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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