1 A changing environment for human security
Introduction
Whether in relation to climate, food, water, health, energy, or livelihoods, dramatic changes are underway in the world today, with significant implications for human security. There are very few places that are untouched by a convergence of global crises, many of which are directly or indirectly associated with environmental change. While climate change receives much of the attention these days, biodiversity loss, air and water pollution, ocean acidification, degradation and salinization of soils, deforestation, and threats to ecosystem services together create one systemic problem that is often referred to as ‘global environmental change’. This is a deceptively benign label, for it hides the asymmetrical responsibilities for such changes, as well as the unequal outcomes that result from them. Although global environmental changes are often perceived as ‘future’ problems, the human consequences are highly visible today, through risky living conditions, lost livelihoods, displaced populations, and unnecessarily high levels of morbidity and mortality. While the current situation is disturbing, future scenarios are alarming.
The challenges facing humanity are towering over our meagre attempts to respond. In fact, almost all strategies to address environmental change have fallen short, failing to change current trajectories, whether in relation to the number of endangered species, increases in global average temperatures, pH levels of oceans, or other challenges (MEA, 2005; IPCC, 2007; UNEP, 2012). Even the successful reduction of ozone depleting substances in the atmosphere is challenged by changes in climate, which are expected to have an increasing influence on stratospheric ozone in coming decades (WMO, 2010). As a result, human security – both in the short and long term – is increasingly threatened by environmental change. We are approaching ‘the end of the world as we know it’, and existing approaches seem to be incongruous to the challenges.
The environment is changing, and this calls for not only different ways of thinking about human security, but also new and more daring ways of approaching it. Human security has been defined in many ways, including as ‘a state that is achieved when and where individuals and communities have the options necessary to end, mitigate or adapt to threats to their human, environmental and social rights; have the capacity and freedom to exercise these options; and actively participate in pursuing these options’ (GECHS, 1999). While there has been a considerable amount of research on the many interacting threats associated with environmental change, and on their consequences for individuals and communities, it is now time to focus on the latter part of this definition, and engage with the capacities to pursue options that address the root causes of multiple, interrelated threats.
The objective of this book is to present insights from research that inspires new ways of understanding the relationship between environmental change and human security. The chapters include critical analyses, case studies, and reflections on contemporary environmental and social challenges, with a strong emphasis on those related to climate change. Taken together, the contributions both support and inform a call for new, transformative approaches to research, policy and action. The focus on transformative approaches recognizes a compelling need for change. The success of such approaches, however, depends on understanding and addressing the root causes of human insecurity. This involves engaging directly with the systems, structures and development paradigms that perpetuate insecurities, but also with the deeper human dimensions of global environmental change. These deeper human dimensions relate to the subjective attitudes, emotions, identities and beliefs that underlie how humans consciously or unconsciously influence and respond to change. Transforming how we perceive, experience, respond to and create change is a powerful leverage point for promoting human security.
We have divided the book into three parts, with the first part presenting a ‘reality check’ about the relationship between environmental change and human security. This section shows that while environmental change presents unprecedented threats to human security, this understanding needs to be balanced by a more nuanced consideration of the social and human factors. This sets the stage for the second part of the book, which discusses the ‘breakthrough conditions’ that underlie transformative approaches to human security in a changing environment. Included here are changes in perspectives and paradigms, a sense of individual and collective empowerment, and the integration and emergence of new ways of approaching environmental change and human insecurity. The third part of the book summarizes the story by considering transformations in the past and future, and discusses the best ‘next steps’ for creating human security in a changing environment.
In this first chapter, we present a brief review of the concept of human security, including how it has influenced research on global environmental change. The human security literature has strongly emphasized the importance of context, drawing attention to the social, economic, political, institutional, technological and cultural factors that influence both environmental change and its consequences (e.g., addressing questions of who, where, why, when and how). However, we also consider the subjective dimensions of human security, which influence how humans engage with this broader context (Gasper, 2010). These include values, beliefs, worldviews, and behaviours that are grounded in both ethical and rights perspectives on human development (Gasper and St. Clair, 2010; O’Brien et al., 2010).
Human security: a concept ‘coming of age’
The idea of human security became prominent in the 1990s, and has grown in importance over the years, not only in debates about environmental change, but also in relation to topics such as globalization, migration, poverty, and development (Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, 2007; Goucha and Crowley, 2008; Gasper, 2010). With its normative appeal to equity, justice, and ethics, the concept of human security is ‘coming of age’ in a period of history where boundaries of all sorts are shifting (Beck, 1999; Held et al., 1999). Personal, social, cultural, political, and planetary boundaries are being pushed, resisted, reinforced and questioned, and in some cases overstepped, redrawn or even dissolved. It is a shaky time, and there is a growing recognition that the changes underway will have profound implications for humanity. The concept of human security brings together the many threats, fears and uncertainties of the present with a strong recognition of agency over the future. It draws attention not only to the insecurities that are prevalent today and perpetuated through deeply embedded systems, structures, behaviours and beliefs, but also to the capacities of individuals and communities to change them.
Over the past two decades the concept of human security has experienced some growing pains, and these are widely reflected in the literature. It has faced sharp critiques within ‘securitization’ debates, for human security is but one small word away from national security, state security, and military security (Paris, 2001; Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy, 2007; Barnett, 2009). The juxtaposition of ‘human’ and ‘security’ can certainly create dissonant images, but this may be a strength rather than a weakness. For example, one such image of human security might show individuals and communities living happily together with no unmet needs or fears, yet with this sense of security maintained by strict borders and controls, as depicted in the novel and film ‘The Hunger Games’. Human security is, in fact, highly political, for the security of some individuals, groups, nations or species often comes at the expense of the security of others (Barnett, 2009). Another dissonant picture might involve individuals and communities so focused on alleviating their fears and wants that in the process of ‘being human’, they actually lose sight of their connections to the biosphere and each other – the connections that secure their existence (Folke et al., 2009). This, unfortunately, is not merely fiction; it is a stunning representation of our current situation. In drawing attention to discomforting contradictions and inconsistencies, the concept of human security compels those who are engaging with threats to individuals and communities in a global context to question boundaries and explore the assumptions that go with them.
Human security has also at times been viewed suspiciously by those focusing on human well-being, human rights, and human development, for it risks corrupting what is already well attended to in other discourses (Gasper, 2010). Indeed, the core of human security is arguably captured in Sen and Nussbaum’s capability approach, and reflected in the discourse on development ethics (Sen, 1999; Gasper, 2004; Gasper and St. Clair, 2010; Nussbaum, 2011). It is about the needs, rights and values of individuals and communities that are facing multiple stressors (Barnett et al., 2010). What human security adds, however, is an explicit recognition of the spatial, temporal and social dynamics between threats and responses. In a changing global environment, human security is about both the well-being of individuals and communities and the collective security of humanity (O’Brien and Leichenko, 2006). The connections between human security at the micro and the macro scales shows that many of the ‘secure’ boundaries that have been established by humans may indeed be illusions.
A changing context for human security
Research on global environmental change and human security has been presented in numerous books, edited volumes, journal articles, and policy papers (Barnett, 2001; Dodds and Pippard, 2012; Dalby, 2009; Brauch et al., 2009; Matthew et al., 2010; O’Brien et al., 2010). Taken together, this literature represents a considerable body of knowledge about why some groups are more vulnerable to environmental change than others, and how capacities to respond are influenced by multiple threats and stressors. Research on environmental change and human security has emphasized that environmental problems and ‘solutions’ must be considered within their social, economic, political, technological, cultural and philosophical context, for it is this very context that creates both human security and insecurity. The cultural and philosophical contexts are important here, for they often justify and sanctify existing systems and structures, and maintain perceptions and ideas of security that are increasingly challenged by environmental change.
Security can be defined as the state of being or feeling secure (i.e., safe and unthreatened, free from fear and anxiety). By definition, security has both objective and subjective dimensions related to ‘what is’ and ‘what is felt’. The objective aspects of human security can be easily measured and monitored; hence they often form the basis for indices and comparative rankings (Gasparatos et al., 2009; Singh et al., 2009). Access to food, water and shelter, literacy rates, life expectancy, and other such indicators provide a first entry point as to who is secure. However, security has significant subjective dimensions as well, and although they are more difficult to measure, they have a profound influence on actions in the world. The freedom to express oneself or one’s opinions, to move freely, or to differ from cultural norms and expectations can be a result of both experiences and perceptions, but they nonetheless form an intrinsic part of human security. Likewise, experiences and relationships that are individually and collectively valued are part of human security. Understanding these deeper aspects of human security calls attention to the emotional, perceptual, and existential groundings of development ethics (Gasper and Truong, 2005).
Economic and political systems are closely linked to value systems and worldviews, and changes in values have implications for human security (Inglehart, 1997; O’Brien and Wolf, 2010). Traditional, modern, and post-modern worldviews and value systems coexist in the world today (Inglehardt and Welzel, 2005). The values prioritized by modern value systems have yielded unprecedented benefits and extraordinary achievements, but there have been some significant costs involved with models of economic development and notions of progress that 1) consider some human lives to be of lesser value; 2) treat the environment as an externality; and 3) sever the relationship between the individual and collective good. Although there are certainly traces of pre-modern attitudes (for example, linked to fatalism and social hierarchies), the shortcomings of this approach to human progress and development have resulted in a highly uneven gap between ‘the good life’ accessible to a relative few, and the stark insecurities experienced by most people on earth today (Pogge, 2008). Although the social and economic consequences of this ‘equality’ gap have been shown to be unfair, unethical and dangerous (UN, 2005; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009), research on environmental change suggests that this particular dichotomy may, in fact, be unsustainable.
Yet sustained it is, with the subjective context of modernity continuing to view environmental change as a separate issue from economic, social and human development. Human security research has certainly moved discussions beyond the overly simplistic ‘technical’ approaches exemplified by the IPAT equation (where Impacts are related to Population, Affluence and Technology), to consider the role of social, economic and political relations, including how access, entitlements and power influence processes, responses and outcomes (Leichenko and O’Brien, 2008; Matthew et al., 2010). This body of research recognizes that environmental problems are closely linked to human insecurities, and that the root causes of these insecurities must be addressed when confronting environmental challenges, for environmental issues are political issues, social issues, economic issues, and development issues (Adger, 2010; O’Brien et al., 2010). This is important, for although there are indeed many practical actions or measures that can be taken to reduce exposure, sensitivity and vulnerability to climate change (e.g., building defences against sea-level rise) or to protect species and genetic diversity (e.g., establishing conservation areas or facilitating the translocation of species), taken to an extreme this technical and managerial approach may reinforce the values and interests that underlie environmental, social and development problems.
While increasing human security can be considered an enduring social goal that originates in efforts to abolish slavery, poverty, war, and gross inequalities, whether it is achievable depends to a large extent also upon how people make sense of the world, i.e., their worldviews. Some argue that we live in a world where winners and losers are natural, inevitable and evolutionary facts of life; others view most negative outcomes as far from inevitable, but rather socially and politically generated and sustained by powerful interests (O’Brien and Leichenko, 2003). These contrasting viewpoints may seem difficult to reconcile, and indeed they have often contributed to both polarization and paralysis. However, a third viewpoint may be worthy of consideration: that global environmental change is currently challenging our basic premises about human security, including understandings of nature-human interactions, winners and losers, relationships among individuals and collectives, and the capacity of humans to influence outcomes.
Conceptualizations of human security can no longer ignore the fact that people and places are connected in a globalized world, and that environmental change processes will affect not only the vulnerable and insecure, but also the collective security of humanity, both in the present and future (O’Brien and Leichenko, 2008). This may be difficult to comprehend, particularly for those whose identities are dependent upon fixed boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘the other’, or upon maintaining a clear separation between ‘humans’ and ‘nature’. Nonetheless, by introducing the notion of planetary boundaries (see Rockström et al., 2009), research on social-ecological systems is challenging many of the personal and cultural boundaries that hinder real progress on human security. It may be time to tell a new story.
In an edited volume with 38 chapters about global environmental change and human security, it is challenging to extract only one story. Yet this is precisely the role of a synthesis process, which involves combining components to form a connected whole. In synthesizing the contents of the individual contributions to this book, each of which has its own story to tell, we hope to trigger some insights and discoveries as to what can be done to create human security in a changing environment. The larger story we have to tell can be summed up as follows: Human thoughts and actions have contributed to an environment of insecurity, manifested as multiple interacting threats that represent a collective challenge to humanity. Yet humans also have the capacity to collectively transform systems and structures that are based on dangerously outdated paradigms. There are, in fact, many openings and opportunities for deliberate, transformative actions, but these call first and foremost for breaking through some entrenched thoughts and attitudes about human-environment relationships, boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘the other’, and the relationship between personal and collective responsibility. Human security is not an option, but a choice.
In the story that we present in this book, humans move from being the antagonists that are destroying the global environment, to being protagonists who are capable of working together to ‘change the change’. However, this type of transformation will not happen magically or through wishful thinking. It is also unlikely to happen within the paradigms that dominate current understandings of sustainable development. It will take conscious change, which includes the courage to continually question the assumptions and beliefs that justify both inaction and action (O’Brien, 2013a, 2013b). Responding from a different action logic, it becomes possible to identify actionable and effective leverage points for systems transformations toward sustainability (Torbert et al., 2004; Meadows, 2008).
A reality check
Part I of the book represents a reality check. Understanding the consequences of global environmental change for human security means ‘getting real’ about the significance from a large-scale, long-term perspective. At a practical level, realism is defined as the attitude or practice of accepting a situation as it is and dealing with it accordingly. Realism involves coming to grips with and accepting the current state of the global environment, rather than denying it, ignoring it, or trivializing it. Acknowledging and accepting the state of things as they actually exist, rather than an idealized version of them, can be cognitively and emotionally challenging. As Moser (2012) argues, the bravest thing to do at this time is to get real, which includes facing the truth and letting it sink in. This means accepting that the changes that we are facing are not fiction, but rather facts that should inform present-day decisions and actions. While there have been many post-modern discussions about the social construction of reality, as well as metaphysical and existential debates about ‘whether reality exists,’ there is nonetheless a reality that is actually experienced and shared by billions of people and species around the world – a reality that is being observed, measured and monitored, and which indicates that the rate, magnitude and scale of environmental change is unprecedented in human history and has impacts on human security (Steffen et al., 2004).
The seven chapters in this section describe the reality that humanity is currently facing, and consider the challenges this reality poses for human security. They present a sobering view of the current ‘state of the world’, and expose some of the dangers of continuing along current pathways. They also challenge dominant interpretations of causality, questioning some of the mainstream views and drawing attention to the dangers of deterministic thinking, as well as the need for more careful policies that address more nuanced understandings of human security. Whether the realities are linked to climate change, urbanization, population displacement, hazards, or access to food, clean drinking water, basic sanitation and modern energy sources, these chapters provide a strong rationale for developing new and more daring approaches to human security.
Human actions are contributing to transformations toward a very different world, and our actions need to reflect this new understanding. In Chapter 2 Simon Dalby discusses human security in the Anthropocene, a geologic era that acknowledges the significant impacts of humans on the global environment. Drawing on findings from earth systems science, he stresses that the transformations that are coming are unprecedented in human history, and that the past is not a good guide to what is coming. In fact, how we respond to change will be decisive for human security in the coming decades. He calls for new thinking about security, where people and their changing ecological contexts are at the heart of the analysis, and where human security is closely linked to what we choose to make, build and use. The chapter makes it clear that we are living in a new reality, and that our actions are influencing that reality.
Climate change and security is the focus of Chapter 3 by Jon Barnett. Starting with the likelihood that efforts to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions will fail to prevent significant warming by the end of the current century, he reviews the state of knowledge about climate change, human security, migration and violent conflict. While there are many interpretations of the climate change and security nexus, Barnett shows that research results are inconclusive. What is more certain, however, is that current policies and practices can actually enhance security if they focus on human security and particularly on people’s needs, rights and values. The chapter shows that migration and violent conflict in a changing climate may be a concern, but prioritizing human security may be a practical and effective means of addressing these concerns.
Elaborating on some of the issues raised by Barnett in Chapter 3, Betsy Hartmann argues in Chapter 4 that the linkages that are increasingly made between climate change, conflict and natural disasters not only lack empirical evidence, but they also contribute to a further militarization of development and humanitarian assistance. For example, the evolution of security narratives on climate change and conflict have justified US military strategies in Africa, at the same time ignoring how the local, regional, national and international political economy influences both coping and adaptation. The challenges of climate change, she argues, call not for the blurring of military/civilian boundaries, but for a more clear distinction between national security and human security.
Urbanization has significant implications for human security. In Chapter 5, Halvard Buhaug and his co-authors point out that urban growth and migration to urban areas are both drivers and by-products of economic development, and they assess the implications of recent and likely future trends in urban population growth. The authors show that although linkages have been made between population pressure and political violence, the connection is weak and inconclusive. Likewise, the potential for urban social disorder resulting from population increases is also unsubstantiated by research. Instead of focusing on these fears, the authors argue for pursuing broader developmental policies that will increase the economic contribution of urban populations, such as education, employment, basic health care, and safe water and sanitation services. The chapter shows that urbanization may not be a threat, but rather an opportunity for increasing human security.
Health risks are often presumed to exist in specific vulnerable groups linked to specific socio-economic and age profiles. Patricia Romero-Lankao and her coauthors suggest in Chapter 6 a more complex reality, presenting research results that illustrate how both social and environmental factors shape risk and vulnerability. The authors draw attention to the dangers of focusing on one paradigm or approach to risk, and suggest a more integrated framework. Equally important, their research shows that increasing air pollution may interact with climate change and pose risks to rich and poor alike. In other words, with 50 per cent of the world’s population currently living in urban areas, the emerging reality may be a shared reality.
Reality can provide some tough lessons on human security. In Chapter 7, Oscar Gomez argues that much can be learned about human security by directly engaging with the problem of uncertainty. Using the examples of two disasters in Japan, he considers how incomplete knowledge and social interactions influenced efforts to regain security and establish justice after the outbreak of Minimata disease in 1956, and in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Gomez emphasizes the importance of processes, including the roles of democracy and a free press in providing information in identifying threats and prioritizing actions. This suggests that human security in a changing environment characterized by great uncertainty can be best engaged with as a process, rather than as merely as a desired outcome.
Improving human security has no single set of options. In Chapter 8, Paul Lucas and co-authors use child and infant mortality as proxy indicators of human security to examine long-term prospects for food, clean drinking water, basic sanitation and modern energy sources at a global scale. They then identify several archetypical patterns of vulnerability, focusing on small-holder farmers in dryland areas. The variety in vulnerability patterns that emerge from their analysis suggest that multiple options exist for improving human security in dryland areas.
Breakthrough conditions
The reality check presented in Part I of this book provides a sobering view of environmental challenges, but it also shows that many of the generalized consequences for human security are in fact contested by empirical research. A focus on human insecurity as a predetermined outcome of environmental change must be balanced by understandings that these outcomes are influenced by social, economic, political and technological systems, and by the individual and collective behaviours, mindsets and worldviews that support and perpetuate them. Systems are, in other words, linked to individual and collective ‘action logics’, which Torbert and associates (2004) define as strategies used by individuals and organizations to analyse the world and react to it. How does one transform action logics? This is a developmental process that occurs at the personal level, but it nonetheless influences organizations and cultures (Torbert et al., 2004; Kegan and Lahey, 2009). Transformation of worldviews may involve radical or subtle shifts in perspectives, but they often call for first breaking through the entrenched habits, loyalties, identities, assumptions and beliefs that hold worldviews firmly in place (Heifetz et al., 2009; Schlitz et al., 2010).
We consider ‘breakthrough conditions’ to be part of the subjective backdrop that must be significantly present for transformative approaches to research, policy and practice to emerge. Breakthrough conditions facilitate a deeper set of responses to global environmental change and human security that challenge conditioned ways of thinking, feeling and acting, whether about vulnerability, adaptation, resilience, innovation, or sustainability. Breakthrough conditions are about transforming mindsets or action logics to move beyond rethinking, reassessing, revising, reforming, or reworking current approaches. These often represent little more than business-as-usual, for they typically occur within the same mindsets as earlier approaches, without challenging assumptions and beliefs about the way that the world works (O’Brien, 2012).
While there are many potential breakthrough conditions that can contribute to transformative approaches to human security, we focus in this book on the importance of 1) seeing things from multiple perspectives, which includes linking issues and scales; 2) questioning dominant paradigms and framings of problems; 3) individual and collective empowerment; and 4) integration of knowledge and action. The breakthrough conditions identified here enable transformation of action logics through their careful engagement with the underlying assumptions that support dominant approaches and responses.
The first breakthrough condition that we discuss involves seeing problems from different perspectives. This includes taking a systems perspective, and making connections across a diversity of issues and scales (Flood and Romm, 1996; Meadows, 2008). However, it also involves recognizing that there are many other perspectives, including different types of knowledge and different types of validity claims (Berkes, 2008). While this may sound simple and straightforward, is not always evident in policies and actions taken in response to complex global challenges. International solutions such as REDD+ may have negative impacts on local livelihoods, creating resistance and resentment for what might otherwise be considered a common goal of reducing the impacts of climate change (Sunderland, 2011; Beymer-Farris and Bassett, 2012). Although research itself can often be reductionist, approaches based on political ecology have long highlighted the linkages among scales and issues (Forsyth, 2003). Increasingly, calls for post-normal science and transdisciplinary research recognize the importance of acknowledging and including multiple perspectives in policy framings and solutions (Mezirow, 2000; Ravetz, 2006).
Transformability and transformative capacity are important characteristics of social ecological systems. In Chapter 9, Katrina Brown highlights how social ecological systems thinking can inform and enrich understandings and analyses of human security. Resilience is a concept that is gaining popularity within scientific and policy debates on environmental change, for it is fundamentally about how systems can deal with disturbance and surprise. This systems view, she argues, is important to human security, for it introduces a dynamic perspective that facilitates more process-oriented analyses across scales. As Brown points out, change is an integral part of how systems function, and disturbance has the potential to create opportunities for doing new things. The chapter reminds us that rather than coping with change and disturbance, it is possible to transform systems.
In a world facing multiple crises, recognizing the connections among diverse issues is critical. In Chapter 10, Robin Leichenko and her co-authors use the double exposure framework to explore pathways of interaction between environmental change and globalization. Focusing on California’s Central Valley, they describe connections and potential feedbacks between drought, the collapse of the housing market, and the fiscal crisis in California, which together had a measurable impact on human security. They also discuss how interactions between these processes play out across space and over time. The chapter stresses that while both processes contribute to growing risks and uncertainties, they also create new opportunities for transformative change. This, however, requires policy responses that connect multiple processes with local outcomes.
Recognizing the importance of cross-scale interactions, in Chapter 11 Katharine Vincent and co-authors look at national level policies versus local level realities in Africa, and consider whether they can be reconciled to promote sustainable adaptation. Based on findings from Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa that examine national policies for climate change adaptation and local practices, the authors point out that observed local level adaptation strategies are not recognized in national policies. This discord emerges from a centralized selection of adaptation priorities that favour technical interventions that cast local communities as recipients rather than as agents of adaptation, and from governments wishing to define desirable and undesirable adaptations so that valuable local strategies may be hindered. They argue that policy frameworks need to be flexible to ensure that they do not inhibit local climate-resilient livelihoods, and that the final choice over which adaptation actions are most effective should be up to those who are affected.
Connections between multiple processes and scales are also the focus in Chapter 12, where Grete Hovelsrud and her co-authors emphasize the important role that local knowledge plays in helping to frame appropriate research questions. Communities themselves are often aware of the social factors that shape their flexibility to respond; in some cases it is the fishing regulations that need to be adapted, rather than the fishermen themselves. Connecting both local and scientific knowledge systems leads to a broader and more holistic understanding of the complexities related to vulnerability and adaptation. This, they argue, is also of importance to community empowerment, which is a critical component of adaptive capacity. The chapter shows that local knowledge and community empowerment are prerequisites for successful and legitimate actions and interventions.
Sometimes it is easier to promote a new perspective than to actually implement it. In Chapter 13, Sofie Storbjörk and Johan Hedrén analyse the potential for integrated coastal zone management and consider some of the difficulties in its implementation in a small coastal community in Sweden. ICZM is an integrated and strategic approach aimed at involving stakeholders on issues related to social, cultural, economic and environmental sustainability. It challenges the reactive approach to coastal management, which focuses on technical fixes. In their case study, the authors uncovered a collision of values and priorities, with divergent interests and stakes leading to divergent policy agendas. They argue that a lack of coherent policies at regional and national levels gives power to individual interpretations that can influence practical management decisions. The chapter shows that different perspectives influence policies and actions, and that consensual policy framings may be limited when sustainability is, in fact, inherently political and contested.
Rights-based perspectives have been underemphasized in policy responses to environmental change. In Chapter 14, Vikram Kolmannskog first acknowledges that states, which have primary responsibility for people on their territory, are sometimes unwilling or unable to protect them. Drawing upon a synthesis of international laws to protect displaced persons, he considers how concepts such as non-discrimination, dignity and participation were considered in the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami. He recognizes the risk that states and other non-local actors may use climate change and disasters as a pretext for relocating groups to other areas, and points out that involuntary relocation and resettlement rarely leads to improvements in the quality of life. The chapter suggests a need for greater attention to contribution of human rights violations to vulnerability, and greater recognition of the responsibility of the international community to protect human dignity and develop new social identities based on interdependence and shared goals.
In Chapter 15, David Simon and Hayley Leck consider the intersection between global environmental change and human security in urban areas. The impacts of environmental change on human security in the near and long-term future are likely to be felt most severely in urban areas of the developing world. The authors argue that this intersection of human security and urban change and development deserves significantly more attention in research, policy and practice in ways that can account for the specific urban challenges. One possible approach to achieve this is to focus on conceptions of, communication of, and responses to risk by different actors in an urban context, and to engage with local authorities.
Human security perspectives can have drawbacks, particularly if they lead to securitization at the expense of people at risk. This is evident in Chapter 16, where Jason Flanagan and John Handmer focus on the securitization of wildfire risk in Australia. The ‘war on wildfire’ clearly has winners, creates heroes, helps enlarge budgets, and creates a clear mission as well as commercial opportunities. Yet the threat-defence logic inherent in securitization cannot deliver if the real objective of human security is the protection of people and key assets. A focus on individual safety could cast people as agents in the solution rather than as part of the problem. They suggest that wildfires need to be recognized as a significant and indeed growing danger, yet that the approach to address them needs to be defined by the concepts of resilience, risk sharing and a focus on the safety of the people at risk.
Perspectives on growth and development are at the heart of human security. In Chapter 17, Roberto Guimarães argues that the most important challenge facing humanity is in fact not the quantity but the quality of growth, tied up intricately with current styles of development that are socially unsustainable. Reforms to increase access of the poor to health, education, and employment are needed in order to shape social cohesion. The emphasis, he suggests, must be on restructuring such access and opportunities as this reduces the intergenerational transmission of poverty and inequality. Structural distortions of the economy and inequalities of social and political power need to be addressed if sustainability is to be achieved.
Paradigms
Challenging dominant discourses, framings and paradigms involves questioning ‘what is’, including the foundational assumptions and beliefs that hold particular paradigms in place. While most people are ‘subject’ to their particular viewpoint, i.e., unaware that they are operating from within a paradigm, or immune to the idea that their own perspective may be partial or limited, others can readily see the limitations and identify the dangers of blindly pursuing the ‘action logics’ of that paradigm. Unfortunately, those who criticize other paradigms are often equally blind to their own assumptions and beliefs, leading to further criticisms by others (Torbert et al., 2004). Contesting paradigms, then, is a process of continuously challenging assumptions and beliefs, eventually recognizing that all paradigms are nothing more than constructions (Meadows, 2008).
This has practical implications for how individuals and groups respond to complex, non-linear problems. The many proposals and ideas for responding to environmental change are often competing, but some gain more traction in public debates than others. In terms of climate change, there is no agreement about what mix of social, economic, regulatory and individual responses would be effective in averting the current trajectory towards 4, 5 or 6°C global average temperature change (Anderson and Bows, 2011). The different types of responses are often underpinned by different ways of conceiving the problems that draw on distinct sets of knowledge and emerge from different worldviews and ontologies (Hulme, 2009). Many dominant discourses of how best to respond to environmental change sit comfortably within existing paradigms. Yet given what is at stake, the diversity of responses and their competing and contradictory nature clearly warrant – even necessitate – that their premises and underlying assumptions be examined carefully. This is particularly significant in the case of climate change adaptation, which has enormous implications for human security, where both the effects of adaptation policies and the effects of a changing climate can compound existing challenges and produce maladaptive outcomes, including for development (Barnett and O’Neill, 2010).
The importance of challenging existing paradigms is perhaps nowhere greater than in models of development. In Chapter 18, Asunción Lera St. Clair and Victoria Lawson present critical arguments that challenge dominant approaches to understanding and addressing poverty. They argue that the dominant poverty knowledge is ill-suited to the challenges of global environmental change, particularly as it assumes dependence upon continued economic growth and consumption. This knowledge neglects the consequences for the environment, and ignores relations between poverty and prosperity. They criticize this knowledge for overemphasizing the economic causes of poverty, for shifting the burden of responsibility for poverty to individuals, and for blinding us to the ethical and justice dimensions of poverty by treating it as a technical matter that is moved from social relations. Dominant models of development perpetuate this knowledge, and limit the possibilities for creating real solutions.
The solutions to global challenges often indeed reflect dominant discourses and paradigms. In Chapter 19, Desmond McNeill reflects on ‘REDD+ and the Global Discourse on Climate Change and Poverty’. He argues that global problems such as climate change call for new thinking about relationships among the nations of the world. Many solutions to climate change emissions reductions, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+), will transform established relationships, for REDD+ money represents payment for services rather than aid. It is directed at poor countries, but not necessarily at poor people, and in fact it might counteract efforts to reduce poverty, as it does not take into account the rights and land tenure of poor and marginalized communities. The chapter suggests that it is not just the ‘North/South’ dichotomy that is being challenged, but the powerful discourse on environment and development.
Dominant approaches to climate change adaptation are leading to adaptation finance being absorbed into business-as-usual approaches to development, argue Philip Ireland and Peter Keegan in Chapter 20. The authors challenge mainstream thinking on climate change adaptation and note that adaptation is significantly influencing the development sector through large and growing volumes of financing, but without taking into consideration the unique challenges of climate change. The practice of co-opting and integrating new development ideas within existing practices is not new, but it risks framing adaptation as a matter of aid and altruism rather than justice or international responsibility. Ireland and Keegan suggest instead a postdevelopmental approach to adaptation that values diverse practices that are already occurring at the local level, which build on the needs, priorities and capacities of local communities. Rather than promoting pre-existing and ideologically driven development aid efforts in the name of adaptation, this chapter seeks to identify viable alternatives and an openness to new possibilities for adaptation.
Discourses powerfully enshrine paradigms prevalent in environmental change. In Chapter 21, Elspeth Oppermann presents a discourse analysis of adaptation as problematized in the United Kingdom’s Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP). Recognizing that threats such as climate change are discursively produced through language, she considers the implications for both adaptation and human security. Her analysis of an early technical report by UKCIP considers how a particular understanding can implicitly or explicitly exclude alternative conceptualizations. The UKCIP’s techno-scientific, risk-based problematization excludes critical engagement with the social and political dimensions of the problem, and fails to consider the role of identity, norms, values, and response capacity. Although alternative notions that raise the concerns of human security are evident in later UKCIP documents, they have not changed the overall rational for adaptation. Oppermann reminds us not to underestimate the importance of discourses. Without an awareness of the limitations of established discourses, our capacity to critically conceptualize and respond to climate change may also be quite limited.
Institutions are constantly produced and reproduced based on a shared definition of social reality. In Chapter 22, Christian Kuhlicke challenges the dominant conceptualization of vulnerability, arguing that it all too often results in simplified and reductionist reasoning based on stereotypical assumptions. Drawing on an analysis of the 2002 floods in Central and Eastern Europe that caught most villages, cities, authorities and citizens by surprise, he focuses on the distribution of knowledge between experts and citizens, including the underlying beliefs and assumptions that contribute to feelings of trust and dependency. He shows that the effective control of the river paradoxically prepared the ground for the experience of a radical surprise. The chapter suggests that there are dangers in leaving knowledge to the experts, and that the ‘promise of security’ needs to be questioned. Any attempt to develop transformational strategies needs to directly engage with institutionalized patterns that shape both interpretations and practices.
New paradigms call for new agendas, and nowhere is this more evident than in current approaches to disaster risk and vulnerability reduction. In Chapter 23, Ben Wisner discusses the role of capacities, knowledge and skills, and participation in disaster risk reduction and vulnerability reduction. Drawing on a case study in Northern Tanzania, he presents empirical evidence that illustrates the dangers of the generic and undifferentiated narratives on risk and vulnerability. He argues that systems thinking is important in this context, and considers how understandings of demographic, economic, socio-cultural, and political systems can inform transformational responses to risk and vulnerability specific to places. The chapter calls for new agendas for research, policy and action, noting that ‘the devil is in the details’.
Empowerment
Human security draws attention not only to what is at stake in relation to environmental problems, but also to those who hold the stakes and can actually move them. A stakeholder is a person with an interest or concern in something, and when it comes to the global environment, arguably everyone holds a stake. However, some interests and values are prioritized, promoted, or protected over others through existing systems, structures, institutions, policies and practices. These interests and values are seldom directly discussed, yet they play a significant role in determining who and what is considered worthy of securing. This generates a power gradient extending from those whose values and interests are secured to those who are excluded from decisions and whose values and interests are often not even acknowledged or represented. While there are different types of power, including hard vs. soft power and resource power vs. relational power (Nye, 2011), responding successfully to complex global challenges calls for both individual and collective empowerment and a recognition of the connections between individual and collective human security.
Global environmental change may exacerbate existing vulnerability, and it may also introduce new threats to communities. Change often results in conflicts of values, interests, and ideas, but how these conflicts are managed is essential to human security. Here the concepts of power and empowerment become important. In Chapter 24, Susanne Moser presents valuable insights on individual and community empowerment for human security. Empowerment, she argues, is about attaining the power to make choices, but it calls for more than just making different choices – it calls for a change in outcomes. The definition of human security does not necessarily imply an emancipatory change process, for it does not always take into account the common good. Human security for some can lead to insecurity for others, which tends to lead to further disempowerment, particularly in oppressive social systems that dehumanize people. To contribute to human security, empowerment of an individual or group should not diminish the power, humanity, dignity and integrity of another. Support from those in true solidarity may be vital to the empowerment of individuals and communities, with solidarity based on a recognition of social and ecological interdependence.
Empowerment clearly can be enabled when social reforms allow for the meaningful inclusion of those previously marginalized. In Chapter 25, Paola Ramallo and Elena Ostrovskaya examine the role that conflicts over water have played in the empowerment of indigenous communities in Bolivia. Drawing on lessons from a water project near Sucre (the official capital), the authors show how recent national social reforms have contributed to reshaping relations among stakeholders in the water sector through a redistribution of power. The legal inclusion of indigenous villagers in water resource management processes has raised their consciousness and brought about long sought-after social change. These changes nonetheless present new challenges, and not all actors are prepared to embrace or acknowledge the rights of indigenous people. Their chapter aptly reminds us that social and political change may call for changes in mindsets across the wider society, and that great challenges remain in order to close the gaps between promises and practices related to human security.
Achieving empowerment is not straightforward and requires engaging critically with theories of social power. In Chapter 26, David Manuel-Navarrete considers human-environmental integration and social power in global environmental change research. He argues that the time may be ripe to reformulate global environmental change as a human-environmental phenomenon, instead of as a geophysical, chemical and bio-ecological event with a ‘human dimension’. He highlights the need to combine systems analyses of global environmental change with critical theories of social power, recognizing that simply advocating for the empowerment of ‘the vulnerable’ does not necessarily lead to fundamental changes in power relations. The chapter discusses promising opportunities for the social sciences in global environmental change research. In fact, he concludes that responses to global environmental change may have more to do with meaning-making than policy or decision-making.
Empowerment is intricately tied up with the engagement of citizens and their recognition of responsibility. In Chapter 27, Thomas Heyd explores the notion of personal responsibility, and considers it in the context of what appears to be growing climate change complacency and defeatism. He argues that active involvement by concerned citizens is necessary for putting pressure on institutions to respond to climate change, and critical to new civil society initiatives. Responsibility can be thought of in terms of justice, solidarity, and harm prevention, which together translate into a commitment to take responsibility for human security. This is nonetheless challenging, particularly as many people are prone to ‘all or nothing’ or ‘wait and see’ attitudes that ignore what can actually be done right now to reduce the risks of climate change. Responsibility to act on climate change, Heyd argues, translates to a responsibility to help transform the cultural frameworks underlying these defeatist attitudes, towards one that recognizes individual and collective responsibility for human security.
Yet empowerment of the citizenry can in and of itself be no panacea. In fact, the focus on individuals’ behaviour may be in part counterproductive. In Chapter 28, Bronwyn Hayward critically examines the social handprint of sustainable citizenship. The handprint metaphor is increasingly used to highlight individual agency, personal responsibility, and a moral imperative to address environmental and social injustice. However, she points out that such images can also reinforce unexamined notions of self-help citizenship, leaving wider systemic patterns and processes untouched. Such an image ignores how individual actions are constrained or mediated by their context, including social institutions, norms, habits, and economic structures. An emphasis on personal responsibility can overstate the value of agency as action, and obscure the potential for collaborative efforts deemed necessary for collective human security. Mutual dependency and human connectedness, Hayward suggests, may be better expressed by the metaphor of ‘holding hands’ in solidarity to create desirable change.
Social capital can be a powerful enabler of action, but it also has its limits. In Chapter 29, Paulina Aldunce and co-authors examine the role of social capital in disaster risk reduction, and consider its role in adapting to climate change. Drawing on a case study from Chile, they consider social capital as both an enabler and barrier to effective responses to disasters. A sense of community and place attachment, for example, can increase the effectiveness of responses to disasters, but may inhibit relocation to less risky areas. Citizen participation and the presence of community leaders has also been shown to be an enabling condition for adaptation, but this should not be at the expense of having supporting institutions at the local and national level. The chapter shows that social capital is critical to vulnerability reduction, but it cannot replace efforts to address poverty, social justice, and environmental integrity.
Individual actors within social networks can act as effective leaders and be instrumental in shaping capacity in communities to respond to risks. In Chapter 30, Fiona Rotberg considers how innovative information or knowledge can be introduced into communities to cope with or adapt to climate variability and change. Drawing on social network theory and social network analysis, she explores the role of actors in social networks, and analyses how key individuals in a Bangladeshi village contribute to coping and adaptive capacity. She finds that informal leadership was important, and that honesty, acceptance by others and trust were valued leadership qualities. She also found that young spontaneous leaders played an important role during extreme events, and suggests that their capacities can contribute to future development and adaptation policies, as they can be sources of local innovation and change. The chapter shows that individuals can play an important role in building collective security.
Integration of knowledge and action
There have been many calls for ‘new ways of thinking’ about environmental problems, as well as appeals for more reflexivity, greater awareness, expanded consciousness and universal values (Rifkin, 2010; Kasser, 2011). While these subjective dimensions are arguably very important aspects of human security, they are of little value until they are translated into actions that influence outcomes. The integration of knowledge and action is thus key to the creation of human security. This is a fluid process that calls for learning, innovation, adaptive management, and leadership, which together can represent a transformative process (O’Brien et al., 2012). A mere fusion of fixed knowledge to action is likely to result in new problems, and potentially in increased vulnerability for others or for future generations (Eriksen et al., 2011). Indeed, Meadows (2008: 145) notes that ‘although people deeply involved in a system often know intuitively where to find leverage points, more often than not they push the change in the wrong direction’. Integrating knowledge and action often calls for different frameworks and approaches, and even for different paradigms.
There is a direct link between the values that drive responses to environmental change and how responses are enacted in practice. In Chapter 31, Siri Eriksen discusses climate change responses and transformational change, with a focus on the concept of sustainable adaptation. She argues that critical thinking about development processes is not reflected in most discussions of adaptation, thus adaptation is seldom considered as part of larger social change processes. Sustainable adaptation emphasizes social equity as a critical part of adaptation, and focuses on the social processes that contribute to vulnerability. Sustainable adaptation, she contends, embraces a normative approach to change, which includes addressing the context for vulnerability, acknowledging differing values and interests and how they are negotiated through social and political relations. Sustainable adaptation is a process characterized by an ability to shape the social and environmental conditions of the future.
Actions to address urban sustainability in a changing environment can no longer be based on fragmented knowledge. In Chapter 32, Peter Marcotullio and William Solecki focus on approaches to the sustainability of cities, which have traditionally been based on a fragmented literature that prioritizes different drivers of change, understands feedbacks and internal processes differently, and uses different criteria for sustainability. This contributes to competing visions of the sustainable city based on different ideologies and models. Although attempts have been made to reconcile the diverse models, the authors call for the development of a new science of urbanization based on a systems perspective that recognizes interactions across scales and the role of emergent phenomena. This new science can help not only to identify and understand urbanization processes, but also identify alternative pathways for sustainability.
New frameworks are needed for integrating objective and subjective dimensions of responses to environmental change. In Chapter 33, Svein Jarle Horn presents a holistic framework for analysis, planning and actions to move society away from its dependence on fossil fuel energy. Arguing that fossil fuels are finite resources, he considers the implications of peak oil and climate change for long-term planning and investment decisions. However, he stresses that these changes will not be enough: the transition away from fossil fuels calls for cultural change, psychological change, and behavioural change as well. Drawing on integral theory, he argues that both peak oil and climate change can be considered exterior symptoms of an interior reality that reflects collective choices linked to cultural stories and worldviews, including stories about progress. Importantly, he points out that changes in worldviews take time, and promoting change instead requires flexibility in communication, and new approaches to solving complex problems. Critical to these approaches is attention to subjective aspects such as feelings, values, motivations and worldviews.
In the practice of adaptation to climate change, diverse goals are underpinned by distinct interests, driven by particular values. In Chapter 34, Carolina Adler and Amanda Lynch draw on the policy sciences framework as an example of a problem-oriented approach to move adaptation forward in a context of irreducible uncertainties. The authors examine a case study of the tourism sector in Australian Alpine Shire to draw out how actors’ distinct interests shape adaptation. Local stakeholders found extreme events to hamper the potential for developing the tourism sector in the area. However, these experiences were situated in a much broader context of non-climatic factors. This highlights the broad contextual vulnerability of the community. An analysis of the myths associated with the issues of concern raised by participants can help to distil concerns that serve narrow interests from those that serve common goals.
Myths and misconceptions are pervasive, and can influence responses to environmental change, including approaches to adaptation. In Chapter 35, Helen Adams and W. Neil Adger challenge conventional thinking about the relationship between adaptation and migration, arguing that the focus on migration in climate change policy debates is currently misplaced. They argue that migration is a critical adaptation strategy that should be seen as beneficial, rather than as a threat or challenge to state and regional security. Throughout history, relocation and population mobility have been important responses to environmental change. It can be seen as a ‘last resort’ action, or it can be seen as a mechanism used to cope with risk in the face of uncertainty. They argue that the debate on migration needs to consider the benefits of population migration on social resilience and human security.
Integrating diverse perspectives into policy and action is a goal of cultural theory. In Chapter 36, Michael Thompson presents clumsy solutions to environmental change that approach the environment from the perspective of ‘elegance out, clumsiness in’. The focus here is on holistic approaches that consider system complexity. According to cultural theory, hierarchical actors place their trust in expert knowledge, believe in stewardship, and view nature as forgiving within certain limits. Discovering where those limits are is central to a hierarchical view. Individualists see nature as entirely robust and place their trust in market institutions because they view man as inherently competitive and self-seeking. In this view, the focus is on ensuring nothing interferes with those institutions that enable individualism. Egalitarian actors see nature as precarious and consider man as essentially benign until corrupted by coercive and unjust institutions. Fatalistic actors take a passive view of humans and see nature as erratic and fickle. Drawing on examples from Nepal, Thompson shows that clumsy solutions to complex problems do not represent a compromise or consensus, but rather a constructive engagement with different ways of organizing.
Transformations: past and future
The final section of the book presents a powerful story of past and future changes – one story focuses on what could have been, as much as on what actually happened centuries ago in Greenland; the other story focuses on the potential for transformations to create alternative futures. Transformations can be defined as physical and/or qualitative changes in form, structure, or meaning-making (Folke et al., 2010). As pointed out earlier, transformations are coming whether we want them or not, and the point now is to choose the type of outcomes that we prefer and deliberately create transformations, which is likely to involve a combination of personal, cultural, organizational and systems transformations (O’Brien, 2012). While it is easy to argue for the need for transformation, how do they actually come about? This is not an easy question to answer, for some transformations happen gradually (e.g., through changes in educational opportunities for girls), while others emerge rapidly (e.g., through the introduction of a new technologies such as mobile telephones). Generally, however, one can say that transformative changes involve challenging existing assumptions and beliefs (e.g., girls should not go to school; telephones are luxury items for the wealthy), and acting upon the new beliefs, with an awareness of the values that are prioritized and the implications of actions for others and future generations.
Lessons about the future are rarely more compelling than when they emerge from ‘completed experiments’ of the past that can be tracked over century scales. In Chapter 37, Andrew Dugmore and co-authors discuss the utility of a long-term perspective when assessing human security. They examine how the seemingly well-adapted society of the Greenland Norse failed in responding to complex problems. They argue that too much specialization in harvesting marine resources, rather than a mix of marine and land-based resources, in trade and diet combined with volcanically induced climate cooling challenged the limited flexibility of the society. The extremely dispersed Greenlandic settlements and extensive networks could also not adjust to the increased societal complexity of the fifteenth century that emerged from economic change in the aftermath of the Black Death in Europe and from Thule peoples arriving in Greenland. This case therefore illustrates ‘elegant failure’ as Greenlandic settlements reached a critical threshold in social coherence during a time of multiple interacting changes. Rather than considering this as an inevitable outcome, they consider ‘what might have been’ by examining more successful outcomes for human security in the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The chapter emphasizes the dangers of focusing on single points of view and simple solutions to complex problems that may seem effective in the short run, but which can also produce unexpected outcomes that rapidly threaten human security.
In Chapter 38, we conclude the book by discussing the future, not as a distant and faraway ideal, but as a manifestation of the present. From this perspective, human security can be seen as a choice that is tied to our values, to the decisions that we make, and to the actions that we take. We consider what it means to transform knowledge, and stress the importance of transdisciplinary research. We consider what it takes to transform policy, including a desirable vision for the future. Finally, we reflect on what is involved with transforming action. We emphasize that this is not about changing values, but rather about promoting global citizenship and new types of leadership. We end by recognizing that human security is a deliberate choice that reflects not only understandings of the past and present, but also an emergent capacity to transform situations that are currently portrayed by many as ‘hopeless and inevitable’ towards one that enables humans to thrive.
This book brings together research that came out of a 2009 international synthesis conference ending a 10-year project on Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS). As a core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP), GECHS asked some critical questions about what environmental change means for human security. The project provided many valuable insights, but the ultimate answers lie in the actions that are taken today, tomorrow, and in the coming years.
As the implications of environmental change become more evident from both scientific findings and experiences accumulating from around the world, the research frontiers are shifting. Transformative approaches to research, policy and action are needed now more than ever, and research on transformation itself is critical. Do we know how to make deliberate transformations happen? Do we have a sufficient knowledge base to inform strategies and actions for equitable, ethical and sustainable transformation at the rate and scale that is called for? Can we increase human security in the face of rapid environmental change, increasing uncertainty, and the potential for tipping points and surprises? The insights and perspectives presented in this book can be considered a starting point for addressing these questions, but transformation itself is a process that calls for changes within science itself. A changing environment for human security calls for networks of networks that connect research, policy and action at all levels. It is about collective action, and connective action to create a secure future. If there is anything that reading this book should provide, it is the understanding that this is actually possible.
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