Lecture 5 on Green Theory of IR PDF

Important further readings: https://www.e-ir.info/2016/04/29/climate-change-adaptation-and- international-relations-theory/ Lecture on IR Theory: Green Politics Fall 2024-2025  Green Politics The Roots of Green Politics  By the 1990s, Internati...

Important further readings: https://www.e-ir.info/2016/04/29/climate-change-adaptation-and- international-relations-theory/ Lecture on IR Theory: Green Politics Fall 2024-2025  Green Politics The Roots of Green Politics  By the 1990s, International Relations had come to recognise the natural environment as an increasingly significant source of questions for the discipline, requiring theoretical as well as practical attention.  What led to this understanding? – mounting evidence that hu man actions were significa  Green Politics The Basics of Green Theory  Ecological thought addresses the interests of nature itself rather than only the interests of humanity in nature.  Environmental issues are tragic because we can see it coming but seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it. That inability is more than a practical problem; it is a profound theoretical challenge.  The issues cannot be solved by technical means but  Green Politics The Basics of Green Theory  a green morality might suggest that human material development should be curtailed in the interest of preserving non- human nature, this would: – limit our freedom to consume however much we can acquire. – put nature before people.  Green theory, in this sense, is ecocentric, not anthropocentrism Green Politics Green Theory: Ecocentrism vs. Anthropocentrism  Ecocentrism prioritises healthy ecosystems because they are a prerequisite to human health and wellbeing.  Anthropocentrism sees only the short-term instrumental value of nature to humans.  Ecocentrism rejects the split between domestic and international politics, given that arbitrary boundaries between nations do not coincide with ecosystems. – For example, air and water pollution can cross a border and climate change cuts across all borders and populations.  This impacts on how we understand and deal with transboundary and global environmental issues  Green Politics Green Theory: Solutions  Global environmental problems require global solutions.  This gives rise to the question of whether we need to give up on the idea of countries with borders as still being relevant to people’s lives, or  Recast them in some more ecologically appropriate way with reference to how  Green Politics Green Theory & Climate Change  Climate change is the dominant environmental issue of our age, caused by our dangerous reliance on fossil fuels. What is the solution?  Green theory helps us to understand this in terms of long-term ecological values rather than short-term human interests.  Others argue that the issue can only be solved through investments in technology, but there is no easy technical solution to human-induced  Green Politics Green Theory & Climate Change What is the Continued… What can you do? solution? 1. Make a voice 2. Eat less Makemeat and dairy your voice  Climate change presents a 3. Cut back on flying clear case of injustice to 4. Leave the car at home both present and future 5. Reduce your energy use humans who are not 6. Increase and protect responsible for causing it and to the ecosystem as a green spaces 7. Invest your money whole. responsibly  Therefore, a solution 8. Cut consumption – and requires an ecocentric waste theory of value and a more 9. Talk about the changes Green Politics Ecosystem: Future Outlook  An outline agreement was eventually achieved in the Paris Accords of December 2015.  Whether or not this effort will actually address the sources and consequences of climate change remains to be seen.  In a world of states with primary responsibilities to their own citizens, finding acceptable trade-offs between immediate economic wellbeing and longer-term ecological wellbeing is difficult.  There is some prospect of powerful states (like China) or groups of states (like the European Union) as well as the US as Biden re-joined the Paris Accord leading the way.  However, the common ground available from an IR perspective of competing states is unlikely to be