Security and Environmental Change

In the early years of the new millennium, hurricanes lashed theCaribbean and flooded New Orleans as heat waves and floods seemedto alternate in Europe. Snows were disappearing on MountKilimanjaro while the ice caps on both poles retreated. Theresulting disruption caused to many societies and the potential fordestabilizing international migration has meant that theenvironment has become a political priority.The scale ofenvironmental change caused by globalization is now so large thatsecurity has to be understood as an ecological process. A newgeopolitics is long overdue.
In this book Simon Dalby provides an accessible and engagingaccount of the challenges we face in responding to security andenvironmental change. He traces the historical roots of currentthinking about security and climate change to show the roots of thecontemporary concern and goes on to outline modern thinking aboutsecuritization which uses the politics of invoking threats as acentral part of the analysis. He argues that to understand climatechange and the dislocations of global ecology, it is necessary tolook back at how ecological change is tied to the expansion of theworld economic system over the last few centuries. As the globalurban system changes on a local and global scale, the world'spopulation becomes vulnerable in new ways. In a clear and carefulanalysis, Dalby shows that theories of human security now require amuch more nuanced geopolitical imagination if they are to grapplewith these new vulnerabilities and influence how we build moreresilient societies to cope with the coming disruptions.
This book will appeal to level students and scholars ofgeography, environmental studies, security studies andinternational politics, as well as to anyone concerned withcontemporary globalization and its transformation of thebiosphere.