Author Description

This book surveys the global politics of the environment through the prism of security studies. 'Environmental Security' has featured prominently in the discourse of academic International Relations and real world international relations since both of these arenas came to be shaken up in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s. The apparent passing into history of a conflict which had completely dominated International Relations and international relations since the 1940s prompted a reappraisal of the politics of security and provided space for environmental issues to be given greater prominence on the international political agenda. 'Securitizing' the environment- that is treating issues such as pollution or resource depletion as threats meriting urgent and special political attention- has been advocated by many Political Ecologists and put into practise by some governments since the 1990s (and even as far back as the early 1970s when the Cold War appeared to be ending and environmental concerns had begun to globalize). Not everyone, though, is convinced of the merits of treating ecological concerns as matters of political emergency and environmental security remains highly contested. In addition environmental security is inconsistently interpreted by its advocates since 'security', in terms of its meaning and the means of achieving it, is viewed differently by different political actors and thinkers. As a consequence of this the academic literature on environmental security that has evolved over the past few decades has tended to polarize rather than synthesize into clearer thinking and few comprehensive and accessible texts have emerged to present issues that demonstrably do greatly affect and concern the general public. This book hence seeks to provide some much needed clarity to thinking about environmental security by presenting the debate on the appropriateness and meaning of this concept in a systematic and accessible format. Towards this end two guiding.