The foundational idea that women’s rights are integral to the politics of liberation, solidarity and justice has been mainstreamed in many international agreements and organizations.
The momentum on women’s rights should now be strongly carried forward to inform the politics of climate and security.
Moving forward, the need to mitigate and adapt to climate change means the world will be pushed to recognize and institutionalize the principle that women’s security is human security.
The challenge is urgent, the climate will not negotiate. Any efforts to address climate change will be that much poorer for the absence of women’s voices and experiences. Any efforts to address climate change will be that much richer with the power, strength and leadership that women bring as agents of change. The need for human security gives even more reason to ensure that women are not left behind.
A talk for the Multihazard Risk and Resilience Group Seminar at the Western University. MARCH 25, 2021
Canada’s response to global disasters has been characterized by a certain degree of push and pull between the domestic and the international levels, and between the provision of immediate relief and the support of long-term resilience and risk reduction. In the area of disaster risk reduction, progress at the international level since 2011 has been marked by a sustained movement away from reactive and relief-based approaches toward “disaster risk governance”. As a signatory to the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction, Canada has been a supporter of this move as well as the move to integrate disaster responses with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), blurring the boundary between “relief” and “development” activities and policies. In this talk, I will explore the meaning of ‘disaster risk governance’ as it is addressed in the Sendai and Hyogo Frameworks, and consider practical examples of how a shift toward governance might improve disaster responses by the Canadian government, and in turn, reduce loss and damage from disasters.
In the community I come from, life centres around Okanagan Lake. The Okanagan Valley is a spectacular vista of rounded hills, distant mountains, sparkling waters, and a unique ecosystem for human and non-human life to adapt and thrive.
Despite its apparent permanence, the Valley and the Lake are fragile and vulnerable ecosystems experiencing accelerating pressures from unsustainable patterns of settlement, travel, and economic development. The Valley is vulnerable to insect damage, invasive species, extinctions, drought, fire, flooding, and water contamination. Virtually all of these threats arise from human activities in one way or another.
Looking at it from a birds’ eye view, the Valley is a whole ecosystem, yet the laws that govern it, and those that determine its future, are piecemeal. As I have written before, movements to protect the Valley and the planet can build on holistic thinking using the political and social revolution in human rights. ‘Rights language’ can be used to transform the current framework of laws, policies, and decision making procedures that govern development.
The Valley is a whole ecosystem, yet the laws that govern it, and those that determine its future, are piecemeal.
The progress of human rights is one of the most vital political stories of human history. The broad recognition of rights has a natural logic of expansion and consolidation. Progress comes in waves and is often beaten back by counter-movements, nevertheless, rights language often reemerges in new clothes when violations are at their worst. Violence and abuse trigger a reaction toward conscience and care, and new rights become recognized and affirmed following the worst atrocities.
What does ‘rights language’ bring to environmental causes that other arguments may overlook? Arguments from science, expertise, economic interest and values are sometimes disembodied, ephemeral, remote. An appeal to ‘rights’ triggers foundational debates: the questions become fundamental to identity and society because many rights are enumerated and protected by constitutional law, and because Canadian society has made a point of ensuring that people know and understand what rights are.
As Canadians we also understand that rights have intrinsic value. Most agree that we would prefer to live in a society that recognizes and respects rights, rather than one that does not. While we may not all comprehend the statistical probabilities of climate models or the technicalities of a carbon tax as a policy instrument, we understand ‘rights’. They are a thing. Rights are personal.
Rights are powerful because they are inherently subversive and simultaneously affirming. Raising an issue of water as a right raises questions about the status quo. What are all of the ways that water is freshened, used, transferred, polluted, and acted upon? It prompts rethinking the economic premises of water management. Rights language also prompts us to recognize the intrinsic value of existence. In other words,the recognition of a right elevates the ethical value of a rights holder in the view of the government and society. For example, the right to exist is one of the most fundamental rights possible. A right to exist implies the logical necessity of respecting that existence by not threatening or undermining the integrity and dignity of the rightsholder.
While we may not all comprehend the statistical probabilities of climate models or the technicalities of a carbon tax as a policy instrument, we understand ‘rights’. They are a thing. Rights are personal.
Rights language is also ethical and cultural. The current imbalance between human development and natural protection, evidenced by the global scale of pollution, is at least in part a product of the tendency to view nature in purely instrumental terms. In Western cultural constructions, nature is inert, a dumping ground for human wastes, or a storehouse of potential resources ready for extraction. Nature has not even been seen as a player in the cycle, much less as a rights holder.
The degradation of nature is simultaneously and unavoidably the degradation of humans. Since nature is a closed system, wastes and depletion will circle back to impact human welfare. The Anthropocene is signalling not the supremacy of humans over nature, but rather the exact opposite: the re-embedding of humans back into nature. We are now as much a product of our own activities as we are of natural processes. The world is now fully ‘human’ in at least one sense: the fates of human and nonhuman alike are interlaced in a way not seen before in history. Human and nonhuman fates are planetary in scale.
Restoring balance means revisiting the roots of the gap between humans and nature, the original split that divided the world and made degradation possible, and even celebrated it. That split is symbolized in three ways: 1. the assumption of anthropocentric dominance, 2. the neglect of nature’s intrinsic value, and 3. the separation and distancing of humans from the ecosystems that sustain them (both physical and psychological) .
Laws and politics have tended to wipe nature out of the ethical universe by limiting legal standing to parties with property interests. In other words, the legal conversation about value, loss and damage takes place only among those who are deemed to have an interest, namely, property owners. Even the representation of the public interest is narrowly circumscribed by the necessity of showing direct property-like profits or losses, rather than a public interest in a long-term trust relationship with nature.
While present and recognized in law, the notion of a public trust has not proven to be an effective shield against destruction in the long term, primarily because it can always be trumped or replaced by a new property claim. In addition, property claims are themselves partial since they divide nature up into parcels of utility based on their value to particular property interests. Sky, land, water, and underground are all seen in terms of different types of access, use, and ownership rights.
Solutions to this problem already exist in law, but they are currently found only in isolated and disjointed legal opinions and cases, both locally and around the world. Recently the question of nature rights has risen in prominence in political discussions, partly due to the rising awareness of the planetary nature of environmental damage being experienced in the Anthropocene, and partly due to the increasing recognition of indigenous rights and the distinctly contrasting worldview of nature that such rights represent.
The Whanganui River decision in New Zealand, the rise of Buen Vivir in Ecuador, the Ganges decision and others are pushing back against the notion that nature is nothing more than property, sink, or resource. At the heart of this counter-narrative is the recognition that humans and nature are together, with common fates and interests, and that the inclusion of nature as member of the human family, worthy of respect, care and affection, is essential to human survival. This is represented by indigenous worldviews in varying ways around the world and set down in the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as well as many other international legaldeclarations and treaties. Both humans and nature have a right to exist, what is needed (even if it is a first step) is the recognition and affirmation of these new rights in politics, law, and development planning.
This is no small thing, so what are the problems? One may object to the recognition of nature as a rights-holder on various grounds. One objection is that extending rights to nature means the diminution of existing human rights. However, this is not a new argument. This argument is familiar to historians, who documented them in response to the expansion and extension of rights to slaves, women, unpropertied males, and ethnic and religious groups. In every case the historical extension of rights did not result in the reduction of existing rights protections, but instead allowed for the more fulsome exercise of existing rights. This is because the pattern and framework of rights growth reinforces and legitimizes that a universe of moral beings and rights holders exists and is deserving of respect.
Another objection is that nature rights are expensive. Indeed, it is hardly arguable that valuable social and political goals are costly. The question of how to pay for rights has rarely been a strong argument against the recognition of rights, however. Few would argue today that the cost of freeing slaves, or protecting children from abuse are not worth the price of rights enforcement. As well, the social, political and even economic benefits of rights recognition spill over into remarkable new avenues of growth and development. Protecting the right of the lake to flow, to provide recreation and fish and a rich environment has immense economic benefits that should also be taken into account when considering the balance sheet of rights recognition.
Finally, a last objection is that recognizing the rights of a lake necessarily undermines the value of other beings who may be more ‘appropriate’ or ‘deserving’ of rights due to their similarity with or affinity for humans. Why should lakes have rights that are not extended to whales, elephants, monkeys or dogs, all of whom demonstrate more ‘human-like’ characteristics such as family relationships, intelligence, and emotions and feeling? What about microbes or farm animals? What about Mars or the moon or other distant territories? Why lakes and not mountains, or deserts, or garbage piles?
These are all valid and complex issues which should be deliberated and which will likely be decided and come before the courts in the next few years. Awareness is growing about how humans and nonhumans should be governed in a truly planetary ecosystem. It’s important to keep in mind that rights recognition is about governing human action, limiting and allowing different kinds of human interaction with the nonhuman world.
Such rules governing human interactions with the nonhuman world already exist, whether they are laws against animal abuse, or rules about mountain climbing or fishing or logging or nature reserves. The issue is that these rules are currently one-dimensional, shaped disproportionately by property and the need to prove an interest in that property. The rules are insufficiently permanent and not based on inter-generational ethics, and they rely on an out of date worldview of nature, one that is amply demonstrating its failures to protect humans and nature every day.
Rights recognition is about governing human action, limiting and allowing different kinds of human interaction with the nonhuman world.
Rights for lakes will help the larger conversation about how to move beyond the exclusiveness of property, to recognize the limits of the planet and the power of nature to act on human societies. Rights for lakes will reiterate the intrinsic value of the nonhuman world. They won’t solve every problem, but not much can be started without them.
On June 8th and 9th 2018, researchers, students, community members and practitioners gathered at Okanagan College to explore ways of articulating and sharing ethical international development ideas and practices. 50 attendees from across North America joined with leaders locally at Okanagan College’s Kelowna campus for an intensive 2-day conference and dialogue on equality, inclusion, and human dignity. Scholars and practitioners interacted in engaging sessions on gender, local governance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Keynote speaker Chloe Schwenke, former Director of the Global Program on Violence, Rights, and Inclusion at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), shared her experiences advocating for a human rights framework for development in the Obama Administration. A second Keynote with Michael Simpson, Executive Director of the BC Council for International Cooperation, built on the themes of leadership and change in a ‘Talkshow’ style interview that engaged the audience in generating new avenues of inquiry.
In addition to providing a summary resource to share the highlights from the two day Conference, the purpose of these Proceedings is to contribute toward a network in which dialogue between scholarly insights and practical development work can improve the participation of people experiencing poverty, social marginalization, discrimination, and oppression both at home and abroad.
For more information and to view the Proceedings, visit the Conference webpage.
The atmosphere on Mars is composed of 96% carbon dioxide, with an average temperature of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Only 16 of the 39 total Mars missions have been successful. Mars is about as far from habitable as we can imagine any environment. Pretty inhospitable, right? So what is it about Mars that captures the imagination of the public?
As our own planet degrades, are we simply casting around for any alternative, no matter how challenging or unlikely? Afloat on a sinking lifeboat, are we (and by ‘we’ I mean the world’s 2% who have any hope of escaping) planning on being castaways for generations into the future? I think not. I think Mars has appeal for other reasons, and these date back to the era of colonialism in the late 19th century.
Colonialism was the ultimate escape from the uncomfortable truths of home, it glorified a narrative of supremacy and heroism.
From the 1870s to the 1890s European powers fought, pillaged, destroyed, and exploited the peoples and territories variously under their control around the world. Africa in particular was an object of focus, a field of colonial competition and experimentation. Although the forces at work driving colonialism were at least partially strategic, they were also cultural, gaining importance due to broad social trends that gave meaning and legitimacy to an otherwise obviously violent project. At least part of the drive to dominate was an awareness of the losses at home, the shortage of resources and the decline of life quality that had accompanied industrialism. Colonialism was the ultimate escape from the uncomfortable truths of home, it glorified a narrative of supremacy and heroism.
The natural world played an important part in this project. Colonialism was celebrated in the drawing rooms and smoking rooms of English nobility, adorned with the heads of hunting trophies, some beautiful, some made fearsome to elevate the social status of the hunter. The larger and more dangerous the prey, the more remote and unforgiving the location, the more revered was the hunter who made the shot. Check this piece by Maximilian Werner to see how this biosocial dynamic, including its gender dimension, still holds sway. The exercise of domination over nature embedded a narrative of triumph over adversity, struggle and reward, similar to the social Darwinist theories of racial superiority which were also gaining traction as more remote peoples and lands came under colonial control.
As England degraded physically and the environment became more and more polluted by coal smoke, with forests long since cut down and cities overrun with poor migrating for work in the industrial centres, a movement arose to preserve and protect the countryside and the rural way of life. Romantics painted a rosy picture of the village, with quaint gardens and carefully tended homes, and mourned the loss of Hobbiton (OK, that came later, but you catch my drift).
For the colonial mindset, nature could be only two things: it was either a garden, or a wilderness. The garden metaphor viewed the colonies as representative of the quiet English countryside, well tended and cared for, planted and grown with care using the knowledge of scientific methods to regulate the relationships between species. Ecological science, and particularly amateur collectors, made a strong impression by carefully gathering, cataloguing and classifying every new species and specimen ‘discovered’ in the remotest outposts of empire. The endless frontiers would provide valuable information from which to garner wisdom about what had gone wrong in England, and the urge to recreate the Garden of Eden (to somehow earn a ‘do-over’) was strong.
The incorrigibility of Mars is no barrier, in fact it is the fuel for a profound sense of longing and loneliness. Mars is the frontier we’ve already destroyed on Earth, the potential garden which we’ve already mismanaged.
On the other hand, the wilderness represented those areas yet to be tamed. Large areas of Africa were virtually uninhabitable due to disease, climatic hardships, wild animals, and dangerous and resentful local populations. The causes of these hardships were unknown, but not unknowable. Setbacks were common, and did incur some measure of humility and respect for the mystery of nature and the depth of the challenge of controlling what were essentially uncontrollable forces. In the Western part of North America, wilderness was much less threatening, and its imminent loss inspired a sense of strong protection, even reverence, for the ‘natural cathedral’. In Africa, the drive to protect wilderness took the form of hunting reserves where wild animals were protected and cultivated. In North America, it took the form of the creation of national parks with mountain vistas which would be destinations for leisure and health as well as hunting.
So how does the present-day vision of Mars come into this? The colonial imagination of the garden or the wilderness is still present in Western, now in many senses, global culture. Mars is the new canvas for the population to project its longings and dreams, and accuracy is still no part of the picture at all, just as it was with Africa. The incorrigibility of Mars is no barrier, in fact it is the fuel for a profound sense of longing and loneliness. Mars is the frontier we’ve already destroyed on Earth, the potential garden which we’ve already mismanaged.
In an Anthropocene epoch, when nothing on Earth is outside of human influence or touch, our own planet disappoints. As the quintessential mysterious unknown, great status and wealth is to be gained by the race to conquer Mars, regardless of whether it turns out well. Just as the drive to dominate ultimately undermined colonialism itself, so may the urge to colonize Mars destroy not only Mars, but also end up undermining efforts to protect what is left of the only home we’ve ever known. One can argue this point, and perhaps I might be too pessimistic. Might Mars end up being a wellspring of information that might be leveraged to save ourselves and our own planet? Can we learn the real lessons of the wilderness and the garden? I fear instead that we are not departing from the past but recreating it, not because poor Mars might end up being another junkyard (although it’s on the way already) but because we have yet to demonstrate the moral fortitude to be able to see ourselves in Mars.
I can only imagine how dizzying it must be to try to make sense of climate science as a non-climate scientist. My background and training doesn’t really equip me to engage in a discussion about the accuracy of climate models, the relative importance of various gas emissions in affecting degrees of heating, or the significance of sea ice extent in the summer in the Arctic. In fact, my engagement as a political scientist in these debates would be highly counterproductive to the discussion and would contribute zero to the stock of climate knowledge as it pertains to the prognosis for the earth.
The Nature of Science and the Science of Nature
One of the mistakes we often make is confusing scientific debates with political ones. This is what fed the ‘climategate’ debacle and what continues to make any whiff of scientific controversy pure oxygen for climate skeptics. However, criticisms of scientists (as opposed to science) mistake the forest for the trees. Scientists are not ‘debating’ the climate so much as they are refining the cumulative knowledge that is their scientific purview, a body of knowledge which is the culmination of centuries of practice, experimentation, rigid application of standards, and a continual cycle of testing and iteration that has stood the test of time. One might also add the contribution of the body of indigenous knowledge that arises from centuries of close experience with changing ecosystems. This knowledge has provided a proven basis for human survival and thriving through millennia of climate changes.
One of the mistakes we often make is confusing scientific debates with political ones.
These methods of knowledge production have produced our most reliable and predictable technologies, things that we use every day without questioning or even knowing anything about their scientific basis. When we check our phones for the correct time or our GPS to figure out how to get to Auntie’s house for dinner, we don’t interrogate the motivations that drive scientists to do their thing, we just make use of it. We’ve forgotten that accurate clocks and navigation systems are the products of the same efforts and methods that produce climate knowledge.
What Role for Political Science?
So, where does that leave me? Shifting the lens means looking at how people learn, where their confidence in their knowledge comes from, and assessing their claims on the basis of mutual respect for each others’ life experience and formal and informal learning.
Assessing claims over time gives better confidence in their robustness, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to truth. Knowledge is socially produced, and so helping to understand how and why social innovation happens is one way that political scientists can contribute to our understanding of climate change.
This is the purview of political science – at the core we political scientists are about improving our knowledge about how people learn, how they come to their beliefs, and how decisions result from that interaction.
What Political Science Might Say
Here’s what political scientists might conclude about the current debates over climate change:
Climate change is a complex of human and nature interactions, incorporating both ecosystem and social system changes. Ask a biologist – life has shaped the planet as much as the planet has shaped life.
Humans deploy information as a tool to resolve psychological and social problems, such as cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy.
Humans deploy information as a tool to foment problems because it brings them social benefits such as inclusion and acceptance into a group they aspire to. This observation applies to scientists as well as everyone else, but scientific testing is explicitly designed to moderate and reduce the impact of this human tendency on the knowledge produced.
Human social reactions to emerging threats vary hugely based on their perceptions, but depend inordinately on social relationships. Human social innovations in response to climate change may be classified into two broad forms: social control or mobilization.
Those closest to the object of knowledge (ie scientists, marginalized peoples in developing countries, indigenous peoples and their leadership) will be most widely questioned as dissonance grows, they will also be the most likely to try to mobilize their knowledge
Those furthest from the object of knowledge (non-scientists, the wealthy and geographically mobile) will be just as likely to experience dissonance but will prefer social control strategies over mobilization
Mobilization does not require special knowledge or access, nor does it require knowledge to be certain or definitive
Social benefits and costs will not be distributed evenly, leading to further pressures on decision making, as sorting these out distracts from collective action
Cognitive dissonance and time pressures leads human decision making groups to narrow the range of choices available in ways that make decisions ultimately less adaptive and optimal.
Knowledge is socially produced, and so understanding how and why social innovation happens is one way that political scientists can contribute to our understanding of climate change.
What to Do?
Some of these observations are more pessimistic, and some are more optimistic, when it comes to the prospects for taking climate action. On the pessimistic side, widespread and deep questioning of the basis of human knowledge is most counterproductive when humans most need to grow their knowledge in order to act effectively. On the other hand, the prospects for collective mobilization may grow over time as climate change impacts become more widely felt.
We are in a novel historical moment which challenges the full range of human ingenuity. Whether mobilization or social control will win out is an open question. I’d speculate that social innovations tend to be more adaptive in a stable climate than they are in a rapidly-changing climate. I know which I’d prefer, but history (if it continues at all) will be the ultimate judge.
This presentation takes a practical look at recent trends in the world and analyze whether the world is getting better or worse. We will look at trends in democracy, human rights and freedoms, economic growth and inequality, environmental degradation and climate change, human health, population, and governance, among others.
For the colonial mindset, nature could be only two things: it was either a garden, or a wilderness. The garden metaphor viewed the colonies as representative of the quiet English countryside, well tended and cared for, planted and grown with care using the knowledge of scientific methods to regulate the relationships between species. Ecological science, and particularly amateur collectors, made a strong impression by carefully gathering, cataloguing and classifying every new species and specimen ‘discovered’ in the remotest outposts of empire. The endless frontiers would provide valuable information from which to garner wisdom about what had gone wrong in England, and the urge to recreate the Garden of Eden (to somehow earn a ‘do-over’) was strong.
So how does the present-day vision of Mars come into this? The colonial imagination of the garden or the wilderness is still present in Western, now in many senses, global culture. Mars is the new canvas for the population to project its longings and dreams, and accuracy is still no part of the picture at all, just as it was with Africa. The incorrigibility of Mars is no barrier, in fact it is the fuel for a profound sense of longing and loneliness. Mars is the frontier we’ve already destroyed on Earth, the potential garden which we’ve already mismanaged.
Climate Debates and the Nature of Expertise
Dr. Rosalind Warner 
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