8: Non-State Actors - The Case of the Environment Flashcards
what do we mean by territoriality?
ability of increasingly organised bureaucratised nation states to use the territory they controlled within borders/frontiers as a source of power (Maier)
territory as a container of power
- ability to control/exploit your space
- key distinctive trait of the modern era was the age of territoriality and the anthropocene
locus of sovereignty (emancipation = self-determination)
age of nation states
- see this with the superpowers of the Cold War as states that could exploit an incredible amount of natural wealth within borders
definitions of anthropocene
JR McNeill
- age in which human agency and intervention on earth and environment became a key transformational driver of the earth and environment itself
Lewis & Maslin
- human activity as global and the dominant cause of most contemporary environmental change
what do we mean by the anthropocene?
age in which human activity, agency and intervention is key
industrialisation as a major technological transformation that produced a capacity for generating more and more energy via natural resources
alternative periodisations of the modern/contemporary age
logic that is progressively proved wrong are ideas that the environment is there to be exploited, natural resources to be extracted, with total power and control of men over nature
international issues of the modern era that had an inner transnational dimension in the 19th and 20th centuries
capital and finance
peace
people’s mobility and migration
health and epidemics
why was there a major change between the late 1960s and the early 1980s? long 1970s as a transformational moment for environmental issues
new forms of global integration and new interdependencies
states decreasingly able to control their territories, use/exploit that territory to rely on territoriality for defining their power, and exchanges/connections/interactions that are now more important than space and control of territory
political, economic and ideological transformations of the long 1970s for environmental issues
technological breakthroughs
- unprecedented mobility of people, capital and goods
- simultaneity of exchange and communications
interdependence and erosion of state sovereignty
age of fracture
- weakening of state institutions, centrality of the individual, individualised notion of inalienable rights
what do we mean by Cold War modernity?
clash of modernities and linear notions of progress
manipulability and exploitation of nature
- idea that earth was there to provide basic resources and they were unlimited
- idea that nature could be manipulated and exploited with man having absolute power over such nature
centrality of industry
- industrial systems as the quintessential symbol of Cold War modernity
faith in technology and scientific hubris
- technological progress = freedom and emancipation
unlimited resources and possibilities
- belief in the development of a toolbox to engineer social and political systems on the path to progress and to be able to constantly exploit the unlimited possibilities
what was the relationship between Cold War modernity and the environment?
green revolution
- idea of generating increasing agricultural output via new techniques, the use of chemical agents/fertilisers, etc.
- tested and applied on a global scale with the US promoting ambitious agricultural reforms/changes/programs in Asia, etc. and the USSR doing similar things
- if you could deliver more calories and more food and more agricultural output to populations of LDCs, you become their key partner
cheap/unlimited oil
- seemed to deliver on the short term
dams and public works
- massive infrastructural projects to exploit and make use of the environment
nuclear power
transportation
post-1945 modernity and the environment
oil and petroleum as key natural resource
- source of energy for the modern global economy
oil
- cheap (up until the late 1960s)
- easily transportable/distributable
- abundant and apparently unlimited
- effective (as a new energy regime compared to oil)
petroleum
- primary energy source of advanced industrial countries
- stable prices
- accesible
- limited/no effort of conservation
the nuclear friendly narrative and the environment
faith in technology and progress
- cheap oil combined with nuclear enthusiasm for the possibilities of nuclear power
trust in politics and experts
connection between civilian and military use of nuclear power
- security and independence
promise to contribute to post-1945 age of exuberance
what was the impact of Cold War modernity on the environment?
universal and homologating models of development vs. local traditions
- heavy top-down intervention where these models are applied even in specific local, peculiar regions
possibility to control, exploit and manipulate the environment
- no thought to possible ecological consequences
chemicals and pesticides
- long-term devastating effects
- intensive use of chemical agents in the green revolution
first fear: scarcity
- driven by oil shocks of the 1970s
second fear: pollution, nuclear waste and fallout
- mobilisation against nuclear since the discovery of impacts of high levels of radioactivity
globalised political environmentalism
challenging the assumption of progress with the idea that progress could be destructive
major challenge from all political groups, traditions, cultures across the political environmental spectrum
how do we explain the rise in the 1970s of a global and globalised political environmentalism?
environmental mobilisation simultaneously local and potentially transnational
- interplay between local and global
- started with NIMBY
scarcity suddenly felt because of political/geopolitical issues
- price of oil skyrocketed in the 1970s
- oil suddenly not cheap or abundant so idea of limits
cross-cultural/political character of environmentalism
- novelty meant that it cut across political and cultural cleavages
new studies and research finding dramatic consequences like pollution and contamination
- verged on pessimism
- discourse of 1970s was invariably a discourse of limits
disasters like oil spills, nuclear accidents and industrial accidents
- long term global and transnational consequences with no protection offered by a national border against these issues
what are the main contradictions/limits of globalised political environmentalism?
whose progress?
- environmentalism that had new regulations on pollution, etc. were often only applied by wealthier and more industrially developed countries that could afford them
- those catching up complained they needed to be exempt since they had less responsibility historically and wanted to reach the same stage of development/industrialisation
- environmental-friendly policies represented a luxury but the response had to be global
mass consumption and primacy of the individual: driver and obstacle
- primacy of individual rights including the right to consume as a key obstacle
consumerism vs collective needs and obligations
transnational issues but still national polities and great power politics
- collective action immensely complicated
- China and US have to be on board for there to be global action
climate change since the 1990s
- anthropocene as a system potentially generating the seeds of its own extinction with global warming creating a condition that was less and less conducive to the preservation of human life on earth
