Environment — Rise of the Concern & Environment as Security

Once peripheral, environmental issues now sit at the centre of world politics — the archetypal global issue, its effects crossing every border.

• Barry Buzan — the environment is now a central element of the security agenda; Robyn Eckersley — a shift from state-centric realism to ecocentric cosmopolitanism.
• Concern gained prominence with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962); since the 1980s, science has documented change driven by human development outpacing ecosystem resilience.

Environment as a security issue

• Degradation drives resource conflicts (water, diamonds, oil) in an era of scarcity; protection now covers food, energy and economic security.
• Barry Buzan & the Copenhagen School — climate belongs to the securitisation discourse: framed as an existential threat that legitimises extraordinary responses.
• Ulrich Beck (Risk Society) — climate change as a new global risk transcending borders; manufactured risks are politically contested and unequally distributed, disempowering the Global South (Small Island states such as the Maldives face existential threat yet lack voice).

Green Politics — Reformist & Radical Ecology

Conventional thought is human-centred, treating nature as a means. John Locke — humans are “the masters and possessors of nature.” Environmental thought instead rests on ecology — the web of relationships sustaining all life. The early transcendentalists — Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson — urged, in O’Riordan and Turner’s phrase, “a sense of responsibility for the earth” before tampering with its resources.

Reformist ecology

• Accepts “limits to growth”; treats damage as an externality or “social cost,” its chief ideological influence being utilitarianism. Peter Singer (1993) — animal rights, since all species have a right to avoid suffering.
• Three solutions: market ecologism / green capitalism (green taxes); stronger state regulation; and shifts in personal and social attitudes to consumption.

Radical Environmentalism

Radical theories treat capitalist modernity — its values, structures and institutions — as the root cause of degradation; many are forms of social ecology.

• Murray Bookchin — social ecology: problems stem from social hierarchies and unequal power; repair needs a decentralised, self-managing society (also the ground of eco-anarchism).
• Eco-socialism — capitalism’s anti-ecological bias flows from private property and “commodification”; sustainability needs a socialist society.
• Ecofeminism — domination over women leads to domination over nature (Carolyn Merchant); Val Plumwood links the exploitation of women and of nature to patriarchal-capitalist systems.
• Arne Naess (1970s) — deep ecology demands a paradigm change: rejecting all anthropocentrism for a radical holism of interconnectedness.
• In practice — John Muir (Sierra Club; Hetch Hetchy), Sunderlal Bahuguna (Tehri Dam), Medha Patkar (Sardar Sarovar), Ken Saro-Wiwa (Ogoni, Nigeria).

North–South Divide in Environmental Politics

The debate over identifying and limiting climate change: the industrialised North (G-8) vs the developing South (G-77). Priorities have diverged since the Stockholm Conference (1972) — consumer needs vs basic needs, and the link between environment and rural poverty.

The North–South divide

• Dauvergne — “The distinction is… about the different ultimate goals that each seeks from global environmental politics.”
• Kyoto Protocol — split Annex I (developed) from non-Annex I (developing), recognising 150+ years of northern industrial emissions under “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBDR).
• Indira Gandhi — poverty is the primary polluter; C. Raja Mohan — the South’s stance is “suboptimal” and “defensive”; Ramachandra Guha — “empty stomach environmentalism” vs Western “deep ecology,” the South a “victim of emissions without representation.”
• Raul Prebisch — the North should transfer 1% of GNP to the South, its prosperity being linked to southern development.
• Tuna — environmental scarcities add a fresh controversy to the debate: for the South, they are another lever for northern control and exploitation; for the North, an opening for cooperation.

India’s Stand & the Global Commons

India in global negotiations

• Shyam Saran — India is often labelled “spoiler,” “obstructionist” or “challenge” for opposing developed-country proposals; the focus should be on isolating the US, and he urges a Citizen’s Charter on climate change.
• Vandana Shiva — lasting peace only when we live in balance with nature; Ban Ki-moon — there is no “Plan B” because there is no “Planet B.”

Global commons

• Garrett Hardin — the “tragedy of the commons”: shared resources degraded through overuse and diffused responsibility.
• Four commons — the atmosphere, the high seas, Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, and outer space. The Convention on Biological Diversity notes 60% of lost biodiversity can never be recovered.
• Instruments — peaking emissions and carbon neutrality via INDCs (India’s Panchamrit); the ocean under the Paris Agreement (SDG 14); the 1.5°C ceiling; protection of Antarctic ice.

Institutional Efforts & the UNFCCC Road

From Stockholm to Glasgow — the institutional road. Stockholm (1972 · first UN human-environment conference) → Brundtland (1983 · Our Common Future; sustainable development) → Rio (1992 · Earth Summit; Agenda 21; UNFCCC) → Kyoto (1997 · binding targets; carbon credits) → Paris (2015 · bottom-up; major emitters cut) → Glasgow (2021 · COP-26; India’s Panchamrit)

Sustainable development — Brundtland Commission (1983) “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

• Earth Summit, Rio (1992) — Agenda 21 and the Polluter Pays Principle; the UNFCCC built on CBDR and “historical responsibility.”
• COP16, Cancún (2010) — the “bottom-up approach” and the Green Climate Fund; Kyoto (1997) — first UNFCCC implementation, binding targets with flexibility mechanisms.
• INDCs (2013) — nationally determined plans; Paris (2015) — landmark accord; Clean Development Mechanism — tradeable emission-reduction credits; IPCC (WMO with UNEP) — the scientific assessment; SDGs 13, 14 and 15 address the crisis.
• Limited success — collective good vs national interest, the North–South divide, US and Canada outside key commitments, and no binding enforcement.

USA & Paris · India’s Panchamrit · SDGs

USA and the Paris Agreement

• US withdrawal initiated under Trump in 2017, finalised 2020; rejoined under Joe Biden. Robert Falkner — the exit undermines a consensus resting on major emitters’ collective commitment.
• Domino effect — developing states managing energy security may follow, as decarbonisation is costly; Ban Ki-moon — harder to raise finance, the US being the second-largest polluter; Nicholas Stern — integrate climate action with development for equity.

India at COP-26 — Panchamrit (five nectar elements)

Sustainable Development Goals

• 17 goals succeeding the MDGs after 2015 — a “blueprint” for a better, more sustainable future. Jeffrey Sachs — measurable progress since 2015; Frances Stewart & Richard Wilkinson — inequality, conflict and degradation obstruct progress. The June 2018 UN report found progress uneven and not fast enough.

Human Security, Non-Traditional Security & Eco-modernists vs Eco-radicals

Non-traditional security concerns threats to welfare from non-military sources — environmental, economic, food, health, cyber, energy, migration, terrorism, water (Caballero-Anthony, 2016). Human security is pressed by climate change, environmental degradation and migration.

• Food crisis — reduced supply, rising staple prices, hunger (Timmer, 2010); the FSIN Global Report (2023) found around 258 million people in 58 countries in acute food insecurity in 2022; the WFP (2021) recorded nearly 9 million hunger deaths a year.
• Thomas F. Homer-Dixon — supply-induced, demand-induced and structural scarcities drive the appropriation of scarce resources by elites and the ecological marginalisation of the poor, weakening states and feeding insurgency and communal violence.

Eco-modernists vs Eco-radicals

• Jesse H. Ausubel — the ecomodernist trinity: “Decarbonization, Dematerialization, and Land-sparing.”
• Jason W. Moore (ecosocialist) — capitalism, not weak technology, drives the crisis; growth can continue “until the last tree is cut.”

Assessment: climate change is a multi-dimensional political concern implicating sovereignty, justice and power — Ulrich Beck on the unintended consequences of modernity, Ramachandra Guha on equity-based North–South cooperation; the task is to make climate governance as central to IR as arms control or trade.