In defence of ecological security

There’s always a sense of relief as an author when written work years in the making has been read by anyone. This extends to something closer to joy when colleagues whose work you respect and have drawn on engage seriously with that work, and I am so grateful to contributors to this forum for doing just that. I almost certainly won’t do justice to the many important points they raise in the below response.

I’ve organized my response to their analysis of Ecological Security along the line of what I see to be key themes of engagement and points necessitating some degree of clarification and response. These concern clarification of the aims of the book, a discussion of the important role of agency, and the application of the themes of the book to particular empirical contexts.

The Aims of Ecological Security

Clarifying the aims of this book is important given the somewhat distinct position it occupies in its research field, but also in more direct response to the concerns raised by Tor Benjaminsen in his assessment of Ecological Security.

This book was written in the context of increasing recognition that climate change constitutes a security issue. This is evident in academic work as well as national security strategy documents and even UN Security Council deliberations. But while momentum has built around the idea that climate change is a security issue, this recognition belies significant and consequential differences over perceptions of the threat itself and whose security is threatened, differences that encourage alternative sets of responses: from military preparedness to a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, for example. It is therefore important to ask whether some approaches or ‘discourses’ of climate security are more defensible than others in terms of their ethical first principles and the set of practices they encourage in response.

Ultimately Ecological Security builds a case, necessitated by the climate emergency and the context of the Anthropocene, for orienting our concerns towards the resilience of ecosystems themselves. Such an approach would encourage urgent preventative action in response to the climate crisis (principally but not exclusively mitigation), would define responsibility for addressing climate implications in terms of capacity and would focus on the rights and needs of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change across space (populations in the developing world), time (future generations) and species (other living beings). This approach stands in contrast to a conceptualization of climate security that encourages us to consider how existing political institutions might be insulated from the effects of climate change. At its heart, then, this book is a normative intervention into debates about how the relationship between climate change and security should be viewed and approached. And it is one that attempts to tackle difficult questions over what ecological security might look like in practice, and what possibilities can be identified for its invocation and even embrace.

Two key points are worth drawing out from this clarification of goals in response to Tor Benjaminsen’s concerns about Ecological Security. The first is in response to the suggestion that the book might have benefited from engaging more directly with debates about climate justice. Here, it is worth reaffirming that the book is driven by normative concerns and consistently engages questions about ethics, fairness and justice. At its heart, the book itself constitutes an exploration and application of key ethical concerns about attributing responsibility for action (linked to capacity), coming to terms with differential vulnerability and prioritizing different sets of needs in response to the climate crisis. It is a book defending a particular account of justice in the face of the climate emergency, one that draws on ‘insights from ecological pluralism, feminism and critical political ecology’ (p. 109) to build a case for an ethics that extends beyond existing human populations and institutions. This concern is evident in articulations of the goals of the book, in the sources drawn upon and at key points in the book constitutes the central focus of analysis. This is particularly the case in chapter 3, which includes a section titled ‘The Ethical Foundations of Ecological Security’ (pp. 101–9) and chapter 4, which includes an extended discussion of equity and distributive justice debates regarding responsibility for addressing climate change (pp. 145–50).

Second, Benjaminsen suggests that the book gives insufficient attention to the question of what ecological security might look like in practice. There are two responses to this, the latter directly linked to the goals of the book. The first response is to note that the bulk of chapter 4 (pp. 125–145) focuses directly on the question of ‘what the pursuit of ecological security might look like in practice’ (p. 123), while the subsequent chapter outlines existing principles, institutions and practices consistent with the discourse. Chapter 4, for example, includes an extended discussion of the potential role of (different forms of) mitigation, adaptation and even geoengineering in advancing ecological security, while also discussing how they might be prioritized and how the dangers of the harmful or inequitable pursuit of particular practices might be ameliorated.

The second point follows from this, and as noted speaks to the aims of the book itself. While taking up the challenge of outlining practices that could feasibly be consistent with advancing ecological security, the aim of the book was not to develop an account that settles (inevitable) practical dilemmas about mediating between different sets of concerns or interests. Neither was it to provide a uniform toolkit for policy makers and practitioners to deploy regardless of the specific social, political, economic, cultural and ecological context they encounter. At this level, the suggestion in Benjaminsen’s analysis that dilemmas will arise in responding to climate change that cannot immediately be resolved through the abstract embrace of ‘ecological security’ is not only one I would accept, it’s one I explicitly acknowledged in the book. This is noted in Dhanasree Jayaram’s intervention in this forum, and is illustrated in my discussion of dilemmas associated with considering the prioritization of future or present generations (p. 115), accounting for responsibility for addressing climate change (p. 129) and whether to engage current institutional arrangements or develop new ones (p. 189), for example.

The failure to develop a policy toolkit or provide a definitive account of managing profound dilemmas in response to climate change would certainly be problematic if that was the aim of the book or the function of ecological security conceived here. But as I argued, and as quoted by Jayaram in her comments in this forum, ecological security is best viewed as ‘a form of sensibility or orientation rather than as a policy program or definitive set of guidelines’ (p. 97). Further, as the extended discussion of the imperative of humility, reflexivity and dialogue in the book (pp. 137–145) sought to make clear, we should actually be wary of overarching accounts that promise a definitive set of tools and practices, abstracted from the local and specific contexts in which these should be considered and applied. Approaching ecological security with a commitment to humility, reflexivity and dialogue in mind should help ensure that practices carried out with the aim of advancing ecological security are fit for purpose and avoid inflicting new harms or injustices.

This clarification of the goals of Ecological Security is important not only in indicating to readers what the book is about but also in specific response to the points raised by Tor Benjaminsen that suggest either that my goals were different or they should have been. Benjaminsen’s own work, much of it cited in his contribution, sets itself different sets of goals to mine in drilling down to provide detailed empirical examinations of the connection between climate change and security in the context of conflict. This is important work. But it’s not the only form of research in this area that is important or worthy. Ecological Security is trying to do something rather different. Indeed the book begins from the premise that in the context of the Anthropocene and the climate emergency, we need to think outside the box, to push ourselves to imagine alternatives and to think critically about how to advance and realise effective and morally defensible approaches to the (increasingly recognised) relationship between climate change and security.

Agents of ecological security

One of the core themes of interventions in this forum is the question of agency: who are appropriate agents of ecological security, how much responsibility do they have for advancing ecological security, how do we make sense of their capacity to respond and on what basis are these claims being made? These are clearly crucial questions, and while the book devotes attention to identifying agents of ecological security and conceptualizing their differentiated responsibilities, I would concede that key questions remain in this context, questions raised in different ways in the interventions of Dahlia Simangan, Elana Wilson Rowe and Dhanasree Jayaram.

My account of agency in ecological security ultimately suggests that agents can be found at multiple levels, from individuals and private corporations to nation-states and inter-governmental organizations. In different ways, all these actors are capable of engaging in practices that create or minimise harm, with responsibility ‘differentiated on the basis of capacity to consciously and meaningfully contribute to the advancement of ecosystem resilience and, in particular, the minimization of harm for the most vulnerable’ (p. 124). Drawing on principles of distributive justice, it is the capacity to consciously create or ameliorate harm that determines degrees of responsibility for advancing ecological security. The focus on conscious action responds to the reality that while a tree’s existence might further ecological security through its role as a carbon sink, for example, it does not have a responsibility to fulfil this function.

Interventions in this forum challenge this account of agency in a range of ways. Dahlia Simangan, for example, makes an alternative case for attributing responsibility based on historical and cumulative contribution to climate change rather than capacity. In this context, there is a striking similarity between those states that would be held primarily responsible in our respective accounts – developed rather than developing states – but for different reasons. Simangan’s case affirms principles closer to retributive justice, pointing to the central role of colonialism in driving both climate change and economic inequality, the latter rendering developing states less economically capable of insulating themselves from the effects of climate change. Her account also makes a case for distinguishing between primary and formative agents: those who shape principles and those who implement them, respectively. This approach, drawing on the work of Dryzek and Pickering (2019), does indeed provide more nuance to the question of how agency might be conceived than the broad brushstrokes developed in Ecological Security. And her argument in this context is a powerful reminder of the importance of recognising colonial legacies and the capacity – not simply vulnerability – of peoples of the developing world in responding to the climate emergency.

Colonial legacies and the agential capacity of vulnerable people are prominent too in Dhanasree Jayaram’s important response to Ecological Security in this forum. Her intervention, drawing on post-colonial thought, endorses the book’s focus on the most vulnerable and the recognition of structural inequality, while pointing to the limits of ascribing too much faith in the capacity of international institutions whose legitimacy is questioned by many in the Global South. She also reminds us, like Simangan, that effective strategies of adaptation and resilience-building can be found in developing countries and impoverished communities, a point challenging simplistic accounts of either capacity or vulnerability. While space prevented a detailed examination of forms of agency exercised in these contexts in the book, a topic that received more attention in my earlier work (e.g. McDonald, 2012), I nonetheless find in this account support for the book’s emphasis on the importance of sustained local community engagement in any form of action consistent with the realization of ecological security. And in identifying scholars of the Global South whose work speaks to core elements of the project she reminds us all of the importance of considering which set of literatures and voices are engaged, and the politics of this engagement.

Finally, Elana Wilson Rowe’s examination of the applicability of ecological security to the context of Arctic governance also raises important questions about agency, in particular the attempt in the book to endorse both working with existing institutional arrangements while recognising the potential need to develop new institutions. Her suggestion that ‘pursuing ecological security will require coming to grips with the existing consequences of the ecosystemic politics already at play around large ecosystems across the globe’ is well taken, and will be crucial when the ambitions of advancing ecological security meet substantive institutional arrangements in the real world. If we reach that point! In the meantime her argument for working with the world we have while building futures consistent with the principles of ecological security is once again a sentiment I find consistent with the thrust of the book’s account of progress and endpoint, discussed at length in chapter 5.

Future applications

A final point here, drawn out in various contributions to this forum, concerns the possibility of applying ecological security to particular empirical contexts, at different scales. In different ways, contributors to this forum suggest the possibility of applying elements of the framework to make sense of prospects for, and dynamics of, ecological security in particular settings.

For Elana Wilson Rowe, whose important work examines the multilateral governance of the Arctic ‘meta-ecosystem’ (see, for example, Wilson Rowe, 2021), there is a case for ‘investigating and comparing different power political practices and effects implicated in cross-border cooperation around ecosystems’. This is clearly an important future project, one with potential implications for conceiving and approaching global political dynamics and the constitution of the global order more broadly. Her intervention asks what the pursuit of ecological security might look like at the level of a ‘meta-ecosystem’, including where great power politics are implicated in contemporary processes of governance. This is indeed a promising avenue of future research.

While less directly making a case for future research, Dhanasree Jayaram’s intervention ultimately suggests the benefit of exploring what ecological security might look like in the context of the Global South generally, and even particular community or sub-national engagement with the intersection between climate change and security more specifically. Once again this is a welcome suggestion, encouraging critical reflection on the extent to which ecological security might resonate in the Global South and drilling down to examine how broad principles of agency, responsibility, means, contestation and negotiation play out in more specific contexts. That would be a particularly appropriate and welcome next step for research in ecological security: examining what it looks like when abstract ideas and principles meets substantive political struggle.

Both suggestions for future research return us to the original point of the aims of the book itself. It was written less as a traditional application of a conceptual framework to an empirical context, and more as an exploration of the central contours of a particular discourse: its ethical foundations, its key constituent parts and prospects for its articulation and embrace. In this sense the next logical step for future research is precisely to take these ideas and apply them to more specific empirical contexts, to examine how they look when the rubber hits the road.

Conclusion

In the space available to me, I am acutely aware that I haven’t done justice to the rich interventions the contributors to this forum have made, and the concerns they raise probably scratch the surface of the range of concerns and even objections to elements of the book. In work published subsequently, I have elaborated on elements of these points, for example, in a recent exploration on the role (and dangers) of geoengineering as a means of advancing ecological security (McDonald, 2022). Other points provide fertile ground for future research and conversation. My sincere hope with this book is that it helps contribute to dialogue about how to view and approach the relationship between climate change and security, not that it is seen as an attempt to provide a definitive or final word on this relationship.

When presenting this book in a ‘virtual’ book tour in the latter stages of 2021, I consistently told audiences that I felt this book made me a very large target. In 2013 (McDonald, 2013), I published an article charting alternative accounts or discourses of climate and security, and that typology constituted an analytical exploration of alternative ways of thinking about and approaching the climate change-security relationship. One of the reviewers then noted that I seemed to prefer one of the discourses I identified over others: the ecological security discourse. This reviewer suggested that there was a case to outline why this was morally preferable, explore in more detail what this approach would mean in practice and explore whether it had any potential for embrace or institutionalization. I argued such a project was beyond the scope of a short article, and thankfully the editors of Political Geography agreed. But it planted a seed that saw years of research and writing, culminating in this book.

There’s always a danger inherent in shifting from an analytical to a normative project, making a case for the ‘good’. It’s much easier to limit ourselves to testable hypotheses that can be borne out through sustained empirical analysis and a discrete methodology, for example. That can be important work. But it’s not the work this book is trying to do. A colleague once described it as something closer to a manifesto. While I’m not wholly comfortable with that term, it’s hard to challenge the idea that it’s a book that makes a case for something. And rather than see attempts to interrogate the foundations of claims made here or how they might play out in practice as pointing to inherent limits of these claims, I hope instead that this suggests a book that encourages and enables thought and conversation about how we might conceive and approach the relationship between climate change and security, and even between humanity and the natural world. In the context of a climate emergency, this is an important conversation. And for their part in that conversation, I am grateful to Paul Beaumont and all the contributors to this forum.