Global Environmental Change and the Crisis of Dominant Development Models: A Human Security-Centered Analysis

Abstract

During the last decades, the global environmental imbalance has reached an intolerable peak, producing devastating impacts on vulnerable regions and populations, historically considered as less responsible for its underlying causes. The growing scientific consensus on anthropogenic environmental change has led to the creation of some paradigmatic approaches aimed to address this issue, such as the ‘sustainable development’ principle and, more recently, the green economy. Nevertheless, policy responses to environmental change have been largely grounded in the dominant development models, those that are arguably to blame for this situation. The present chapter suggests that the global economic system is still unable to propose workable alternatives to reconsider the structural drivers that give rise to the environmental crisis and increasing social inequalities. It discusses the interrelations between environmental change and dominant development pathways, and demonstrates how the environmental discourse is still disregarding human and social issues or, more precisely, the inter-linkages between the growing social injustice and the ever-increasing environmental crisis. By recognizing that social and structural inequalities are among the important drivers of ecological crisis, this research emphasizes this tight relationship, and shows, in the meantime, how the environmental crisis is further widening the rich-poor gaps and creates new grounds for additional vulnerabilities. This leads to the conclusion that fighting social vulnerabilities must be at the heart of policy responses to the global environmental change. Based on this mutual interaction, this chapter argues that the latter is predominantly a human-security issue and, therefore, related responses should be people-centered.