The Environment: “Well, the sun is going to explode anyway”

This week we looked at the environment and the different ways states and activists NGOs have tried to address what is arguably the most transnational issue on the course.

Yet “the Environment” is always that chapter at the back of the textbook the Prof may or may not get to in week 14 of any standard IR course. It’s the “oh yeah, this” or the quintessential case study – not normally a topic or a subject or IR theory in and of itself.

And yet, there are indications that show this may no longer be the case. For example, the recent Worldwide Threat Assessment released bythe Director of National Intelligence is, quite frankly, full of the environment. For example:

Destruction can be invisible, latent, and progressive. We now monitor shifts in human geography, climate, disease, and competition for natural resources because they fuel tensions and conflicts. Local events that might seem irrelevant  are more likely to affect US national security in accelerated time frames.
 

And

Risks to freshwater supplies—due to shortages, poor quality, floods, and climate change—are growing. These forces will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, potentially undermining global food markets and hobbling economic growth. As a result of demographic  and economic development pressures, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia face particular difficulty coping with water problems.

In fact there is a whole section on “Climate Change and Demographics”:

Food security has been aggravated partly because the world’s land masses are being affected by weather conditions outside of historical norms, including more frequent and extreme floods, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, coastal high water, and heat waves. Rising temperature, for example, although enhanced in the Arctic, is not solely a high-latitude phenomenon. Recent scientific work shows that  temperature anomalies during growing seasons and persistent droughts have hampered agricultural productivity and extended wildfire seasons. Persistent droughts during the past decade have also diminished flows in the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Niger, Amazon, and Mekong river basins.

Congress may not be into climate change, but it seems clear the US national security community is. 

Nothing quite like being able to shovel your air.

So how to regulate? I put forward the question of what was the best way to get China to do something about climate change and burning carbon. Students seemed to be torn over how to do it. Some suggested more rules in trade regulations – but the WTO is not so keen on that (see: Sea Turtles). Others thought it would be best to frame the issue (<-framing! Remember week 5?!) as in China’s own interest? NGOs and states could and should emphasize the toll that poor air quality can have on a nation’s health. Or the impact of climate change on farming and flooding, etc.  But in the end, I’m not sure there was a preferred method as to how this could really happen.

There was a mix of different attitudes towards the environment, with one student implying that it wasn’t necessarily worth worrying about, given that “the sun is going to explode anyway”. Another suggested that given a choice between $1000 off tuition for the deaths of 500 baby seals in a woodchipper, that most students would take the former (a vote on the matter saw that the seals would be spared, 5/9).

However, we had some passionate environmentalists in the class and an interesting discussion as to whether Canada really had any moral clout to discuss climate change while it is doing everything it can to developthe Oil Sands in Alberta. (Think of us the next Saudi Arabia, only with more flannel).

Week 7: “Terrorism is like the Harlem Shake. It was over two weeks ago”.

This week I started the class by asking students, in groups of threes, to ranks the most serious threats to Canada. What I received in response surprised me. Among the responses, all three highlighted threats to the economy and the environment and, to a certain extent, energy. All also highlighted clandestine or illegal migration in some way as well as cyber-security. None, however listed terrorism. Instead, one of my students said the above quote that is the title of this entry.

A couple of thoughts on this.

1) This is interesting, because it is quite clear that the Canadian government believes (or says it believes) thatterrorism is a priority threat to Canada.  So either it is doing it’s job very well, or not very well at all.

I mean, teaching this course five years ago, I would have expected terrorism to be on the top of everyone’s list. Global events may have moved on, but I at least expected a terrorism shout-out from at least ONE of the groups. (To be fair, there are only 10 in the class). Instead, the threat was seen as overblown and not really affecting Canada. Terrorism, apparently, is something that happens elsewhere.

2) I mentioned to my students that they had taken a very “wide” view of security rather than more narrow, traditional security issues (ie: national defence, protection of sovereignty). When I asked them whether or not it was wrong to “securitize” things like the environment, or the economy, no one really seemed to think it was that bad of a proposition. (Though givern the state of the F35 issue here in Canada, I’m not sure I’d want the Department of National Defence running the economy.)

3) That being said, when I asked them what they meant by suggesting that protecting the environment/climate change are important security issues, they pointed to the melting ice up north, and how an ice-free North West Passage has important security/sovereignty implications for Canada. When I asked about the economy and energy issues, they pointed to similar concerns about the Alberta oil sands. Cyber issues were related to reports that other governments have hacked into Canadian government computer systems or other private sector institutions. In other words, these “wide” security issues were linked to what might be considered more narrow ones.

4) No student believed that Canada could solve its security issues alone - some international coordination was required. When I asked how, views differed. We considered International organizations, networks, etc. There did not seem to be a single way of dealing with these issues as a whole. 

5) Finally, I showed my students a clip from the new James Bond movie, Skyfall (posted above). SPOILER ALERT: In it M is testifying to an inquiry after MI6 has ‘royally’ screwed up (pardon the pun) on several occasions.  She argues that states no longer know who their enemies are; that they are fighting against and in shadows.

Personally, I reject this view. I think states know who their enemies are, where they come from and what they are doing. For whatever faults our bureaucracies may have, they are clever. A bolt out of the blue is, at least in the West, thankfully rare.

But my students largely were on Team M. For example, one pointed out, the armed forces of a state were now far more likely to be facing a teenager or child soldier with an AK-47 rather than an armed soldier of another state.  Threats, in this view are more fluid and difficult to identify.

What, I wonder does this mean for combating threats in the future? 

Week 6 : Economy… I mean, BRAAAAIIIIINNNNSSSSS

Back from March Break and at the half-way point of the course. We spoke a lot about the financial system and financial reform and about various institutions that seek to regulate the global economy and whether or not they had worked in the face of looming economic meltdown.

On one hand we had relatively pessimistic views which suggested that our attempts at global governance had failed. If international organizations, institutions and networks post-1945 had been aimed at preventing the mistakes of the inter-war era, scholars such as Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini suggest that the international system has failed and no one wants to bear the cost of leadership in the way the US has in the past. DanDrezner, however, challenges this relatively pessimistic view. He argues takes a more optimistic stance, suggesting that really, post-2008, the global system actually preformed relatively well.

This is interesting – and there has been a lot written in recent weeks on this issue. A good summary (and critique) is found atthe Duck of Minerva. Just how good is our liberal inernational order? And to what extent should we be reasonable about what we expect from it?

Then, to be honest, we ended up watching this for the rest of the class. Never let it be said that I do not exemplify the pinnacle teaching excellence.

Weeks 4 and 5: What Works When Networks Work?

The last two weeks we have continued with looking at the institutions of global governance. In particular we looked at Anne Marie Slaughter’s idea of networks and Keck and Sikkink’s Transnational Advocacy Networks. Although they differ in their interpretation and understanding of networks in global governance, all sides agree that there are many advantages to them such as their flexibility, the fact that they can adapt quickly and draw upon the resources and experience of other actors.

A couple of interesting themes emerged from these discussions. Some in the class seemed to be more open to being less state-centric than perhaps what I felt they were before. Perhaps this is due to the fact that both theories are challenging to the state but also accommodating to it. Slaughter’s work is quite clearly tied to the state, even if it is a disaggregated version of it. And transnational advocacy networks, although based on advocacy that is often in opposition to the state, can (as the case of the Ottawa Landmine Treaty shows) work very well with states. And in fact, the importance of international networks vis-à-vis states was a popular topic for discussion.

However, students seemed less interested in questions about authority and legitimacy than I would have thought. What makes networks of bureaucrats particularly democratic? Or what are the implications of civil society dominating international discourses? Perhaps, given the prior discussion in Barnett and Finnemore’s work on the possible dangers of international organizations enlarging their mandates and increasingly encroaching in on our everyday lives, there wasn’t much new to discuss. To me, however, this is one of the most disconcerting elements of contemporary global governance.

This week is the midterm – followed by reading week. Now that we have looked at the nature of globalization, sovereignty and forms of global governance, we will be applying this knowledge to more policy-focused areas, such as economics, security, the environment and social care. 

Links to Weeks 4 and 5 Power Point Presentations: (NOW WITH LESS BROKEN-Y LINK!) http://ge.tt/9RB49DY?c

Week 3: Can International Organizations "Break Your Balls?": A Constructivist View

Kim Jong Il vs. Hans Blix - watch more funny videos

This week we looked at Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore’s “Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics”. The key message coming from this book is that international organizations (IOs) are not the handmaidens of states (as often portrayed in Realist literature). Instead, IOs have agency – they can do things and effect change.  They have compulsory power (they control material and normative resources that can influence others), institutional power (they can guide behavior in indirect ways ie: agenda setting) and productive power (they can define the problems which need to be solved, and propose solutions.)

This is not just a happy story, however. Barnett and Finnemore argue that IOs are bureaucracies, and subject to bureaucratic politics. For better or worse, they tend to expand into new areas. And because they have traditionally been created by liberal states, they tend to be liberal in nature. Barnett and Finnemore also believe that these features of IOs will not be going away anytime soon, and they may be more and more involved in our every day lives.  But IOs have also made mistakes, and are not necessarily democratic, nor democratically accountable. This may pose problems in the future.

I thought the class might be interested in these last points – that IOs are liberal in character and are becoming more and more involved in our daily lives. But the students weren’t biting. Instead, we seemed caught on the issue as to whether IOs actually matter, and whether they can make a difference. This is good, but it seems like we might be caught up in a very narrow view of what “making a difference” actually is and means. Is it more important that states sign a treaty? Or if they change their behavior because of IO pressure/action or norms generated by IOs? Can IOs, in fact, "break your balls"?

You can read the International Organizations version of the article here. 

Week 3 Power Point: http://ge.tt/2mvfdZW/v/0?c