights from theory and practice for those seeking to address the challenges of environmental change.
Author: Simon Dalby
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Author: Matt McDonald
Author: Linda Sygna
Author: Matt McDonald
Author: Alexander Carius
Author: Richard A. Matthew
Author: Rita Floyd
Author: Hans Günter Brauch
Author: Mohamed Behnassi