Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspecative on Globalization - Hardcover

Pirages, Dennis Clark; DeGeest, Theresa Manley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 084769500X ISBN 13: 9780847695003

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

Global environmental politics has emerged from its initial incarnation in the arena of "low politics" and is rapidly becoming a "high politics" concern. Concern over water pollution, air pollution, deforestation, and related basic environmental issues is giving way to a broader ecological security agenda. In this pathbreaking book, Dennis Clark Pirages and Theresa Manley DeGeest argue for dramatically broadening the context in which security priorities are established in an age of increasing globalization. Addressing the very fundamental question of the sources of premature human deaths and associated insecurity, both historically and in the contemporary world, the authors observe that in the twentieth century starvation killed nearly as many people as did military conflict. But disease was responsible for killing nearly fourteen times as many people as was warfare. And in the contemporary world of the twenty-first century, environmental terrorism and biological warfare are blurring the traditional distinctions between natural disasters, accidental deaths, and military casualties.

Ecological Security moves the analysis of global environmental and resource issues to the next level by developing an "eco-evolutionary" perspective for analyzing emerging problems associated with rapid globalization. Preserving future ecological security will depend upon maintaining dynamic equilibriums among human populations, and between them and pathogenic microorganisms, other species, and the sustaining capabilities of nature. This eco-evolutionary framework is used to anticipate and analyze emerging demographic, ecological, and technological discontinuities and dilemmas associated with rapid globalization. The authors conclude by stressing the need for new kinds of global public goods to mitigate the harshest impacts of these rapid and interrelated changes.

About this title

About the Author

Dennis Clark Pirages is Harrison Professor of International Environmental Politics at the University of Maryland. Theresa Manley DeGeest is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland.

Review

The author's attempt to create a holistic explanatory model is impressive. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries. (Library Journal)

An indispensable resource for understanding globalization. Highly recommended! (Herman Daly, University of Maryland)

Ecological Security presents an innovative approach toward environmental issues, weaving them together with the trend toward economic globalization and its implications for the distribution of wealth in the world. Authors Dennis Clark Pirages and Theresa Manley DeGeest have produced a well-written and readable text that will be understood and appreciated by a broad readership. (Marvin S. Soroos, North Carolina State University)

With each passing day, it appears more and more obvious that the prevailing explanations for turbulence and crisis in world affairs are wholly inadequate, and that existing policy responses are of little use in addressing emerging dangers. We desperately need a new mode of analysis for deciphering international developments and devising new policy mechanisms. Ecological Security provides exactly what we require: a comprehensive approach to the study of world affairs that combines economic, political, sociological, biological, and ecological perspectives, and does so in a way that enables us to grasp the dramatic changes taking place. More than this, it lays the groundwork for a truly evolutionary approach to the management of world affairs. (Michael Klare, Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Affairs, Hampshire College)

Pirages and DeGeest recognize that globalization is driven by a multiplicity of co-evolving processes, that this has been going on for thousands of years, and that the processes involved appear to have undergone an evolutionary shift in recent times. This book will help to get these important points across to a wide audience. (William R. Thompson, Indiana University)

In Ecological Security authors Pirages and DeGeest embrace and integrate environmental, demographic, and technological dynamics into their analysis of the paths from international to global relations to great advantage. Building on Pirages's decades-long contributions in this tradition, they cast aside the more typical approach to compartmentalize and therefore marginalize these supposedly background variables of international politics. (Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 084769500X
• ISBN 13: 9780847695003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 296