Environmental Security Deconstructed

Abstract

The basic logic of the environmental security discourse is that humankind is living beyond the carrying capacity of the earth’s local, regional, and global ecosystems. Essence is how to evaluate environmental stress in relation to political stability: is this a matter of ordinary politics or a matter of exceptional politics, i.e. security politics? The debate is dominated by an intriguing paradox: in order to preserve the political-economic and social-cultural structures of local, national, and world societies it is necessary to change them fundamentally, given their un-sustainability. The warning reads that either the structures are changed voluntarily and in a controlled manner, or structural change will be enforced violently and randomly by environmental crises. Much of the debate boils down to the question ‘who is to pay a price today to avoid that others have to pay a higher price tomorrow?’