ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY: AN APPENDAGE TO GEO-POLITICAL WORLD ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES?

Outline

1. Introduction 2. Environmental Security: Meaning and Nature 3. Environmental Security: A Security to US Geopolitical Order, Social System and Way of Life 4. Dilemmas of Environmental Security: Problem of Equity,
Historical Responsibilities 5. Environmental Security: An extension of North into South's National Sovereignty 6. Post-Cold War American Perspective of Environmental Security 7. Economic Rethinking: The Basis of Environmental Security 8. Conclusion

ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY: AN APPENDAGE TO GEO-POLITICAL WORLD ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES?

Author: Narottam Gaan

DOI Link: https://www.doi.org/ BIISSj2003v24n3a4

ABSTRACT

Environmental security is an appendage to US and its allies' conventional understanding of security based on realist paradigm. The Western pattern of development, economy, life style and consumption contributed largely by science and industrial revolution, resulted in a masculine understanding of power to exploit the nature at the peril of others and to have access to resources by the use of force where these are available in total ignorance of sovereign state system and principles of intergenerational equity, justice and responsibility. It is due to the exercise of this power by the US and its allies that vast damages were done to the nature and environment in terms of global warming, sea level rise, ozone layer depletion and other natural hazards. These non-military threats were posed to the entire humanity, more particularly to the people of South, as they lack the necessary scientific, technological and financial wherewithal to withstand the brunt of environmental hazards. So the very realist paradigm of security to provide security to the people came in for questioning about its relevance after the end of Cold War. So the need for redefining security in terms of environmental security was seriously felt. But American security think-tanks continued to define security in its old style and, conventional wisdom and logic in order to give fulfillment to its domestic imperatives of over consumption, inordinate life style and amassing of wealth shaped by its liberal political-economic thinking. From a Post Cold War perspective it redefines environmental security not in terms of what it is required of -for example, rethinking life style, pattern of development, respecting intergenerational equity and accountability -but in terms of an extension of its conventional geopolitical interests. This paper questions the American logic and wisdom and tries to put the concept of environmental security in its right perspective.

BANGLADESH INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AND STRATEGIC STUDIES

Outline