Environmental Security

Since the end of the Cold War environmental matters especially theinternational implications of environmental degradation have figuredprominently in debates a... » 

Since the end of the Cold War environmental matters especially theinternational implications of environmental degradation have figuredprominently in debates about rethinking security. But do the assumptionsunderlying such discussions hold up under close scrutiny? In this firsttreatment of environmental security from a truly critical perspective SimonDalby shows how attempts to explain contemporary insecurity falter overunexamined notions of both environment and security.Adding environmental history aboriginal perspectives and geopolitics to theanalysis explicitly suggests that the growing disruptions caused by a carbonfueled and expanding modernity are at the root of contemporary difficulties.Environmental Security argues that rethinking security means revisiting thequestion of how we conceive identities as endangered and how we perceivethreats to these identities. The book clearly demonstrates that the conceptualbasis for critical security studies requires an extended engagement withpolitical theory and with the assumptions of the modern subject as progressivepolitical agent. Viewed thus on a global scale the environmental securitydiscourse raises profoundly troubling political questions as to who we are andwhat kind of world we are collectively making in our efforts to be secure. «