Responsibility and agency in securitizing climate change in the Anthropocene

Based on the premise that security discourses are constructed along political and ethical contestations, Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security traces the contours of ecological security—a normatively defensible and politically plausible approach to climate change. Matt McDonald (2021) eloquently weaves together security, ecology, and ethics in defining ecological security’s commitment to the resilience of ecosystems and the rights and needs of vulnerable beings, including future generations and nonhuman nature. At a glance, a security discourse that includes all living beings, at present and in the future, is nothing more than a utopic vision given the state-centric and anthropocentric institutions, norms, and practices dominating the discussions on climate security. However, the book carefully laid the sociological groundwork on how these discourses are contested and constructed, and therefore can be challenged and changed by possibilities that are not just critical, but also emancipatory. Security is constructed through negotiation and contestation; it is also political because it rests on who drives the negotiation and who gives meaning to contestation, and it draws on ethical conceptions and commitments. Such grounding convinces the readers that not only is ecological security possible, it is also desirable and ethical given growing uncertainties and cascading risks due to climate change. It is this uncertainty about the future that makes McDonald’s proposal to integrate dialogue, reflexivity, and humility into ecological security compelling in the context of the Anthropocene.

McDonald aptly situates the relevance of ecological security in the Anthropocene, the proposed geological unit marking humanity’s impact on the Earth system. The Anthropocene challenges the foundations of the current international order duly preserved by state-centric priorities, militarized forms of security, and a consumption-driven economy (Simangan, 2022). These foundations appear incompatible with the measures required to overcome environmental challenges that are global in nature and beyond the limits of our anthropocentric sense of agency, temporality, and spatiality (Simangan, 2022). For McDonald, the dominant national, international, and human security discourses fall short of broadening these senses. National security responds to symptoms rather than causes of climate change. International security, on the other hand, focuses on the preservation of the status quo and remains myopic to the possibilities of transformation. And despite being cognizant of the varied vulnerabilities to the impact of climate change, human security merely instrumentalizes the environment, reinforcing human-nature dualism—a worldview that led to the Anthropocene. Meanwhile, ecological security makes a case for a different climate security discourse appropriate in this new geological epoch—one that secures the entire ecosystem for the benefit of all living beings.

McDonald’s use of the Anthropocene as a backdrop is also a reminder that climate change is just one of the manifestations of the planetary impact of human activities—biodiversity loss, pollution, and ocean acidification also need attention. Debates surrounding the Anthropocene, specifically critiques of the “good Anthropocene,” are also a reminder that human agency and human exceptionalism could be harmful. Despite (or perhaps because of) the homogenizing undertones of the Anthropocene, several scholars have renewed the value of “non-Western” ontologies and human-nature entanglements found in many indigenous traditions (e.g., Inoue, 2018; Inoue and Moreira, 2017). The geological reality and political critiques of the Anthropocene substantiate ecological security’s commitment to other living beings. Security, so far, has been anthropocentric, despite the complex interconnectedness of human societies to other species.

The Anthropocene is also a reminder of injustices and inequalities in human history, and McDonald recognizes how these undermine climate change mitigation and adaptation. Occasionally, the book directs our attention to the fact that societies/states are not equally culpable for climate change. For example, the colonization of the Americas is one of the proposed starting dates of the Anthropocene (Lewis and Maslin, 2018), and imperial voyages led to the human-driven exchange of species and pathogens between continents. A little over a hundred years after Columbus set foot in what is now the Bahamas, global atmospheric CO₂ levels dropped dramatically. This anomaly (also called the Orbis spike in 1610) happened when 50 million people, mostly farmers, died of smallpox that was brought by the colonizers, leaving untended farms where trees flourished again, sucking back CO₂ from the atmosphere (Lewis and Maslin, 2018). This geopolitical link between the history of European colonialism and its geological impact makes Jairus Grove’s (2019) alternative term to the Anthropocene more accurate—the Eurocene.

The Eurocene also considers the historical emissions from the Industrial Revolution, another proposed marker of the Anthropocene’s beginning. According to Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer (2000), the popularizers of the term Anthropocene, it was the invention of the steam engine in 1784 that paved the way for increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to human activities. The atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, methane, and other GHGs have been increasing since then, with 2021 recording the highest level of global CO₂ emissions in history. The subsequent technological advancements in transportation, communication, and production after World War II, alongside the explosion of human population, globalized economies and the flow of information. This is the period of the Great Acceleration, the most recent proposed starting date of the Anthropocene (Steffen et al., 2015). This growth in human activities is driven by capital accumulation and commodification of nature, encapsulated in another alternative term, the Capitalocene (Moore, 2016).

Regardless of when it started, whether it goes all the way back to our mastery of fire and the discovery of agriculture, or economic globalization, it is clear that the Anthropocene is not caused by all of humanity. While some societies and countries benefitted much earlier from rapid industrialization, the colonized and the marginalized were left behind to deal with the resulting injustice, slow development, and environmental degradation. Humanity is not homogenous—the Anthropos that created the Anthropocene is not the same Anthropos at the frontlines of global crises in the Anthropocene. There is stark inequality among countries with regard to the causes, impacts, and responses to climate change. This inequality was on full display during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26). Travel and accommodation costs, coupled with visa and vaccine requirements, prevented inclusive participation, especially from the Global South (Taylor, 2021; Worland, 2021). And there is so much more to be done in including the rights and needs of young people and children in these negotiations other than a mention in written documents (Save the Children, 2021). While the rich, white, capitalist men conferred in Glasgow in 2021, there was a drought-induced famine sweeping the island of Madagascar. Climate change contributed to the drought, while poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and poor governance exacerbated food insecurity (Pannett, 2021; UN, 2021). Amidst these compounding issues, it must be noted that Madagascar is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, despite recording only 0.2 metric tons of CO₂ emissions per capita in 2019. To put that into perspective, in the same year, an average US American emitted almost the same amount in just one week (World Bank, 2020). These inequalities are becoming more pronounced in light of climate change and other manifestations of the Anthropocene, such as the ongoing pandemic.

I wrote elsewhere that the Covid-19 pandemic is the Anthropocene materialized (Simangan, 2021a). The set of responses to the pandemic is a testament to the wide socio-economic gaps created by industrialization and capital accumulation. While the health-insured rich were self-isolating in their mansions, the poor had to break restrictions just to eat and access medical care. Climate change, like this pandemic and the other major catastrophes in the Anthropocene, will hit the poorest and the most vulnerable the earliest and the hardest. The disproportionate impact of climate change, as articulated in McDonald’s book, is heightened in the Anthropocene, further validating ecological security’s commitment to vulnerable beings.

The Anthropocene also helps extend our ability to grasp futurities and geological history beyond the human scale by highlighting how human agency has an impact well beyond our perceived temporalities and spatialities. As McDonald argued in his book, this connection with the Anthropocene supports the need for a climate security discourse that safeguards future generations. While some skeptics may want to see a prioritization of the immediate needs of the present generation, which the book does not discount, the resilience of ecosystems will have a more direct effect on those who will inherit them. Their vulnerability rests on the fact that they are not yet here to influence decision-making priorities and environmental policies, and yet they will be inheriting the outcomes (both good and bad) of such decisions and policies. With vulnerable beings as the referent object of ecological security, and threats to ecosystem resilience as the security issues, extending our response to the rights and needs of future generations makes perfect sense.

But who does the responding? According to McDonald, the agents of ecological security are mainly the responsible and capable. “In short, responsibility is approached here principally in terms of capacity, defined in terms of both the ability to (knowingly) contribute to climate harms and the ability to contribute to the amelioration of climate change and its effects” (McDonald, 2021: 146). The qualifier “knowingly” suggests that responsibility rests on those with awareness of the ecological harms of their actions. However, colonization was intentional, even though its ecological impact was not known back then; and actions with intent have more bearing when exacting accountability. Furthermore, historical accounts exist of colonists changing the local climates in order to subjugate populations and exploit their environments (Mahony and Endfield, 2018). While the book proposes states and institutions with contemporary and historical responsibility fund adaptive measures to address climate change and its impacts, I advance this proposal by highlighting that those with higher cumulative contributions to climate change bear more responsibility.

Extending the temporality of responsibility is befitting of the Anthropocene timeline. Since 1750, Western European countries, followed by the United States, were responsible for virtually all GHG emissions from fossil fuels until 1950 when other regions started catching up in terms of economic development after World War II (Ritchie et al., 2020). At present, it is also important to factor in net trade emissions. Some economies (e.g., France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and the United States, among other top CO₂ importers) with relatively low production-based or territorial emissions have high consumption-based emissions. Data on trade-adjusted CO₂ emissions show that Western Europe is still the region with the most CO₂ emissions, even when compared with other countries that recorded an increase in emissions in the past decades (Ritchie, 2019). The argument for a higher responsibility for those with higher cumulative contributions to climate change is not just a matter of atmospheric effects and ecological awareness, but also of climate justice. In a more radical thrust, Madita Standke-Erdmann and Alina Viehoff (2020) call for a securitization, not of climate change, but of climate justice. To some extent, McDonald also invokes climate justice, specifically in his discussion on the agents of security (2021: 147–150). He characterizes responsibility according to the principles of equity and distributive justice and refers to the work of postcolonial scholars on international security and global governance. This characterization, however, is not explicit about climate change being one of the legacies of colonialism and the inequalities and injustices such a legacy perpetuates to this day (IPCC, 2022). On the other hand, it is understandable that addressing this colonial legacy in the context of climate change could undermine the political purchase of McDonald’s ecological security. But when we speak of linking geological history and human history in the Anthropocene (Chakrabarty, 2009), which is a reflection of these historical inequalities and differentiated vulnerabilities, climate action without the integration of climate justice cannot claim the side of the most vulnerable.

McDonald considers the impoverished populations, future generations, and other living beings as the most vulnerable across space, time, and species, respectively. “The most vulnerable [are] living beings disproportionately exposed to manifestations of climate change, lacking capacity to adapt to manifestations of it, and unable to meaningfully input into decisions that may create harms for them” (McDonald, 2021: 114). He problematizes the extent of the capacity of impoverished populations, future generations, and other living beings to communicate as well as our capacity to communicate back. Indeed, poorer societies and low-income countries often lack the resources to adapt to climate change impacts and the political capital to influence policies. Poverty, alongside inequity, limits adaptation, further resulting in “disproportionate exposure and impacts for most vulnerable groups” (IPCC, 2022: C.3.1). However, it must be noted that their vulnerability was caused mainly by external oppression rather than internal failings. Their resources are limited, and their political agency is silenced because of a long history of colonization and marginalization. Vulnerability does not equate to a lack of agency, and agency is not the same as responsibility (and as McDonald pointed out, there is little discussion about what agency and responsibility entail). But it could have been made more explicit in the book that the vulnerable are not entirely incapable. In fact, values and practices for protecting the resilience of ecosystems can be found in societies most vulnerable to climate risks (Boivin and Crowther, 2021; Parry et al., 2007), but they are not the most responsible for cumulative contributions to climate change. This supports the demand for climate justice.

I agree with McDonald that the state will continue to play an important role in addressing climate change. Despite criticisms that the state is the root of the practices and priorities that resulted in climate change and other ecological crises, McDonald recognizes the resources and capacity of the state to also contribute to climate action. He argues that the role of the state can be steered by international, human, and ecological security discourses. Here, we see the utility of McDonald’s comprehensive explanation of how security is contested, constructed, and therefore, changed. With an updated security framing, traditional security agents (i.e., states and IGOs), together with non-traditional security agents (i.e., private corporations, civil society, and individuals), can all work toward ecosystem resilience in a spirit of dialogue, humility, and reflexivity (McDonald, 2021).

The inclusion of the state in security discourses, including that of McDonald’s ecological security, is understandable, as it is the traditional agent within the securitization framework. However, and as McDonald also acknowledges, the state may not have the moral high ground in the context of the Anthropocene, given the ecologically harmful and oppressive practices some states have been deploying for the sake of national interests (from colonization to nuclearization). The state could pass climate legislations, but it could be the same state that had delayed such legislations for years. Additionally, even well-meaning contributions to climate action could be mired by tense geopolitics in many regions. For instance, after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022, China suspended its climate talks with the US. This geopolitical move matters because these two countries are the largest GHG emitters in the world. After all, the questions of “whose security matters, from what threats, and how it is to be protected by what agents” (McDonald, 2021: 193) make security discourses reflective of, if not malleable to, politics. Since the means of securitization, such as dialogue and deliberation, are influenced by power relations (McDonald, 2021: 139), agency is also a product of power. Climate action, whether through competition or cooperation, that rests on states alone and their national security priorities could incite a power shift, which could be peaceful or not (Simangan, 2021b; see also Fishel, 2021). The uncertainties behind this shift could be the reason why, despite the presence of immanent possibilities that were enumerated in the book (McDonald, 2021: 176–188), political and institutional change is piecemeal and has been slow to respond to the urgency of climate change.

Borrowing John Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering’s concept of formative agency in the Anthropocene, I suggest differentiating security agents not just between traditional and non-traditional actors, but also between primary and formative agents as a way of improving McDonald’s ecological security framework. Dryzek and Pickering (2019) define formative agents as those who shape principles, while primary agents are those who implement them. They regard scientists and experts and subnational governments, as well as the most vulnerable and nonhumans, as the formative agents who have the moral agency to shape norms and discourses in the Anthropocene. Meanwhile, we can also think of the primary agents as those responsible for, in contrast to those vulnerable to, climate change. In this case, the most vulnerable have the agency (or are one of the most morally capacitated agents) in ecological security.

The late Koreti Mavaega Tiumalu, who organized a youth-led network of climate activists from the Pacific Islands called the 350 Pacific, proclaimed: “We come from a people who have lived sustainably and in harmony with nature, with our environment, for centuries. So to be labeled as passive victims, or to have some of our islands be seen as the possible first climate refugees, is really not well received in the Pacific. Our key message is ‘we’re not drowning, we’re fighting’” (Butler, 2014). This is the kind of agency that must steer the conversations, not just about adaptation and resilience, but also about justice in the Anthropocene. Climate change and other global crises demand both a radical rethinking of frameworks and principles that inform discourses and also a radical reset of institutions and systems that work against the agency of the most vulnerable. For advocates of the rights and needs of the most vulnerable in times of a changing climate, McDonald’s Ecological Security helps chart the political challenges and possibilities ahead.