From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security Exploring New Limits to Growth

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security Exploring New Limits to Growth PDF Author: Dennis Pirages And Ken Cousins
Publisher: Academic Foundation
ISBN: 9788171885541
Category : Environmental policy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security Exploring New Limits to Growth

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security Exploring New Limits to Growth PDF Author: Dennis Pirages And Ken Cousins
Publisher: Academic Foundation
ISBN: 9788171885541
Category : Environmental policy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description


Environmental Security and Gender

Environmental Security and Gender PDF Author: Nicole Detraz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317656075
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Over the past 20 years scholars, policymakers, and the media have increasingly recognized the links between both traditional and non-traditional security issues and the changing condition of the global environment. Concepts such as 'environmental security' and 'resource conflict' have been used to hint at these significant linkages. While there has been a good deal of scholarly work conducted that seeks to identify the ways that actors link these concepts, there has been little examination of the intersection between approaches to environmental security and gender. This book explores this intersection to provide an insight into the gendered nature of both global environmental politics and security studies. It examines how the issues of security and the environment are linked to theory and practice, and the extent to which gender informs these discussions. By adopting a feminist environmental security discourse, this book provides crucial redefinitions of key concepts and offers new insights into the ways we understand security-environment connections. Case studies evaluate if, and how, environment and security discourses are being used to understand a range of environmental issues, and how a feminist environmental security discourse contributes to our understanding of security-environment connections. This multidisciplinary volume draws on literature from the environmental sciences, security studies and sociology to highlight the complex human insecurities that often accompany environmental change. As conceptualizations of security continue to shift and broaden to include environmental issues and concerns, it is imperative that gender informs the debate.

Ecological Security

Ecological Security PDF Author: Matt McDonald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009021486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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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.

Ecological Security

Ecological Security PDF Author: Dennis Pirages
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847695010
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Global environmental politics has emerged from its initial incarnation in the arena of 'low politics' and is rapidly becoming a 'high politics' concern. Concern over water pollution, air pollution, deforestation, and related basic environmental issues is giving way to a broader ecological security agenda. In this pathbreaking book, Dennis Clark Pirages and Theresa Manley DeGeest argue for dramatically broadening the context in which security priorities are established in an age of increasing globalization. Addressing the very fundamental question of the sources of premature human deaths and associated insecurity, both historically and in the contemporary world, the authors observe that in the twentieth century starvation killed nearly as many people as did military conflict. But disease was responsible for killing nearly fourteen times as many people as was warfare. And in the contemporary world of the twenty-first century, environmental terrorism and biological warfare are blurring the traditional distinctions between natural disasters, accidental deaths, and military casualties. Ecological Security moves the analysis of global environmental and resource issues to the next level by developing an 'eco-evolutionary' perspective for analyzing emerging problems associated with rapid globalization. Preserving future ecological security will depend upon maintaining dynamic equilibriums among human populations, and between them and pathogenic microorganisms, other species, and the sustaining capabilities of nature. This eco-evolutionary framework is used to anticipate and analyze emerging demographic, ecological, and technological discontinuities and dilemmas associated with rapid globalization. The authors conclude by stressing the need for new kinds of global public goods to mitigate the harshest impacts of these rapid and interrelated changes.

Ecoviolence

Ecoviolence PDF Author: Thomas F. Homer-Dixon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847688708
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Ecoviolence explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources_such as cropland, fresh water, and forests_and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Detailed contemporary studies of civil violence in Chiapas, Gaza, South Africa, Pakistan, and Rwanda show how environmental scarcity has played a limited to significant role in causing social instability in each of these contexts. Drawing upon theory and key findings from the case studies, the authors suggest that environmental scarcity will worsen in many poor countries in coming decades and will become an increasingly important cause of major civil violence.

The Meaning of Environmental Security

The Meaning of Environmental Security PDF Author: Jon Barnett
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781856497862
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Jon Barnett takes on the military-industrial interests of those in the establishment to reveal how ordinary human beings must have a safe environment in which security is subordinate to care of the planet and its delicate ecosystems.

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security

From Resource Scarcity to Ecological Security PDF Author: Dennis Pirages
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262162319
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
An analysis of past projections and current trends in population and the environment, with suggestions for future policies that will help ensure ecological security.

Energy Security

Energy Security PDF Author: Sascha Muller-Kraenner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317740904
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
'Essential reading.' Bernice Lee, Chatham House 'Lays out the energy security landscape with a commendable clarity that I have not seen elsewhere. It could help save the world.' Science, People & Politics Accessible and exciting ... [this] is the first truly objective examination of the relationship between resource scarcity, security and ecological destruction. Neues Deutschland Cuts through the confusion and complexity, clarifying the options for a sustainable energy future. Dan Esty, Yale University Humanity stands at a threshold: will its shared energy future be peaceful, or will it be threatened by resource wars? How can rapidly depleting resources be managed to the advantage of all, and therefore conflicts averted? How can we avoid irreparable damage to the last areas of untouched natural beauty, all in the name of accessing valuable resources? And how do we arrive at an international energy policy which not only provides safe, economical energy without conflict, but also addresses the all-important issue of climate change: What is the best way to achieve greater energy security? Energy Security addresses all of these questions, arguing for an urgent overhaul of international law and institutions to control relations with countries such as Russia, which own the worlds remaining fuel supplies. The book presents alternatives to fossil fuels as two diametrically opposing strategies: the increased use of atomic energy; and a comprehensive climate protection policy with a focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy. In times of international terrorism, there are heightened concerns about nuclear proliferation, and Energy Security argues that the future must belong to renewable energy. Published with the Heinrich B ll Foundation

Environment, Scarcity, and Violence

Environment, Scarcity, and Violence PDF Author: Thomas F. Homer-Dixon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822998
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital renewable resources as cropland, fresh water, and forests. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in this sobering book that these environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences--contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence, especially in the developing world. Homer-Dixon synthesizes work from a wide range of international research projects to develop a detailed model of the sources of environmental scarcity. He refers to water shortages in China, population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and land distribution in Mexico, for example, to show that scarcities stem from the degradation and depletion of renewable resources, the increased demand for these resources, and/or their unequal distribution. He shows that these scarcities can lead to deepened poverty, large-scale migrations, sharpened social cleavages, and weakened institutions. And he describes the kinds of violence that can result from these social effects, arguing that conflicts in Chiapas, Mexico and ongoing turmoil in many African and Asian countries, for instance, are already partly a consequence of scarcity. Homer-Dixon is careful to point out that the effects of environmental scarcity are indirect and act in combination with other social, political, and economic stresses. He also acknowledges that human ingenuity can reduce the likelihood of conflict, particularly in countries with efficient markets, capable states, and an educated populace. But he argues that the violent consequences of scarcity should not be underestimated--especially when about half the world's population depends directly on local renewables for their day-to-day well-being. In the next decades, he writes, growing scarcities will affect billions of people with unprecedented severity and at an unparalleled scale and pace. Clearly written and forcefully argued, this book will become the standard work on the complex relationship between environmental scarcities and human violence.

Security and Environmental Change

Security and Environmental Change PDF Author: Simon Dalby
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745658474
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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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.