GLOBAL

ENVIRONMENTAL 17
ISSUES

Source: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

PREVIEW
The environment is often viewed as the archetypal example of a global issue. This is because environmental processes
do not respect national borders; they have an intrinsically transnational or global character. As countries are peculiarly
environmentally vulnerable to the activities that take place in other countries, meaningful progress on environmental
issues can often only be made at the international or even global level. Nevertheless, international cooperation on
such matters has sometimes been very difficult to bring about. This has occurred for a number of reasons. In the
first place, the environment has been an arena of particular ideological and political debate. Disagreements have
emerged about both the seriousness and nature of environmental problems and about how they can best be tackled,
not least because environmental priorities tend to conflict with economic ones. Can environmental problems be
dealt with within the existing socio-economic system, or is this system the source of those problems? Such debates
have been especially passionate over what is clearly the central issue on the global environmental agenda, climate
change, as the controversial withdrawal of the United States from the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change
demonstrated. Despite sometimes catastrophic predictions about the consequences of not addressing climate
change, concerted international action on the issue has been frustratingly slow to emerge. What have been the
obstacles to international cooperation over climate change, and what would concerted international action on the
issue involve? Finally, climate change is not the only issue on the global environmental agenda. Another issue of
major concern is energy security, with some talking in terms of a new international energy order in which a country’s
ranking in the hierarchy of states is being increasingly determined by the vastness of its oil and natural gas reserves,
or its ability to acquire them. To what extent has energy security reshaped global order, and are natural resources
always a blessing?

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 492 GLOBAL POLITICS

KEY ISSUES
z How and why has the environment developed into a global issue?
z Do modern environmental problems require reformist or radical solutions?
z What are the causes and major consequences of climate change?
z How far has international action over climate change progressed?
z What obstacles stand in the way of international cooperation over climate change?
z How has energy security shaped conflict both between states and within states?

THE RISE OF GREEN POLITICS

THE ENVIRONMENT AS A GLOBAL ISSUE
Although forms of ecologism or green politics can be traced back to a backlash
against the industrialization of the nineteenth century, the environment did not
become a significant national or international issue until the 1960s and 1970s when an
environmental movement emerged that sought to highlight the environmental costs of
increased growth and rising affluence, at least in the developed West, drawing attention
also to a growing divide between humankind and nature. Influenced in particular by the
idea of ecology, the pioneering works of early green politics included Rachel Carson’s The
Silent Spring (1962), a critique of the damage done to wildlife and the human world by the
increased use of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals, and Murray Bookchin’s Our
Synthetic Environment ([1962] 1975) which examined how pesticides, food additives,
and X-rays cause a range of human illnesses, including cancer. This period of the 1960s
and 1970s also saw the birth of a new generation of activist NGOs (see p. 8) – ranging
from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to animal liberation activists and so-called
‘eco-warrior’ pressure groups – campaigning on issues such as the dangers of pollution,
the dwindling reserves of fossil fuels, deforestation, and animal experiments. From the
1980s onwards, environmental questions were kept high on the political agenda by green
parties, which now exist in most industrialized countries, often modelling themselves on
the pioneering efforts of the German Greens. The environmental movement addresses
Ecologism: A political three general problems. These are:
ideology that is based on
the belief that nature is z Resource problems – attempts to conserve natural materials through reducing the use
an interconnected whole, of non-renewable resources (coal, oil, natural gas, and so on), increasing the use of
embracing humans and
renewable resources (such as wind, wave, and tidal power), and reducing population
non-humans, as well as
the inanimate world. growth, thereby curtailing resource consumption.
Fossil fuels: Fuels that z Sink problems – attempts to reduce the damage done by the waste products of
are formed through the economic activity, through, for example, reducing pollution levels, increasing
decomposition of buried recycling, and developing greener (less polluting) technologies.
dead organisms, making
them rich in carbon; z Ethical problems – attempts to restore the balance between humankind and nature
examples include oil, through wildlife and wilderness conservation, respect for other species (animal rights
natural gas, and coal.
and animal welfare), and changed agricultural practices (organic farming).
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 493

C E PT
CON

ECOLOGY
The term ‘ecology’ was coined by the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866. Derived from the Greek oikos,
meaning household or habitat, he used it to refer to ‘the investigations of the total relations of the animal both to its
organic and its inorganic environment’ (Haeckel 1866). Ecology developed as a distinct branch of biology through
a growing recognition that plants and animals are sustained by self-regulating natural systems – ecosystems –
composed of both living and non-living elements. Simple examples of an ecosystem are a field, a forest, or a pond.
All ecosystems tend towards a state of harmony or equilibrium through a system of self-regulation, referred to by
biologists as homeostasis.

During the 1970s, environmental politics focused particularly on resource issues. This
reflected a growing awareness that humankind lives in a world of ‘global finiteness’, an
awareness reinforced by the oil crisis of 1973. A particularly influential metaphor for the
environmental movement was the idea of ‘spaceship Earth’, because this emphasized the
notion of limited and exhaustible wealth. Kenneth Boulding (1966) argued that human
beings had traditionally acted as though they lived in a ‘cowboy economy’, an economy
with unlimited opportunities, like the American West during the frontier period.
However, as a spaceship is a capsule, it is a closed system and all closed systems tend to
exhibit evidence of entropy in that they decay because they are not sustained by external
inputs. Ultimately, however wisely and carefully human beings behave, the earth, the
sun, and indeed all planets and stars are destined to be exhausted and die. Similar
concerns about global finiteness were also highlighted by the unofficial UN report Only
One Earth (Ward and Dubois 1972) and the report of the Club of Rome, The Limits to
Growth (Meadows et al. 1972). The latter work had a stunning impact, in that it appeared
to predict by extrapolating five variables – world population, industrialization, pollution,
food production, and resource depletion – that the world’s oil supplies would run out by
1992. Although such predictions were subsequently revealed to be gross exaggerations,
Entropy: A tendency
and despite widespread criticism of the methodology used, the idea of limits to growth towards decay or
dominated thinking about the environment for a decade or more. disintegration, a
characteristic exhibited,
Environmental issues also became an increasingly major focus of international concern sooner or later, by all
(as shown in ‘Key Events … Major International Initiatives on the Environment’). closed systems.
This reflected a growing awareness that environmental problems have an intrinsically Acid rain: Rain that
transnational character: they are not contained by national borders. States are therefore is contaminated by
environmentally vulnerable to the economic activities that take place in other states, a sulphuric, nitric, and other
lesson that was reinforced during the 1970s by a growing concern about the regional acids that are released
impact of acid rain and by the truly global consequences of ozone depletion caused by into the atmosphere by 17
the burning of fossil fuels.
emissions of man-made chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons. The
first major international conference to be held on environmental issues was the 1972 Ozone depletion: A
decline in the total
UN Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) at Stockholm, which also led to
amount of ozone in the
the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), responsible earth’s stratosphere,
for coordinating the environmental activities of states and international organizations particularly the
to promote better regional and global environmental protection. However, the global development of a so-
recession of the 1970s and onset of the ‘second Cold War’ in the early 1980s subsequently called ‘ozone hole’ over
the Antarctic.
pushed environmental issues down the international agenda. They were revived, in part,
 494 GLOBAL POLITICS

through the impact of environmental catastrophes such as the 1984 Bhopal chemical
plant disaster and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, but also by a growing recognition
that environmental degradation was closely associated with the advance of globalization
(see p. 9), encouraging many, particularly in the South, to link environmental and
development issues. This was exemplified by the 1987 Brundtland Commission Report,
which provided the dominant mainstream framework for understanding and addressing
environmental issues and the the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’
S
NT
EVE

MAJOR INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES ON THE ENVIRONMENT

1946 The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling established the International Whaling
Commission (IWC), which attempts to preserve Great Whales by upholding an international
moratorium on whaling.
1950 World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established as a specialized agency of the UN for
meteorology (weather and climate) and related geophysical sciences.
1959 Antarctic Treaty, which set aside Antarctica, earth’s only continent without a native human
population, as a scientific preserve.
1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm, which laid the
foundations for environmental action at an international level and prepared the way for the launch
of the UN’s Environmental Programme (UNEP).
1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which aimed to ensure that
international trade in wildlife and plants does not threaten their survival.
1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which defined the rights and responsibilities of countries
in their use of the world’s oceans and established guidelines for businesses, the environment, and
the management of marine natural resources (entered into force in 1994).
1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, which confirmed the existence of the
Antarctic ‘ozone hole’, and attempted to reduce the use of CFC gasses (entered into force in
1987).
1987 Brundtland Commission Report, which highlighted the idea of sustainable development.
1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which provided for the phasing
out of CFCs with the goal of the ozone layer having recovered by 2050.
1988 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (see p. 506) established, which reports on the
implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).
1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro and
commonly called the ‘Earth Summit’, which included conventions on climate change and
biodiversity and established the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).
1997 Kyoto Protocol to the FCCC, which established a legally binding commitment by developed states
to limit greenhouse gas emissions in a phased process. (Entered into force in 2005 with the first
commitment period being 2008–12.)
2009–12 The UN Climate Change Conferences held in Copenhagen, Durban, and Doha to formulate a
successor to the Kyoto Protocol (see p. 509).
2015–16 The UNFCCC negotiations in 2015 lead to the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change (see
p. 512).
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 495

From the 1990s onwards, environmental debate has increasingly focused on the issue of Global warming: An
‘climate change’ brought about through global warming. Initial concerns about climate increase in the earth’s
temperature, widely
change had focused on CFC emissions, but this shifted over time to the impact of so-
believed to be due to heat
called ‘greenhouse gases’, with the establishment of the UN Framework Convention on trapped by greenhouse
Climate Change (FCCC), the first attempt to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at gases, such as carbon
a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change, dioxide.
and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was responsible for Greenhouse gases: Gases
reporting on the implementation of the FCCC (see p. 506). Nevertheless, it took until the (such as carbon dioxide,
1997 Kyoto Protocol to the FCCC to agree measures to control emissions of greenhouse water vapour, methane,
gases. Under the Kyoto Protocol, developed countries agreed to cut their emissions by nitrous oxide, and ozone)
that trap heat in the
an average of 5 per cent, usually against 1990 levels, during the ‘commitment period’, earth’s lower atmosphere
2008–2012. Subsequent conferences were convened in Copenhagen (2009), Durban creating a warming
(2011), Doha (2012), and Paris (2015) in an attempt to formulate a successor to Kyoto. ‘greenhouse effect’.
However, in their different ways, these conferences demonstrated the difficulty of Carrying capacity: The
achieving concerted and effective action on the issue of climate change (see p. 502). maximum population
These difficulties relate, most basically, to the mismatch between state interests and that an ecosystem can
the collective interests of the international community, as illustrated by the idea of the support, given the food,
habitat, water, and other
‘tragedy of the commons’. Potentially, this problem applies to all environmental issues.
necessities available.

FOCUS ON . . .
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS?
Will shared resources always be misused or overused? Does community ownership of land, forests, and fisheries
lead to inevitable ruin, and what does this imply about modern environmental problems? Garrett Hardin used the
idea of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ to draw parallels between global environmental degradation and the fate of
common land before the introduction of enclosures. He argued that if pasture is open to all, each herder will try to
keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. However, sooner or later, the inherent logic of the commons will
remorselessly generate tragedy, as the number of cattle exceeds the carrying capacity of the land. Each herder
calculates that the positive benefit of adding one more animal (in terms of the proceeds from its eventual sale) will
always exceed the negative impact on the pasture, as this is relatively slight and, anyway, shared by all herders. As
Hardin put it, ‘Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all’ (Hardin 1968). The idea of the ‘tragedy of the commons’
draws attention to the importance of the ‘global commons’, sometimes seen as ‘common pool resources’, and of
threats posed to these by overpopulation (a particular concern for Hardin), pollution, resource depletion, habitat
destruction, and over-fishing.
Many now question the logic behind the ‘tragedy of the commons’. Hardin’s anti-immigrant, racist, and eugenicist
views – expanded on especially in his later work – were directly connected to his central thesis. From the 1950s Hardin
was a leading member of the American Eugenics Society, alongside the former Nazi eugenicist Otmar Freiherr von
17
Verschuer. His views on people as the major threat to the environment rendered him a key figure in what Carolyn
Merchant (see p. 514) and others call ‘environmental racism’. But Hardin’s ideas have also been challenged on their
basic Eurocentric assumptions about human nature and behaviour too. Elinor Ostrom (1990) argued that some
societies successfully managed common pool resources through diverse, bottom-up institutional arrangements. Not
only does historical evidence suggest that common land was usually successfully managed by communities (Cox 1985),
as is borne out by examples such as the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, but the argument is also circular: its conclusions
are implicit in the assumption that human nature is selfish and unchanging (Angus 2008). Indeed, eco-socialists would
argue that selfishness, greed, and the wanton use of resources are a consequence of the system of private ownership,
not their cause. Community ownership, by contrast, engenders respect for the natural environment.
 496 GLOBAL POLITICS

RES
FIG U

KEY THEORISTS IN GREEN POLITICS

ERNST FRIEDRICH SCHUMACHER (1911–77)

A German-born UK economist and environmental thinker, Schumacher championed the cause of human-scale production
and advanced a ‘Buddhist’ economic philosophy (economics ‘as if people mattered’) that stresses the importance of
morality and ‘right livelihood’. His key work is Small Is Beautiful (1973).
ARNE NAESS (1912–2009)
A Norwegian philosopher who was influenced by the teachings of Spinoza, Gandhi, and Buddha, Naess was the leading
advocate of ‘deep ecology’, arguing that ecology should be concerned with every part of nature on an equal basis because
natural order has an intrinsic value. His writings include Ecology, Community and Lifestyle (1989).
GARRETT HARDIN (1915–2003)
A US ecologist, microbiologist, and eugenicist, Hardin is best known for the idea of the ‘tragedy of the commons’, and
warned against the environemental dangers of population growth. Especially in his later work, this argument took the form
of an overtly eugenicist, anti-Black, anti-Latinx, and anti-immigrant racism, arguing in the 1990s against ‘the dogma that
all cultures are equally good and valuable’. The Southern Poverty Law Centre today lists Hardin as a key white nationalist
and ‘extremist’ thinker. His chief works include The Tragedy of the Commons (1968) and Lifeboat Ethics (1974).
MURRAY BOOKCHIN (1921–2006)
A US libertarian socialist, Bookchin highlighted parallels between anarchism and ecology through
the idea of ‘social ecology’, and was also strongly critical of the ‘mystical’ ideas of deep ecology,
which he dubbed ‘eco-la-la’. His major works in this field include The Ecology of Freedom (1982)
and Re-enchanting Humanity (1995).
See also Ecofeminist theorists (p. 514)

Source: Debbie Bookchin

GREEN POLITICS: REFORMISM OR RADICALISM?

Global commons: Areas The environment is an arena of particular ideological and political debate. Disagreements
and natural resources about the seriousness and nature of environmental problems, and about how they can
that are unowned and best be tackled, are rooted in deeper, often philosophical debates about the relationship
so beyond national between humankind and the natural world. Conventional political thought has subscribed
jurisdiction, examples
including the atmosphere, to a human-centred approach to understanding, often called anthropocentrism. Moral
the oceans, and, arguably, priority has therefore been given to the achievement of human needs and ends, with
Antarctica. nature being seen merely as a way of facilitating these needs and ends. In the words of
Anthropocentrism: the early liberal English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), human beings are ‘the
A belief that human masters and possessors of nature’. Environmental thought, by contrast, is based on the
needs and interests are principle of ecology, which stresses the network of relationships that sustain all forms
of overriding moral and of life including human life. However, green politics encompasses two broad traditions,
philosophical importance.
which can be called ‘reformist’ ecology and ‘radical’ ecology.
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 497

Reformist Ecology Shallow ecology: A green

ideological perspective
Reformist ecology seeks to reconcile the principle of ecology with the central features
that harnesses the lessons
of capitalist modernity (individual self-seeking, materialism, economic growth, and of ecology to human
so on), which is why it is sometimes called ‘modernist’ ecology. It is clearly a form of needs and ends, and is
humanist or ‘shallow’ ecology. The key feature of reformist ecology is that recognition associated with values
that there are ‘limits to growth’, in that environmental degradation (in the form of, such as sustainability and
conservation.
for instance, pollution or the use of non-renewable resources) ultimately threatens
prosperity and economic performance. The watchword of this form of ecologism is Externality: A cost of an
sustainable development, especially what is called ‘weak’ sustainability. In economic economic activity that has
wider impact but does not
terms, this means ‘getting rich more slowly’. From the reformist perspective, damage feature on the balance
to the environment is an externality, or ‘social cost’. By taking account of such costs, sheet of a business or
modernist ecologists attempted to develop a balance between modernization and form part of the GDP of a
sustainability. country.

The chief ideological influence on reformist ecology is utilitarianism, which is based on Sustainability: The
capacity of a system to
classical liberal thinking. In that sense, reformist ecology practises what can be called maintain its health and
‘enlightened’ anthropocentrism, encouraging individuals to take account of long-term, continuing existence over
not merely short-term, interests. The British utilitarian philosopher and politician John a period of time.
Stuart Mill (1806–1873) thus justified a steady-state economy (one without economic Utilitarianism: A moral
growth) on the grounds that the contemplation of nature is a ‘higher’ pleasure. Peter philosophy that equates
Singer (1993) justified animal rights on the grounds that all species, and not just humans, ‘good’ with pleasure or
have a right to avoid suffering. More generally, utilitarian thinking acknowledges the happiness, and ‘evil’ with
pain or unhappiness,
impact on the quality of human life of environmental degradation by recognizing the
and aims to achieve ‘the
interests of future generations. The nature of environmental matters means that many greatest happiness for
of the consequences of our actions may not be felt for decades or even centuries. the greatest number’ (the
Industrialization, for instance, had advanced for some two hundred years before concerns principle of general utility).
were raised about the depletion of finite oil, gas, or coal resources, or about greenhouse
gas emissions. Therefore ecologists have developed ideas about intergenerational
justice, suggesting that our obligations extend beyond the present generation to future
generations, encompassing the living and the yet to be born.
Such ‘futurity’ has been justified in different ways. Care for and obligations towards
future generations have sometimes been seen as a ‘natural duty’, an extension of a moral
concern for our children and, by extension, their children, and so on. A concern for future
generations has also been linked to the idea of ‘ecological stewardship’. This is the notion
that the present generation is merely the custodian of the wealth that has been generated
by past generations and should conserve it for the benefit of future generations. However,
the idea of cross-generational justice has also been criticized. Some argue that all rights 17
depend on reciprocity (see p. 437) (rights are respected because of something that is
done, or not done, in return), in which case it is absurd to endow people who have yet
to be born with rights that impose duties on people who are currently alive. Moreover,
in view of the potentially unlimited size of future generations, the burdens imposed by
‘futurity’ are, in practical terms, incalculable. Present generations may either be making
sacrifices for the benefit of future generations that may prove to be much better off, or
their sacrifices may be entirely inadequate to meet future needs.
 498 GLOBAL POLITICS

The most straightforward case for conserving resources is therefore that it maximizes
the welfare or happiness of people, taking account of both the living and of people who
have yet to be born. Finally, reformist ecology is defined by the means through which it
would deal with environmental problems, as typified by the mainstream environmental
movement. It tends to advocate three main solutions to environmental degradation:
z ‘Market ecologism’ or ‘green capitalism’. This involves attempts to adjust markets to
take account of the damage done to the environment, making externalities internal to
the businesses or organizations that are responsible for them. Examples of this include
green taxes.
z Human ingenuity and the development of green technologies (such as drought
resistant crops, energy-efficient forms of transport, and ‘clean’ coal). The capacity for
invention and innovation that created industrial civilization in the first place can also
be used to generate an environmentally friendly version of industrialization.
z International regimes (see p. 89) and systems of transnational regulation. Global
governance (see p. 527) offers the prospect that the impact of ‘tragedy of the commons’
can be reduced, even though it can never be removed.

Radical Ecology
Radical ecology, by contrast, encompasses a range of green perspectives that call, in
Green taxes: Taxes
that penalize individuals their various ways, for more far-reaching, and in some cases even revolutionary, change.
or businesses for, for Rather than seeking to reconcile the principle of ecology with the central features of
instance, the waste they capitalist modernity, these theories view capitalist modernity, and its values, structures,
generate, the pollution and institutions, as the root cause of environmental degradation. A variety of these
they cause, the emissions
perspectives can collectively be categorized as forms of social ecology, in that they
they generate, or the
finite resources they each explain the balance between humankind and nature largely by reference to social
consume. structures. The advance of ecological principles therefore requires a process of radical
Social ecology: The idea social change. However, this social change is understood in at least three quite different
that ecological principles ways:
can and should be applied
z Eco-socialism advances an environmental critique of capitalism. For eco-socialists,
to social organization,
a term originally used capitalism’s anti-ecological bias stems from the institution of private property and
mainly by eco-anarchists. its tendency towards ‘commodification’. These reduce nature to mere resources and
Commodification: suggest that the only hope for ecological sustainability is the construction of a socialist
Turning something into a society.
commodity that can be
bought and sold, having
z Eco-anarchism advances an environmental critique of hierarchy and authority.
only an economic value. For eco-anarchists, domination over people leads to domination over nature. This
implies that a balance between humankind and nature can only be restored through
Ecological footprint:
A measure of ecological the abolition of the state and the establishment of decentralized, self-managing
capacity based on the communities (Bookchin 1982).
hectares of biologically
productive land that are
z Ecofeminism advances an environmental critique of patriarchy (see p. 107). For
needed to supply a given ecofeminists, domination over women leads to domination over nature (Merchant
person’s consumption 1983, 1992). As men are the enemy of nature because of their reliance on instrumental
of natural resources and reason and their inclination to control or subjugate, respect for nature requires the
absorb their waste. creation of a post-patriarchal society.
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 499

FOCUS ON . . .
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: RECONCILING GROWTH WITH
ECOLOGY?
Can development be ecologically sustainable? Is there an inevitable tension between economic growth and protecting
the environment? The idea of ‘sustainable development’ has dominated thinking on environmental and development
issues since it was highlighted by the 1987 Brundtland Report. The Brundtland Report’s highly influential definition of
the term is:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs. It contains two key concepts: (1) the concept of need, in particular the
essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given, and (2) the concept of limitations,
imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and
future needs. (UN 1987)
However, there is debate about what sustainable development means in practice, and about how growth and ecology
can be reconciled. What is sometimes called ‘weak’ sustainability (reformist ecology) accepts that economic growth
is desirable, but simply recognizes that growth must be limited to ensure that ecological costs do not threaten its
long-term sustainability. This means, in effect, getting richer slower. Supporters of this view, moreover, argue that
human capital can be substituted for natural capital, implying, for example, that better roads or a new airport could
compensate for a loss of habitat or agricultural land. In this view, the key requirement of sustainability is that the net
sum of natural and human capital available to future generations should not be less than that available to present
generations. However, ‘strong’ sustainability, favoured by radical ecologists, rejects the pro-growth implications of
weak sustainability. It focuses just on the need to preserve and sustain natural capital, seeing human capital as little
more than a blight on nature. This is sometimes reflected in the belief that natural capital should be evaluated in terms
of people’s ecological footprint, an idea that has radically egalitarian implications.

While social ecology views radical social change as the key to ecological sustainability, Deep ecology:
so-called ‘deep’ ecology goes further in emphasizing the need for paradigm change, a A green ideological
perspective that rejects
change in our core thinking and assumptions about the world. This involves rejecting all
anthropocentrism
forms of anthropocentrism, and embracing ecocentrism instead. Deep ecology therefore and gives priority to
advocates a radical holism that implies that the world should be understood strictly in the maintenance of
terms of interconnectedness and interdependence (see p. 84). The human species is nature; it is associated
merely part of nature, neither more important nor more special than any other part. with values such as
bioequality, diversity, and
Such ecocentric thinking has been constructed on a variety of bases, ranging from the
decentralization.
new physics (particularly quantum mechanics) and systems theory to Eastern mysticism
(especially Buddhism and Taoism) (Capra 1975, 1982, 1996) and pre-Christian spiritual Ecocentrism: A theoretical
orientation that gives
ideas, notably ones that stress the notion of ‘Mother Earth’, as advanced in the so-called priority to the maintenance
Gaia hypothesis. Deep ecologists have radically revised conventional ethical thinking, of ecological balance rather 17
arguing that morality springs not from human beings, but from nature itself, and than the achievement of
supporting the idea of ‘biocentric equality’. They are also fiercely critical of consumerism human ends.
and materialism, believing that these distort the relationship between humankind and Biocentric equality:
nature. The principle that all
organisms and entities in
the ecosphere are of equal
moral worth, each being
part of an interrelated
whole.
500

APPROACHES TO . . .

REALIST VIEW
Realism has traditionally paid little attention to environmental thinking and it would be highly questionable
to suggest that realism can be associated with a particular conception of nature. Realism is certainly more
concerned with survival than with sustainability. Nevertheless, it has addressed the issue of the relationship
between humankind and the natural world in at least two senses. First, classical realists have often explained
human behaviour and propensities in terms of those found in other animals and, indeed, in nature itself.
Selfishness, greed, and aggression have commonly been viewed as innate features of human nature,
reflecting tendencies that are found in all species (Lorenz 1966). On a larger scale, the struggle and conflict
that realists believe is an ineradicable feature of human existence has sometimes been traced back to the
fact that nature itself is ‘red in tooth and claw’. Conflict and war have thus been seen as a manifestation of
‘the survival of the fittest’, a kind of social Darwinism. Second, realists have acknowledged the importance of
nature, in recognizing the role that scarcity, and therefore conflict over resources, often plays in generating
international tensions. Such thinking has been particularly evident in the ideas of geopolitics (see p. 517),
which is itself a form of environmentalism. It is also reflected in the idea that many, and perhaps most, wars
are ‘resource wars’.

LIBERAL VIEW
In the liberal view, nature is viewed as a resource to satisfy human needs. This explains why liberals have rarely
questioned human dominion over nature. Lacking value in itself, nature is invested with value only when it
is transformed by human labour, or when it is harnessed to human ends. This is reflected in Locke’s theory
that property rights derived from the fact that nature has, in effect, been mixed with labour. Nature is thus
‘commodified’, assigned an economic value, and drawn into the processes of the market economy. Indeed, in
emphasizing the virtues of free-market capitalism, classical liberals have endorsed self-interested materialism
and economic growth, a position that many ecologists have linked to the rapacious exploitation of nature.
The anti-nature or anti-ecological biases of liberalism can be seen to stem from two main sources. First,
liberalism is strongly anthropocentric, by virtue of its belief in individualism. Second, liberals have a strong
faith in scientific rationality and technology, encouraging them to adopt a problem-solving approach to
nature and to place a heavy reliance on human ingenuity. Nevertheless, alternative traditions within liberalism
reflect a more positive approach to nature. These include a modern liberal stress on human flourishing, which
may be facilitated through the contemplation of nature, and a utilitarian emphasis on maximizing happiness
and minimizing suffering, a stance that may be applied to other species or to future generations of humans
(Singer 1993).

MARXIST VIEW
Marxists traditionally had little to say about the natural environment, and their teleological view of history
as an unfolding process arguably naturalized industrialization, and consequently ignored its polluting and
environmentally degrading effects, in favour of focusing on the revolutionary potential it offers in the creation
of an industrial working class or ‘proletariat’. ‘Eco-socialism’ has, however, become a highly influential political
theory, informing green parties in many countries. Its key proponents, such as John Bellamy Foster (2000),
 501

THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

are heavily influenced by Marx and Marxism in their theorization of how to tackle environmental issues,
arguing that a Marxist ecology is entirely possible.

FEMINIST VIEW
Ecofeminism has been a significant strand of feminist thought and activism since the term was coined by
French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne in the 1970s. Ecofeminists come at the environmental question
from a range of angles. Some associated with second-wave ‘radical’ feminism, such as Carolyn Merchant
(see p. 514) and Mary Daly (1978) took an almost mystical approach, emphasizing an essential femininity
of femaleness in ‘nature’, which is threatened by the masculinist scientism of the Enlightenment project.
Notably, the third-wave Black feminist theorist Audre Lorde criticized Daly’s ecofeminism for – typically
of ‘white feminisms’ – excluding the experiences of women of colour. Later ecofeminists such as Carol J.
Adams (1990) and Erika Cudworth (2005) emphasize the parallels between men’s patriarchal control of
women and their control (and eating) of non-human animals in ‘anthroparchy’, highlighting gendered and
sexualized language around the production and consumption of meat. In this view, men’s domination of
women is one aspect of their wider domination and exploitation of the natural world they find themselves in.
More recently, Cudworth (2011, 2017) has turned to ‘posthumanism’ as a way of exploring and challenging
this anthroparchal, patriarchal order (see p. 514).

POSTCOLONIAL VIEW
Given its generous treatment of white nationalist and other racist figures such as Garrett Hardin (see
p. 496), and the abundance of ‘environmental racism’ focused on ‘population control’ solutions, postcolonial
theorists have been sceptical of ecological theories and movements. The rise of the transnational ‘Extinction
Rebellion’ (XR) movement in recent years triggered angry responses from some anti-racist activists who
deplored not only the lack of race and class diversity in the movement, but also the positive encouragement
given to protestors by XR leaders to get themselves arrested. The ‘white privilege’ required to view arrest as
a relatively safe option, given the violent policing and profiling of racialized minorities in the West, made this
movement less accessible to people of colour. That said, some postcolonial and critical race scholars – from
Nathan Hare’s (1970) call for a ‘Black Ecology’ to Kwasi Densu’s (2018) argument for ‘African-Centered
Ecophilosophy and Political Ecology’ – have argued that racialized minorities and formerly colonized peoples
have specific and valuable practical and intellectual contributions to make to environmental debate.

GREEN THEORY VIEW

From the perspective of green politics, nature is an interconnected whole that embraces humans and non-
humans as well as the inanimate world. Nature thus embodies the principles of harmony and wholeness,
implying that human fulfilment comes from a closeness to nature, not from attempts to dominate it. This
holistic view is embraced most radically by deep ecologists, for whom nature is the source of all value. Nature
is thus an ethical community, meaning that human beings are nothing more than ‘plain citizens’ who have no
more rights and are no more deserving of respect than any other member of the community (Leopold 1968).
502 GLOBAL POLITICS

Extinction Rebellion
Source: TOLGA AKMEN/Getty Images

CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change is not only the most prominent global environmental issue but also, some
argue, the most urgent and important challenge currently confronting the international
community. However, the issue is bedevilled by controversies and disagreements. The
most important of these are over:
z The cause of climate change: is climate change happening, and to what extent is it a
result of human activity?
z The significance of climate change: how serious are the consequences of climate
change likely to be?
z The cures for climate change: how can climate change best be tackled?

CAUSES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate is different from weather: climate refers to the long-term or prevalent weather
conditions of an area. As the US writer Robert A. Heinlein (1973) noted: ‘Climate is what
we expect; weather is what we get.’ However, this certainly does not imply that the earth’s
climate is stable and unchanging. Indeed, it has experienced wild swings throughout its
4.6 billion-year history. There have been numerous ice ages, interspersed with warmer
interglacial periods. The last ice age occurred during the Pleistocene epoch, which
ended about 10,000 years ago, during which glaciers on the North American continent
reached as far south as the Great Lakes and an ice sheet spread over Northern Europe,
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 503

leaving its remains as far south as Switzerland. By contrast, some 55 million years ago,
at the end of the Palaeocene epoch and the beginning of the Eocene epoch, the planet
heated up in one of the most extreme and rapid global warming events in geological
history. Such changes resulted from a variety of developments: changes in the radiation
output of the sun; changes in the earth’s attitude in relation to the sun (as the earth’s
orbit alters from elliptical to circular and changes occur in its tilt and how it wobbles on
its axis); variations in the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, and so forth. Over the
past century, and particularly during the last few decades, a new period of rapid climate
change has been initiated, with temperatures climbing quickly from normal interglacial
levels. This time, however, climate change has been largely, and perhaps entirely, the
result of human activity.

FOCUS ON . . .
THE ANTHROPOCENE
In a 2000 issue of the newsletter of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme – an international NGO
set up by the International Science Council – the environmental scientists Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer
(2000) proposed ‘to use the term “anthropocene” for the current geological epoch’. This proposal was made on the
basis of a range of evidence that human-made (‘anthropogenic’), or human-accelerated, processes have come to
shape the natural environment at a planetary level in a way that warrants a new name to replace the ‘Holocene’ –
the term for the geological period spanning from almost 12,000 years ago (when the Pleistocene, the last ‘ice age’
ended) to today. Crutzen and Stoermer cited the explosive growth in global human population, urbanization, and
industrialization in the twentieth century, which led to massive increases in the extraction and burning of fossil
fuels, with measurable impacts on atmospheric pollution, the creation of photochemical ozone or ‘smog’, and the
Antarctic hole in the ozone layer, alongside and overlapping with the detonation of nuclear weapons, the depletion
of ocean fish stocks, the loss of natural habitats to agriculture, and the high-impact mass production of animals
such as cattle.
The Anthropocene remains a somewhat contested concept, and (at the time of writing) is yet to be formally
adopted by the relevant international geological organizations, but it has garnered widespread formal and
informal recognition in national scientific communities, including usage by the Geological Society of London
and the Geological Society of America. The international Anthropocene Working Group, a panel of thirty-four
leading scientists, announced in 2019 that it would make a formal proposal to the International Commission on
Stratigraphy, which oversees the official geologic time chart, by 2021, that the name be used to describe the
period beginning from the ‘Trinity’ US nuclear bomb test in 1945 – though other scientists consider this too
recent a start point. In any case, the Anthropocene has become a key concept in global social and political theory
too. In international relations theory, David Chandler (2018) and others have explored the significance of the
Anthropocene as a political period in which governance structures have necessarily become increasingly diffuse,
tied not only to climate change but also to the rise of ‘Big Data’, machine-learning algorithms, and the ‘Internet of
17
Things’. Jason Moore (2016), meanwhile, suggests rejecting ‘Anthropocene’ in favour of ‘Capitalocene’, to capture
the importance of capitalism to producing the dramatic environmental changes the Anthropocene is intended to
describe, while the posthumanist or ‘multispecies feminist’ Donna Haraway suggests that her term ‘Cthulucene’
(2015) would be a more hopeful way of capturing the necessity for improvement in human-nonhuman relations
for planetary survival and more ‘liveable’ futures.
 504 GLOBAL POLITICS

During the 1990s, the issue of global warming due to climate change achieved a higher
and higher profile on the international environmental agenda. This was due to the fact
that environmental groups, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, increasingly
made efforts to stop global warming the primary focus of their activities and because
the establishment of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meant that
there was, for the first time, a source of authoritative scientific statements on the issue.
This latter development largely put paid to the first and most basic debate about climate
change: is it actually happening? Until about 2004–2005, a ‘denial lobby’, sometimes
funded by US oil companies, challenged the very idea of global warming, claiming that
the data on temperature changes in the earth’s atmosphere was either inconclusive or
contradictory. However, in 2005, a series of articles in the journal Science highlighted
serious flaws in the data that had been used by ‘denial lobbyists’, helping to establish
a new consensus: the world was getting hotter, and this was an incontrovertible fact.
According to the IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, eleven out of the twelve years
between 1995 and 2006 ranked among the twelve warmest years since records began
on global surface temperatures in 1850. It also pointed out that the so-called ‘pause’
in temperature increases since 1998 is too short to reflect a long-term trend. It is more
significant that the linear warming trend over the fifty years from 1956 to 2005 was
nearly twice that for the one hundred years from 1906 to 2005. However, while the fact
of global warming was becoming more difficult to deny, the factors accounting for it
remained a matter of sometimes passionate dispute.
Climate change ‘sceptics’ (as opposed to ‘deniers’) have called into question the link
between global warming and human activity, specifically the emission of ‘greenhouse
gases’. They had done this by emphasizing that the earth’s climate is naturally variable
even during an interglacial period. For example, during the so-called ‘little ice age’,
which lasted until the second half of the nineteenth century, Europe and North America
suffered from bitterly cold winters and Iceland was frequently ice-locked. Others
attempted to establish links between temperatures on earth and factors such as solar
sun spot activity. In the United States, the Bush administration (2001–2009), while not
denying the fact of global warming or that a proportion of it was anthropogenic, skilfully
exploited scientific disagreement over the exact relationship between greenhouse gases
and climate change to cast doubt on the value of the larger project of tackling climate
change. While climate change sceptics exploited uncertainty and scientific disagreement
to justify political inertia, committed environmentalists did precisely the opposite in
applying the precautionary principle. Nevertheless, over time, the relationship between
the emission of greenhouse gases and climate change became more difficult to question.
Precautionary principle:
The presumption This occurred both as the science of climate change was better understood in terms of the
in favour of action ‘greenhouse effect’ (see p. 495) and because of an increasingly clear correlation between
in relation to major the rate of global warming and the level of greenhouse gas emissions. Whereas in its Third
ecological and other Assessment Report in 2001, the IPCC stated that it was ‘likely’ that temperature increases
issues over which there were due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, in
is scientific uncertainty,
based on the fact that its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, it declared that such a causal link was ‘very likely’,
the costs of inaction meaning that it was more than 90 per cent certain; by the Fifth Assessment Report in 2014
vastly exceed the cost of this had risen to ‘extremely likely’, or 95 per cent to 100 per cent certain. Needless to say,
(possibly unnecessary) the debate about the causes of climate change was politically vital because this affected not
action.
only whether the problem could be addressed but also how this should be done.
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 505

FOCUS ON . . .
THE THUNBERG EFFECT?
Greta Thunberg rose to global prominence at the age of just fifteen. In 2018, Thunberg organized a strike among pupils
at her Swedish school, leading them to a climate change protest at the country’s parliament. Thunberg’s view – and one
that is seemingly shared by many young people – is that the older generations who control all the levers of political and
economic power are too slow to act on climate change, while it is the younger generations who will pay the price. This
question of intergenerational social justice had been raised in climate change debates before, but never so forcefully
by the very young people it is likely to impact most strongly. News of the school strike and Thunberg’s role in it quickly
spread through global media – both traditional and social – and school strikes were soon being organized on a regular
basis in countries around the world, many under the banner of ‘Fridays for Future’. By 2019, media pundits were talking
about this trend as ‘the Greta effect’. But does Thunberg’s activism reach beyond media hype and ‘going viral’? In 2021
a survey with a representative sample of 1,303 US adults was published in a prestigious social psychology journal. Its
authors found that respondents who were familiar with Thunberg as a public figure had both stronger intentions to take
action on global warming, and more belief in their ‘collective efficacy’ – that by working together, people can make a
difference on this issue. The researchers formally named this significant shift in attitudes ‘the Greta Thunberg Effect’
(Sabherwal et al. 2021).
In the years since Thunberg first came to global attention, she has become an important, and somewhat divisive,
public figure. She published a short book, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference (2019), made countless media
appearances, and travelled the world to attend climate change meetings and demonstrations. In 2019, she was Time
magazine’s Person of the Year, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, 2020, and 2021, while she won
2020’s inaugural Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity (worth in excess of $1 million, which Thunberg committed to donate
to climate projects and charities). Thunberg’s message has been hugely popular with many people, particularly those
of a liberal political inclination, but she has also come in for criticism. Right-wing ‘climate change sceptics’, including
former US president Donald Trump and many of his supporters, and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, have publicly
attacked and sought to discredit Thunberg. Online, Thunberg has been subject to persistent abuse and harassment,
ranging from accusations that she is a ‘crisis actor’ in a conspiracy to present climate change as a threat, to direct and
indirect threats of extreme (and often misogynist and sexualized) violence and death. To be subjected to such intense
global scrutiny and pressure at such a young age might seem an unconscionable burden, yet in 2020 Thunberg’s
response to the barrage of online abuse from climate change deniers was to tweet: ‘This shows that we’re winning.’

CONSEQUENCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The prominence of the issue of climate change is driven by its potentially catastrophic
implications for human welfare and, possibly, for the future of humankind. How serious
will the consequences of global warming be? What will be the impact of long-term
climate change? The consequences of living on a warmer planet have, at times, been as
keenly disputed as whether global warming is actually taking place and whether it is 17
linked to human activity. This was particularly true in the early period of climate change
research, when the impact of increased greenhouse gas emissions was thought to lie
many decades into the future, the case for addressing the issue being linked more to our
obligations towards future generations than to a concern about the present generation.
However, the impact of climate change has occurred earlier and more dramatically than
was anticipated, meaning that it can no longer be treated merely as a ‘future generations’
issue. Nevertheless, anxieties about climate change continue to have a marked future-
looking character, as, even if robust action were to be taken shortly, its effects are certain
to be felt more severely by today’s children and their children.
 506

GLOBAL ACTORS . . . INTERGOVERNMENTAL

PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Type Established Location

Intergovernmental 1999
1988 Geneva,
Beijing
organization Switzerland

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change z IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007). This
(IPCC) is an international panel of scientists and provided more evidence of the link between
researchers that provide advice on climate change to climate change and anthropogenic greenhouse gas
the international community. The IPCC was established concentrations.
in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO) and the United Nations Environment z IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014). This
Programme (UNEP) to provide decision-makers and concluded that it is 95 per cent certain that humans
others interested in climate change with an objective are the ‘dominant cause’ of global warming.
source of information about an issue that had become
The wide membership of the IPCC, its reputation for
increasingly complex and controversial. The IPCC
objectivity and its reliance on worldwide scientific
does not conduct any research, neither does it monitor
expertise gives the IPCC unrivalled influence in
climate change-related data or parameters. Its role is to
shaping how the international community understands,
assess on a comprehensive, open, and transparent basis
and responds to, the issue of climate change. In this
the latest scientific, technical, and socio-economic
respect, it has played the leading role in building a
literature produced worldwide, with a view to better
consensus amongst scientists and national politicians
understanding (1) the risks of anthropocentric climate
about the existence of climate change and the fact
change, (2) its observed and projected impacts, and (3)
that it is a consequence of anthropogenic greenhouse
options for adaptation and mitigation.
gas emissions, and is therefore linked to the burning of
Significance: The most significant work of the IPCC fossil fuels. Its influence can thus be seen in the growing
is in publishing reports, the most important being acceptance that climate change is an issue that demands
Assessment Reports. Hundreds of scientists all over the attention of the international community, making it
the world contribute to these reports as authors, increasingly difficult for countries such Russia, Australia,
contributors, and reviewers, drawing mainly on reviewed the United States, China, and India to remain outside
and published scientific literature. Five Assessment the climate change regime. The IPCC was awarded the
Reports have been produced to date: Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, together with Al Gore, the
former US Vice President.
z IPCC First Assessment Report (1990). This played a
decisive role in leading to the FCCC. The IPCC has also attracted criticism, however. Some
argue that its emphasis on already published scientific
z IPCC Second Assessment Report (1995). This data and on exacting reviews (the Fourth Assessment
provided a key input for the negotiations that led to Report took six years to produce, and the sixth report
the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. was not yet published in April 2022) means that its
judgements and conclusions are dangerously out of date,
z IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001). This provided
and therefore tend to underestimate the seriousness
further information relevant to the development of
of the climate change challenge. The ‘Summary for
the FCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.
Policy Makers’, the only bit of an Assessment Report
 507

that is read by most politicians and journalists, is a carbon dioxide that many environmentalists dismiss
politically negotiated document that sometimes omits as unsound. The IPCC has also been criticized for
controversial judgements found in the larger report. overstating its claims (not least the claim, found in the
Some scientists also challenge the basis on which IPCC 2007 Report but retracted in 2010, that the Himalayan
projections and conclusions are developed; for example, glaciers would disappear by 2035) and for sacrificing
IPCC projections about global warming are founded on its reputation for scientific neutrality by being seen to
assumptions about the capacity of the oceans to absorb campaign for radical cuts in emissions.

In its 2014 Assessment Report, the IPCC noted a range of changes to climatic conditions,
including the following:
z It is likely (66–100 per cent certainty) that 1983 to 2013 was the warmest thirty-year
period in the northern hemisphere for at least 1,400 years.
z It is virtually certain (99 to 100 per cent) that the upper 700 metres of the earth’s
oceans have warmed during the period 1971–2010.
z It can be said with high confidence that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have
been losing mass in the last two decades, and that glaciers have continued to shrink
almost worldwide.
z It is very likely (90–100 per cent) that heatwaves will occur with higher frequency and
duration, although occasional winter extremes will continue.
The human impact of climate change has been significant and is very likely to increase.
In some circumstances, more warmer days and nights and fewer colder days and nights
over most land areas is likely to reduce human mortality from decreased cold exposure,
yet most of the effects of climate change are negative. Increased tropical cyclone activity
creates a greater risk of death and injury from flooding and from water- and food-borne
diseases, and also leads to major displacement of populations. Since the mid-1990s, there
has been a 40 per cent increase in Atlantic hurricane activities and, according to some
scientists, the most powerful tropical cyclones now occur twice as often as they did thirty
years ago. China has been particularly badly affected by flooding on the Yangtze, the
Yellow River, and other rivers. The increased incidence of extreme high sea levels also
causes a greater risk of death and injury by drowning, especially in the world’s great river
deltas, such as the Bengal delta in Bangladesh, the Mekong delta in Vietnam, the Nile
delta in Egypt, and the Yangtze delta in China. If current increases in sea level persist,
one-sixth of the land area of Bangladesh could be lost to the sea by the middle of this
century, if not earlier, leaving 13 per cent of the country’s population with nowhere
17
to live or farm. The prospects for people living in low-lying island groups, such as the
Maldives, may be even bleaker, as these may disappear altogether. The greater incidence
of drought and the advance of desertification will lead to an increased risk of food and
water shortages, malnutrition, and, once again, a greater risk of water- and food-borne
diseases.
Climate change has affected all parts of the world, but it has not done so evenly. Africa
and the Arctic (where sea ice is shrinking by 2.7 per cent per decade) are likely to bear the
brunt of climate impacts, along with low-lying small islands and the Asian river deltas.
508 GLOBAL POLITICS

The IPCC estimates that by 2080, if current trends continue, anything from 1.2 billion to
3.2 billion people will be experiencing water scarcity, 200 million to 600 million people
will be malnourished or hungry, and between 2 million and 7 million people each year
will be subject to coastal flooding. However, the effects of climate change will be truly
global, not least through its impact on migration trends and economic development. An
estimated 200 million to 850 million people could be forced to move to more temperate
zones by 2050 due to water shortages, sea level crises, deteriorating pasture land, conflict,
and famine, all linked to climate change. Together with widening gaps in birth rates and
growing wealth-to-poverty ratios, climate change could therefore also lead to deepening
ethnic and social tensions in developed societies. The economic consequences of climate
change were highlighted by the Stern Review (2006), which pointed out that global
warming could so disrupt economic and social activity that a failure to address it could
mean global GDP being up to 20 per cent lower than it otherwise might be.
However, some environmentalists have painted still more dire images of the consequence
of climate change, creating a number of ‘catastrophe scenarios’. One of these is that the
disappearance of the polar icecaps could result in an abrupt increase in temperature levels
on earth as white ice helps to keep the planet cool by reflecting back some 80 per cent
of the sunlight that falls on it. Sea water, by contrast, absorbs sunlight and reflects back
little. A second is that the melting of the planet’s permafrost, the thick level of frozen soil
covering much of the ground in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, could
release trapped greenhouse gases, contributing to a major acceleration in global warming.
A third is that the release of cold water through melting Artic ice could, in effect, ‘turn
off ’ the Gulf Stream, bringing freezing conditions to much of Northern Europe (the
scenario highlighted in the 2004 Hollywood disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow).
Others, however, have dismissed these catastrophe scenarios as scaremongering. The
IPCC, for example, rates the likelihood of the Gulf Stream faltering during the twenty-
first century as ‘very unlikely’ (a probability of less than 10 per cent).

HOW SHOULD CLIMATE CHANGE BE TACKLED?

The task of tackling climate change is notoriously difficult; some even fear that it may be
impossible. It is instructive, in this respect, to compare efforts to deal with climate change
with the response to the problem of ozone depletion. In the case of ozone depletion,
there was little scientific disagreement about its cause (the emission of CFC gases from
aerosols and other sources); there was general agreement that its consequences were
negative and a recognition that they affected developed and developing states alike; and,
most importantly, there was a straightforward solution available at an acceptable price –
banning CFCs and switching to alternatives that could be developed economically. The
Montreal Protocol of 1987 thus demonstrated how effective international cooperation
on environmental matters can be. CFC emissions were reduced from the mid-1990s
onwards, with a view to being completely phased out by 2030, allowing the ozone layer
to recover completely by 2050.
Climate change, by contrast, is profoundly difficult because its origins lie not in the
use of particular substances or a specific productive process or set of commodities,
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 509

but, arguably, in the process of industrialization itself. The burning of fossil fuels (coal,
oil, and natural gas) has not only been the basis for industrialization and thus the key
to economic growth for the last two hundred years or more, but it has also been the
basis for greenhouse gas emissions that have resulted in global warming. Any serious
attempt to address the problem of climate change must therefore either recast the nature
of industrial society, providing an alternative to ‘carbon industrialization’, or make
significant sacrifices in terms of economic growth and therefore material prosperity.
How far has international cooperation on climate change progressed, and what obstacles
stand in the way of effective international action?

International Cooperation over Climate Change

The Rio ‘Earth Summit’ of 1992 was the first international conference to give significant
attention to the issue of climate change. It did so by establishing the FCCC as a
‘framework convention’, calling for greenhouse gases to be stabilized at safe levels on the
basis of equity and in accordance with states’ ‘common but differentiated responsibilities
and respective capabilities’. The clear implication was that developed states should take
the lead, committing themselves to restoring 1990 levels of emissions by the year 2000.
However, although it was accepted by 181 governments, the FCCC was no more than a
framework for further action and it contains no legally binding targets. This was just as
well for developed states, whose carbon emissions continued to rise during the 1990s.
The exclusion of developing states meant, in fact, that the rate of increase got steeper,
particularly due to the economic emergence of China and India.
The most significant international agreement on climate change was the Kyoto Protocol
to the FCCC, negotiated in 1997. The significance of the Kyoto Protocol was that it set
binding targets for developed states to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by
2012. The targets were designed to reduce total emissions from the developed world to
at least 5.2 per cent below their 1990 levels. National targets varied, however, with the
European Union and the United States being set targets for reductions of 8 per cent and
7 per cent, respectively, while other states, such as Australia, were allowed to exceed their
1990 levels. These targets were accompanied by ‘flexibility mechanisms’ that introduced
a system of carbon trading that was designed to assist countries in meeting their targets.
This established a ‘cap and trade’ approach to climate change, which has since become the
dominant strategy for addressing the issue. Kyoto’s strengths included that it introduced,
for the first time, legally binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions, and by applying
these targets to thirty-seven developed states (so-called ‘Annex 1’ countries) it prepared
the way for later participation of developing states, 137 of which ratified the Protocol.
Furthermore, in providing a mechanism for emissions trading, it helped to promote the
17
idea of carbon as a commodity and introduced a vital element of flexibility that made Emissions trading:
A mechanism that allows
binding targets appear more acceptable. For example, emissions trading allows developed
parties to the Kyoto
states to meet their targets in part through technology transfers and investment in the Protocol to buy or sell
developing world, thereby, at least in theory, contributing to reducing their emissions emissions from or to other
levels. Critics of carbon trading nevertheless argue that it is a loophole that allows countries parties, while keeping
to exceed their targets and not take climate change sufficiently seriously, especially as the within overall emissions
targets.
system is difficult to police and has given rise to many allegations of abuse.
 510 GLOBAL POLITICS

Mitigation: Moderating However, the Kyoto Protocol also had significant limitations. In the first place, the targets
or reducing the impact of set at Kyoto were, arguably, inadequate in terms of achieving the Protocol’s goals of
something; in particular,
preventing ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’. For example,
reducing greenhouse gas
emissions to limit climate the European Union, which has taken a leading role in the campaign to address climate
change. change, called for (and subsequently met) greenhouse gas cuts of 15 per cent by 2010,
Adaptation: Changing almost three times greater than the Kyoto cuts and over a shorter time span. Second, the
in the light of new United States’ failure to ratify the treaty, first through the Clinton administration’s fear
circumstances; in that the US Senate would not ratify the treaty and later through the Bush administration’s
particular, learning to live outright opposition, dealt Kyoto a fatal blow and set the process of tackling climate
with climate change. change back for over a decade. This was not only because the United States, then the
world’s largest emitter, accounted for about 25 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions,
but also because US non-participation ensured that developing states, and especially
China and India, would remain outside the Kyoto process. Third, the decision to restrict
binding targets to developed states alone seriously compromised the Kyoto process from
the outset. The United States consistently used the exclusion of China and India as a
justification for its non-participation. Moreover, China’s carbon emissions continued
to rise steeply, and have exceeded those of the United States since 2008, meaning that
climate change could no longer be seen merely as a developed world problem.
While the Kyoto Protocol was never going to be the solution to climate change, it
provided a perhaps necessary first step along the road. Nevertheless, the faltering
progress associated with Kyoto meant that, by 2005, global carbon dioxide emissions
were rising four times faster than they were in the 1990s. One consequence of this has
been a shift in emphasis away from ‘mitigation’ towards ‘mitigation and adaptation’.
Key ‘mitigation’ technologies and practices identified in the 2007 IPCC Assessment
Report include the following:
z fuel switching from coal to gas;
z the wider use of nuclear power;
z the greater use of renewable heat and power (hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal,
and bio-energy);
z early applications of carbon dioxide capture and storage (e.g. storage of CO2 removed
from natural gas);
z more fuel-efficient vehicles, such as hybrid and cleaner diesel vehicles; and
z shifts from road transport to rail, public transport, and non-motorized transport
(cycling, walking).
The same report nevertheless highlights a range of ‘adaptation’ strategies, including the
following:
z the relocation of settlements, especially coastal zones;
z improved sea walls and storm surge barriers;
z expanded rainwater harvesting and improved water storage and conservation
techniques;
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 511

z adjustment of planting dates and crop varieties;

z crop relocation and improved land management (e.g. erosion control and soil
protection through tree planting); and
z improved climate-sensitive disease surveillance and control.
Nevertheless, there were signs that greater scientific agreement on the existence, causes,
and implications of climate change, together with shifting public attitudes, in part
through the work of environmental NGOs, had strengthened international cooperation
on the issue. Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2004, as did Australia in 2007 (although
Russia, together with Canada, Japan, and New Zealand withdrew from the Kyoto
process in 2012). Most significantly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008, together
with Democrat control of both houses of Congress (until 2011), appeared to mark a
key shift in US policy, creating a willingness to participate in formulating a successor
to the Kyoto Protocol, which was due to run out in 2012. What is more, despite China’s
unapologetic emphasis on largely coal-based industrial growth, the environmental costs
of carbon industrialization have become increasingly apparent, through, for instance,
heavily polluted cities (eight out of ten of the world’s most polluted cities are in China),
shrinking glaciers on the Tibet-Qinghai plateau, and falling water tables across the
country. This created a growing likelihood that China and other developing countries
would be more willing to address the issue of climate change and recognize that they
have an interest in tackling it. This was the context in which the UN began to consider the
shape of the post-Kyoto climate change regime, starting with the 2009 Climate Change
Conference in Copenhagen. However, the outcomes of this process have widely been
seen as disappointing, highlighting yet again the difficulties of achieving international
agreement on the issue of climate change. From 2016, the UNFCCC replaced the
Kyoto Protocol with The Paris Agreement (see ‘Global Politics in Action … The Paris
Agreement’).

17
 512

GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . .

The Paris Agreement
Events: In 2015, representatives of 196 countries met
at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
COP 21 in Paris, France, to negotiate a new UNFCCC
agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto
Protocol. On 12 December, all participating countries
approved the terms of an agreement, and on 22 April
2016, 174 of those countries signed the agreement at the
UN’s New York City headquarters. The Paris Agreement,
which entered into force on 4 November 2016, when the
threshold of sufficient national ratifications was reached,
commits signatories to: keep a global temperature rise
this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-
industrial levels, pursue efforts to limit the temperature
increase even further to 1.5 degrees, and to increase the Then Secretary of State of the USA, John Kerry, signs
ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate the Paris Agreement with his granddaughter present
change, while also making international finance flows to highlight the anticipated significance of the treaty
for future generations
consistent with lowering greenhouse gas emissions and
Source: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
building ‘climate resilience’.

Significance: The United States – the second biggest so-called ‘alt right’, or far right, cultural politics that
emitter of greenhouse gases after China, but an even brought him to power. In office, Trump submitted formal
greater emitter per capita – controversially never notice of US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in
ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Much of the debate that November 2019, and the United States formally left
followed focused on the weakness of an agreement the agreement a year later. Just a few months after
that lacked US participation. As such, American buy- formal withdrawal, however, Joe Biden was sworn-in
in to the Paris Agreement was widely viewed as a major as US President, in January 2021, and immediately re-
achievement. However, while the Obama administration signed the agreement on his first day in office. In any
embraced the negotiations, the agreement was signed case, it is now far less clear that the Paris Agreement
in its last year. Donald Trump was elected President of is adequate to significantly slow or stop an unfolding
the United States in 2017 on a platform that included climate catastrophe. In 2022, the UN determined that
a commitment to ‘cancel’ the deal. Trump has publicly even if the parties to the agreement were to meet all of
called climate change in general and global warming in their pledges, they would likely only limit the rise in world
particular a ‘hoax’, and suggested on Twitter in 2012 temperatures to 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the
that the ‘concept of global warming was created by and century, where a limit of 1.5 degrees would be necessary
for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing to meaningfully tackle the worst effects of climate
non-competitive’, while scepticism about the existence change. Consequently, while no major new agreements
of climate change (along with opposition to Muslims have been signed since Paris, further rounds of COP
and other racialized minorities, immigration, feminism, negotiations, and environmental social movements,
and transgender people) has been a key plank of the have taken on renewed urgency in recent years.
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 513

WHY IS INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION SO Collective good:

A general benefit from
DIFFICULT TO ACHIEVE? which individuals cannot
Effective international action to tackle climate change will only occur if solutions are be excluded and, as
a result, for which
found to a series of obstacles to international cooperation. The most significant of these
beneficiaries have no
obstacles are the following: incentive to pay.
z conflict between the collective good and national interests;
z tensions between developed and developing states;
z economic obstacles; and
z ideological obstacles.
The issue of climate change can be seen as a classic example of the ‘tragedy of the commons’.
What countries accept would be generally beneficial to all of them may not be the same as
what benefits each of them individually. Clean air and a healthy atmosphere are therefore
collective goods, key elements of the ‘global commons’. However, tackling global warming
imposes costs on individual states in terms of investment in sometimes expensive
mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as accepting lower levels of economic growth.
In such circumstances, states are encouraged to be ‘free riders’, enjoying the benefits of a
healthier atmosphere without having to pay for them. It is entirely rational, therefore, for
each actor to try to ‘pay’ as little as possible to overcome the problem of climate change.
This creates a situation in which states are either unwilling to agree to binding targets, or
if targets, binding or otherwise, are developed, these are likely to be set below the level
needed to deal effectively with the problem. Moreover, the more economically developed
a state is, the greater will be the costs incurred in tackling climate change, and the more
reluctant such states will be to undertake concerted action. Democracy, in such a context,
may create further problems, particularly as party competition tends to be orientated
around rival claims about the ability to deliver growth and prosperity.
The second problem is that the issue of climate change exposes significant divisions
between the developed world and the developing world. Climate change, in other words,
serves to widen the North–South divide (see p. 464). One source of tension is that
current emissions levels arguably provide an unfair guide for setting targets because of
‘outsourcing’. The transfer of much of manufacturing industry to the developing world
means that over one-third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with the consumption
of goods and services in many developed countries are actually emitted outside their
borders. Deeper divisions nevertheless stem from rival approaches to the problem of
burden-sharing in the area of climate change. From a Southern perspective, the developed 17
world has a historic responsibility for the accumulated stock of carbon emitted since the
beginning of the industrial age. In effect, developed countries have used up a large part of
the safe carbon-absorbing capacity of the atmosphere, and made substantial gains in terms
of economic growth and prosperity as a result. Developing countries, by contrast, are both
disproportionately badly affected by climate change and have the fewest capabilities to
tackle it, whether through mitigation or adaptation. This implies either that emissions
targets should not be imposed on developing countries (as at Kyoto), or that any such
targets should take account of historic responsibilities and be structured accordingly,
imposing significantly heavier burdens on developed countries than on developing ones.
 514 GLOBAL POLITICS

RES
FIG U

ECOFEMINIST THEORISTS

CAROLYN MERCHANT (1936–)

A US ecofeminist philosopher and historian of science, Merchant portrays female nature as the
benevolent mother of all undermined by the ‘dominion’ model of nature that emerged out of the
scientific revolution and the rise of market society. Her main works include The Death of Nature
(1983) and Radical Ecology (1992).

Source: With permission

of Carolyn Merchant

VANDANA SHIVA (1952–)

An Indian ecofeminist activist and nuclear physicist, Shiva is a trenchant critic of the biotechnology
industry. She argues that the advance of globalization has threatened biodiversity and deepened
poverty, particularly among women. Her writings include Monocultures of the Mind (1993) and Stolen
Harvest (1999).

Source: Wikimedia
Commons

ERIKA CUDWORTH (1966–)

A British ecofeminist working across sociology, political studies, and international relations, Cudworth’s research explores
intersecting oppressions and environmental harms in a range of areas, including pornography and the meat industry,
and human social relationships with non-human animals. Cudworth also pioneered posthuman approaches (see p. 129)
to IR in her work with Stephen Hobden. Her books include Developing Ecofeminist Theory (2005) and, with Hobden,
Posthuman International Relations (2011) and The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism (2017).

From a Northern perspective, however, countries cannot be held responsible for actions
whose consequences were quite unknown at the time they were carried out, and, anyway,
the individuals who were responsible are largely dead and gone. In this view, targets should
be set in line with current emission levels alone, in which case developed and developing
countries would be treated alike. Apart from anything else, the growing importance of
emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil means that unless the developing
world plays a significant role in cutting emissions global targets will be impossible to meet.
Nevertheless, tensions between developed and developing countries are even more acute
if population size and per capita income are taken into account. For instance, although
China now far exceeds the United States as the world’s foremost CO2 emitter, while the
United States has seen a shallow decline in absolute emissions since 2007, per capita
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 515

emissions in the United States remain more than double those of China (15.2 tons against
7.4 tons in 2018). Southern thinking on the matter tends to be rights-based, reflecting
both the idea that each human being has an equal right to the world’s remaining carbon
space and the idea of a right to development (already exercised by the developed North).
This suggests that emissions targets should clearly favour the developing world, where
most of the world’s people live, as well as most of the world’s poor. Critics of the rights-
based approach to tackling climate change nevertheless argue that it introduces egalitarian
assumptions that do not apply to other aspects of life. For example, why should the use of
the world’s remaining carbon space be allocated equally when there is no agreement on the
wider issue that natural resources should be equally shared?
Radical ecologists, including both social ecologists and deep ecologists, tend to argue
that inadequate progress in responding to climate change has much deeper, and perhaps
structural, roots. The problem is not simply a manifestation of the difficulty of bringing
about international cooperation but, rather, is about the underlying economic and
ideological forces that have shaped capitalist modernity. As far as economic factors are
concerned, criticism usually focuses on the anti-ecological tendencies of the capitalist
system, at both national and global levels. In particular, profit-maximizing businesses
will always be drawn towards the most easily available and cheapest source of energy:
fossil fuels. Short-term profitability will dominate their thinking, rather than issues to
do with ecological sustainability. In this view, ‘green capitalism’ is merely a contradiction
in terms. At an ideological level, countries’ attachment to carbon industrialization may,
in the final analysis, be a manifestation of the materialist values that dominate modern
society, creating, deep ecologists argue, a profound disjuncture between humankind and
nature. Materialism and consumerism mean that the economic and political systems are
geared towards economic growth and the quest for rising living standards. From this
perspective, the difficulties of tackling climate change stem not only from the problem
of persuading people to forego at least a measure of their material prosperity, but, more
challengingly, from the task of encouraging people to revise their values.

DEBATING . . .
CAN ONLY RADICAL ACTION TACKLE THE PROBLEM OF CLIMATE
CHANGE?
The divide in green politics between radicals and reformists is clearly reflected in competing approaches to tackling climate change.
While some argue in favour of structural economic and ideological change, others champion less radical, and less painful, options.

17
YES NO
Dangerous delays. There is a wide and growing gap between Exaggerated fears. Concern about climate change
the recognition of the problem of global warming and the has been driven by a kind of environmental hysteria.
introduction of effective international action. The failings of Environmental NGOs try to grab public attention and
Rio, Kyoto, and Copenhagen therefore mean that modest shift attitudes by highlighting ‘doomsday scenarios’. The
emissions cuts are no longer adequate. The general consensus mass media often conspire in this process to make the
is that global temperature rises of more than 2 degrees coverage of current affairs ‘sexy’ and attention-grabbing.
celsius would mark the ‘tipping point’ in terms of dangerous Policymakers may therefore adopt radical strategies, not
human impact, while, according to the IPCC’s 2013 so much to deal with the problem of climate change,
prediction, these may increase by up to 4.8 degrees celsius. but rather to allay public anxieties about the issue.
 516 GLOBAL POLITICS

YES NO
Myth of ‘easy’ solutions. Sadly, the strategies that are the Adapt to change. Most environmentalists view global
least economically and politically problematical are also the warming simply as something that must be stopped, based on
least effective. Renewable energy sources are likely to make the assumption that all of its impacts are negative. However,
only a minor contribution to reducing the use of fossil fuels. climate change may bring opportunities (new tourist
Carbon trading has failed to produce significant emissions destinations, improved plant viability, and so on), as well
reductions. Technological ‘fixes’ for climate change, such as challenges. Moreover, the cost of stopping its negative
as the use of so-called biofuels, carbon storing, ‘clean’ coal, impact may be unacceptably high. In these circumstances,
and nuclear power, have often proved to be expensive, it may be easier and more cost-effective to understand the
ineffective, or are associated with other environmental costs. implications of global warming and find ways of living with it.
Economic restructuring. It is difficult to see how global Market solutions. Capitalism is resolutely not anti-green.
warming can be addressed without changes being introduced Capitalism’s environmental credentials are reflected in its
to the economic system that has caused it. Market capitalism responsiveness to more eco-sensitive consumer pressures,
has proved to be a highly effective way of generating wealth, and the recognition that long-term corporate profitability can
but it is, arguably, the enemy of ecological sustainability. only be ensured in the context of sustainable development.
Although eco-socialists’ ideas have been increasingly derided, Further, carbon usage is best discouraged not through
many environmentalists call for a radical restructuring strictures and prohibitions, but by market mechanisms
of capitalism, in particular through the strengthening that disincentivize carbon usage and incentivize the
of state intervention to impose sustainable practices. development of low-carbon or carbon-neutral technologies.
Post-material society. Economic restructuring is impossible Human ingenuity. The capacity for innovation and creativity
if the values and appetites that sustain industrial society that lay behind carbon industrialization can surely be
and ‘growthism’ go unchallenged. Concerted action on harnessed to build carbon-neutral businesses, industries, and
climate change thus has to have a cultural and psychological societies. Although investment in renewable energy sources
dimension. Materialism must be overthrown as the demand is currently insufficient, its potential is enormous, especially
for ‘more and more’ is displaced by a steady-state economy if technology such as super-efficient wind turbines is utilized.
based on ‘enough’. Only if values and sensibilities alter will Solar power plants, using solar cells, are becoming increasingly
policymakers at national and international levels have the common in many parts of the world, and zero-carbon ‘eco-
political space to develop meaningful solutions to the problem. cities’ are being built in China, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere.

RESOURCE SECURITY
Although climate change has tended, since the late 1980s, to be the pre-eminent issue
on the global environmental agenda, it is by no means the only important issue. Indeed,
over very much the same period, non-renewable resources, and particularly energy
resources, have come to be seen as having a growing bearing on matters such as security,
development, and conflict. In fact, in many ways, climate change and resource security
have become counter-balancing priorities for states. For example, while climate change
Resource security:
encourages states to reduce their use of fossil fuels, the quest for resource security
Security understood in
terms of access to energy encourages them to seek and to exploit new fossil fuel reserves. On the other hand,
and other resources environmentalists have presented investment in renewable resources and non-carbon
sufficient to meet a technologies as a ‘green’ road to resource security, although this only applies if such
state’s economic and alternatives genuinely have the capacity to generate the same energy levels as fossil
military needs.
fuels. What is clear, though, is that concerns over the adequacy of natural resources
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 517

to sustain human populations and ensure national power long predate concerns over Resource war: A war
climate change. They can be traced back to Thomas Malthus’ gloomy prediction that, due that is fought to gain or
retain control of resources
to the ‘principle of population’, living standards in any country would always return to
which are important to
subsistence levels. Although technological innovation and the discovery of new resources economic development
have tended to keep Malthusian pessimism at bay, history has been characterized by and political power.
periods of anxiety, sometimes bordering on panic, over scarce resources. For example, in Peak oil: The point at
the nineteenth century the earliest industrial powers scrambled for control over sources which the maximum rate
of iron and coal, while after the First World War the major European powers engaged in of petroleum extraction is
a desperate search for foreign sources of petroleum. reached.

Anxieties about resources, nevertheless, subsided during the 1970s and 1980s, due
both to the discovery of new, and seemingly abundant, fossil fuel supplies and because
accelerated globalization appeared to have created larger and more responsive markets
for energy and other resources. However, they have revived with particular force since
the 1990s, moving the issue especially of energy security significantly up the international
agenda. A growing number of wars, for example, appeared to be resource wars (Klare
2001). Geopolitics, once thought dead, had suddenly revived. Why did this happen? At
least three developments help to explain it. First, the demand for energy, particularly oil,
gas, and coal, rose sharply through the arrival of new contenders on the global resources
playing-field, notably China and India, but also, to a lesser extent, Brazil and other
emerging economies. Second, the world’s leading energy consumer, the United States,
became increasingly concerned about its dwindling supplies of cheap domestic oil and
its growing reliance on increasingly expensive, and less secure, foreign oil. Third, just as
demand pressures intensified, anxieties resurfaced. Fears grew generally that the world’s
stockpile of essential commodities had started to shrink, and these focused particularly
on oil (Deffeyes 2006). Concern was raised not only by the seeming failure of new oil
supplies to keep pace with burgeoning demand, but also, more alarmingly, by predictions
(debunked by some) that the moment of peak oil may soon be reached. The world’s oil
may be running out, without any alternative energy source, renewable or non-renewable,
appearing to be capable of replacing it. Such developments have both contributed to
important shifts in global power as well as created turbulence and often conflict in
countries ‘blessed’ by abundant supplies of oil and other resources.

C E PT
CON

GEOPOLITICS
Geopolitics is an approach to foreign policy analysis that understands the actions, relationships, and significance of
states in terms of geographical factors, such as location, climate, natural resources, physical terrain, and population. 17
The field of geopolitics was significantly shaped by Alfred Mahan (1840–1914), who argued that the state that
controls the seas would control world politics, and Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), who suggested, by contrast,
that control of the land mass between Germany and central Siberia is the key to controlling world politics. Critics of
geopolitics have usually objected to its geographical determinism, which appears to imply that in international politics
‘geography is destiny’. While globalization was often seen to have rendered geopolitics less relevant, recent conflicts
including the Russia-Ukraine War (see p. 186) have highlighted its persistence. The nascent politics of space,
meanwhile, suggests that the traditional concerns of geopolitics will be relevant in the future too (see p. 644).
518 GLOBAL POLITICS

RESOURCES, POWER, AND PROSPERITY

The link between resources and global power can be seen in the emergence of a new
international energy order. In this, a state’s ranking in the hierarchy of states may
no longer be measured by conventional economic and military capabilities, but by
the vastness of its oil and gas reserves and its ability to mobilize other sources of
wealth to purchase (or otherwise acquire) the resources of energy-rich countries
(Klare 2008). This notion divides the world into energy-surplus and energy-deficit
states, and further divides them on the basis of the level of their surplus and deficit.
The key players in this international energy order are the United States, China, and
India, all energy-deficit countries, and Russia, an energy-surplus country. As far as
the United States is concerned, a context of dwindling domestic reserves of oil and
rising international prices has encouraged it to strengthen its geopolitical influence
in the area with the most abundant oil supplies, the Gulf region. Many have thus
argued that the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq were, in significant ways,
motivated by such considerations about oil. One dimension of the ‘war on terror’
(see Chapter 10) may therefore have been the United States’ concerns about energy
security (Heinberg 2006).
The economic emergence of China and India, sometimes collectively referred to in
this context as ‘Chindia’, has transformed the world markets for oil, natural gas, coal,
uranium, and other primary sources of energy, as well as industrial commodities such as
iron ore, copper, aluminium, and tin. As far as China is concerned, the search for energy
security has had implications for both domestic and foreign policy. Domestically, it has
encouraged China to crack down on separatist movements and strengthen political
control over western and south-western provinces such as Xinjiang and Tibet, which
may provide access to central Asia and its rich supplies of oil and other resources. China’s
burgeoning external influence has focused on strengthening diplomatic ties with oil-
rich countries such as Iran and, most clearly, undertaking massive investment in Africa,
the home of the world’s largest untapped energy and mineral supplies. China leads the
modern ‘scramble for resources’ in Africa, which, in some respects, resembles the late
nineteenth-century ‘scramble for colonies’. The new international energy order has
particularly favoured Russia as the world’s foremost energy-surplus state. Russia thus
emerged from the collapse of communism and a decade of post-communist turmoil
as an energy superpower. It now operates as a key power broker of Eurasian energy
supplies, being able to exert substantial leverage through the growing dependency of
European Union and other states on Russian oil and natural gas. However, the quest for
energy security has also encouraged Russia to strengthen its control over its ‘near abroad’
and especially over the oil-rich Caucasus region. This, for example, may have been one of
the factors contributing to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia.
Natural resources, finally, are generally considered to be an unmixed blessing, widely
being seen as one of the key components of national power. Energy, mineral, and other
resources provide a country not only with the basis for long-term economic development
but also with a means of gaining income from, and exercising influence over, other
countries. Examples such as Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states, Venezuela,
 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 519

Kazakhstan, and, of course, Russia appear to bear this out. However, in practice, natural Resource curse: The
resources often bring as many problems as they bring blessings. This can be seen in the tendency for countries
and regions with an
fact that many of the poorest and most troubled parts of the world are also characterized
abundance of natural
by abundant supplies of energy and minerals, with sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle resources to experience
East being obvious examples. This has led to the idea of the ‘resource curse’, sometimes low growth, blocked
called the ‘paradox of plenty’. development, and,
sometimes, civil strife.

FOCUS ON . . .
THE PARADOX OF PLENTY: RESOURCES AS A CURSE?
Are resources a blessing or a curse? Why are countries and areas that are richly endowed with natural resources
often amongst the poorest and most troubled in the world? In the first place, natural resources can be seen to create
a number of economic imbalances and difficulties. These include increased volatility in government revenues, which
can lead to inflation and boom-and-bust cycles in government spending. Damage can be caused to other economic
sectors as revenues from natural resource exports push up wages and the exchange rate (this is sometimes called
the ‘Dutch disease’, from the fact that the discovery of natural gas in the Netherlands in the 1960s led to declines in
manufacturing industries). There can also be a dangerous lack of economic diversification, as other industries fail to
develop because they cannot match the profitability levels of natural resources.
Second, natural resources can also have a damaging impact on the nature and quality of governance. This occurs both
because huge flows of money from natural resources tend to fuel political corruption and because, as resource-rich
countries have less need to raise revenue from the general public, they often pay little attention to popular pressures.
There is therefore a link between abundant natural resources and authoritarianism. Third, natural resources can, and
often do, breed conflict and civil strife. Conflict tends to occur over the control and exploitation of resources as well as
over the allocation of their revenues, meaning that resource-rich societies are more prone to ethnic conflict, separatist
uprisings, and general warlordism. While ‘diamond wars’ have been common, if usually relatively brief, in Africa, oil-
related conflicts, ranging from low-level secessionist struggles to full-blown civil wars, have occurred in countries as
different as Algeria, Colombia, Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Equatorial Guinea.

SUMMARY
y The environment is often seen as the archetypal example of a global issue. The intrinsically
transnational character of environmental processes means that countries are peculiarly
environmentally vulnerable to the environmental activities that take place in other countries.
Meaningful progress on environmental issues can therefore often only be made at the
international or even global level.
y Disagreements about the seriousness and nature of environmental problems, and about 17
how they can best be tackled, are rooted in deeper, often philosophical debates about the
relationship between humankind and the natural world. Reformist and radical strategies are
influenced by contrasting views about whether human needs (anthropocentrism) or larger
ecological balances (ecocentrism) should take precedence.
y Climate change has dominated the international environmental agenda since the early 1990s.
Although some disagreement persists, there has been a growing consensus that climate
change is happening, and that it is the product of human activity, notably the emission, since
the beginning of the industrial age, of greenhouse gases. However, substantial disagreement
persists both about its consequences (and so the seriousness of the problem) and, most
particularly, about how it should be tackled.
 520 GLOBAL POLITICS

y Effective international action to tackle climate change is hampered by a variety of obstacles to

international cooperation. The most significant of these are: (perhaps fundamental) conflict
between national self-interest and the common good; tensions of various kinds between
developed and developing states; biases within capitalism in favour of growth; and a deeply-
rooted ethic of materialism and consumerism.
y Energy resources have come to be seen as having a growing bearing on matters such as
security, development, and conflict, particularly as access to oil, gas, and coal has become a
crucial factor in determining the shape of twenty-first-century world order. However, it is by
no means clear that natural resources are always a source of national power, in that resources
may be a ‘curse’ when they, for instance, create economic imbalances and attract unwanted
foreign interference.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

y Why have environmental issues become an increasingly y Have the negative consequences of climate change
major focus of international concern? been exaggerated?
y How does ‘shallow’ ecology differ from ‘deep’ ecology? y Should developed countries take primary responsibility
y What are the implications of the idea of sustainable for tackling climate change?
development? y Should greenhouse gas emissions targets be set on a per
y Do we have obligations towards future generations and, capita basis?
if so, what does this imply? y Do concerns about resource security always conflict
y Can it any longer be doubted that climate change stems with those about climate change?
from human activity? y To what extent are natural resources a ‘curse’?

FURTHER READING
Betsill, M., K. Hochstetler, and D. Stevis (eds), International Elliott, L., The Global Politics of the Environment (2004).
Environmental Politics (2006). An authoritative collection A comprehensive and detailed examination of the nature
of essays that review the key debates in international and development of global environmental issues.
environmental politics. Stevenson, H., Global Environmental Politics: Problems,
Dessler, A. and E. Parson, The Science and Politics of Policy and Practice (2017). A wide-ranging introductory
Global Climate Change (2010). A clear and accessible textbook exploring global environmental politics.
introduction to the nature of global climate change and
the challenges it poses.

 inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website:
L
[Link]/heywood-global-politics-3e