Traditional IR Theory and Global Environmental Issues:

In the domain of theory of traditional International Relations (IR), interest about global environmental problems has been negligible.  Both technically and functionally, environmental activities were accorded very little academic attention and publicity.  Environmental problems were uncovered by scholars after these issues had become and integral part of foreign policy concerns of nation states.  For instance, when air quality in Netherlands dramatically worsened due to the discharges from the German Ruhr Basin, the issue found a place in the agenda of IR.

Environmental matters, if mentioned, were regarded as subsidiaries of extensive dissertations on the law of the Seas, disposition of sea-bed mineral resources or the treaty on Antarctica etc.;  which were, anyway, basically issues with economic implications.

The guru of theory of IR, Hans Morganthau, thought it apt to devote only three and a half pages to natural resources in his book of more than 500 pages; a book (Politics Among Nations: the Struggle for Power and the Struggle for Peace), considered the “holiest” for the beginners of IR theory.  We concluded that for the classic realist Morganthau, value questions, (for instance, environmental aspects), were superficial in the final analysis of politics.  After all, States pursue their interests and these are defined in terms of power and not value systems.

Reasons for Rejection of Environmental Problems

The reasons for this lack of interest in environmental issues were various.  IR as a disciple suffers from its close association with policy questions and trends to respond on an adhoc basis to the shifting international political agenda.  Therefore, till the global problems caused by environmental degradation wee staring right at their faces, IR theorists could not fathom any need to include environment in their dialectic.

IR theory has been mostly dominated by the Realist School which simply sequesters or trivialises environmental concerns and fails to comprehend the historical dynamics of the global system of capital accumulation which has been integral to the production of environmental degradation.  The historical coincidence between the rise and spread of capitalism and industrialization, and the beginning of environmental crises was ignored.  This school of though failed to address the question of ecological interdependence.

When the Behaviourial Social-Scientific approach to IR became popular, focus shifted to observation and explanation of the behaviour of human beings, specially political and military decision-makers.  This approach proved to be incapable of taking and ecologically holistic view of the human species.  Developments in science have consecrated a manipulative division between man and nature and the behaviourial approach concentrated on man’s behaviour while ignoring ecology.  It failed to accept the fact that environmental degradation was the result of a set of structural practices and processes followed by men.

Sometimes, rejection of environment was the result of the conviction that environmental degradation does not undermine any of the foundations of the orthodox practice and theory of Ir.  The legacy of statism in IR remained ensconced and thus the denial of global environmental crises became a prime casualty of statism, empiricism, behaviourism and pluralism in IR.

Mobilisation of Environmental Problems

As environmental degradation escalated, the awareness grew that it is a global and not a purely localized or transboundary phenomenon; that stratospheric ozone layer depletion, climate change and the Green House Effect are global concerns.  The intensification of these realizations led to the first UN Conference on Environment at Stockholm in 1972.  Since then, there has been a steady growth of environmental awareness.  Nevertheless, international environmental relations remained the narrow preserves of a few specialists.

The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 saw the price of oil quadrupling, when the Arabs imposed the oil embargo.  This proved to the world that resources are scarce and there are limits to growth.  Secondly, the oil crisis also proved the degree of vulnerability of today’s inter-dependent society.  This also signaled the failure of the Bretton Woods System of international cooperation by managing exchange rates and recession.  An overwhelming concern for global economic management made the academics react by propounding new theories of international economic management, but all the while ignoring the fact that environmental degradation is linked to the whole gamut of economics-resource, recession and under-development.

IR’s Response

These developments made obvious the urgent need of incorporating global environmental issues into the existing IR paradigm.  The first dilemma confronting the scholars was whether to incorporate environmental aspects as an issue amongst others in the realm of IR or whether IR itself be fundamentally altered. 

An intellectual legacy of the traditional school of thought became evident in the response of academic IR to the emergent environmental problems.  In responding to the rise of global environmental politics, IR theory has continued to be state-centric and favours the State, which is a typical trait of Realism.  IR theorists are convinced that any environmental issue becomes worthy of attention in the disciple only when they are of consequence to State actors.  The whole gamut of environmental concerns is theoretically and practically subordinated and dependent upon the pre-determined character and interests of the State.

Therefore, repertoire of global environmental politics focus on the activities of the sate and poses questions from the view of the states.  States are regarded as key-players and non-state actors as supporting players.  It was proving to be difficult for the IR scholars to understand the tussle between the citizen and the nation state on the one hand and a wider conception of humanbeings as a single species within the global biosphere on the other.  This is the crux of much discussion on global environmental politics.

Realist obsession with state power, and the likely use of force, its failure to recognise the role of NGOs, and the inadequacy of its response to a problem which in its manifestation, presents a challenge to sovereignty, have all made the Realist Approach less helpful as an approach to global environmental politics.  Though today’s world is inter-linked at various levels, common vulnerability to environmental degradation is the ultimate form of inter-dependence.  Therefore, the priorities in the foreign policy agenda of nations are changing, and relevance of the use of force is on a downward slide.  This would imply that environmental inter-dependence would mean a loss of power of the state.  And if the power of the state is subordinated to a centralised global governance, the Realist Approach cannot possibly work.

A Need for Change in Values 

The quintessence of the dilemma in current IR is the question of choice between the realist’s perception of the precedence of state security versus environmental security.  Security of a nation is a national concern but environmental questions regarding the ozone layer, climate change, resource depletion, marine, pollution, specie conservation, are now regarded as global questions.  To solve these problems, national or state effort is not enough.  These interests cannot be asserted as “national”  interest but as “global” interests.  Thus we hear invocations of “Global Commons’ or the “Common Heritage of Mankind” in international forums.

These values then induce the assumption that the proper level of authority lies at the global level and not at the country level.  The global environmental problems can be effectively tackled only when we allow environmental values to assume higher priority over security or wealth.

But how can we classify these values and how do we establish a common value preference schedule and under what conditions can authority be transferred to the global level?

NGO’s Role in Change in Value Perceptions

To establish a common value preference schedule, its mainly NGOs who can contribute.  The most striking feature of many NGOs  is the prominent set of values they chose to promote.  Initially, a  NGO starts  by promoting a single value, but as it grows, various linkages become obvious and an expansion of values and activities take place.  NGOs are different from governments because they can choose the scope and field of their activities. Unlike the government, it does not need to make an legitimate distribution of its resources or non-material values within a wider political system.

NGOs are cohesive bodies whose main asset is the commitment its members have towards a set of values.  When NGOs select their values, they achieve something the Governments can hardly ever do.  They are free to set up a clear schedule of value preference after deciding their priorities.  They can work on long term basis, and target specific policy systems. Governments do not have this freedom.

NGOs can have clear goals and can set their own agenda unlike Governments, which may have clear priorities when they come to office but they often abandon it while responding to a domestic agenda.  Therefore, NGOs are free to promote new policies, develop new perspectives and be the source of innovative ideas.

Thus at a more cardinal level, if values start to change in a society, it will be the NGOs who will possessthe maximum freedom to adopt new value preference schedules.

The UN as a Global Environmental Forum

To transfer authority to a global body, the States will have to work through multi-lateral or other official arrangements which include the co-option of non-state actors, and attempt to mediate and manage global environment between sates through a formally recognised institution.

Currently, the only international body capable of taking over this mantle is the United Nations.  The end of the Cold War has left the UN is in a position to address the environmental agenda more thoroughly now than at any time since Stockholm.  The member states acknowledge that there is an explicit nexus between environmental degradation and patterns of economic development – for example, many acknowledge that there is a connection between mass poverty in the South and unsustainable patterns of consumption in the North.

Sustainable Development is the buzzword of international cooperation today in the UN, these two words can gain the status of a new standard campaign, akin to the campaigns for decolonisation and anti-Apartheid carried out so successfully in the UN in the 1960s and 1980s.  Sustainable Development could thus provide a definitivepost-Cold War raison-de’tre, to the organisation.

IR theory has to formulate a functional approach for the UN to function either as a forum for global negotiations between sovereign states where cooperative ventures could be agreed upon; or to work as an instrument for implementation of the policies of its members.

Conclusion

Theory of IR seems to have come to a full circle.  Idealist school of thought lost much ground with the rise of Hitler, the collapse of the League of Nations and the Secon World War.  The Realist School of thought flourished on the ruins of the Idealist School, in the initial phase of the Cold War.  Realism concentrated on war, security and prospects of international peace and cooperation.  The Key factor is the independent states in a decentralised international system.  Thievery basis of Realism is questioned today because the global nature of environmental threats bound the sovereign states do; not coincide with the boundaries of the ecological system which sustain them.  Therefore, any attempt by a sovereign state to regulate the ecological system will have very limited success and might lead to a crisis of legitimacy of the state.

Thus the theoretical stability and security afforded to orthodox IR, by the accrediting of sovereignty to the political formation called the modern state, is drastically debilitated by the scale, extent, dynamics and intricacies of global environmental degradation.

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