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Location: Ramphal Building R0.03/4
CRIPS Annual Lecture (followed by a wine reception)
'Ecological Security'
Prof. Matt McDonald
20th of October 17:00, Ramphal Building R0.03/4

Abstract:
There is increasing recognition in scholarship on the relationship between environmental change and security that the way this relationship is understood varies significantly. These varied environmental security discourses have different conceptions of the nature of the threat posed, but most importantly encourage vastly different policy responses. With regard the issue of climate change, for example, these responses range from national adaptation strategies to globally-oriented mitigation action. Given these differences, it becomes important not simply to outline differences but also to consider whether we can identify progressive security discourses: discourses underpinned by defensible ethical assumptions and encouraging effective practical responses to environmental change. Here, and focusing on the example of climate change, I make a case for an ecological security discourse. Such a discourse orients towards ecosystem resilience and the rights and needs of the most vulnerable across space (populations of developing worlds), time (future generations) and species (other living beings). Such a discourse is both morally more defensible than other security discourses and most likely to encourage practices oriented towards redressing the problem of climate change itself, though its embrace and implementation of course faces profound practical and epistemological challenges.

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