Week 5ClimateChange2024.pdf

Week 5: International Relations of Climate Change Dr Candice Moore [email protected] What is Climate  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIsjcG7hTmo Change?  A concern for those looking at state security   2C  old news! 1.5C is ideal...

Week 5: International Relations of Climate Change Dr Candice Moore [email protected] What is Climate  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIsjcG7hTmo Change?  A concern for those looking at state security   2C  old news! 1.5C is ideal  Carbon budget is 240Gt CO2eq emissions  3 decades left to get to net-zero carbon emissions  If net-zero not achieved by 2050  climate will become self-determining What is the problem?  IPCC in 2018 made 3 calls:  Keep global average temperature increase to 1.5C  50% reduction in global emissions by 2030  Appropriate political response needed for this daunting challenge   Introduction (Videos)  Where have we come from? Origins of the Perspective  How are environmental challenges different? What does Outline Green Theory add?  International Relations Theory and Climate Change  Case Study   Robyn Eckersley reading  Started with a concern around management of common pool resources in the 1970s, e.g. major river systems, oceans, the atmosphere.  But the ‘modern ecological crisis’ started in the second half of the 20th century  ‘great acceleration’ in the 1950s : massive growth in Origins of the human population and economic activity  increased perspective energy and resource consumption; new sources and rising levels of pollution and waste production, rapid erosion of Earth’s biodiversity  Holocene  Anthropocene  Scholarship has since grown, 1960s start of the environmental movement  How are  Environmental problems are very different from environmental military threats: challenges different? Deliberate What does Green Discrete Specific Theory add? Requires immediate response Easy to mobilise resources to fight!  How are  Environmental problems are very different from environmental military threats: challenges different? Persistent What does Green Deliberate Ubiquitous Theory add? Discrete Dire Specific Unintended Requires immediate Wide variety of actors response Many Stakeholders Easy to mobilise Transboundary resources to fight! Long time scale   Environmental problems are very different from military threats: How are environmental challenges different? Deliberate What does Green Discrete Persistent Ubiquitous Theory add? Specific Dire Requires immediate response Unintended Easy to mobilise Wide variety of actors resources to fight! Many Stakeholders Transboundary Long time scale   Environmental problems are usually seen as the ‘stowaways’ of otherwise legitimate activities, including investment, production and consumption   Radical voices started to question this however, including questioning the idea of ‘growth’ and ‘modernisation’  Became highly politicised in the ‘Limits to Growth’ debate of early 1970s How are  1972: UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (first environmental of its kind) solidified environment as a Global Issue challenges different?  1980s: ‘Sustainable development’ discourse emerged: we can have economic growth and sustainable development What does Green  2010s: The idea of limits has returned  carbon budgets, planetary Theory add? boundaries, new scientific and political discourses on Anthropocene  ‘ecological modernization’: the idea that technology can help us use the environment in more efficient and sustainable ways; there are synergies between capitalist development and environmental protection.   Green theory has emerged within IR theory to try to respond to some of these challenges  Green theory exposes the ecological blindness of IR International theory Relations Theory  It has 2 branches: Green IPE and a normative and Climate cosmopolitanism branch Change  Has reinterpreted some of the central concepts and discourses in IR and global politics, challenging traditional understandings of :  Security Development IR Theory Democracy International Justice What Green Theory Brings to IR Theory Ecological Security Sustainable Development Green Theory Ecological Democracy Environmental Justice   Realism  Would dismiss as ‘low politics’ unless it has effect on national security  Neo-Liberalism For example…  Would be concerned with adjusting incentive structures to push states toward cooperation on ‘Global  Critical Theorists Warming’  Look at the social and economic structures of domination  Green Theory  Examines our neglect of nonhuman nature  Neglect of needs of future generations  Skewed distribution of ecological risks   Beardsworth (2020)  Working with the State  State still holds power to effect social transformation: why? What is the  National Level: it can steer policies and finances  It is the only social organisation that has the monopoly of appropriate violence, can help mobilise others; can lead other states political response?  Solidarity (internationally): disrupting divisions between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ states as all states are in some form of development on a continuum when it comes to the environment.  What new ways of thinking through this problem can we come up with?  What would be your idea of international solidarity in the context of this problem?  What would be your idea of ‘sustainable development’ when we are faced with the climate change challenge?  International justice?