Environmental Security

Approaches and Issues

Rita Floyd, Richard Matthew, Rita Floyd, Richard Matthew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415538992
• eBook ISBN: 9781136266744
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Economic development, population growth and poor resource management have combined to alter the planet's natural environment in dramatic and alarming ways. For over twenty years, considerable research and debate have focused on clarifying or disputing linkages between various forms of environmental change and various understandings of security. At one extreme lie sceptics who contend that the linkages are weak or even non-existent; they are simply attempts to harness the resources of the security arena to an environmental agenda. At the other extreme lie those who believe that these linkages may be the most important drivers of security in the 21st century; indeed, the very future of humankind may be at stake.

This book brings together contributions from a range of disciplines to present a critical and comprehensive overview of the research and debate linking environmental factors to security. It provides a framework for representing and understanding key areas of intellectual convergence and disagreement, clarifying achievements of the research as well as identifying its weaknesses and gaps. Part I explores the various ways environmental change and security have been linked, and provides principal critiques of this linkage. Part II explores the linkage through analysis of key issue areas such as climate change, energy, water, food, population, and development. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the value of this subfield of security studies, and with some ideas about the questions it might profitably address in the future.

This volume is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the field. With contributions from around the world, it combines established and emerging scholars to offer a platform for the next wave of research and policy activity. It is invaluable for both students and practitioners interested in international relations, environment studies and human geography.

1 Analyst, theory and security

A new framework for understanding environmental security studies

Rita Floyd¹

DOI: 10.4324/9780203108635-2

The history of environmental security studies presented in the introduction reveals that environmental security means different things to different people. My task in this chapter is to bring order to this messy and opaque field. To this end I offer a new framework for understanding environmental security studies that serves to interrelate the chapters in the book on the basis of key areas of division.

Different schools of thought in ESS are often divided in accordance with the entity deemed threatened (the referent object of security), and thus it is possible to divide the field into human-, state- and biosphere- centric approaches.² Ultimately, however, this categorization is more helpful when discussing the actual practice of environmental security, as the United Nations, individual states and green activist groups tend to promote distinct referent objects of environmental security. It fails, however, to reveal the nuances between the different and competing theoretical approaches in ESS.

A better way of ordering environmental security studies is to separate the field along two dividing lines. The first of these pertains to the role of the analyst and his or her view of the nature of theory. The second dividing line pertains to his or her view of security. Let me begin with the first.

Dividing line I: the role of the analyst and the nature of theory

In security studies, the appropriate role of the security analyst is contested. Some analysts are primarily concerned with how security is practised while others are primarily concerned with the condition of security, and how this can be achieved.³

Traditional security analysts, for example, do not give much thought to what it means to be secure and who or what should be secured. They simply assume the primordial right of states to security and are concerned with studying the practice of national and military security. According to Stephen Walt, for example, “[security studies] explores the conditions that make the use of force more likely, the ways that the use of force affects individuals, states and societies, and the policies that states adopt in order to prepare for, prevent, or engage in war.”⁴ By comparison, consider how different the theoretical literature on human security is. Much of that literature is consumed by the debate over the nature of human security, with the literature generally split into whether (human) security is and/or should be about freedom from violent conflict only, or whether it should be about both freedom from fear and freedom from want. In short, human security scholars are concerned with the condition of human security and how it can be achieved.⁵

A similar divide is apparent in the subfield of ESS. On the one hand there are those whose primary interest lies with specifying an ideal condition of environmental security and how this can be achieved. The now considerable literature on environmental security as human security falls into that category. Thus, it is in this literature where one finds definitions of the actual meaning of environmental security. One of the most insightful contributors to this approach, for example, tells us that environmental security is “the process of peacefully reducing human vulnerability to human-induced environmental degradation by addressing the root causes of environmental degradation and human insecurity”.⁶

How different scholars consider the appropriate role of the analyst is inseparable from their view of theory. The majority of scholars primarily interested in the condition of environmental security are informed by a Critical epistemology.⁷ They believe that theory is never value-neutral and that “all theory is for someone for some purpose”.⁸ As such they do not differentiate between theory and practice and theoretical analysis is considered a form of practice.⁹ The task or role of the environmental security analyst, then, is to imagine, teach and ultimately bring about a better future in which those identified as most vulnerable (environmentally insecure) are rendered more secure.

On the other hand, there are those whose primary interest is with studying how environmental security plays out in practice. Here the environmental security literature is dominated by positivist causal studies, concerned with the role of the environment in generating violent conflict. For these analysts theory simply serves to explain the world. And even when this kind of analytical and explanatory work gives way to policy recommendations, these remain non-normative. Thus these scholars do not advance a comprehensive case for why one set of policies should be adopted over another. Instead, their recommendations are fact-based, which is to say they are focused on what is happening and why it is happening rather than on what should happen. Considering, however, that the motives for research are rarely ever value-free these kinds of policy recommendation do not remain without problems and they must be treated accordingly. Moreover, this kind of research will normally be improvable methodologically, while a weak or questionable methodology has implications for the validity of policy recommendations.

Given all I have said so far it is possible to argue that the two dominant types of theory in contemporary environmental security studies are “Critical” and “analytical”. Applying descriptive labels such as these is always a difficult endeavour in the social sciences. It is important to note therefore that Critical Theory is not purely and solely normative, but also may contain within it an empirically grounded explanatory analytical element. Indeed, Max Horkheimer, one of its founding fathers, maintained that Critical Theory is viable only if it can explain the circumstances of oppression and enslavement.¹⁰

Throughout this section I have stressed the importance of primary interest in either the condition or the practice of environmental security. This is important because the Critical Theorist’s work on the condition of environmental security will often begin by demonstrating that the current practice of environmental security leads to widespread human (or biosphere) insecurity. On that basis, s/he then will advance a proposal for what environmental security should ideally entail.¹¹ Similarly, works on the practice of environmental security are – just as realism and other traditional approaches to security studies – themselves already informed by a view of what security is (see below for an elaboration on this theme and whether this renders all approaches normative). While the difference between works on the condition of environmental security vis-à-vis its practice then fails to conclusively distinguish between Critical Theory and analytical theory, the primary interest or the preponderance of the argument is a good indication of the theory used.¹²

However, not all analysts within ESS will limit themselves to just one of these two types of theory. Not only are other types of theory conceivable and used (for example, some scholars within ESS are influenced by poststructuralism – see below), but also, perhaps most importantly, Critical Theory is not the only theory through which a normative claim can be made. Some analysts even combine analytical with normative theory, but not as emancipatory theory. This in itself is only possible when proponents do not subscribe to the Critical Theorist’s view that theory is tantamount to practice; or, in other words, when scholars differentiate between the role of the analyst and that of the securitizing actor.

One example of this type of work is provided by some environment, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding scholars. By and large these scholars follow the positivist mainstream with their focus on hypothesis testing and falsification, and seemingly strive to explain the world only (see below for more on method). However, given that the focus of this literature is on “conflict transformation”¹³ this literature is also explicitly normative. The normative aspect of this work is summarized in one influential book, which “hope[s] to nudge governments, intergovernmental organizations, social movements, and other actors who have not been aggressive about environmental cooperation to be somewhat more so, by pointing to credible possibilities of peacemaking spin-offs, if they are willing to act to realize them”.¹⁴

Another example is provided by scholars working with (versions of) securitization theory as developed by Ole Wæver and the Copenhagen School. Securitization theory holds that security is a performative speech act, because issues become matters of security policy only when they become recognized as existentially threatening by a suitably powerful securitizing actor and are declared security threats. Provided that the issue is accepted as threatening also by a relevant, sanctioning audience the issue is then moved out of the normal/democratic policymaking realm into a state of emergency politics where it can be addressed by the use of extraordinary measures.¹⁵ Securitization theory is a postpositivist analytical theory that aims at explaining¹⁶ who can securitize, on what issues, under what conditions, and to what effect.¹⁷ Although the Copenhagen school somewhat misleadingly claims that “security means survival”,¹⁸ it is important to note that this says nothing about the circumstances under which a referent object is actually safe from harm (secure); or in other words, about the condition of (environmental) security. Instead, to “qualify” for securitization an issue needs to be perceived to be existentially threatening in severity by the securitizing actor, but also by a relevant audience. In line with this the Copenhagen school clearly specifies that the role of the security analyst is functionally distinct from that of the securitizing actor and that only the latter can be the architect of successful securitization.¹⁹ This said, however, it is also the case that because the securitization analyst believes in the securitizing force of language (security is after all considered a performative speech act) his or her written work “is at least partly responsible for the co-constitution of social reality, as by means of the securitizaton analyst’s own text this reality is (re)produced. In other words, in writing or speaking security the [securitization] analyst him/herself executes a speech act.”²⁰ In an effort to overcome this “normative dilemma of speaking and writing security”²¹ the securitization analyst is then practically forced to make normative recommendations. Wæver does so by promoting desecuritization as ceteris paribus preferable to securitization. The former refers to the process whereby an issue is moved out of the realm of security, emergency politics and exception (that defines securitization) and back into ordinary politics.²² Interestingly, while arguing that the environment should be desecuritized,²³ he manages to make a normative argument without saying a word about what environmental security should ideally be. Or in other words, nowhere does he write about the actual condition of (environmental) security.²⁴

Wæver’s normative preference for desecuritization is informed by the idea that desecuritization and securitization tend to have the same outcome, whereby desecuritization is believed to lead to politicization, dialogue and an opening up of debate, while securitization is believed to lead to depoliticization, dedemocratization and potentially the security dilemma. Not only has it been shown that desecuritization can lead to depoliticization²⁵ but also as a normative strategy desecuritization is feasible only when one ignores – as he does – the existence of objective existential or real threats.²⁶ Yet, in such cases – for example, when climate change induced global sea-level rise endangers the physical existence of small island states – securitization may well be the more appropriate solution. On the basis of these and similar ideas, I have suggested elsewhere that a better strategy for escaping securitization theory’s “normative dilemma” is to differentiate between (morally) right and wrong securitizations. “Just securitization theory” identifies a set of criteria that determine the morality of securitization across all sectors of security, including for environmental security. The criteria are: 1) there must be an objective existential threat; 2) the referent object of security must be morally legitimate; and 3) the security response must be appropriate to the threat in question.²⁷

From theory to method

Before turning to the second dividing line, it is useful to include a section on method. Simply put, an analyst’s view of theory, as well as his or her epistemological position, informs the choice of methods he or she deems appropriate. With the exception of political ecologists, environmental conflict scholars are informed by a positivist epistemology that aims to emulate the natural science. Their research methods typically include quantitative work. Recent work on the interrelationship between demographic factors and violent confl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Environmental security studies An introduction
• Chapter 1 Analyst, theory and security A new framework for understanding environmental security studies
• Chapter 2 The evolution of qualitative environment-conflict research Moving towards consensus
• Chapter 3 Environmental security and the resource curse
• Chapter 4 A political ecology of environmental security
• Chapter 5 From conflict to cooperation? Environmental cooperation as a tool for peace-building
• Chapter 6 Environmental dimensions of human security
• Chapter 7 Ecological security A conceptual framework
• Chapter 8 Gender and environmental security
• Chapter 9 Understanding water security
• Chapter 10 Conservation, science and peace-building in southeastern Europe
• Chapter 11 Population and national security
• Chapter 12 Environmental security and sustainable development
• Chapter 13 Ensuring food security Meeting challenges from malnutrition, food safety, and global environmental change
• Chapter 14 Challenging inequality and injustice A critical approach to energy security
• Chapter 15 Climate change and security
• Chapter 16 Whither environmental security studies? An afterword
• Index