Download world society

Sustainability Myth Busters 2016
National security interests trump global challenges?
Green Office, 10 October 2016
Jaap de Wilde
Centre for International Relations Research
www.rug.nl/let/cirr
bottom-line
Carrying capacity of the earth:
the total patterns of consumption that the earth’s
natural systems can support without undergoing
degradation
I = PAT
I =
P=
A=
T=
environmental impact
population pressure
affluence
technology
Global dimension of environmental security
= North-South & elite-masses dimension
•
Paradox:
in order to preserve our affluent life-styles it is necessary to
change them fundamentally, given their unsustainability
•
Tension: sustainability, equity, liveability
Who is to pay a price today to avoid that others
have to pay a higher price tomorrow?
Three approaches to environmental security
•
Neo-Malthusians
•
Distributionalists
•
Economic optimists (techno fix)
All caught in state-centric thinking
Side-track: What is security?
• Definition: Absence of threat
How do actors relate to each other and to their natural environment in terms of
threats and vulnerabilities?
• Securitization Theory (Ole Wæver)
• objective / subjective / intersubjective security
• security as a speech act
• securitization & desecuritization
Looking for a world society perspective
• How do 7.4 billion people organize themselves in
terms of cooperation and conflict?
• See: http://www.worldometers.info
[the site aggregates all kind of statistical data on a global level.
Parameters of social life – the world as one ‘organism’?]
A World Society Perspective:
How do 7.4 billion people relate to each other in terms of
cooperation and conflict?
individuals
international organizations
identity groups
Family, Tribe, Class, Firm,
Civil Society, Nation
sovereign states
transnational corporations
markets
world society
Caught in an identity, a sovereingty & an economic discourse
The problem of state-centrism & traditional geopolitics
• National Security always comes first
• Comparative analysis is misleading and
misrepresenting actual living conditions
Towards a new understanding of geopolitics?
• Theory:
• Urban Security trumps National Security
• Combine IR, Urban Sociology, Critical Geopolitics, Security
Studies
• Population density as the ontology of world society
• Rethink levels of analysis (zooming in/out)
• Revival of Functionalism
• Practice:
• > 50% world population in cities
• 750 largest cities > 57% of Global GDP (GWP)
• Cities & Environmental problems:
•
•
•
•
80% of world’s population within 100 km from sea
3-5°C ↑ by 2025
pollution, heat waves, infrastructure, health issues
No subsistance farming or self-reliance
http://www.unicef.org/sowc2012/urbanmap/
of
A World Society Perspective:
How do 7.4 billion people relate to each other in terms
cooperation and conflict?
individuals
international organizations
identity groups
Family, Tribe, Class, Firm,
Civil Society, Nation
sovereign states
transnational corporations
markets
world society
Caught in an identity, a sovereignty & an economic discourse
Creating a ‘google earth’ for the social sciences,
economics and humanities