Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization

By Dennis Pirages and Theresa Manley Degeest

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847695018
• ISBN13: 9780847695010
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.9" x 0.5" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Ecological Security: Global Priority for Plantary Management

Ecological Security implies the safeguarding and management of Natural Planetary Resources, and well as the Atmospheric, Terrestrial, and Oceanic Commons. As one example, the authors cite Maintenance of an Adequate Food Supply as a "Critical Element" to the security of Human Societies. They highlight the cultivation of grain, and the domestication of animals as a an event which had a profound impact on human well-being. Whereas Hunter-Gatherer Societies required from 5-15 square kilometers to feed each individual, with the introduction of grains and animal farming, a single square kilometer devoted to farming could support anywhere from 25 to perhaps 1000 people. The Authors present an overview of the present major challenges to the Global Environment, with special emphasis on Population Control, Pandemics such as AIDS and SARS, and major problems caused by Atmospheric Pollution, Loss of Topsoil and Desertification,lack of clean water, and pollution of fresh and sea water as major Ecological Challenges for the 21st Century. From their perspective, the 21st Century promises to be one of Challenges to Ecological Secutiry, with the most negative trends being linked to overpopulation. famine, and especially to the economic disparity between the rich and poor counties of the World. Authors Pirages and DeGeest point out that we are now in a position of being responsible for a set of "linked technological and environmental challenges to the evolutionary processes which provide the underpinnings to ecological security." Citing the power of Multinational Corporations...with over 60,000 Multinationals and 450,000 subsidiaries, a new Paradigm Shift needs to take place, so we can move from the present situation of National and Corporate Dominance, into a more wholistic Global Governance, which decreases the gap between rich and poor nations. They emphasize the fact that a major focus on developing new sustainable clean-energy technologies will eliminate Western dependence on Middle-East Oil, thus removing the basis for Fundamentilist Islamic Terrorist Attacks on America and its allies. On a positive note they also point out that the shift to globalizing commerce and trade could "make possible the wholesale reseeding of Earth's Biosphere with a laboratory-conceived Second Genesis, an artifically produced bioindustrial Nature designed to replace Nature's own evolutionary scheme." Elliott Maynard, Ph.D., President, Arcos Cielos Research Center.