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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Jessica F. Green & Thomas N. Hale, Duck of Minerva

    Why IR Needs the Environment and the Environment Needs IR

    April 13, 2017 By Wilson Center Staff

    The original version of this article, by Jessica F. Green and Thomas N. Hale, appeared on Duck of Minerva.

    The state of the global environment is terrible – and deteriorating. The globalization of industrial production and the consumptive habits of 7 billion people have created the Anthropocene, a geologic age in which the actions of humans are the primary determinant of the Earth’s natural systems. This shift creates a profound new form of environmental interdependence, of which climate change is only the most salient example. Other “planetary boundaries” include biodiversity; the nitrogen cycle on which plant life and agriculture depend, fresh water; and the world’s oceans and forests. Human activity is putting all of these systems into a state of crisis. Each of them is essential for economic production and human welfare. One does not have to be a political scientist to infer that the implications for politics are profound, even catastrophic.

    What do international relations scholars have to say about these looming political and economic crises? Not much.

    In a new study published in PS: Political Science & Politics, we use Teaching and Research in International Policy (TRIP) data to identify and understand what we describe as the “marginalization” of environmental politics in international relations. The results shocked us.

    Though IR scholars in the United States see climate change, along with conflict in the Middle East, to be the greatest global threat in the years to come, just seven percent of them describe their primary or even secondary research field as environmental politics. More damning, fewer than two percent of the articles published in the top disciplinary journals (defined by impact factor) are on environmental subjects.

    Continue reading on Duck of Minerva.

    Sources: Duck of Minerva, PS: Political Science & Politics.

    Photo Credit: Damage in Tacloban City, the Philippines, after Typhoon Haiyan, November 2013, courtesy of Henry Donati/UK Department for International Development.

    Topics: biodiversity, climate change, climate engineering, conflict, economics, education, environment, environmental security, food security, foreign policy, gender, human rights, natural resources, oceans, security, water
    • GEOFF DABELKO

      Same comment I put on the original – In talking with colleagues who regularly contribute in this IR/environment space, I think there is plenty of work getting done but published in other outlets. The traditional IR journals are traditional in terms of topical focus and methods and have proven (or their reviewers at least) to be uninterested. JPR, as you flag, is a notable exception especially vis a vis questions of environment, climate, conflict, and peace. Long-time editor Nils Petter Gleditch and new editor Henrik Urdal themselves have made contributions in this space as well as many contributions outside it. International Security was a place IR/environment scholars turned in the 1990s but less so today.

      Scholars in this space are acting rationally in ways that go beyond impact factor and journal reputation narrowly defined within the discipline. We are interested in having people read, comment, cite, and engage with the work. Therefore we look to outlets where the (wider) community focuses such as Global Environmental Politics and Global Environmental Change or even farther afield from IR, journals like Climatic Change where there is a willingness to do special issues on for example climate change, conflict, and security. On occasion, the pinnacle placement is Nature or Science, top journals for many fields by any measure.

      The pool of scholars engaging on IR/environment topics also comes from a wider set of disciplines. These topics commonly have scholars engaging from geography, anthropology, sociology, migration studies, development studies, political ecology, environmental studies where the common thread is more plural interdisciplinary and methodological approaches. They aren’t often focused on IR theory narrowly constructed, but they are contributing to robust and active debates that should be part of the IR/environment discussion.

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