Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration [1 ed.] 303038568X, 9783030385682

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Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18

Úrsula Oswald Spring

Earth at Risk in the 21st Century Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration With a Foreword by Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser and a Preface by Hans Günter Brauch

Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice Volume 18

Series Editor Hans Günter Brauch, Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS), Mosbach, Germany

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15230 http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP.htm http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP_OswaldSpring.htm

Úrsula Oswald Spring

Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration With a Foreword by Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser and a Preface by Hans Günter Brauch

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Úrsula Oswald Spring Regional Centre of Multidisciplinary Studies National Autonomous University of Mexico Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico

Acknowledgement: The cover photograph is based on a satellite image of NASA Satellite View of the Americas on Earth Day on 23 April 2104 (Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GOES Project); at: https://www.nasa.gov/content/satellite-view-of-the-americas-on-earth-day. NASA images generally are not copyrighted and may be used for educational purposes. A book website: http://www.afes-press-books.de/html/PAHSEP_OswaldSpring.htm. ISSN 2509-5579 ISSN 2509-5587 (electronic) Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice ISBN 978-3-030-38568-2 ISBN 978-3-030-38569-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyediting: PD Dr. Hans Günter Brauch, AFES-PRESS e.V., Mosbach, Germany English Language Editor: Dr. Vanessa Greatorex, England This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Let peace, security and a healthy environment prevail, to ensure that human capacity and efforts will avoid the hothouse Earth and lead us to a sustainable, multicultural and peaceful future. For Charlotte and Luca Kai, my two grandchildren, in the hope that global gift-giving to nature and humankind may produce social equity, gender equality and a sustainable peaceful transition for Mother Earth.

Foreword

Úrsula Oswald Spring has achieved recognition as a dedicated researcher, an important development policy participant and advocate, and a prolific writer. Her work encompasses a large range of topics, from gender to sustainability and peace, and has been carried out with many international research teams. In particular, she has constantly been a participant in social science initiatives in the Global South and, with Editor Hans Günter Brauch and others, has edited several comprehensive books on issues of security, environmental change, sustainability and engendered peace. As a young researcher, she began her field studies in Mexico, during the period of the internationalisation of social science as many young scholars travelled around the world in search of broader perspectives on development and social change. Soon after, her work focused on specific topics related to gender, as well as other important social processes such as migration and rural development. Úrsula Oswald Spring continued to work in Mexico with her family, as her daughter, Eréndira Serrano Oswald, and her son, Omar Serrano Oswald, have followed in her footsteps and are now also publishing their own research.

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A major element of Úrsula Oswald Spring’s work has always been her capacity to participate in on-going research projects which are grounded in social and cultural movements. At international level, especially, her energy criss-crossing the world to participate in research and policy seminars and congresses is highly regarded. In fact, she has held important positions in international social science organisations, as she has also been President and Secretary General of the International Peace Organization. At national level, she also held the position of Secretary for the Environment in the Government of the State of Morelos in Mexico. Her intense work programme has also included numerous educational activities at universities such as the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Universidad Campesina – the Peasant University – as well as in many countries of the Global South. However, her students have also been indigenous peoples of local communities as well as government officials and educators. Given the wide range of scientific and policy interests and publications of Úrsula Oswald, in the following pages a brief summary is given of the theme of gender and the way this author has created an interrelated frame of reference to drive the sustainability transition.

Human, Gender and Environmental Security After several decades of continued fieldwork and research, at the beginning of the new millennium Úrsula Oswald Spring was able to bring together the findings of her work. She focused on the concept of sustainability, in the context of the deleterious imbalances of poverty and inequality and their consequences, which, she argues, must now be situated within the frame of reference of human security. In Mexico, especially, neoliberal development has led to increased drug use and trade and organized crime related to human trafficking, including the highest ever rates of ‘feminicides’, that is, murders of women at the hands of their male family members – husbands, fathers, uncles or even boyfriends. In this context, Úrsula Oswald Spring’s research and advocacy has turned towards the notion of security. In 2009 she posited a new concept, that of HUGE – human, gender and environment security – encompassing the three major factors that must be taken into account in policy proposals and implementations at both national and international level. In terms of environmental security, Oswald Spring argues that the loss of natural resources and pollution leads to higher risks that must be managed by national governments to give security to actors, especially women, by changing discriminatory patriarchal structures (Oswald Spring 2009a: 1159). She delves deeply into research on environmental security, stating that in the fourth evolutionary phase of this concept, it has now expanded and must be taken into account as a concern for the whole of society and all of its sectors. “Gender security must considerer all forms of life, food security, care and health, public security, education and cultural diversity” (Oswald Spring 2009b: 1279). The goals of her proposal of the HUGE

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programme in political ecology include promoting solidarity, resilience, participative democracy and building peace and equity. In recent writings, Úrsula Oswald Spring has focused on climate change, gender and health. Along with R. Rosas and M. Tena, her co-authors of a chapter in the book “Cambio Climático, miradas de género” – Climate Change, gender perspectives – (Imaz et al. 2016), she highlights the different kinds of vulnerabilities that women are facing in terms of their health and personal security which place them in diverse situations of risk and danger. For this reason they argue that “the gender perspective can increase the efficacy of actions taken to protect people from climate variability and change” (Oswald Spring et al. 2016: 99).

The Sustainability Transition An example of Úrsula Oswald Spring’s research on sustainable transition is her precise and extensive analysis of fieldwork data on the valley of the Yautepec River in the state of Morelos in México. She found devastating consequences there of the expansion of the war on drugs and social collapse. Her data clearly showed a mismatch between local people’s perceptions of strategies to achieve the transition to sustainability and the local government’s implementation programme. Her findings indicate that 44.7% of the local population live in ‘marginality’ while only 13.6% live in ‘poverty’, according to the categories drawn by the Government to classify them. As a consequence, Úrsula Oswald Spring argues: Social inequality has created social resentment and when the mínimum salary is not adequate for the survival of the families, they explore other sources of income, frequently in illegal activities. Therefore, rates of criminality, especially kidnappings and extortion have increased. People no longer trust their neighbours and even less so local authorities. Crimes that may be committed by local politicians are not reported. Of every ten kidnappings, police are involved in eight of them (Oswald Spring 2016a: 688).

To decrease their vulnerability to criminal activities, people no longer go out at night, they have organised defence groups in their barrios, and parties are held inside their houses, among other strategies. They have also developed strategies against floods and overflowing rivers, created maps of places of refuge in their own zones, and formulated even more complex strategies in case of drought or other meteorological phenomena due to climate change. In this paper, however, Úrsula Oswald Spring concludes that illicit activities, corruption and public insecurity make it impossible to carry out consistent action that could improve waste management and limit the damage caused by climate change, floods and fluctuations in the rain regime. In the conclusion of the book Handbook of Sustainable Transition and Sustainable Peace, Úrsula Oswald Spring and her co-editors Hans Günther Brauch and Jürgen Scheffran propose a shift from a disciplinary perspective to a transdisciplinary approach which should be simultaneously anticipatory and transformational (Oswald Spring 2016a: 887).

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Engendered Positive, Sustainable and Culturally Diverse Peace Úrsula Oswald Spring has now moved on, as always, engaging with the pressing concerns of the Sustainability Transition. She provides a wealth of data on current development and the environment, citing that “the current model of globalization excluding large sectors of the population has led to the concentration of half the wealth of the world in the hands of 85 persons” (Oswald Spring 2015). She highlights that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that from 1980 to 2010 greenhouse gases emissions have increased 60 ppm, leading to higher global temperatures. This rise in temperature then leads to the melting of glaciers in the poles, Greenland and high mountain ranges, as well as severe hydrometeorological events. In this context Úrsula Oswald Spring proposes a Sustainability Transition that must begin in local niches, permeating political regimes and transforming the global arena according to adjustments in agendas, actors, activities and local arenas. Her work is currently focused on defining peace, especially for women, in the twenty-first century. The notions of pax romana and of peace as the absence of conflict, as defined in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, give a negative definition of peace, restricted mainly to a military peace that protects the interests of national elites and defends against foreign invasions. Johan Galtung posited a positive peace in the sense that the absence of violence in all its forms must also include the restoration of relations, the creation of a social system that provides for the needs of society, and constructive conflict negotiation. UNESCO posited yet another concept, that of the culture of peace which, among other values, includes human rights, gender equity, democratic participation and tolerance. This broader perspective, she argues, is provided by the concept of structural peace, which focuses on the inequality of the present capitalist and neoliberal system which exploits labour and nature and increases the earnings of the dominant elite. Úrsula Oswald Spring looks for the roots of this deleterious development model and finds that it is based on a patriarchal religious doctrine which reinforces inequality inside nations, regions and families, as well as over the entire Global North and Global South. Sustainable peace, on the other hand, requires people to prevent the danger of losing natural resources, including water, air and healthy food, while developing an environmental and intercultural philosophy to build peace though dialogues. Finally, engendered peace must encompass a paradigm that will end violence by changing the contemporary systems of oppression and the exploitation of nature and human beings in the new setting of the geological era of the Anthropocene. Úrsula Oswald Spring concludes her long trajectory of research into the themes mentioned in these pages by calling for a frame of reference of human security, which, as mentioned previously, she has named HUGE, an initiative which may then unleash a scientific and peaceful discussion to deepen and expand military-political security to include economic, environmental and social security. In this sense, she supports the concept of ‘securitization’ proposed by Ole Waever,

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whereby situations of great emergency may justify extraordinary measures that people may accept to ensure survival and well-being. Úrsula Oswald Spring strongly argues that a paradigmatic change is indeed urgent and necessary. In her latest publications she lists the most important elements that are needed to bring it forward as diverse societies move in harmony to achieve sustainability. Úrsula Oswald Spring is one of the voices that must be heard in pointing towards a horizon of engendered, sustainable peace. Mexico City and Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico September 2019

Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser

References Brauch H.G., Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin, J. Scheffran, eds. (2016a). Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace. Heidelberg: Springer. Oswald Spring, Ú. (2009a). “A HUGE Gender Security Approach. Towards Human, Gender and Environmental Security”, in H.G. Brauch et al., eds., Facing Global Environmental Change). Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1165–1190. Oswald Spring, Ú. et al. (2009b). “Linking Anthropocene, HUGE and HESP: Fourth Phase of Environmental Security Research” in Facing Global Environmental Change. Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1165– 1190. Oswald Spring, Ú. (2011). Towards a sustainable health policy in the Anthropocene. Magazine of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP-ICSU), 1, January: 19–25. Oswald Spring, Ú. (2015). “Paz positiva, sustentable, culturalmente diversa y engendrada”, in Serrano, Oswald Spring, de la Rúa, eds., América Latina en el camino hacia una paz sustentable: herramientas y aportes, Guatemala, FLACSO, pp. 49–68. Oswald Spring, Ú. (2016a). “Development with Sustainable-Engendered Peace”, in Brauch H., Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin, J. Scheffran, eds. 2016. Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace. Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 161–187. Oswald Spring, Ú. (2016b). “Sustainability Transition in a Vulnerable River Basin in Mexico” in Brauch H.G., Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin, J. Scheffran, eds. 2016. Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace. Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 675–705. Oswald Spring, Ú., H.G. Brauch and J. Scheffran. (2016d). “Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace: Key Messages and Scientific Outlook” in Brauch H.G., Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin, J. Scheffran, eds. 2016. Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace. Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 885–887.

Lourdes Arizpe Schlosser is a professor at the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research of the National University of Mexico. She received an MA from the National School of History and Anthropology in Mexico in 1970 and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, in 1975. She has pioneered anthropological studies on migration, gender, rural development, and global change and culture in Mexico, in Latin America, and in international research groups, both academic and policy-oriented. Professor Arizpe taught at Rutgers University through a Fulbright grant in 1979 and carried out research in India and Senegal

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with a John F. Guggenheim grant in 1981. She was director of the National Museum of Popular Cultures in Mexico 1985–1988. She was elected President of the National Association of Ethnologists of Mexico in 1986 and Secretary to the Mexican Science Academy in 1992. Professor Arizpe was Director of the Institute of Anthropological Studies at the National University of Mexico, was elected President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in 1988, and successfully organized its World Congress in Mexico in 1993. Lourdes Arizpe became a member of the United Nations Commission on Culture and Development, and soon afterwards was designated Assistant Director-General for Culture at UNESCO 1994–98. She was elected President of the International Social Science Council for 2004–2008, and participated as a member of the Academic Faculty of the Global Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland 2000– 2004. At the United Nations Institute for Research on Social Development, she was Chair of the Board 2005–2011 and a member of the Committee for Development Policy of the Economic and Social Council. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Lourdes Arizpe became an Honorary Member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of the UK in 1995, and has received the Order of “Palmes Académiques” from France in 2007, the Award for Academic Merit of the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico, and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Florida at Gainesville in 2010. Her most recent book in English was published in 2019 with the title: Culture, International Transactions and the Anthropocene (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag) and in Spanish with the title: Cultura, Transacciones Internacionales y Antropoceno (Mexico City: National University of Mexico and Miguel Angel Porrua).

Preface

Úrsula Oswald Spring combines extensive experience in multiple disciplines with numerous roles. She was born on 30 December 1946 in Switzerland as the second-oldest daughter. The small factory her father managed was damaged in an air raid by the Allied Air Forces due to a targeting error that caused such serious health problems for her older sister that she later died of them. This family tragedy contributed to Úrsula’s lifelong interest in health and humanitarian issues. She studied medicine in Madagascar (1965–1968) and completed her medical examinations in Paris in 1968. She went on to obtain several academic degrees in Switzerland: first a diploma as an elementary school teacher in Rorschach, then later, at the University of Zürich, an M.Sc. in clinical psychology (28 July 1972) under the guidance of Prof. Dr. U. Moser and Prof. Dr. Jean Piaget and Bachelor degrees in psychology (1969), philosophy (1972), classical languages (1971) and anthropology (1972). On 25 February 1977 she received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology with a speciality in ecology at the famous ethnological institute of Zürich University, then chaired by Prof. Lorenz Georg Löffler. Her doctoral thesis was on underdevelopment as a consequence of dependence (Unterentwicklung als Folge von Abhängigkeit).

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In 1973 she went to Mexico, where she worked first at the Centro de Investigaciones Superiores del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (CISINAH; Centre for Higher Research, National Institute of Anthropology and History), later at the newly founded Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico (UAM in Xochimilco), and finally at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the Regional Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies (CRIM). She also became the first Attorney General of Environment and, later, the Minister of Ecological Development in the state of Morelos (1992–1998). Having spent her childhood in Europe, some crucial formative years in East Africa and Madagascar and most of her life in Mexico, she has a combination of North and South experience from three different angles, and has acquired a Southern, Latin American and Mexican identity from a global cosmopolitan perspective. As a scientifically, politically and societally active woman, she combines many roles as a feminist social scientist interested in peace, development and environmental issues, and as the mother of two children (Omar and Eréndira) and the grandmother of two grandchildren (Charlotte and Luca Kai), Úrsula has become a true world citizen whose heart and sympathies lie with the citizens of the Global South, many of whom are highly vulnerable and the losers in the globalisation process. As a ‘political’ (policy-interested) social scientist, she has dual experience as a policy-maker (without ever having been a party member) and as one of the first women in a male one-party government, when she was involved in the ‘top-down’ preparation of environmental laws and the implementation of policy decisions. As a ‘social activist’, e.g. as the president of the farmers’ University of the South in Morelos, and as a leader of many environmental concerns, she has participated in many bottom-up citizens’ initiatives, e.g. the recent campaign for a ‘citizens’ water law. As a scientist her training has combined disciplines and knowledge representing the humanities (languages), the social sciences (psychology, anthropology, political science) and also methods from the natural and physical sciences (medicine, environment, interdisciplinarity, systems theory with open, dissipative and self-regulating systems). She is a critic of the narrow, overspecialised scientific approaches with which many young scholars must contend to publish mostly ‘apolitical’ articles in high-impact journals that do not appeal to policy-makers and citizens’ leaders. Her work is characterised by an activist highly principled approach aimed at overcoming patriarchy and realising gender equity, global and social justice, peace, security and harmony with the environment, which she has called an ‘engendered’ sustainable approach for peace and security with equity. In her “autobiographical reminiscences and reflections” (Oswald Spring 2019) Úrsula distinguishes four phases in her life: her childhood in Switzerland, her African experience, her studies in Zürich, and her decades – more than four – living and working in Mexico. Her scientific work as a psychologist, anthropologist, development analyst, environmentalist, peace researcher and gender specialist has

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been primarily multi- and interdisciplinary with a strong normative and transformative interest. In her Pioneer volume (PAHSEP 17) she presented in five parts her life, work and publications, and in the remaining four parts key modified and updated texts on methodology, gender and peace; on development and regions, gender and the environment; on food and society; and on environment, climate and water issues. In this second anthology she focuses on a widened and deepened security approach. She combines in four parts texts on (I) peace, environment and security (Chaps. 1–9), (II) gender and human security (Chaps. 10–13), (III) water, health, food and energy security (Chaps. 14–17), and (IV) migration, the nexus among sectorial securities, and the outlook for the future (Chaps. 18–21). Given the wide disciplinary and thematic scope she has combined in her scientific and activist work, and the critical approach of the generation of 1968 that challenged the assumptions of the old generation with an openness and curiosity in the spirit of the era of ‘enlightenment’, her scientific work has never been apolitical but, rather, interested in societal change in the context of a more peaceful and just world that aims to protect Mother Earth – or Pachamama, as the indigenous Aymara people in Bolivia call it – for the benefit of present and future generations. In her scientific work during the past five decades the following six key roles, major themes and core questions were most prominent: • From primary school on she has always defended vulnerable social colleagues. • In Africa she learnt about the horrors of a civil war, the problems of tropical illnesses, hunger, neo-colonialism, racism and dependency from first-hand personal experience. • During her European university studies she worked in a psychiatric clinic, where she was confronted with the abandonment of chronic schizophrenic patients in the so-called developed world. • She was also an activist fighting against racism, analysing the Tanzanian ujamaa (extended family), lobbying in favour of breastfeeding and supporting the “Nestlé kills babies” student campaign, and protesting against the big Cabora Bassa Dam in racist southern Africa. • As a peace researcher she has been the only female President and later also Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), and with multiple refugees from South America she was a founder of the Latin American Peace Research Association (CLAIP), of which she is still a very active member. • As Attorney General and Minister of Environment in Morelos she was inspired by the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and implemented Agenda 21 at both governmental and social level. All these experiences transformed her into a global intellectual leader and scholar (UNU-EHS, IPCC, ISSC, ICS etc.) on global environmental change, in which capacities she has always fought for gender equity and care of the vulnerable.

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Her convictions were reflected in her role at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and Mumbai, where she worked intensively with Via Campesina and other social movements to design a common agenda of activities for all oppressed groups across the globe. I first met Úrsula Oswald Spring at the seventh conference of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) in December 1977 in Oaxtepec in the state of Morelos in Mexico, which she had co-organised with her Mexican colleague Jarmila Olmedo Dobrovolny for participants from the Global North and Latin American colleagues. Most of the latter were political refugees from military dictatorships in various Latin American countries, and several had obtained political asylum in Mexico. I saw Úrsula again a year later in July 1978 during the Pugwash conference at the Center for Economic and Social Studies of the Third World (CEESTEM) in Mexico City, a research centre that was set up after the presidency of Luis Echeverría Álvarez to analyse the problems and challenges of the Third World. In 1979, during the eighth IPRA conference in Königstein (Germany), she coordinated the food and peace study group in the presence of her two-month-old son, Omar. Later she attended IPRA conferences in Groningen, The Netherlands (1990), a year after the end of the Cold War; in Kyoto, Japan (1992); in Valletta, Malta (1994), when she was already a state Minister for Ecological Development in Morelos in Mexico; in Durban in South Africa (1998), where she was elected IPRA President; and later in Sopron in 2004, in the town where the holes in the Iron Curtain had first become a reality in May 1989. Later she participated actively in IPRA at the biannual conferences in Leuven in Belgium, Sydney in Australia, Mie in Japan, Istanbul in Turkey, Freetown in Sierra Leone (2016) – where we both addressed issues linking peace and environmental issues – and Ahmedabad in India (2018), where Úrsula organised the 27th IPRA General Conference and I helped as IPRA’s cashier. In 2004, she was a speaker at two workshops I organised in the framework of an EU-sponsored Research Network (GMOSS) in June in Hungary and in September 2004 in The Hague (The Netherlands). In May 2005 Ursula spoke at the UNCCD Third Session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 3) in its Global Interactive Dialogue (GID). In August 2005 we coordinated an Advanced NATO Research Workshop on the Mediterranean in Istanbul, and in October 2005 we both had prominent roles at the Sixth Open Meeting of the Global Environmental Change Research Community in Bonn, Germany. In November 2005, as the first chair on Social Vulnerability at UNU-EHS at a symposium of the MunichRe Foundation on “Worldwide disaster prevention – awareness is the key” in Castle Hohenkammer near Munich, Úrsula convinced the World Bank and the International Red Cross to start collecting gender-sensitive data on disasters to address social and environmental vulnerability properly. Since May 2005 a very intensive scientific cooperation emerged between us that resulted in many joint conference appearances, in keynote speeches at workshops, in lectures at many universities on all five continents, and in co-authored articles

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and book chapters as well as co-authored research reports and books (Oswald Spring 2019: 101–150; Oswald Spring/Brauch 2009 [in Spanish]; Brauch et al. 2008 [in Turkish]; Aydin et al. Spring et al. 2012 [in Turkish]; Brauch et al. 2015a, 2015b, 2015c [in Chinese]. We became the two lead editors of three major Hexagon volumes (Brauch et al. 2008; Brauch et al. 2009; Brauch et al. 2011) on the reconceptualisation of security in the Anthropocene and of a fourth Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace (Brauch et al. 2016) that achieved 1,022,849 chapter downloads between September 2012 and June 2019. All major joint conference appearances since 2004 are documented on two respective research websites (see at: http://www.afes-press.de/html/download_oswald.html and http:// www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon.html). For much of this time Úrsula has also been teaching courses at the European Peace University (EPU) in Schlaining in Austria, and at several universities in Malaysia (UKM and USM in Penang). So far she has also run courses for Ph.D. candidates at the Centre for Higher Naval Studies (CESNAV) of the Mexican military services and she held a guest professorship at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand from September 2013 to January 2014 in the context of the programme of the Masters programme on International Development Studies (MAIDS). Úrsula is an excellent speaker and lecturer who can address several hundred indigenous women in her home state of Morelos in a language and tone they understand as well as offer keynote speeches at international conferences – e.g. the International Social Science Council (ISSC) in 2015 in Durban (South Africa) and the new International Council of Science (ICS) in 2018 in Fukuoka in Japan – and teach her students in Mexico and at the United Nations University’ Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn (Germany) and during her guest professorship at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok (Thailand) and at other universities in Latin America, North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. She argues very eloquently on the issues that are crucial to her, namely containing or even overcoming patriarchy as the key social progenitor of violence, discrimination, exploitation and destruction and the basis of capitalism and neoliberalism. She promotes a world characterised by gender equity and social justice, the eradication of intolerance, homicide and feminicide, and a gift-giving society that cares about the most vulnerable. She has worked very hard to give her two children, Omar and Eréndira, a high quality education in Mexico, Switzerland and at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Having both completed PhDs – in international relations in Geneva in Switzerland (Omar) and at UNAM in Mexico in social anthropology (Eréndira) – they both entered a university career. Besides her prolific publication record in several languages (Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, French) with translations into Chinese, Greek, Finnish, Japanese and Turkish, Úrsula has represented international scientific organisations globally and been the Commissioner of the University of the Farmers of the South in Morelos.

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While being a hard-working and efficient first environment minister who launched and implemented many environmental development projects and laws in her state, she also eradicated the corruption in her ministry, and pursued the polluting industries. This earned her the nickname of “Barby Thatcher” (the iron woman) of Morelos. She has nevertheless remained a true idealist for whom the ideas of peace, justice and equity, development, climate change and the environment matter. For her, the intergenerational concept of ‘sustainability’ is a clear action goal, especially since her grandchildren were born. Having worked with Úrsula since 2005, it is my pleasure to note that we have had many controversial scientific and political debates that have sometimes resulted in new joint ideas which we developed together from our very different disciplinary backgrounds and mindsets, among them the concept of peace and ecology or ‘peace ecology’ to preserve the Earth for her grandchildren, as representatives of all children across the world, maintaining it as a habitable planet that successfully copes with global environmental change and converts the challenges we increasingly observe and face into new opportunities in a good Anthropocene era of Earth and human history. Úrsula is also a very caring person, as I have experienced personally after several periods of illness and hospitalisation since 2017. Every year at Christmas time she gives a food hamper to a poor old lady who sells newspapers in the Zocalo of Yautepec in Morelos. This indigenous Mexican lady has raised several grandchildren while her daughter was working in the US. Úrsula has been awarded several prizes and received widespread recognition in both her adopted country and globally. She has gained recognition as a Mexican ‘global scholar’, as an honest politician and as a caring women who helps others in need, and she is promoting a gift economy globally to overcome global environmental change and social injustice. Mosbach, Germany August 2019

Hans Günter Brauch

References Aydin, Mustafa; Brauch, Hans Günter; Celikpata, Mitat; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Polat, Nekati (Eds.): Uluslararasi Iliskilerde Catismadam Güvenige (Istanbul: Bilgi Universitesi Yainlari, 2012). Brauch, Hans Günter; Aydin, Mustafa; Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Guest Eds.), 2008: special issue of: Uluslararasi Iliskiler/International Relations, 5, 18, Summer Special Issue on “Security” (2009) [in Turkish]. Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Grin, John; Dunay, Pal; Chadha Behera, Navnita; Chourou, Béchir; Kameri-Mbote, Patricia; Liotta, P.H. (Eds.), 2008: Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century (Berlin–Heidelberg–New York: Springer).

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Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Grin, John; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Kameri-Mbote, Patricia; Behera, Navnita Chadha; Chourou, Béchir; Krummenacher, Heinz (Eds.), 2009: Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts. Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol. 4 (Berlin–Heidelberg–New York: Springer). Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Grin, John; Kameri-Mbote, Patricia; Chourou, Béchir; Dunay, Pal; Birkmann, Jörn (Eds.), 2011: Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks (Berlin–Heidelberg–New York: Springer). Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Bennett, Juliet; Serrano Oswald, Serena Eréndira, 2016: Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective (Cham: Springer International Publishing). Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Grin, John; Scheffran; Jürgen (Eds.), 2016: Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace (Cham–Heidelberg–New York– Dordrecht–London: Springer). Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Collins, Andrew E.; Serrano Oswald, Serena Eréndira (Eds.), 2018: Climate Change, Disasters, Sustainability Transitions and Peace in the Anthropocene (Cham: Springer Nature, Switzerland). Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Grin, John; Cheng, Liu (Eds.), 2015a: Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century [in Chinese] (Nanjing: PR China: Nanjing Press Company), [in Chinese]. Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Grin, John; Cheng, Liu (Eds.), 2015b: Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts [in Chinese] (Nanjing: PR China: Nanjing Press Company), [in Chinese]. Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Mesjasz, Czeslaw; Grin, John; Cheng, Liu (Eds.), 2015c: Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks [in Chinese] (Nanjing: PR China: Nanjing Press company), [in Chinese]. Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Brauch, Hans Günter, 2009: Reconceptualizar la Seguridad en el Siglo XXI (Mexico D.F. – Cuernavaca: UNAM/CRIM/CEIICH/CCA). Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Brauch, Hans Günter; Tidball, Keith G. (Eds.), 2014: Expanding Peace Ecology: Peace, Security, Sustainability, Equity and Gender – Perspectives of IPRA’s Ecology and Peace Commission (Cham: Springer International Publishing). Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Brauch, Hans Günter; Serrano Oswald, Serena Eréndira; Bennett, Juliet, 2016: Regional Ecological Challenges for Peace in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia Pacific (Cham: Springer International Publishing). Oswald Spring, Úrsula, 2019: Úrsula Oswald Spring: Pioneer on Gender, Peace, Development, Environment, Food and Water (Cham: Springer International Publishing).

Hans Günter Brauch (Germany), Dr. phil. [Ph.D.]. (Heidelberg, 1976) habil (Free University of Berlin, 1998), until 2012 Adj. Prof. (Privatdozent) at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Free University of Berlin; since 1987 chairman of Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS). He is editor of five English language scientific book series: Hexagon Book Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace; SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace (ESDP); SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice (PSP); Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice (PAHSEP); and The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science (APESS) with Springer International Publishing (SIP) and with Springer Nature Switzerland and of several standalone books. He was guest professor of international relations at the universities of Frankfurt on Main, Leipzig, Greifswald, and Erfurt, a research associate at Heidelberg and Stuttgart, and a research fellow at Harvard and Stanford Universities. In autumn and winter 2013–2014 he was a guest professor at Chulalongkorn

University in Bangkok. He has been a member of the IPRA Council (1992–1996 and 2016–2020), of its Executive Committee (2016–2018), Chairman of IPRA’s Subcommission on Statutes (2016– 2018) and Co-convenor of IPRA’s Ecology and Peace Commission (EPC) from 2012 to 2018, as well as a co-editor of its four peer-reviewed book publications. He has published works on security, armaments, climate, energy, migration and Mediterranean issues and on themes of peace and ecology in English and German, and has been translated into Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Japanese, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish.

Acknowledgements

This volume has emerged from different experiences in Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. The publication of this volume is the result of meeting numerous people, interacting with many organisations, and living, researching and teaching in a wide variety of places. The book is filled with people’s lives and with different experiences, complementary phases of thinking and stimuli from these five continents and multiple research groups during my fifty years of investigation. It would be difficult to thank all those women, men, indigenous people, peasants and urban dwellers who helped me to understand better the mechanisms of exploitation, gender discrimination and environmental destruction in ways, which were necessary to clarify ideas and to integrate complex thinking within interdisciplinary research groups. Beyond question, this book would not exist without the tireless dedication of Dr. Hans Günter Brauch, to whom I am deeply indebted. From Günter I received multiple ideas for reflection, the stimulus to deepen my thinking on the complexity of security and peace, and the opportunity to discuss within the AFES-PRESS study group the widening, deepening and sectorialisation of peace and security thinking. I am also grateful to my daughter, Dr. Serrena Eréndira Serrano Oswald, for some style editing and multiple theoretical discussions about gender security or engendering security. Special acknowledgements go to Dr. Vanessa Greatorex (UK), for her professional and profound stylistic corrections. Without any doubt, I also received new insights from multiple anonymous peer reviewers, who often put their finger on some weakness of the submitted chapter. Many thanks to all of them. For the last three decades the Regional Centre for Multidisciplinary Research (CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca, Mexico) has offered me a workplace to deepen my knowledge of the interlinks between human behaviour (gender, peace, security, gift-giving, nutrition, diseases) and the natural alterations in air, soil, water, biodiversity, food and oceans in order to integrate a systemic understanding of complexity.

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I also wish to thank Dr. Christian Witschel, editorial director for Earth Sciences, Environment and Geography, with Springer Nature in Heidelberg (Germany) and the production team in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India for their dedication to this book, most particularly Ms. Birke Dalia, Jayanthi Krishnamoorthi, Manopriya Saravanan and their team. To all of them my heartfelt appreciation; however the content of this book is entirely my responsibility. Cuernavaca, Mexico September 2019

Úrsula Oswald Spring

Contents

Part I 1

Texts on Peace, Gender, Environment and Security . . . . . . .

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Contextualisation on Gender, Peace, Security and Environment . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Structure of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Organisation of This Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Gender, Peace, Security and Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Studies on Deepening, Widening and Sectorialising Security . 1.4.1 Securitisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 Widening Towards Environmental, Economic and Societal Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.3 Deepening Human and Gender Security . . . . . . . . . 1.4.4 Sectorialisation of Water, Food, Climate and Energy Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Regional Impacts and Environmental-Induced Migration . . . . 1.6 Neoliberal Oligarchy or Transition Towards ‘Buen Vivir’ . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2

On Peace and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 New Challenges for Peace and Security References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

Peace and Sustainability in a Globalised World . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Sustainable, Equal and Diverse Development Processes 3.2.1 Regional Development and Sustainability . . . . 3.2.2 The Sustainability Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Medium-Term Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Where Should We Put Our Best Effort to Achieve a Better Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Ahimsa and Human Development: A Different Paradigm for Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Armed Terror, Militarism and Ahimsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Sustainability and Natural Resources for Peace and Conflict 4.3.1 Climate Change and Its Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Water and Soil as a Conflict Potential . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Sustainable Development Policies for Peace-Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Free Market, Income, Trade and Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Global Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Trade Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Foreign and Internal Debts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Social Justice and Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.2 Consumption, Youth and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.3 Urbanisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.4 Malnutrition and Food Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.5 Basic Needs Produces a Sustainable, Peaceful Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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85 86 90

On Environmental Security and Global Environmental Change . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Evolution of the Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Phase 1: Wars and Military Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Phase 2: Scarcity of Natural Resources and Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.3 Phase 3: Climate Change and Global Environmental Change as Environmental Stressors for Conflicts and Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.4 Phase 4: Conflict Resolution, Mitigation, Adaptation and Resilience for Achieving Environmental Security with a HUGE Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Global Threats to Environmental Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Population Growth and Urbanisation . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 Ecosystem Deterioration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 Climate Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.4 Global Environmental Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Outlook: Where Are We Now After the Paris Agreement? . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Ecology and Threats to Human Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction: Ecology Threatened . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Clean Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Fresh Water and Sanitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Surface Water and Sanitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Groundwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 Water Footprint and Virtual Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Soil and Desertification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Biodiversity Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Ecosystem Services and Human Well-Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 Alternative Knowledge, Wisdom and Behaviour for Integrated Environment: Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EbA) . . . . . . . . 6.7.1 Wisdom and Science for Changes in Human Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7.2 Ecosystem-Based Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water Conflicts, Megalopolises and Hydrodiplomacy . . . . . . . 7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Water Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Megalopolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 Hydrodiplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Conflicts Over Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Water Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Development Projects: Dams, Real Estate and Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Hydrodiplomacy: A Peaceful Way to Water Conflict Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.1 Hydrodiplomacy Between Mexico and the United States: A Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Some Conclusions: Water Challenges in Latin America . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peace, Environment and Security: A Gender Perspective from the Global South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Preliminary Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Sustainable Development Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Human Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 Gender Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 A Feminist Critique to the Human Security Concept . . . 8.6 An Alternative Paradigm for Development and Peaceful Conflict Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

8.7

Historical Evolution of Some Security Concepts . . . . . . . . . . 8.7.1 Nation State and Social Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7.2 Regional Alternatives and Inclusive Globalisation . . 8.8 Peace, Peace Research, Peace Movements and IPRA Within Its 40 Years After Groningen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Environmental Management in a Globalised World . . . . . . . . 9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Processes of Environmental Deterioration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 Urbanisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.2 Pollution of Air, Water, Soil and Climate Change 9.2.3 Management of Natural Resources . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 An Alternative Paradigm Is Urgent and Possible . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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10 Gender Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Gender and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Evolution of Feminist Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.1 Epistemological Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.2 Feminist Empiricism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.3 Postmodern Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.4 Standpoint Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 Gender Security in Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 Four Pillars of Gender Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5.1 The First Pillar: Identity and Social Representation 10.5.2 The Second Pillar: Gift Economy or Economy of Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5.3 The Third Pillar: Ecofeminism Against Environmental Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5.4 The Fourth Pillar: Social Movements . . . . . . . . . . . 10.6 Gender Security: A Paradigm Shift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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217 217 219 222 222 225 225 226 228 230 230

9

Part II

Texts on Gender and Human Security

11 On HUGE Security: Human, Gender and Environmental Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Addressing Global Human Security Challenges . . . . . 11.2 Dual Goals of the HUGE Security Concept . . . . . . . . 11.3 Dual Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.4 Deepening the HUGE Security Concept . . . . . . . . . . . 11.5 Widening Human and Gender Towards Environmental Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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11.6 A HUGE Programme for Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 11.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 12 On Engendered-Sustainable Peace from a Feminist and Bottom-Up Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1.1 Conceptual Approach: Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1.2 Theoretical Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1.3 The Historical and Political Context: The World in the Early 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Multiple Impacts of Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.1 The Impact of Patriarchy in the Private Sphere . . . 12.2.2 The Impact of Patriarchy on the Environment . . . . 12.2.3 Engendering Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.4 Science and Policy for an Engendered-Sustainable Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.5 Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2.6 The Concept of an Engendered-Sustainable Peace . 12.3 Historical Evolution of Patriarchy and Regional Adaptation 12.4 Peace Efforts, Sustainability and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 Cultures of Peace and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.6 Pitfalls of Peace, Sustainability and Gender Security . . . . . . 12.7 Transformation Towards an Engendered-Sustainable Peace Theory and Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.8 Conclusion and Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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13 A Gender Perspective on Climate Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1 Gender and Climate Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2 Climate Change Impacts from a Gender Perspective . . . . . 13.3 From National Security Towards a Global HUGE Security 13.4 Impacts of Climate Change on Women and Girls . . . . . . . 13.4.1 Disaster Impacts with a Gender Perspective . . . . . 13.4.2 Health Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.4.3 Food Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.4.4 Water Security Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.5 Some Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part III

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329 329 331 333 335 336 338 339 341 343 345

Texts on Water, Health, Food and Energy Security

14 On Water Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 14.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 14.2 Water Security Has Been a Relative Latecomer to the Conceptualisation Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352

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14.3 Impacts of Water Security on the Sustainability Discourse . . . . 358 14.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 . . . . . . . .

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372 372 374 375 377 378 379

15 On Health and Water Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.2 Objectives of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3 Water and Health Security: Widening of Security . . . . . . . . . 15.3.1 Conceptual Considerations and Clarifications . . . . . . 15.3.2 Water Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3.3 Health Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3.4 Context of Globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4 Climate Change and Its Impacts on Health and Water Security in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4.1 The PEISOR Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4.2 The Pressure in the Case of Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4.3 The Effects for Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4.4 The Environmental Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4.5 The Societal Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.5 Social Vulnerability and Climate Change Impacts . . . . . . . . . 15.6 Restoring Ecosystem Services Improves Water and Health Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.7 A Global Challenge for Equity and Collaboration . . . . . . . . . 15.7.1 Widened Understanding of Health and Water Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.7.2 Health and Water Security: A Complex Policy Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . 386 . . 387

16 Agroecology for Food Sovereignty and Security . . . . . 16.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.1 Structure of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.2 Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.2 Conceptual Considerations on Food and Nutrition 16.3 Food Security Versus Food Sovereignty . . . . . . . . 16.3.1 Food Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.3.2 Food Sovereignty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.4 Hunger in a World of Abundance and Waste . . . . 16.4.1 Food Crisis and Hunger . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.4.2 Waste of Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.5 Corporate Agriculture Versus Green Agriculture . . 16.5.1 Industrialised Corporate Agriculture . . . . 16.5.2 Environmental Deterioration . . . . . . . . . . 16.5.3 Green or Agroecological Agriculture . . . .

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393 393 394 395 395 397 397 397 399 399 401 402 402 403 404

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16.6 Some Conclusive Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 17 Energy Security: Policies and Potentials in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . 17.1 Introduction, Hypothesis and Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.1.1 Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.1.2 Structure of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.2 Energy Security: A Complex Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.2.1 Geopolitics of Oil and Oil Prices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.2.2 Evolution of the Concept of Energy Security . . . . . . 17.3 Energy Security and Availability of Energy Resources in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3.1 Energy Security in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3.2 Fossil Energy Supply in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.4 Trinational Energy Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.5 Renewable Energy Potential and Sustainability in Mexico . . . 17.6 Conclusions: A Future with a Sustainable Renewable Energy Transition in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part IV

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413 413 414 415 416 416 418

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422 423 425 428 430

. . 438 . . 443

Texts on Migration, the Nexus among Sectorial Securities and Outlook

18 Analysing Migration and Environmental-Induced Migration with the PEISOR Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.1.1 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.1.2 Objective of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.1.3 Conceptualisation of Environmental-Induced Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.1.4 Structure of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.2 Methodological Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.3 P: Climate Change as a Pressure for Environmentally Induced Migration (EIM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4 E: Effects of Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier to Human Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4.1 Effects of Climate Change as a Security Risk in Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4.2 Environmental Scarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4.3 Environmental Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.4.4 Environmental Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.5 I or Impact of Climate Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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451 451 452 453

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462 462 464 465 466

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18.6 SO: Societal Outcomes: Rural Environmentally-Induced Migration (R-EIM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.6.1 Internal Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.6.2 International Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.6.3 Societal Outcomes and Security Threats . . . . . . . . 18.7 R: Policy Responses to Environmentally Induced Migration 18.8 Political Perspective and Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18.9 Conclusive Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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19 Environmentally-Induced Migration from Bottom-Up in Central Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1.1 Objective of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1.2 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1.3 Structure of the Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2 Methodology and Methods of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2.1 The PEISOR Model from Bottom-Up . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2.2 Interdisciplinary Research Methods with the Participation of the Affected People . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2.3 Conceptual Approaches to Gender, Adaptation and Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2.4 The Study Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2.5 Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.3 Pressure (P) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.3.1 Environmental Deterioration and Index of Environmental Vulnerability Perception . . . . . . . . 19.3.2 Socio-economic Deterioration and Index of Social Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.4 Effects (E) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.4.1 Effects on the Environment: Degradation, Scarcity and Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.4.2 Effects on Society: Poverty, Lack of Public Services, Loss of Solidarity and Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.5 Impacts (I) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.5.1 Impacts on the Environment: Extreme Hydrometeorological, Geophysical and Technological Events . . . 19.5.2 Impacts on Society: Poverty, Lack of Public Services, Malnutrition, Disease, Loss of Livelihood and Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.6 Societal Outcome (SO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.6.1 Pendular Environmentally Induced Migration . . . . . . 19.6.2 Return Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.6.3 Rural-Rural Environmentally Induced Migration . . . 19.6.4 International Environmentally Induced Migration . . .

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468 469 471 479 484 487 488 491

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499 499 500 502 502 502 502

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505 507 508 509

. . 510 . . 512 . . 515 . . 515 . . 518 . . 519 . . 521

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521 524 526 526 527 527

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19.7 Response (R) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.7.1 Governmental Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.7.2 Societal Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.8 Conclusion on Environmentally Induced Migration . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxxi

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20 The Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.2 Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security (WSFBE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.3 Research Question and Working Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4 Conceptualisation of Human Security, Dual Vulnerability, Gender Perspective, and Living Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4.1 Human Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4.2 Dual Vulnerability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4.3 Gender Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4.4 Living Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.5 Deepening the Nexus Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.5.1 Soil Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.5.2 Biodiversity Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.6 Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Global South Facing the Challenges of an Engendered, Sustainable and Peaceful Transition in a Hothouse Earth . . . . 21.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.1 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.2 Structure of This Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.3 Definition of Key Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2 Existing and Upcoming Threats for the Global South . . . . . 21.2.1 Climate Change: A Hothouse Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2.2 Wealth Concentration and Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2.3 Famine, Thirst and Diseases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2.4 Forced Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3 An Alternative World-View with an Engendered Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3.1 We Belong to This Earth; We Are Not Its Owners: Degrowth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3.2 Environmentalism Versus Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3.3 Caring Instead of Accumulating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3.4 Solidarity and Sorority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4 Adaptation for Whom? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4.1 Adaption from Top-Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4.2 Adaptation from Bottom-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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528 529 530 532 538

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552 553 553 554 556 557 560 564 570 574

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Contents

21.5 Resilience-Building Based on Own Capacities in the South . . 21.5.1 The Global South Is Alone: Promoting Living Well . 21.5.2 Indigenous Zapatistas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.5.3 Economy of Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.6 Outlook: An Engendered-Sustainable Future with Peace, Sorority and Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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601 602 604 606

. . 609 . . 611

International Peace Research Association (IPRA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617 IPRA Conferences, Secretary Generals and Presidents 1964–2018 . . . . . 619 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625

Abbreviations

ACTO AFES-PRESS AFPREA ANZUS APPRA BAU BD bha BP C CC CCA CEDAW CEPAL/ECLAT CETP CFE CHS CISINAH CLAIP CLOC CNPA CNRET CO2 CO2e COMECON Conacyt COP COPRED COPRI CRAC-PC

Amazonian Cooperation Treaty Organization Peace Research and European Security Studies Africa Peace Research and Education Association Australia, New Zealand and US defence agreement Asian and the Pacific Peace Research Association Business-as-usual Billion dollars Billion hectares Billion pesos Celsius Climate change Centre for Atmospheric Science Convention to Eliminate Discrimination against Women Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean Clean Energy Transitions Programme Federal Electricity Commission Commission of Human Security Centre for Superior Research in Anthropology and History Latin American Council on Peace Research Latin American Peasant Organisation National Coordination Plan de Ayala Centre for Natural Resources, Energy and Transport Carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide equivalent Council for Mutual Economic Assistance National Council of Science and Technology Conference of Parties Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development Copenhagen Peace Research Institute Communitarian Police Force (in Spanish)

xxxiii

xxxiv

CSD DIWO DLDD DoD DOE DRM DRR E. coli EbA EIA EIM ENIGH ENOA ENSO EOLSS EPA EROI ESS EU EUPRA EVPI EZLN FAO FLN FTAA GDI GDP GEC GECHS GEM GHG GMO GPI GRACE GRFC GWh HAV HDI HIV-AIDS HPI-1 HPI-2 HUGE IEA IGBP IHDP

Abbreviations

Commission on Sustainable Development Diverse Women for Diversity Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought US Departments for Homeland Security and Defense US Department of Energy Disaster risk management Disaster risk reduction Escherichia coli Ecosystem-based adaptation US Energy Information Agency Environmental-induced migration United States (USA) National Survey on Income and Expenses National Survey of job and work Niño/Niña cycle Encyclopaedia on Life Support System US-Environmental Protection Agency Energy return on investment Ecosystem services European Union European Peace Research Association North American Environmental Vulnerability Perception Index Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Chiapas) Food and Agricultural Organisation Frente de Liberación Nacional Free Trade Agreement of the Americas Gender Development Index Gross domestic product Global environmental change Global Environmental Change and Human Security Gender Empowerment Measure Greenhouse gases Genetical(ly) modified organisms Global Performance Index Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Global Report on the Food Crisis Gigawatts/hour Hepatitis A virus Human development index Human Immunodeficiency Virus Human Poverty Index, measuring human deprivation in LDC Human poverty generally Human, Gender and Environmental International Energy Agency International Geosphere and Biosphere Programme International Human Dimension Program

Abbreviations

ILO IMF INDC INECC INEGI IOM IPCC IPRA IRBM IRENA IT IUCN LDCs LVC MA MAD Marez MBD MDG MMD MNE Morena MST mt MVMC MWh NADB NAFTA NATO NDC NGO NIC nini NOAA NTM OAS OECD PAN PEISOR Pemex PIH PINCC POPs ppm PPP

xxxv

International Labour Organisation International Monetary Fund Intended National Determined Contributions National Institute for Environment and Climate Change National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico International Organisation of Migration Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change International Peace Research Association Integrated river basin management International Renewable Energy Agency Internet technology International Union for Conservation of Nature Least developed countries La Via Campesina (global peasant movement) UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Mutual assured destruction Autonomous Municipalities Zapatista Rebels Million barrels per day Millennium Development Goals Billion dollars Multinational enterprises Movement of National Regeneration Movemento Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) Metric tons Metropolitan Valley of Mexico City Megawatt/hour North American Development Bank North American Free Trade Agreement North Atlantic Treaty Organisation National Determined Contributions Nongovernmental organisation United States National Intelligence Council Young boys and girls without school and job National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Nontuberculous mycobacterial Organization of American States Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development National Party of Action Pressure, Effect, Impact, Societal Outcome and Response model Petroleos Mexicanos Polemic Institute in Holland, Gröningen Universitarian Programme on Climate Change Persistent Organic Polluters Parts per million Purchase power parity

xxxvi

PRD PRI PRIO Prodesen RECs REDD+ REN21 Sagarpa SAP SDG 2030 Segob Sener SHCP SIPRI SVI TAMA TAPRI TGS TIAA TINA TTP UAM UK UN UNAM UNCB UNCCD UN-DESA UNDP UNEP-WCMC UNESCAP UNESCO UNFCCC UNFPA UNHCR UNICEF UN OCHA UNSC UNSTAT UNU-EHS UN-WWAP USA

Abbreviations

Party of Democratic Revolution Party of Institutional Revolution Peace Research Institute Oslo Mexican Programme for the Development of Electricity Renewable energy certificates Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Renewable Energy Mexican Ministry of Agriculture Structural Adjustment Program Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Ministry of Interior Ministry of Energy Finance Ministry Stockholm Peace Research Institute Social Vulnerability Index There are many alternatives Tampere Peace Research Institute Total Groundwater Stress There is an alternative There is no alternative Trans-Pacific Partnership Metropolitan Autonomous University United Kingdom United Nations National Autonomous University of Mexico UN Convention on Biodiversity UN Convention to Combat Desertification UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Development Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre of the United Nation’s Environment Programme UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia UN-Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations Population Fund United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UN Children’s Emergency Fund United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UN Security Council UN Statistic Division United Nations University on Environmental and Human Security UN World Water Assessment Programme United States of North America

Abbreviations

USB US-NIC USSR VNRs WB WEF WGBU WHO WMO WRI WSFBE WTO WWC WWF WWF

xxxvii

Billions of US dollars US intelligence community Soviet Union Voluntary National Reviews World Bank World Economic Forum German Government World Health Organisation World Meteorological Organization World Resource Institute Water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy nexus World Trade Organisation World Water Council World Water Forum World Wildlife Fund

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

6.5 6.6 7.1 7.2

Widening, deepening and sectorialisation of security. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scales of insecurity related to climate change. Source IPCC (2014a: 777) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transformation of the biosphere over 8000 years. Source UNCCD (2017: 31) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unequal global access to wealth. Source The Author . . . . . IMF conditions imposed on highly indebted countries. Source Strahm/Oswald Spring (1992: 130) . . . . . . . . . . . . . World Population, 1750–2015 and Projections until 2100. Source Roser/Ortiz (2018: 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . World’ Urbanisation. Source UN-DESA (2017) . . . . . . . . . Limits of Planetary Boundaries. Source Steffen et al. (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Increase of CO2 at Mauna Loa since pre-industrial times. Source NOAA 2019 (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.pdf) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Percentage of population with access to clean water by Country. Source Reddit (2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Increasing water stress by 2040. Source World Resource Institute 2015 (Projection based on business-as-usual using SSP2 and RCP8.5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global aquifers. Source Richey et al. (2015a: 5200) . . . . . . Virtual water in food items. Source FAO (2010) (1000 l/kg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soil security. Source McBratney et al. (2014: 204) . . . . . . . One planet perspective. Source WWF (2012: 32) . . . . . . . . Water risks in 148 countries. Source OECD (2017: 34) . . . Hydrodiplomacy for resolving water conflicts. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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21

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23

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68 73

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102 103

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107

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118 119

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121 122 129 140

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147

xxxix

xl

Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2 Fig. 11.1

Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3 Fig. 12.4 Fig. 12.5 Fig. 13.1 Fig. 13.2 Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2 Fig. 14.3 Fig. 15.1 Fig. 15.2

Fig. 15.3

Fig. 15.4 Fig. 17.1

List of Figures

Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Source UNGA 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The right to life. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human, Gender and Environmental Security as basic human rights to life. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evolution of poverty and indigence in Latin America: 1980–2015. Source CEPAL (2019: 97) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evolution of inequality: 2002–2018. Source CEPAL (2019: 42) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dual: environmental and social vulnerability. Source Adapted by Oswald Spring (2013a: 21) based on earlier work by Bohle (2003, 2009) . . . . . . . . . . . Unequal access to financial institutions. Source Gonzales et al. (2015: 19) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender parity score. Source McKinsey Global Institute (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender gap index. Source WEF (2016: 8) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paid and unpaid work by men and women. Source WEF (2016: 32) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Share of the top 1% and the global 99%. Source Oxfam (2016: 3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cascading effect with potential interactions (arrows). Source Steffen et al. (2018: 4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Baby deaths a year after a powerful typhoon. Source Anttila-Hughes/Hsiang (2013: 71) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water security and its links to other sources of security. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Integrated water management. Source The Author . . . . . . . . Actions and functions for managing risks of extreme events. Source IPCC 2012: 346 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The PEISOR model. Source Brauch/Oswald Spring (2009: 9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Annual abnormality of the mean temperature in Mexico (1960–2005) and projections until the year 2100. Source SEMARNAT-INE (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Annual abnormality of the monthly precipitation in Mexico (1960–2005) and projections until the year 2100. Source SEMARNAT-INE (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map of Mexico with the division of States. Source INEGI (2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nominal and real oil prices. Source U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA 2015a, b: Oil_Prices_Since_1861.svg, Washington, IEA) . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 17.2

Fig. 17.3 Fig. 17.4

Fig. 17.5 Fig. 17.6

Fig. 17.7 Fig. 17.8 Fig. 17.9 Fig. 17.10

Fig. 17.11 Fig. 17.12 Fig. 17.13 Fig. 18.1 Fig. 18.2 Fig. 18.3 Fig. 18.4 Fig. 18.5 Fig. 18.6 Fig. 18.7

xli

The influence of geopolitical impacts and conflicts on real oil prices (USD real 2008 of Brent Spot). Source US EIA (2013) and the author 2013–2016: http://www.eia.gov/finance/ markets/reports_presentations/eia_what_drives_crude_oil_ prices.pdf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model of analysis of energy security. Source Winzer (2011: 20) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Total number of illegal connections of oil thefts detected in Mexico. Source Nuche/Etellekt (2015: 8), complemented 2013–2015 by the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Export of crude oil and import of fuel products between Mexico and US in TBD. Source EIA (2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . Production of crude oil and investment in exploration and extraction of the Mexican oil mix (1997–2016); investment/year. Source Data from Pemex (1997–2016) . . . Projection of production and consumption of fuel in Mexico (MBD). Source Arena Pública (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indicative path for emissions compliance of NDC by Mexico. Source INECC (2015b: 34). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National inventory of GHG emissions. Source INECC (2015a, b: 111) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Content of energy in the ocean at 2000 m depth. Source NOAA, NESDIS, NODC, Ocean Climate Laboratory (2015), further elaborated by Levitus et al. (2012) . . . . . . . . Power generation technology in Mexico. Source Prodesen (2015: 18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Increase in the estimated power demand 2015–2030. Source Prodesen (2015: 35) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Growth of gas consumption and reduction in production in Mexico. Source León et al. (2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conceptual framework for EIM. Source UK Government Office of Science (2011: 12 and 33) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Among unauthorised migrants Mexicans may no longer be the majority. Source Pew Research Center (2017) . . . . . Dendroclimatic analysis in the Northern States of Mexico. Source Villanueva-Diaz et al. (2010) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aridity index in Mexico. Source INEGI (2016) . . . . . . . . . . Unequal geographical, economic and demographic distribution of water. Source PNH (2013: 19) . . . . . . . . . . . Severe droughts in Mexico: 2012–2014. Source CICC (2015: 70) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Projected changes in precipitation patterns in 2050. Source CCA (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 18.8 Fig. 18.9

Fig. 18.10 Fig. 18.11 Fig. 18.12 Fig. 18.13 Fig. 18.14

Fig. 18.15 Fig. 18.16 Fig. 18.17 Fig. 18.18 Fig. 18.19

Fig. 18.20 Fig. 19.1

Fig. 19.2

Fig. 19.3 Fig. 19.4 Fig. 19.5

List of Figures

Projected temperature changes (°C) in 2050. Source CCA (2009) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Socio-demographic dynamic in Mexico. Source Developed by Lozano (2009) and based on data from INEGI (1995, 2000, 2005) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Average household income/month in Mexico. Source ENIGH (1992–2016), based on real pesos of 1992 . . . . . . . Estimation of Mexican undocumented migrants in the USA (million people). Source Passel/Cohn (2016: 4) . . . . . . . . . . Unauthorised migrants are long-term residents in the USA. Source Passel/Cohn 2016: 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Border patrol arrests. Source Gonzalez-Barrera 2016, Pew Research Center (data for 1976 covered 15 months) . . Migrant flow to USA and return to Mexico. Source Passel et al. (2012: 7). Dark migration Mexico-USA; clear from USA to Mexico (in thousand people) . . . . . . . . . Net Mexican migration after 2008 recession is negative. Source Pew Research Center (2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Temporary and permanent migrants. Source Based on data of Passel (2005: 4) and Segob (2012) . . . . . . . . . . . Remittances sent from USA to Mexico. Source Elaborated with data from Banxico (2019) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arrests on the border between Mexico and USA. Source Pew Research (2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Criminalisation of undocumented migration (in %). Federal criminal arrests. Source Pew Research Center (2017), based on US Bureau of Justice, Statistics, September 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Undocumented migrants jump on ‘The Beast’. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Map of the complex river systems, mostly functioning during the Monsoon. Source Designed by Joaquín Carulina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Past and projected changes of population fertility rate in Morelos 1970–2030. From left to right, the Spanish key below the maps means: ‘More than 2%’; ‘From 1 to 2%’; ‘From 0 to 1%’; and ‘Negative’. Source Rueda (2006: 178) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transformation of precarious houses in El Pañuelo. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poor household in Cochoapan, Guerrero, the Poorest Municipality in Mexico. Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . National, State and Private Protected Areas. Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 19.6 Fig. 19.7 Fig. 19.8 Fig. 19.9 Fig. 19.10 Fig. 19.11 Fig. 20.1 Fig. 20.2 Fig. 20.3 Fig. 20.4

Fig. 20.5 Fig. 20.6 Fig. 20.7 Fig. 20.8 Fig. 21.1 Fig. 21.2 Fig. 21.3 Fig. 21.4 Fig. 21.5

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Existing soils in the study region. Source INEGI (2010) . . . Perception of risks in the study area. Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flood over the Central Bridge in Yautepec. Source Civil protection during the 2010 flood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dead animals in Lorenzo Vázquez during the dry season of 2013. Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Solidarity and support after a Flash Flood. Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fence in the Northern Border in Tijuana. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender: a social construction of masculinity and femininity. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Linkages between ecosystems services and human well-being. Source MA (2005: 50) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soil degradation. Source UNEP, GRID, Arendal (w/d) . . . . Nitrogen cycle in the soil. Source Growjourney (2016), translated originally from German in https://upload. wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Cicle_del_ nitrogen_de.svg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Biodiversity security worldwide. Source Museum of Natural History, London, cited in (19-11-2016) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plants under pressure. Source IUCN (2016: Bangkok, IUCN; downloaded 18-3-2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Threatened species worldwide and by regions. Source World Bank (2015: 33) World Development Indicators . . . . . . . . . Water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy (WSFBE) nexus. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Six gases producing global greenhouse gas emissions. Source IPCC (2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adaptation. Source IPCC (2012: 346) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Synthesis of alternative efforts. Source Mother Pelican (2014) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Food consumption by an indigenous family in the Peruvian Andes and by a middle-class family in Germany . . . . . . . . . A utopia of a HUGE peace and security. Source The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Tables

Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table Table Table Table

6.3 7.1 7.2 10.1

Table 18.1 Table 19.1 Table 19.2 Table 19.3 Table 19.4 Table 19.5

Table 20.1

The water footprint. Sources Oswald/Brauch (2009: 196) . . Severity of water erosion by continent (per cent of surface area). Source Borrelli et al. (2013: 4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . World forest cover 1990–2010. Source FAO (2010) . . . . . . Water risks. Source OECD (2017: 32) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water conflicts in Latin America. Source The Author. . . . . Widening and deepening of security. Source Oswald Spring (2008a, b): 16 (inspired by Møller 2003: 279; Oswald Spring 2001, 2004, 2007) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Undocumented Mexicans and their relation to population and workforce. Source Pew Research Center (2017) . . . . . . Survey about environmentally induced migration. Source Results from the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Environmental Vulnerability Perception Index (EVPI). Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Composition of the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Land use changes. Source Field research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of relation between men and women. Source Elaborated by the Author based on INEGI (2005, 2010, 2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State of biodiversity in animals. Source WWF (2016a), Species Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Boxes

Box 14.1

Ministerial Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the 21st Century, 22 March 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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xlvii

Part I

Texts on Peace, Gender, Environment and Security

Chapter 1

Contextualisation on Gender, Peace, Security and Environment

1.1

Introduction

These texts on gender, peace, security and environmental problems were written based on my concern about an unequal and unsustainable development process during the past six decades, when the history of the earth moved from the Holocene to the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). The following chapters were influenced by theoretical reflections, my life experience and my scientific training on three continents, at the universities of Antananarivo (Madagascar), Paris (France), Zürich (Switzerland) and in Mexico (CISINAH, UAM and UNAM). The influence of these three cultures with very different historical backgrounds explains my progressively broadened understanding of the global development process. The post-colonial experiences in Africa in the 1960s, the violence left behind by the former colonial powers, and the outcome of civil wars, corruption and destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems and species forced me to understand not only the physical functioning of the human body (medicine), but also its psychological behaviour that supports or obstructs a healthy human life (psychology) and avoids environmental destruction (ecology). My understanding of the links between the human body, the mind and the environment (anthropology) resulted first in an intuitive and later an interdisciplinary approach to these four interrelated circles (body, mind, environment and human relations). Understanding the importance of these four study subjects triggered in me a commitment to responsible scientific and sustainable behaviour towards other human beings, but also to nature. When I was fleeing from the civil war in Burundi, I received unconditional support from unknown women, who sometimes risked their lives, when they offered our refugee group clean water and food. This disinterested and generous behaviour gave me a better understanding of the existing gender relations, around the world, where a violent patriarchal mindset, paired with egoism and greed, is destroying the most precious human interrelations of caring and supporting others.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_1

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1 Contextualisation on Gender, Peace, Security and Environment

Back in Europe, I studied the psychological and anthropological processes in humans and cultures, trying to understand first the violence against others and later the ferocity against ourselves. During my studies in Zürich, I was actively involved in various student groups, and we gradually grew aware of the failed development processes proposed by international organisations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We also studied the impacts of multinational enterprises on developing countries (e.g. of Nestlé and its promotion of milk powder for babies; or Siemens, RWE, etc. with their support for the construction of the dam of Cabora Bassa) and how their business model destroyed the livelihood of people in different parts of Africa. As a dynamic study group we published several reports and pamphlets about the ‘Ujamaa model’ of Tanzanian socialism; against racism and Apartheid in South Africa; against the social and environmental destruction of the Cabora Bassa dam; and against racism in children’s books in Switzerland. All these studies took me back to Africa several times, enabling me to see how livelihoods and environments were being continuously affected and seriously destroyed by the so-called modernisation projects. Further, all these projects increased the foreign debts of these fragile countries, where the World Bank was the key promoter. Without any doubt, land use change, land grabbing, soil erosion and water deviation had also produced serious conflicts in these recently independent countries. Thus in 1971, during a guest semester at the University of Zürich, Johan Galtung taught and familiarised me with his theories of peace and structural imperialism, and later, in training courses in Västerhaninge, Sweden, I received a systematic training in peace-building and conflict resolution. Further research and teaching in Asia and Latin America helped me to better understand the structural mechanisms of dependency, debt payment, loss of livelihood and subsistence food in the rural areas, increasing the importation of foreign food.

1.2

Structure of the Book

This volume complements my Pioneer book (Oswald Spring 2018) and is divided into four parts. Part I focuses on Peace and Security with a nonviolent approach to conflict resolution and human development. Most conflicts are related to the extraction of natural resources, therefore environmental security plays a crucial role in managing potential future conflicts. Globalisation has changed the relationship between humankind and nature, and environmental management is dominated by short-term profits, regardless of the costs of ecosystem destruction or pollution of water, soil and air. However, there are different environmental behaviours among men and women, but also among peasants and indigenous and multinational managers. Therefore, Part II introduces in Chap. 10 the concept of gender security (Oswald Spring 2013) and Chap. 11 a HUGE security (Oswald Spring 2012). Peace theories were basically developed by men and began with the ‘negative peace’ after World War

1.2 Structure of the Book

5

II. However, none of these theories explored the root causes of violence, which are based on patriarchal relationships developed during the last several thousand years by religion, kingdoms, slavery, conquest and private enterprises. Thus, the next chapter (Chap. 12) proposes an engendered-sustainable peace from a feminist and bottom-up perspective that challenges the androgenic understanding of peace theories. Without doubt, climate change has brought new risks and threats to humankind, where a gender perspective may help to transform the traditional national and state security approach towards a more human-orientated perspective (Chap. 13). Part III analyses several sectorial securities, such as water, health, food and energy security. Part IV first reviews the outcome of the mismanagement of the previously analysed sectorial securities, where one of the most difficult outcomes are survival threats. Often people affected by disasters, especially long-time droughts, are deprived of their basic needs, which obliges them to migrate. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are the regions most affected by climate change, due to the fact that these countries are located between two oceans with rising temperatures. They are especially strongly exposed to hurricanes, droughts, landslides, sea level rise, coastal erosion and intrusion of sea water into the coastal aquifers and fertile coasts. Chapters 18 and 19 analyse first international migration and later internal migration with a gender perspective. Chapter 20 examines the nexus among water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy security, where the traditional military and political security approach is unable to propose sustainable alternatives for the future. Finally, Chap. 21 scrutinises ways in which the Global South could achieve a sustainable transition with equity and inclusive development processes, even when it is severely affected by climate and global environmental change.

1.2.1

Organisation of This Chapter

With this global overview of the book, this introductory chapter first presents texts on gender, peace, security and environment from a global perspective (1.3). As a key concept, which gave birth to the Constitution on the United Nations Organisation after World War II, peace and security continue to be debated after the end of the Cold War. Because the world is a complex mosaic of different regional and socio-cultural interests, which have produced different conflicts, the mechanisms of conflict resolution are equally diverse and often adapted to the regional socio-economic and environmental conditions. Globally, some common desires for peace and security have historically evolved, but others have been subsumed under the expansion of global capitalism, where market forces and speculative capital have taken precedence over the productive and trade activities. In response to this, the Copenhagen School of Rethinking Security (Buzan et al. 1998) has introduced a new approach to analysing peace and security (1.4). New threats of terrorism and failed states brought Wæver (1995) to securitise the new political arena (1.4.1). The end of the Cold War and the expansion of a single

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economic system under neoliberalism have also influenced the peace community. Peace and security approaches have widened and now include in their analysis societal, economic and environmental themes (1.4.2). The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 1994) launched the ‘human security’ concept, and in 2007 Oswald Spring added gender security (1.4.3). Different multilateral organisations of the UN focusing on development issues introduced several sectorial approaches of security (Brauch et al. 2009). In the face of famine, FAO (1983) explored the concept of ‘food security’. After several oil crises and price hikes during the 1970s, the newly established International Energy Agency (IEA 1994) introduced the concept of ‘energy security’. In The Hague in 2000 the third World Water Forum proposed a ministerial understanding of ‘water security’, and in 2007 the WHO emphasised the need for public ‘health security’. These specific security concepts were interpreted as being part of a sectorial approach. Finally, the World Economic Forum (2011) linked together water, food and energy security with a nexus approach, but without defining the conceptual reach of security (Oswald Spring 2016). Since the 1970s the drastic changes in the world economy have had different regional impacts (1.5). The so-called Third World countries, today understood as the Global South, were unable to integrate organically into the globalisation process. The structural dependency from the former occidental powers through colonialism and neo-colonialism produced a process of underdevelopment (Chapters 9 and 10 in PAHSEP 17). Their abundant natural resources (oil, gas, minerals, wood, etc.) made them attractive to multinational enterprises, which often polluted soils, air and water and exploited the resources at the cost of destroying ecosystem services, changing landscapes and making many local people poorer and poorer. Further, the massive use of fossil oil in the industrialised countries produced negative impacts of climate change and strong disasters in many developing countries (IPCC 2012, 2014a). Often, local people lost their homes, family members and livelihoods through floods, drought, landslides, hurricanes and forest fires, and were obliged to migrate within their country or abroad. This chapter concludes with a reflection on the present model of corporate globalisation and its impacts on human beings and the environment (1.6). Is there a way within the present model of economic development to produce well-being for all human beings or will the dominant productive and consumer system lead humankind and the ecosystem towards extinction? What should be the different approaches for a transition to sustainability with equity and justice for all humans? Would the proposal of the indigenous Aymara in Bolivia of ‘buen vivir’ (good living) allow a different relationship with nature and other ethnic and cultural groups? Could other alternatives, experimented globally, such as degrowth, less consumerism or an economy of solidarity, avoid a potential global cataclysm in the new era of the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002)?

1.3 Gender, Peace, Security and Environment

1.3

7

Gender, Peace, Security and Environment

Ever since my years in Africa, development issues have stimulated my curiosity. I wanted to better understand the structural conditions and the lack of improvements for the people in the Global South in contrast to the progress in the North. The theory of dependency (Marini 1973; Stavenhagen 1965, 2013) and the theology of liberation (Boff 1980) attracted me to Latin America. The dependency theory explained how multinational enterprises, allied with national elites and corrupt governments, extracted the surplus of the poorest, the small farmers, indigenous people and migrant women (Arizpe 2015). In Mexico, I started to do fieldwork in the poorest region of the country, the Montaña of Guerrero and its two coasts, the Costa Chica and Costa Grande. Here Lucio Cabañas was the leader of a guerrilla movement called ‘Army of the Poor’ that was militarily persecuted by the Mexican army. I was able to examine these global tendencies of surplus extraction by international capitalists and the mechanisms of exploitation by the local bourgeoisie and corrupt functionaries at national, state and municipal level. In my Ph.D. thesis on these regional differences (PAHSEP 17, Chapter 9) I exposed the multiple mechanisms of exploitation through hoarding and underpayment of labour by the local bourgeoisie and the extraction of the scarce resources of poor peasants through the payment of credits to the World Bank. I learned that globally the mountain areas were the most biodiverse, but also the poorest regions. I also witnessed the loss of livelihood and subsistence production through development programmes promoted by the national government and financed by the World Bank. During my time as a student, Rudolf Strahm and I wrote several pamphlets together and organised public awareness campaigns on the Global South and on the mechanism of poverty increase. Later, in Spanish, we co-authored a book on the development of underdevelopment (PAHSEP 17, Chapter 10). With other colleagues and peasant women and men, I was actively involved in setting up an independent peasant organisation, the Coodinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala (CNPA [National Coordination Plan Ayala]) to overcome the political constraints of trade unions, which were promoted by the Government. I also did field research in several regions of Mexico, often linked to women, peasants or poor urban dwellers. When we established the Colegio of Tlaxcala in 2001 with a Ph.D. and a Masters programme on regional development, I focused on the evolution of the concept of regions and its local differences. In my studies on the dependence on oligopoly market structures and on financial capital in rural development I turned to the approach of an interdisciplinary systems analysis, which will be further discussed in Chaps. 14, 15 and 17. The increasing violence in Mexico, linked first to guerrilla movements in Guerrero and urban areas, together with the violent military repression and later also organised crime, made it necessary to deepen my understanding of peacebuilding and conflict resolution processes. In the context of the International Peace

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Research Association (IPRA) and the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), I coordinated, with George Kent from Hawaii, IPRA’s ‘Food Study Group’ and later, with Hans Günter Brauch from Germany, the Ecology and Peace Commission. Combining my medical, psychological, anthropological and environmental expertise, I learned that a safe and especially organic food culture offered small children and adults a capacity for a creative and healthy life. I trained several women’s groups in nutrition, especially during the harsh crisis years in Mexico, which helped them to develop their survival strategies (Oswald Spring 1991). With Hans Günter Brauch und his colleagues from AFES-PRESS (Arbeitsgruppe Friedensforschung und Europäische Sicherheitspolitik – Peace Research and European Security Studies), after the end of the Cold War, we started to systematically study the new security concepts and their widening, deepening and sectorialisation processes (see our security handbook in three volumes, Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011; Chapters 3–19). Since the 1960s, through gender studies I have been examining the critical conditions of women and girls and their labour, salary, political and social discrimination. Since 1975, when the First UN Conference on Women occurred in Mexico, I have been actively involved with female peasants, marginalised urban people and academic experts to collectively think about these structural mechanisms of discrimination and exploitation related to patriarchy. As a new reconceptualisation of security (Oswald Spring/Brauch 2009), I introduce the gender perspective and explore the peace potential of different security approaches, where the understanding of the root causes of violence might offer an alternative way to deal with violence, destruction, exploitation and subordination. Thus, equality, equity and sustainability combined with peaceful negotiation and win-win outcomes for all involved, including the environment, might offer a pathway out of the devastation of human relations and nature. In this context I examined the concept of gender security (Chap. 10) more deeply, while my daughter suggested “engendering security” (Serrano Oswald 2009). I am still convinced that gender must be securitised, due to the existing intrafamiliar violence and the lack of legal reinforcement in most parts of the world that is reflected in the male-dominated judicial system (Buscaglia 2013), but also that peace and security must be engendered (Chap. 11). I believe that security should be embedded in a deepened and widened security approach (Buzan et al. 1998) to overcome the present environmental, economic, societal, gender and human destruction. This Human, Gender and Environmental Security (HUGE) security concept (Chap. 11), explores an integrated view that links up exploitation, violence, inequality and discrimination against women, indigenous people, children and other powerless humans with similar mechanisms that are used to exploit and destroy nature. I have been influenced by ecofeminism (Mies 1968; Warren 1997) that not only analysed, from a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary and anticolonial perspective the destruction of humankind and nature, but also proposed alternatives to overcome this destructive behaviour.

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With Mies (1998), Bennholdt-Thomsen (1998), Bennholdt-Thomsen and Mies (1999) and other ecofeminists I studied the mechanisms of violence due to patriarchal-capitalist relations that operated against the traditional sustainable food culture. Multinational enterprises (Monsanto merged with Bayer) had established a monopoly on agrochemicals and GM-seeds, and worldwide governments and international organisations (FAO, WB) supported this type of industrial agriculture. The result of this unnatural production has been biodiversity loss, soil depletion, erosion and food crisis in several developing countries, especially in the drylands in Africa. Therefore, from a bottom-up perspective, in collaboration with several ecofeminists I experimented with an organic agricultural subsistence approach1 as an alternative to produce safe food for poor people despite the dominant patriarchal and capitalist system (Chap. 15). This subsistence approach was further developed by Via Campesina (2002) – a world association of peasant organisations – with its concept of food sovereignty (Oswald Spring 2009), which we also are promoting in the Peasant University of the South (Universidad Campesina del Sur). Via Campesina (1996, 2016) also promoted the interchange of native seeds among peasants from all over the world to avoid the spread of genetically modified organisms and the payment of seed patents (Oswald Spring 2011b). Recently, due to the drastic loss of natural soil fertility, desertification, erosion of soils, greater threats of climate change, especially in the drylands, and the persistence of hunger in developing countries, FAO (2013, 2016) has promoted these organic practices under the concept of climate-smart agriculture. Further, the ecofeminist approach towards organic agriculture has also increased the visibility of unacknowledged female domestic work in food production, where globally 50% of the food is cultivated by women in orchards and small plots of land (IPCC 2014a), while agribusiness normally produces crops for livestock, biofuel and exportation. This organic agriculture also represents a non-violent way to restore the damaged environment and improve food sovereignty in regions and nations with severe food scarcity, bad nutritious habits (obesity) and difficult climate conditions (Chap. 16). Finally, organic food also conserves human health and reduces free radicals, including the toxins from industrialised food with multiple preservatives, sugar and artificial flavours that produce aggression against the human body. Energy security, policies and its potentials in scrutinised in the case of Mexico (Chap. 17). Violence cannot be combatted with greater violence, but requires a different approach to overcome it. After the agricultural revolution with irrigation systems 10,000–6000 years ago in Mesopotamia, India, China, Mesoamerica and South

1

This organic agriculture includes the use of native seeds and the compost from organic waste, which facilitates the recovery of soils depleted by chemical fertilisers and restores ecosystems and their services at micro level. The improvement of natural soil fertility with organic compost and manure from animals conserves humidity in the soil, facilitates the infiltration of water into the aquifer, increases crop yields without agrochemicals, reinforces the immune system of plants, helping them fight better against diseases and plagues in natural way, and improves ecosystem services.

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America, a process of social stratification emerged systematically across all these regions as a result of food surplus, food trade, market structures, militarisation, wars and discrimination against women. Therefore a different peace approach made the abolition of patriarchal structures necessary (Chap. 2). It also raises awareness that global environmental change and climate change are anthropogenically induced (Chaps. 5, 6, 7 and 8) and directly related to this violent system of domination. So far, peace conceptualisations and theories have primarily been developed by men, e.g. by Chadwick Alger; Gonzalo Arias; Genaro Arriagado; Norberto Bobbio; Kenneth Boulding; Boutros Boutros-Ghali; Gaston Bouthoul; Hans Günter Brauch; Lothar Brock; Ernst-Otto Czempiel; Vicens Fisas; Paulo Freire; Johan Galtung; Mahatma Gandhi; Humberto Gori; Nils-Petter Gleditsch; Eric Hobsbawn; Francis Hutchinson; Immanuel Kant; Otto Kimminich; Ives Lacoste; Paul Lederach; Mario López; Francisco Muñoz; Hermann Oeling; Ido Oren; Raimon Pannikar; Roland Paris; Sebastian Rosato; Edward Said; Paul Smoker; Dieter Senghaas; David Spiro; Eduard Tarnawksi; Peter Uvin; Immanuel Wallerstein; Quincy Wright; Gerado Zampliglione and many others. New peace concepts have emerged, such as negative, positive, structural, cultural and environmental peace, but none of these male peace researchers has questioned the deep-rooted origin of violence based on the patriarchal system. Brilliant women, such as Reardon (1980, 1996) and Boulding (2000), have addressed issues of gender and patriarchal warfare. However, the male mainstream of peace research has mostly ignored their conceptualisations. Inspired by these two exceptional women and after several years of research, I discussed the concept of sustainable peace and environmental security (Chap. 8). Later an engenderedsustainable peace concept emerged (Chap. 12). All these concepts not only focus on theoretical reflections, but should also serve as a tool for women and men from bottom up to strengthen their struggle for a more equal, peaceful and sustainable world without violence and peaceful conflict resolution or ahimsa (Chap. 4). The concept of an engendered-sustainable peace attempts to reach an understanding of violent patriarchal behaviour, and also explores alternatives in indigenous societies which have found ways to consolidate preventive conflict resolution (Menchú 2004), avoid violence and peacefully reintegrate criminals into their society (Rojas Flores 2004). Without a different – nonviolent and engendered – approach to humans and nature, there is no possibility of saving the planet and its people. An alternative peace concept must be holistic and address physical, social, gender and cultural threats of the dominant values and behaviour in the Anthropocene (Oswald Spring et al. 2014; Chapters 10, 12, 13). Climate change has also increased the pressure on the Global South and threatened not only traditional state security, but also the human, gender and environmental security (Chap. 11). The studies on water and its quality indicated further that most diseases among children and adults are still linked to polluted water, as reflected in the popular reference in Mexico to ‘Moctezuma’s revenge’ for foreigners who get diarrhoea. In other words, it is the microbiological and often also the physical-chemical pollution of water which is still the main cause of child mortality and many diseases (Chap. 14).

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In 2008 I began coordinating a scientific research network on water for the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) in Mexico. About 450 researchers from different disciplines and institutions, including enterprises and public functionaries, participated in a diagnosis of the conditions, the existing knowledge, the official educational system, the training courses and the gaps in Mexican water research (Oswald Spring 2011a). The diagnosis explained catastrophic outcomes. Water resources are not only getting scarcer, but also increasingly polluted and, in addition, water management was highly inefficient. The governmental reply was to privatise the water supply and its treatment by transferring the task to multinational enterprises, which generally did not improve the quality of service and water, but drastically increased prices. Many people and citizen groups opposed this policy and there were multiple protests against an expensive and inefficient water supply. Aguascalientes was considered by the Government to be a model of privatisation, but when Avelar et al. (2011) studied the quality of the water supply, they found high levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and other toxic components in its drinking water. Infants are always the most vulnerable in such conditions. They established in 18% of children proteinuria, bilirubin and ketones and 7% of these children required periodic dialysis and are waiting for a kidney transplant (Arreola Mendoza et al. 2011). Given these complex hygiene, health and water issues, the question emerged how to securitise (Wæver 1995) water in Mexico? Chapter 14 on water security contextualises this problem and Chap. 15 demonstrates that health security is closely related to water security. All these different security approaches were systematically developed by United Nations and researchers, who deepened, widened and sectorialised the security understanding.

1.4

Studies on Deepening, Widening and Sectorialising Security

In 1994, UNDP deepened the narrow understanding of military and political security and proposed as a new concept ‘human security’, whereby human beings were put in the centre of concern and not the sovereignty and the territory of the State. Buzan et al. (1998) later proposed a widened understanding of security, including ‘economic, societal and environmental security’. In all these reconceptualisations of security the reference object shifted from the State to human beings or nature, and the values at risk moved from territory and national sovereignty to identity, survival, equality, equity and sustainability. The threats were no longer other states, terrorism, guerrilla and sub-state actors such as organised crime, but immigrants, privatisation processes, reconfiguration of a global oligarchy, exclusive globalisation processes and authoritarian churches, and especially humankind, its consumerism, the sustainability of ecosystems and patriarchy.

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Within the widening, deepening and sectorialisation of security, the AFES-PRESS group, led by Hans Günter Brauch, collaborated for a decade, editing three handbooks on reconceptualising security. These books involved more than 300 researchers from all over the world and from different disciplines (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011). The group continued its efforts with a handbook on transition to sustainability and sustainable peace (Brauch et al. 2016). When these efforts were under way, a constitutional change occurred in Mexico, and since 2014 petrol and gas can be extracted, refined and sold by private enterprises, primarily multinational holdings (Rodríguez 2007). Almost everybody in Mexico was against this change, because the oil reserves had been the pivot for public investments in the country (Dávalos López 2007) and a key factor for the development of Mexican infrastructure. The outcome was a substantial increase in the price of gasoline and gas. Globally, enormous political instability, terrorism and wars prevailed in the Middle East, frequently related to abundant oil reserves. In this political context, I wrote the chapter on energy security and geopolitics (Chap. 17), which suggests a global approach for this conflictive source and analyses the repercussions of unsustainable financial and environmental exploitation of oil and gas in Mexico. These 22 chapters touch different but interrelated themes, such as: development, peace and security with a gender perspective. Several chapters analyse the conditions of food (Chap. 16), water (Chap. 14), health and livelihood (Chap. 15), not only for marginalised Mexican women and men, but also with the intention of understanding the global mechanisms of exploitation and discrimination related to patriarchal subordination of the most vulnerable (Chaps. 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13). The outcomes of undernourishment, depeasantisation, poverty and migration resulting from various development models promoted in Mexico also indicate the violence imminent in these processes, which has affected significant social groups. For decades these development models were promoted by the World Bank, the IMF, multinational enterprises and often also occidental governments and philanthropic foundations. After four decades of this failed strategy, which has also had a severe impact on the environment, the World Bank (2014) is critically reviewing its development policy and changing its past investment practices, due to the negative outcomes for humans and the environment. A dramatic example of this failed development policy is the destruction of the tropical rainforests and the drying out of the wetlands in Tabasco, which was financed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (Barkin 1977). Both processes have destroyed not only the livelihood of most local inhabitants, but also one of the most biodiverse regions on earth. Further, they have increased the risks of severe floods in the Tabasco floodplain and the displacement of indigenous people in the mountains, due to the construction of big dams, and, during the severe Niña year in 2012 the tropical humid climate experienced its first drought. These modernisation projects also accelerated the globalisation process and the concentration of wealth in a small group of super-rich people, while the world’s population has grown to over 7.5 billion people, increasing the demand for water, food and jobs. Therefore, during the past three decades of neoliberalism, the

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destruction of ecosystems, social security networks, employment (Salas 2007) and livelihood for the majority of people living in developing countries has increased. However, the extensive globalisation, with the extraction of the surplus from workers, peasants, women, and indigenous people, is producing a boomerang for industrialised regions, due to new illnesses (such as avian flu, AHN1, zika virus, etc.; e.g. Eibenschütz et al. 2012) and economic and environmental migration (Chaps. 18 and 19). The present world situation is further affected by global environmental change and climate change (Chap. 13) and its socio-environmental impacts (IPCC 2013, 2014a, b). Therefore, it is time to analyse alternatives for processes of sustainable and just development that can build regionally and globally sustainable livelihoods (Barba 2012) for men and women, children and the elderly (Corcuera 2012). This new understanding must also help to restore nature and its ecosystem services as a stable base for sustainable well-being, which the Aymara define as ‘living well’ (buen vivir). Does this indigenous understanding and living in harmony with nature represent a new paradigm for a sustainable and healthy planet, where humans are able to limit their consumption and destruction of Mother Earth (Chap. 19)?

1.4.1

Securitisation

Since 2000 climate change has increasingly been perceived as a major threat to humans, infrastructure, ecosystem and production. Extreme hydrometeorological events and hurricanes have killed people, interrupted productive activities (e.g. oil refineries in Houston in 2017) and produced landslides, while Hurricane Maria (2017) produced unprecedented levels of destruction on the island of Dominica and 4645 deaths on Puerto Rico. Particularly exposed were vulnerable people in the Caribbean who had insufficient warning before the powerful Hurricane Maria, number five on the scale of Saffir-Simpson (the highest level), wrought enormous havoc, with the cost of damage in Puerto Rico alone estimated at 102 billion USD. Also, lack of water and drought related to climate change (IPCC 2013) have created new a security danger and concern among affected people in several African countries. These unpredicted and more extreme events (IPCC 2012) are threatening international, national and human security (Chap. 13). Therefore, climate change was securitised by different governments and the United Kingdom raised the topic at the UN Security Council in 2007 (Wisner et al. 2007). However, climate change risks are very different from the traditional military and political threats normally managed by the UNSC via military security strategies. The enemy is us, with our consumption of hydrocarbons, massive emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), badly managed solid waste and untreated liquid sewage. The military and its arms offer no solution for dealing with extreme events and climate disasters. The solution requires both global multilateral cooperation and binding agreements on the reduction of GHG, but also national and local actions to mitigate GHG, reduce climate risks and prepare exposed people to adapt and

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acquire the resilience to confront and successfully manage climate risks in the future, especially where cities in the Global South are highly exposed and at present badly prepared to deal with the upcoming threats. In this complex situation, Wæver (1995) proposed the concept of securitisation, where, through a discursive and political process, an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community, thus the danger represents an existential threat to a highly valued referent object. This object may be life, livelihood, home, but is perceived by the exposed people as of most importance. Once the existence of the threat is acknowledged, it enables experts and other people in authority – generally politicians – to formulate appropriate strategies and promote exceptional measures to deal with the threat so that people agree and accept the imposed actions. Thus, any successful securitisation process requires three elements: 1. A referent object that is threatened and may affect survival, the State, livelihoods, liberal values, etc. 2. A securitising actor, who makes the claim – called by Wæver speech act – which explains the existential threat to the referent object. Thereby, the actor legitimises the use of extraordinary measures, often carried out by the political authority or a socially accepted actor. 3. An audience – the exposed and potentially affected people – who are convinced by the successful speech act and allow the securitising actor to develop extraordinary measures. In this century, climate change has been perceived in many countries as a threat to national, international and above all human security. International security concerns are today related to environmental or climate-induced migration (Oswald Spring et al. 2014) and potential conflicts with numerous refugees (UNHCR 2017). Nowadays, multiple countries in Europe and especially the US also perceive climate-induced migration as a national security threat which requires extraordinary measures, such as walls, fans, militarisation of the border etc. Different governmental reports have securitised the threat, especially the United Kingdom and Germany, but increasingly also the small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean, threatened by sea level rise. UNU-EHS has started to analyse the inherent vulnerability, risks and challenges to human security (Brauch 2005a, b) by focusing on human security aggravated by climate change. This human security approach orientates the threats towards the highly socially vulnerable poor population in the North (Hurricanes Harvey in Huston, Katrina in New Orleans) and the South (Hurricanes Stan, Maria, Patricia, etc.), which have destroyed lives, livelihoods and productive activities. The Swedish Academy supported this securitisation process, when IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and Al Gore Jr. shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for building up a scientific assessment for disseminating knowledge about the anthropogenically produced climate change impacts. This securitisation process provided an arena for promoting mitigation measures that are needed globally to reduce GHG emissions. Further, IPCC (2013, 2014a, b) assessed

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the new knowledge with empirical studies, whereby political, historical, social and environmental themes were scrutinised to transform normal political behaviour into an urgent securitisation process. Priority activities of government and people try to avoid further disasters, loss and risks. These studies converted climate change into a matter of security. However, with the exception of the highly affected countries which year by year suffer from the impacts of climate change extreme events, the global audience continues with its normal behaviour. Political and economic deniers in the US and elsewhere, who reinforce their fossil fuel lobby, have done enormous damage to this securitisation process. Notwithstanding the small achievement in Paris in 2015, which will be unable to reduce drastically the GHG emission in order to avoid further risks and threats, ‘business as usual’ behaviour predominates, which is increasing the anthropogenic GHG in the atmosphere towards dangerous and soon irreversible levels. The agreed maximum of 450 ppm of CO2 emissions will be exceeded, as the Mauna Loa station reported 412 ppm of CO2 (NOAA 2018) in May 2018. Most of the industrialised countries, including China, are still emitting too many GHG, together with the low level of commitment and the rejection of the US for binding efforts of decarbonisation.

1.4.2

Widening Towards Environmental, Economic and Societal Security

Drawing on my collaboration with members of the AFES-PRESS, I examine the deepening of security by addressing human and gender security, its widening by reviewing environmental and societal security, and its sectorialisation with regard to water, food, energy, health, climate and global environmental change security (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011, 2016). The security debate has been influenced by more global issues, such as what does security mean globally? How are the cultural philosophical and religious influences changing the understanding of security? What are the objects of security, the new dangers and the subjective security concerns over threats, vulnerabilities and risks? Finally, there is the question how has security been reconceptualised during the last two decades? The indications of changes in the earth’s future climate and the impacts of global environmental change are challenging governments and the survival of people. These threats must be treated with the utmost seriousness, where the precautionary principle is often forgotten, such as preventive evacuation in case of extreme hazards (see Puerto Rico). Climate change has altered and threatened the living conditions of many people in the Global South. Some of them have undertaken large-scale migrations and others have settled nearby, leading to greater competition for the already scarce natural resources and ecosystem services. Again, such changes have placed heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries, where there may be an increased risk of violent conflicts and wars over scarce resources within and between states (IPCC 2014a).

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The assessments of IPCC (2013, 2014a, b) have produced an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and climate change. However, the responses to this risk have rarely resulted in funding being ring-fenced in the national budget for disaster management and support during and after extreme events. Without any doubt the climate impacts will affect people in both the North and the South. The hurricanes in 2017 were disastrous. Harvey flooded Houston, limited oil production and caused damage costing more than 180 billion USD. In the Caribbean in 2017 alone, Hurricane Irma caused deaths, 60% of Barbuda’s population became homeless and 99% of its buildings were destroyed. Hurricane Maria hit less than a week later and claimed lives in Dominica, where it damaged more than 80% of the houses and destroyed lives, the livelihood and infrastructure in Puerto Rica. Studies also predict that as climate change continues to escalate, the Caribbean is projected to incur the highest damage per unit of GDP on a global scale as a result of more intense hurricanes (IPCC 2012). All these extreme events cannot be managed through military security, therefore a widened approach of economic, societal and environmental security was proposed by the Copenhagen School of Security (Buzan et al. 1998). Specifically, disasters clearly necessitate an integrated widened approach. Changing natural conditions related to rising sea temperatures are altering the climate conditions over the sea, producing stronger and more frequent hurricanes (IPCC 2012). Strong winds, high waves and extreme precipitation in a short time also harm the affected ecosystem. Hurricane Stan, classified as a number one category hurricane, was locked by a cold front in the mountains of Guatemala and Chiapas in Mexico. A landslide in Atitlan buried about 1500 indigenous people of this community under thousands of tons of sludge. In Chiapas, the extraordinary rainfall also caused 92 rivers to overflow, devastating villages and flooding cities in the plane, and also destroying 40% of the forest cover (Oswald Spring 2012). This hurricane destroyed one of the most biodiverse regions of Mexico. All these disasters also produce severe economic damage, thereby affecting the economic security of people and governments. Extreme events impact especially the most vulnerable with low levels of adaptation and almost no capacity for resilience. In the case of the Caribbean, about half of the severely affected people of Puerto Rico left the island after Hurricane Maria and are rebuilding their lives in the US. But governments are also strongly affected, as when Hurricane Stan destroyed about half of the GDP of Chiapas, due to the loss of productive assets and infrastructure. Roads, bridges, schools, livestock, coffee and forest plantations required a decade to achieve the same productive and service level that existed before Hurricane Stan. Both Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 destroyed the infrastructure of hotels, piers and tourist sites with the loss of years of tourist income in Barbuda and Dominica, countries that depend mostly on international tourism. Without any doubt economy is crucial, but deaths, invalidity and loss of jobs also produce societal insecurity. Generally, the most vulnerable are the ones with the lowest assets to recover from disastrous extreme events. Governments in the

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Global South are unable to give the physical, economic, societal, but also psychological support to these affected people. Their low level of adaptation reduces their capacity to recover and rebuild, and often the sole option is to migrate to a safer place and restart a new life and livelihood elsewhere (Chaps. 18 and 19). Without any doubt, as humankind is responsible for the emissions of GHG and waste, but at the same time we are the victims of our own destructive behaviour, military security cannot avoid the future threats. Therefore, the widened approach towards environmental, economic and societal security allows researchers to analyse the impacts of these upcoming threats in a more integrated way. However, although this widened approach may allow better interrelation of previously separated security issues, there are still epistemological and methodological hurdles between security thinkers that try to prohibit bridge-building between scientific disciplines (Economy, Sociology, Anthropology and Environmental Studies). World-views within different security studies approaches have obliged scientists to reconceptualise security. Although UNDP (1994) initiated a deepening approach when it presented the human security concept, there remains an additional problem related to levels of analysis.

1.4.3

Deepening Human and Gender Security

In the 1990s, global changes have occurred, related to the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the emerging of China as an international player and the democratisation of the Latin American governments, which voted out the military regimes through democratic elections. These processes produced a decline in the international order and the traditional security threats. However, there was an increase in intra-state conflicts in Africa and recently non-traditional wars, such as the drug wars, happening especially in Latin America. All these violent actions produced unrelenting cost of human lives, survival, risks and threats. With its human security approach, UNDP (1994) put the individual, his or her environment and livelihood at the centre. Human security proposed a deepening approach to security that refers humankind as the main referent object. This approach starts with the individual, scales up to the family, the village, the nation, the region, the international and the global or planetary security. The individual is considered as the centre, whose security must be protected. Human security analyses many interrelated variables, such as economic, social, political, environmental and technological factors. The concept recognises that “lasting stability cannot be achieved if people are not protected from a wide variety of threats to their lives and livelihoods”. The UN Security Council extended the meaning of the concept to international peace and security, which cover conflicts that are more domestic and with higher humanitarian impacts. Human security evolved during the last two decades and was increasingly better defined. Human security was first considered as freedom from fear, where the humanitarian agenda insisted on violence, conflicts and weapons such as

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elimination of personal mines and small arms. In the Commission of Human Security (CHS 2003) Ogata/Sen introduced as a second pillar freedom from want, where they proposed the absence of necessities. They included the structural elements of poverty, inequality, vulnerability, injustice, etc. as crucial elements for an integrated human security. UNU-EHS (Brauch 2005a, b) added as a third pillar freedom from hazard impacts, related to global environmental change and climate change impacts. UNU-EHS proposed to reduce the social and environmental vulnerability, to address the risks and to enhance the coping capacities of exposed people to adapt and create resilience for the upcoming new threats. As a fourth pillar, Annan (2005) insisted on freedom to live in dignity, where he proposed an agenda based on the rule of law, the consolidation of human rights and a democratic governance. The fifth pillar introduced by UNESCO is freedom to live in cultural diversity. Oswald Spring (2013) suggested as another deepened process gender security (Chap. 10) and Serrano Oswald (2009) advocated engendering security. Gender security refers to the process of socialisation to ‘become’ a gendered human being; a man or a woman, depending on the position of the social structure. Gender security is socially constructed and systemic within the present patriarchal society, and it is normally taken for granted. The relations are linked to gender status, ethnicity/race, class, age and minority status in relation to the model of reference. Equity and identity are the values at risk. The source of threats in the first instance come from the patriarchal hierarchical and violent order, characterised by exclusive, dominant and authoritarian institutions such as non-democratic governments, churches and economic élites. The symbolic distribution of space and time assigns the male the public sphere – production, res publica, homo sapiens – and the women the private: reproduction, home, homo domesticus. The distribution of power also acquires generic forms. Men exercise a hierarchical and vertical power of domination and superiority and women subordinated powers inside their household. As a result, feminicides and intrafamiliar violence are often not persecuted and less condemned by the still male organised judicial systems. Women work longer than men on unpaid work inside the household and caring activities. Women also receive lower salaries for the same activities, and the number of poor women is higher than that of men. They also face a greater struggle to attend school and receive professional training, because their work inside the household is considered without value. Recent changes in multilateral organisms and empowerment of women are slowly changing the assignation of these traditional female roles, letting them participate more actively in economic and public life. To promote greater equity, multiple governments have created quota systems to allow more numerous public participation by women. Finally, the author proposed an integrated Human, Gender and Environmental – or HUGE – Security, which analyses in an integrated way equality, equity and sustainability (Chap. 11). This integrated security advocated an engenderedsustainable peace and security, in which a feminist analysis orientated the investigation towards a bottom-up perspective (Chap. 12).

1.4 Studies on Deepening, Widening and Sectorialising Security

1.4.4

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Sectorialisation of Water, Food, Climate and Energy Security

Brauch et al. (2009) proposed a third process, called sectorialisation of security that linked to policy problems such as energy, food, water, health, livelihood and climate security. The author asserted that these sectorial security concepts can be analysed by different dimensions and with different referent objects. Water security (Chap. 14) has different meanings for the suppliers (e.g. multinational water enterprises, local governments), who are interested in high prices and low standards of water quality. Conversely, the consumers are pressuring for an uninterrupted supply of high quality drinking water at an affordable price. Health security has similar problems (WHO 2007) when the providers are multinational health and pharmaceutical enterprises. Health security (Chap. 15) is further directly related to water security and most infant deaths in the Global South still occur because of polluted water and diarrhoea. Consumers require a safe and permanent health service which does not destroy their limited budget or produce life-long debt. Food security (Chap. 16) was introduced early by FAO (1983) with the aim of eliminating hunger and malnutrition. However, multinational food enterprises are more interested in selling low quality food at high prices and controlling the supply of basic grains to the Global South with genetically modified organisms. Their modern cluster approach to food security creates reliance on technology, production processes and chemical inputs, thus small producers in the North and the South become dependent on these technologies. But often such crops do not provide the quality of food people traditionally ate and need for a healthy life. Further, this industrialised agriculture has multiple negative impacts on soil depletion, GHG related to long-distance food trade, and impoverishment of small-scale farmers in the Global South because of subsidised agriculture in the Global North. All these factors are changing the food security paradigm towards a green agricultural food sovereignty, as promoted by Via Campesina (2013, 2016), and FAO (2012, 2016) has reinforced this paradigm shift. Energy security (Chap. 17) has similar structural problems. Oil producers and multinational oil companies are interested in high oil prices, independent of the externalities produced by GHG emissions and global warming. On the consumer side, people ask for clean and safe energy supply, preferably from renewable providers, although price is also a crucial factor with regard to energy consumption. Energy, water, food and health security applies to all the five dimensions of the security. Military, political and economic securities are included in all these sectorial securities and they have a strong impact on environmental security due to pollution. This nexus is also related to societal security and often directly threatens the survival of the affected people. A nexus also exists among these sectorial securities (Chap. 20). An international energy security that relies chiefly on biofuels may directly affect food security because of food price hikes for the importing southern countries or because of land use change from food crops to biofuel production. But bioenergy

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also impacts water security and soil conservation since these biofuels are generally produced by heavy mechanised and industrialised agriculture. Further, an excess of agrochemicals in this biofuel production may leak into the soil and groundwater, and pollute aquifers and drinking water with severe health impacts on both people and livestock. Biofuel has also led to substantial increases in food prices, precipitating both peaceful and violent protests. Therefore food security is an international security problem, especially when widespread drought across the US, Argentina and Australia almost tripled the prices of basic grains in 2003. FAO was obliged to ask the US to suspend using corn to produce biofuel in order to ensure food supply in importing countries and stabilise grain prices. Food security is also a societal and national security issue, as food shortages combined with natural hazards may destabilise an elected government (e.g. Ethiopia). When a food crisis reaches several countries and migration for survival starts, a regional security problem emerges and can get converted into an international security issue. Water security not only produces regional security challenges between upstream and downstream countries, pollution, accidents and regional droughts, but can induce military actions (Gleick 2004; Homer-Dixon 1999, 2000) to grant the necessary water supply in downstream countries. However the hydrodiplomatic approach (Oswald Spring 2005) has dominated for resolving transboundary water conflicts (Wolf et al. 2003; In’t Veld 2016). Health security may be analysed from an international security point of view when major pandemics (SARS, Asian flu, AHN1, Ebola, etc.) are threatening the world by spreading fast due to modern transportation. But potential viruses used in the war of terror may also represent a national security threat to the US, Europe or elsewhere. Anyway, health security is foremost a problem of human security that affects not only the individual, but also the family and especially women, who are frequently the primary carers of the sick. – Widening: 5 dimensions: political, military (narrow), and economic, societal, environmental (widened security) – Deepening (from people to state and global: levels and actors) – Sectorialisation (water, health, food, energy, soil, biodiversity security). All these dimensions and reference objects require a deeper analysis, which is progressively given in each of the following chapters. Figure 1.1 explains graphically how the five dimensions of security may interrelate and how they can apply at different levels. In many of these analyses, the answer to the security approach depends on the world-view, the mindset and the perceptions that are influenced by our governments, the dominant scientific knowledge and the leading media. There exist differences among researchers, where the critical theorists (Aberystwyth, Copenhagen School and AFES-PRESS) are arguing for a widening, deepening and sectorialisation of the concept of security. They criticise the primacy given to the sovereign state as the primary referent object and the key securitiser agent. These scholars are challenging the traditional security scholars, mainly in the US, who

1.4 Studies on Deepening, Widening and Sectorialising Security

21

Fig. 1.1 Widening, deepening and sectorialisation of security. Source The Author

speak of the risk of intellectual incoherence because for them the State is the only referent object of security and the securitiser is therefore the military, which defends the national territory and its sovereignty.

1.5

Regional Impacts and Environmental-Induced Migration

Climate change over the 21st century is projected to increase the mobility of people. Displacement risk increases when populations lack the resources for planned migration and experience higher exposure to extreme weather events, particularly in developing countries with low income and lack of efficient governmental support. Expanding opportunities for mobility inside the country can reduce the vulnerability of such populations. Changes in migration patterns can also be a response to both extreme weather events and long-term climate variability and change (drought), thus migration is an effective adaptation strategy. Climate change can directly and indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and inter-group violence by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts, such as poverty, economic shocks and inadequately managed disasters. The impacts of climate change on the critical infrastructure and territorial integrity of many states are expected to influence their national security policies, especially when land inundation and seawater intrusion into the aquifers occur due to sea level rise. This threat poses a global risk to the territorial integrity of small

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island states in the Pacific and low-lying coastal countries (Bangladesh). There exist also transboundary impacts of climate change linked to water supply, dam constructions (Ethiopia-Egypt) or changes in sea ice, shared groundwater resources (Guarani aquifer), and pelagic fish stocks (Chile-Peru). These upcoming situations have the potential to increase rivalry between states. However, national, intergovernmental and multilateral institutions might enhance cooperation and manage many of these potential conflicts. Without any doubt, human, gender and environmental security will be progressively threatened by climate changes, where not only material goods are at stake. For centuries, climate variability was managed efficiently by indigenous, local and traditional forms of knowledge. This wisdom, often developed during crisis situations, represents a major resource for adapting to climate change, for enhancing human security and for limiting all types of migration. However, climate-induced mobility is also a widely used strategy to maintain or support livelihoods in response to social and environmental risks and loss of livelihoods. However, greed and unstable or undemocratic governments may increase the risks of violent conflict within a state. This condition is especially sensitive after an inadequately managed disaster, where social and environmental vulnerability may intensify existing ethnic, religious or land conflicts. People living in places affected by violent conflicts are particularly vulnerable to climate change risks and regional migration. They may shape both conditions of security and require national and human security policies. All this maladaptation and mismanagement of disasters will, in the short term, increase environmental and societal security, and survival dilemmas may force the people to abandon their homelands and set off on an uncertain environmental-induced migration, where women and children are especially at risk (IPCC 2014a). Climate change also goes beyond the material impacts and will compromise the immaterial cultural values and traditional norms and behaviour of communities, families and individuals, especially when their means of livelihood are getting lost. But cultural values may also help migrants adapt better to the new conditions in urban settlements, where traditional networks often help newcomers to integrate better into adverse and unknown conditions. Urban areas are highly exposed to climate change and the concentration of people in megacities may avoid a preventive evacuation. Therefore, coastal cities and megacities in particular must develop resilience among their citizens to avoid the loss of lives and livelihood. Safe territorial reserves may grant immigrants better starting conditions. Training courses, rainwater harvesting, green roofs and renewable energy are ways in which individuals and collectives can adapt and improve their resilience for confronting better the unknown impacts of climate change and post-disaster disruption. All these alternative activities are related to habits, mindsets and world-views, where the cultural elements are crucial for a successful adaption to unknown climate and social threats. Therefore the question remains, which model of globalisation may be the most adequate during times of harsh climate change impacts?

1.6 Neoliberal Oligarchy or Transition Towards ‘Buen Vivir’

1.6

23

Neoliberal Oligarchy or Transition Towards ‘Buen Vivir’

Confronted with these multiple security risks, this last part of the introduction explores the future of humankind and its links with Planet Earth. Chapter 21 explores some ways to confront greater uncertainty, unknown risks and strong impacts of climate change. World-view undoubtedly produces conceptual lenses which influence scientific approaches and the interpretation of the securitising process. Are we on the edge of the knife or do we still trust the technological fix that allows us to continue with the cornucopian horn and massive use of fossil oil? Who will profit from the technological advances, who will decide to be included in this process, and how many people globally will be excluded? These are some of the key questions in the last chapter of this book. When we include in the analysis the threat from climate change impacts at local, national, regional and international scale, the stress and the risks are increasing among people of low income or those living in regions highly exposed to drought, flood or sea level rise. Migration and temporal mobility are disrupting existing livelihoods, and also affecting cultural identity and the conditions of survival (Fig. 1.2). Women are especially impacted by the lack of water, health and food security, but at the same time in practice it is women and girls who are able to resolve this scarcity locally by fetching water, healing with traditional medicine and producing subsistence crops in their orchards. This sustainable food production not only has the potential to increase the nutritional level of the whole family, but also

Fig. 1.2 Scales of insecurity related to climate change. Source IPCC (2014a: 777)

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cares for the environment and may restore depleted soils which were previously exposed to industrialised agriculture with high agrochemical inputs. Therefore, increasing climate change impacts affect access to resources. During scarcity and especially when pastoralists invade agricultural land and the water sources of farmers, violent conflicts may explode (Kenya). In the past, there were cultural mediators, who managed the access to water resources among the conflictive groups, but with access to modern arms and lack of governmental control, violence can break out easily (Le Cour Grandmaison 1984). Farmers are then often obliged to leave their traditional village, migrate to shanty towns and lose their cultural links and communitarian support (Oswald Spring et al. 2014). Chaotically growing big cities in the Global South represent economic and cultural challenges for both governments and newcomers, who often are pushed towards the most dangerous and risky places to settle down. In this urban context, multiple anti-traditionalist movements rise. Some religious beliefs lose their link with reality, other movements become radical, defending their former lifestyle and well-being, some ally with terrorist groups, and other groups pressure the government to improve livelihood and environmental conditions. Especially among the youth, different violent terrorist groups have appeared, which often call attention to their nonconformity with extremist actions. Conflicts may increase in regions with existing land conflicts when multinational enterprises promote land-grabbing or mining activities. Corporate enterprises, only interested in short-term high profits, may accelerate the existing tensions and break the existing fragile equilibrium. In these conditions, sometimes local conflicts may spread fast to entire regions and also generate transboundary confrontations over scarce resources. Land, water and food security are crucial themes to increase or reduce conflicts, because they directly affect the personal and community life and the survival conditions of the involved people. A human and HUGE security approach may understand these conflictive scenarios. Government at local and national level may explore alternative livelihoods with more stable food and water security and improved livelihood (Barba 2012). The creation of jobs for the youth in urban areas, the training of migrants and integration between different ethnic groups may reduce the tension and create an arena of new collaboration and identity, where people are less threatened by climate change and disasters and feel safer. However, cultural integration and the establishment of new identities are long, ongoing processes which require bottom-up and top-down support to be successful. In this often violent scenario, an indigenous group – the Aymara – has proposed an alternative paradigm to the generalised corporate neoliberalism and the exclusive globalisation. Their traditional behaviour starts with caring about their community and the nature that is sustaining their communal life. Their basic paradigm is ‘buen vivir’ (good living), where daily life is prioritised and agreements are negotiated by consensus and where differences of minorities are respected. Nature and humankind are complementary, thus harmony with nature, community life, cosmic rights, reciprocity and social control are crucial. The elderly have extensive life experience

1.6 Neoliberal Oligarchy or Transition Towards ‘Buen Vivir’

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and can teach the rest of the community how to drink, to eat, to dance, to work and to enjoy without excess and destruction, in order to maintain cosmic unity. This indigenous philosophy of lifestyle may also offer an alternative cosmovision to the rest of society, threatened by neoliberal consumerism and the upcoming risks of global environmental change and climate change. These indigenous societies have understood that there exists only one good life and not a better life, thus accumulation and hoarding are not the keys to an integrated livelihood in harmony with nature. This indigenous belief represents an ontological approach to explain how the world is functioning, but also an explanation how it is operating and how it will be in the future when harmony among humankind and mother earth is reinforced. Thus, their philosophy represents a theory of action about how the community should attain these goals and an epistemology on what is true and what is false. It enables the indigenous and other people to understand the errors of the neoliberal corporate behaviour of greed and short-term profit at the cost of the destruction of the environment and the harmony between human beings and mother earth, the so-called ‘Pacha Mama’.

References Annan, Kofi (2005). In Larger Freedom: Towards Security, Development and Human Rights for All, Report of the Secretary General for Decision by Head of States and Governments, New York, UNGA. Arizpe, Lourdes (2015). Vivir para crear historia. Antología de estudios sobre desarrollo, migración, género e indígenas, México, D.F., CRIM-UNAM-M.A. Porrúa. Arreola Mendoza, Laura, Luz María del Razo, Olivier Barsbier, Ma. Consolación Martínez Saldaña, Francisco J.A. González, Fernando Jaramillo Juárez, José Luis Reyes Sánchez (2010). “Potable Water Pollution with Heavy Metals, Arsenic and Fluorides and its Relation to the Development of Kidney Chronic Illness in the Infant Population of Aguascalientes”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.), Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin, Springer, pp. 231–238. Avelar González, Francisco Javier, Elsa Marcela Ramírez López, Ma. Consolación Martínez Saldaña, Alma Lilián Guerrero Barrera, Fernando Jaramillo Juárez (2011). “Water Quality in the State of Aguascalientes and its Effects in the Population’s Health”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.), Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin, Springer, pp. 217–230. Barba Solano, Carlos (2012). “Regímenes de bienestar latinoamericanos: ¿universalismo o focalización?”, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Derechos sociales y desarrollo incluyente, México, D.F., UNAM, J. Pablos, pp. 41–64. Barkin, David (1977). “Desarrollo regional y reorganización campesina La Chontalpa como reflejo del gran problema agropecuario mexicano”, Comercio Exterior, Vol. 27, No. 12, pp. 1408– 1417. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika (1998) (Ed.). Juchitán la ciudad de las mujeres, Oaxaca, Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas, Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Maria Mies (1999). The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy, London, Zen Books. Boff, Leonardo (1980). Teología del cautiverio y de la liberación, Madrid, Paulinas.

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Boulding, Elise (2000). Cultures of Peace. The Hidden Side of History, New York, Syracuse University Press. Brauch, Hans Günter (2005a). “Environment and Human Security. Towards Freedom from Hazard Impact”, Intersection, No. 2, Bonn, UNU-EHS. Brauch, Hans Günter (2005b). Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks of Environmental and Human Security, Source No. 1, Bonn, UNU-EHS. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Pal Dunay, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Peter H. Liotta (2008) (Eds.). Globalisation and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualising Security in the 21st Century, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navnita Chadha Behera, Bechir Chourou, Heinz Krummenacher (2009) (Eds.). Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Béchir Chourou, Pal Dunay, Jörn Birkmann (2011) (Eds.). Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Jürgen Scheffran (2016) (Eds.). Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace Handbook, Cham, Springer International Publishing. Buscaglia, Edgardo (2013). “La práctica jurídica en el análisis económico del derecho”, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Seguridad pública, derechos humanos y cohesión social, México, D.F., UNAM, Juan Pablos, pp. 221–240. Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, Jaap de Wilde (1998). Security. A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, Lynne Rienner. CHS (2003). Human Security Now, New York, UN. Corcuera Cabezut, Santiago (2012). “Derechos sociales exigibles. Crítica a la clasificación de los derechos humanos en “generaciones””, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Derechos sociales y desarrollo incluyente, México, D.F., UNAM, J. Pablos, pp. 319–338. Crutzen, Paul J. (2002). “Geology of Mankind”, Nature, Vol. 415, No. 6867, p. 23. Dávalos López, Juan José (2007). “Las reservas de petróleo en México: su valor para la nación”, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Política energética, México, D.F., UNAM, M.A, Porrúa, pp. 177–191. Eibenschütz Hartman, Catalina, Silvia Tamez González, Iliana Camacho Cuapio (2012). La política sanitaria en México desde la medicina social, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Derechos sociales y desarrollo incluyente, México, D.F., UNAM, J. Pablos, pp. 83–103. FAO (1983). World Food Security: A Reappraisal of the Concept and Approaches, Rome, FAO. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] (2013). Climate Smart Agriculture. Sourcebook, http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3325e.pdf. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] (2016). Climate Change and Food Security: Risks and Responses, Rome, FAO. Galtung, Johan (1971). “A Structural Theory of Imperialism”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 81–118. Gleick, Peter H. (2004). Water Conflict Chronology, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, http://worldwater.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ww8-red-waterconflict-chronology-2014.pdf. Homer-Dixon, Thomas (1999). Environmental Scarcity and Violence, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2000). The Ingenuity Gap, New York, Alfred A. Knopf. IEA (1994). The History of IEA 1974–1994, the First 20 Years of IEA, Paris, OEACD/IEA. In’t Veld, Roland Jaap (2016). “Governance of Sustainable Development in Knowledge Democracies – Its Consequences for Science”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 855–868.

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IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014a). Climate Change 2014. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014b). Fifth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Le Cour Grandmaison, Colette (1984). “L’eau du vendredi: Droits d’eau et hierarchie social en Sharqîya (Sultanat d’Oman)”, Études rurales, No. 93–94 (January–June), pp. 7–42. Marini, Ruy Mauro (1973). Dialéctica de la dependencia, Mexico, D.F., Era. Menchú, Rigoberta (2004). “Culturas indígenas, cosmovisión y futuro”, in Ú. Oswald (Ed.), Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías, México, D.F., Coltlax, CLAIP, FHB, pp. 49–62. Mies, Maria (1998). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, Melbourne, Zed Books. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1991). Estrategias de supervivencia en la Ciudad de México, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2005). El valor del agua. Una visión socioeconómica de un conflicto ambiental, Tlaxcala, El Colegio de Tlaxcala, CONACYT-FOMIX, SEFOA. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2007). “Human, Gender and Environmental Security: A HUGE Challenge”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.), International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Encyclopedia on Life Support System/UNESCO, Oxford, EOLSS Publishers. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009). “Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Issue”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 471–500. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2011a) (Ed.). Water Resources in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2011b). “Genetically Modified Organisms: A Threat for Food Security and Risk for Food Sovereignty and Survival”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1019–1042. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2012). “Vulnerabilidad social en eventos hidrometeorológicos extremos: una comparación entre los huracanes Stan y Wilma en México”, SocioTam, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 125–145. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2013). “Seguridad de género”, in Fátima Flores (Ed.), Representaciones Social y contexto de investigación con perspectiva de género, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM, pp. 225–256. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2016). “The Water, Energy, Food and Biodiversity Nexus: New Security Issues in the Case of Mexico”, in Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Juliet Bennett, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald (Eds.), Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective, Cham, Springer, pp. 113–144. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2018). Úrsula Oswald Spring: Pioneer on Pioneer on Gender, Peace, Development, Environment, Food and Water, PAHSEP 17, Cham, Springer, Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch, Keith G. Tidball (2014). Expanding Peace Ecology: Peace, Security, Sustainability, Equity and Gender. Perspectives of IPRA’s Ecology and Peace Commission, Cham, Springer International Publishing. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald, Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Fátima Flores Palacios, Maribel Ríos Everardo, Hans Günter Brauch, Teresita Ruiz Pantoja, Carlos Lemus Ramírez, Ariana Estrada Villanueva, M. Mónica Cruz Rivera (2014). Vulnerabilidad Social y Género entre Migrantes Ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-DGAPA-UNAM. Reardon, Betty A. (1980). “Moving to the Future”, Network, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 14–21.

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Reardon, Betty A. (1996). Sexism and the War System, New York, Syracuse University Press. Rodríguez Padilla, Víctor (2007). La reforma energética: ¿cambiar estructuras industriales o mejorar los arreglos institucionales?, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Política energética, México, D.F., UNAM, M.A, Porrúa, pp. 17–29. Rojas Flores, Oscar (2004). “Pacificación y readecuación productiva comunera en la zona alta de Ayacucho, Perú”, in Ú. Oswald (Ed.), Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías, México, D.F., Coltlax, CLAIP, FHB, pp. 199–214. Salas, Carlos (2007). “Políticas de empleo para México”, in J.L. Calvo (Ed.), Empleo, ingreso y bienestar, México, D.F., UNAM, M.A, Porrúa, pp. 85–95. Serrano Oswald, S. Eréndira (2009). “The Impossibility of Securitizing Gender vis à vis ‘Engendering’ Security”, in H.G. Brauch, Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1143–1156. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (1965). “Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina”, El Día, 25 and 26 of June, Mexico, D.F. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (2013). Peasants, Culture and Indigenous People. Critical Issues, Cham, Springer. UNDP (1994). Human Development Report: New Dimensions of Human Security, New York, UNDP. UNHCR (2017). Climate Change Refugees, http://www.unhcr.org/climate-change-and-disasters. html. Vía Campesina (1996). Food Sovereignty. A Future Without Hunger, Rome, FAO. Via Campesina (2002). “Food Sovereignty”, Document distributed during the World Food Summit +5, Rome, Via Campesina. Via Campesina (2016). La Via Campesina, Building an International Movement for Food and Seed Sovereignty, https://foodfirst.org/la-via-campesina-building-an-international-movementfor-food-and-seed-sovereignty/. Wæver, Ole (1995). “Securitization and Desecuritization”, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (Ed.), On Security, New York, Columbia University Press, pp. 46–86. Warren, Karren J. (1997) (Ed.). Ecofeminism. Women, Culture, Nature, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. WEF [World Economic Forum] (2011). Water Security. The Water-Food-Energy Nexus, http:// www.gwp.org/Global/ToolBox/References/Water%20Security_The%20Water-Food-EnergyClimate%20Nexus%20(WEF,%202011).pdf. WHO (2007). The World Health Report 2007. A Safer Future, Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century, Geneva, WHO. Wisner, Ben, Maureen Fordham, Ilan Kelman, Barbara Rose Johnston, David Simon, Allan Lavell, Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Gustavo Wilches-Chaux, Marcus Moench, and Daniel Weiner (2007). “Policy Memorandum by Scientists Regarding the UN Security Council’s First Discussion on Climate Change: Climate Change and Human Security”, http://www.afes-press.de/html/download_hgb.html. Wolf, Aaron, B. Shira Yoffe, Mark Giardano (2003). “International Water: Identifying Basins and Risks”, Water Policy, No. 5, pp. 29–60. World Bank [WB] (2014). Risk and Opportunity, World Development Report, Washington, D.C., World Bank. World Water Forum (2000). Ministerial Declaration During the Second World Water Forum, The Hague, WWF.

Chapter 2

On Peace and Security

Individuality is and is not even as each drop in the ocean is and is not. It is not because apart from the ocean it has no existence. It is because the ocean has no existence if the drop has not, i.e. has no individuality. They are beautifully interdependent. And if this is true of the physical law, how much more so (it is) of the spiritual world. M.K. Gandhi, Letter to P.G. Mathew, 8 September 1930

2.1

Introduction

Peace and security explore key elements of human life, where peace (Boulding 2000), future, nature, spirituality (King 1998) and well-being link up with a comprehensive way of nonviolent conflict resolution (Gandhi 1993; Ameglio 2004).1 The world is a complex mosaic of different regional and socio-cultural interests, and conflicts are understood as motors of change. Globally some common desires have historically evolved. Every person and community wants to live in a healthy and peaceful environment without threats to its life, food and livelihood (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies 1999). Therefore, from a multidisciplinary point of view and from different cultural backgrounds, ideas and desires, this chapter analyses the relationship between security and peace. These links may help to create nonviolent conflict resolution processes in diverse cultural and spiritual contexts in the new era of the Anthropocene. The world has changed during the last fifty years of intensive globalisation processes and conflicts and has shifted from the Cold War (1947–1989) during the 1980s to an increasing North–South confrontation. After the peaceful global turn of 1990, with the exception of the violent war in the former Yugoslavia (1991–1999), Some ideas are taken from Úrsula Oswald Spring’s book on International Security, Peace, Development and Environment, Encyclopaedia on Life Support System, Vol. 39, Oxford, EOLSS, 2007. 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_2

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most East, South-East (including Slovenia and Croatia) and South European countries were integrated into the European Union between 2004 and 2013. Thus less developed regions were economically supported with special regional programmes to gradually reduce the different stages of economic development among its member countries. The United States has been trying to deal with its new role as the ‘sole superpower’, since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and was dissolved into fifteen independent countries in 1991. Nevertheless, Europe and the United States missed the unique opportunity to transform their military industries into peaceful and sustainable economic processes. There was no peace dividend nor reconversion of military into civil production. Furthermore, the past and present economic model of the USA has relied heavily on cheap fossil energy sources. The waste of fossil energy has created new global environmental threats due to global climate change. This has increasingly produced not only environmental insecurity but also threats to humankind, due to extreme events which have often turned into societal disasters as well. Scarce energy resources are now posing for the USA a temptation for violent appropriation, and the Iraq, Libya and Syria wars are the most extreme outcomes of efforts to obtain control over increasingly scarce resources2 in the Middle East such as oil, but also water, and consequently irrigated land. Europe decided to overcome its traumatic world war experiences with a new organisation and a mandate to resolve further conflicts peacefully. The three European communities (coal and steel of 1951, nuclear energy of 1958, and the economic community) gradually became the European Union of 28 member states in 2016, with a free interchange of goods, services and people and a process of reducing existing gaps in economic development through major development programmes to modernise its members’ economies and upgrade their infrastructures. This allowed both South (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Cyprus) and so far ten Central European countries better opportunities to develop and fully integrate into the present model of production, and also to benefit from a major academic exchange programme supporting the next generation. With the gradual Eastern enlargement of the EU, three former Soviet republics (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia), six former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) and two former Yugoslav Republics (Slovenia and Croatia) have joined so far, while a few others are candidate countries (Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania) or have entered into economic association agreements with the EU (Georgia, Ukraine). Three countries opted to stay out (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland) and the UK decided in a referendum in June 2016 to leave the EU. After a counter-coup in Turkey in July 2016, full EU membership 2

Other destabilisation processes were induced in Nigeria, Congo, Venezuela, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and previously in Angola, Indonesia, Timor, etc. They are expressions and control mechanisms of former colonial and superpowers whose behaviour exhibits their intention to appropriate cheap, often scarce resources.

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of Turkey has become highly unlikely for a few decades. The new EU member states hope to benefit economically from the financial transfers and from a greater export market, to reduce corruption, to stabilise their democratic processes, and to develop their human and economic potentials. However, in several countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland) extreme right movements and parties are challenging the liberal democracy model within the European Union and have closed their borders to refugees from Muslim countries. Similar trends are happening in the United States with the campaign of the Republican candidate against Mexicans and Muslims. In 2016, UK decided to leave the European Union through a referendum called ‘Brexit’. With the end of the Cold War and the overcoming of the bipolar international order, the former Soviet Union in 1991 entered into a rapid process of disintegration with the national independence of its former fifteen Soviet republics. Its prevailing military competition and deterrence doctrine became obsolete, the Warsaw Pact collapsed and COMECON dissolved. Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries experienced an unequal development: a very rapid accumulation by a few oligarchs who became billionaires within a few years, a rapid modernisation of the major cities and an intensive process of impoverishment in rural areas. The abundance of Russian fossil energy sources (oil and gas) permitted a fast recovery and empowerment due to the energy dependence of Europe and increasingly also of China. Structural problems and a missing culture of democracy were compensated by the innovation of highly trained people. Russia became a member of the G-8 group, and is thus cooperating with the richest and most influential countries, but after the annexation of the Crimea from the Ukraine, the membership of Russia was suspended and Russia became an object of economic sanctions by EU and NATO countries, which has intensified the downward trend of the Russian economy. Finally, the USA has remained the only superpower. The consolidation of its democratic institutions, its high productivity and economic leadership have permitted it to launch several wars in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (1991, 2003) and Libya (2011). It has also become involved in the conflict in Syria, in 2011 sending arms to the rebel groups and from 2014 undertaking surveillance missions. However, as with any empire that has tried to resolve its main global problems, this has resulted in internal economic instability, high budget deficits, a negative payment and trade balance, rapidly growing debts, and a huge economic crisis in 2008. Externally, the USA has failed with its policies on global climate and on environmental issues, partly due to its narrow focus on homeland security. The US has isolated itself and lost its reputation with many peoples in Europe and elsewhere. Its policies towards Latin America, called by Saxe Fernández (1999) backyard behaviour, its competition with Europe, its involvement in several African conflicts and its hegemonic behaviour in Asia has further isolated the USA. In the countries of the global South, the bipolar competition between both superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union (USSR) created tensions and conflicts inside their countries and with neighbouring nations, which often resulted in proxy wars. Former colonial powers from Europe fought in Africa and Asia for zones of political and military influence through large legal and illegal arms trade and to

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control the new markets for massive consumption. The theatre of war in Africa includes first colonial wars against European nations (Algeria, Mozambique, Rhodesia), secessionist and separatist conflicts (Mau Mau in Kenya), civil wars in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, clashes in Guinea and the ethnic-religious confrontations among Arabs (Tuareg in Mali and Niger) and black Africans.3 Colonial Africa was also involved in the two world wars, but the violence increased especially after independence, when the former colonies tried to maintain their political and economic control. They integrated their former colonies into an economic preferential system, but also supplied local warlords with arms when they could not control the free elected government. These warlords were able to control diamond, gold and other mines (Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan), oil resources (Nigeria) and timber (Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone). Consequently military coups (Republic of Congo, Mali, Guinea Bissau), fraudulent elections (Republic of Congo) and warlords created failed states, civil war, refugees and increased poverty, hunger and environmental destruction. Borders arbitrarily imposed by colonial power divided ethnic groups and forced others to integrate in newly created nations, thus ethnic conflicts erupted in East (Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda) and West Africa (Ivory Coast). Nevertheless, Africa is still very rich in natural resources, and Europe, the United States and China are interested in expanding the market for their goods and offer investments and credits to grant scarce and especially cheap raw materials. Therefore, traditional and new geopolitical forces are especially important in Africa. In Asia complex constellations and contradictory processes were produced by the colonial powers (France and the Indochina War) and later followed by the USA with the Vietnam War, when Laos was also heavily bombed. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge regime killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of educated middle class people in killing camps. When the Japanese surrendered after World War II, Korea was divided into two parts. The Korean War from 1950 to 1954 was a result of the Cold War and the confrontation of the United States in South Korea and the Soviet Union and China in North Korea. With Gandhi’s ahimsa (active nonviolence; Gandhi 1996) and a huge social mobilisation, India gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. However, the colonial borders, insecurity, a longstanding conflict with Pakistan and religious differences among Hindus and Muslims led to the separation from India and later also of Bangladesh from Pakistan. This highly conflictive heritage led to several wars, continuing armed confrontations, and a complex migration challenge. Both Pakistan and India developed nuclear weapons. China passed through Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and the state-controlled economy produced millions of starving people. Since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms in 1978 towards a free market economy, the World Trade Organisation

3

This confrontation among Arabs and black Africans has historical roots of more than 1,000 years, when Arabs, especially Tuareg, sold black Africans to America. The trade of slavery continued and in Mauritania slave trade was not criminalised until 2007.

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(WTO) estimated that from 2009 onwards the Asian colossus has become the first global export country, the most important technological provider and exporter, but also a crucial investor worldwide, including in the USA. Today China is the second economic power, only after USA, and purchase power parity (PPP) estimates indicate that China has already become the economic leader or will be in the near future. This industrial expansion required abundant raw materials and energy from abroad, but also produced heavy air, soil and water pollution, often directly affecting the health of Chinese people. Today China is also the highest emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but per capita the USA and several European Union countries are still higher. China has remained a developing country with numerous poor people, especially in rural areas. Its 13th Five Year Plan (2015– 2020) is regionally rebalancing the economy and focusing more on qualitative growth. The means are doubling the cross national product for 2010–2020. The hope is that China will not enter into a military competition with the USA, but use its resources for stabilising the global economy internally and externally. China is still trying to integrate Taiwan into the mainland and conflicts emerged with regard to the democratisation process in Hong Kong. In several other Asian countries liberation processes resulted in a painful separation, e.g. during the Korean War. During another war, Vietnam suffered an enormous loss of human lives. Its ecology has been affected by the massive spraying of the rainforest with herbicides (Agent Orange, Agent White et al.). After the defeat of the US ally South Vietnam in 1976, Vietnam was reunited. In 1988, the former USSR had to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The previous military support by US intelligence agencies for the Afghan freedom fighters and the Taliban against the Soviet Union contributed to the present global terrorism threat that has directly affected its previous supporters and the security of the North American people. After 9/11, the US and several NATO countries and other US allies intervened militarily in Afghanistan, but they did not achieve their proclaimed goals. Today Afghanistan has become a ‘failed state’ with frequent terror attacks, which have also involved neighbouring Pakistan. After the end of the Cold War, the rapid disintegration of the former Soviet Union with about 30,000 nuclear warheads and a certain loss of control over its arms arsenal and enriched uranium supplies in the newly independent states increased the danger not only for this region, but also for global stability. In the global South, threats by undemocratic governments controlled by ethnic clans created ‘failed states’ e.g. in Somalia, which has failed to regain its statehood in the ensuing twenty-five years. Additional challenges have been aggravated by adverse environmental conditions, such as the shrinking of the Aral Sea and Lake Chad, the progressing desertification process and the pollution in the Caucasus due to oil extraction and transportation. There are also tensions within Kazakhstan, with a rising number of internal social and labour protests and external conflicts with Uzbekistan, a regional rival. There have also emerged border and water conflicts between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In South, Southeast and East Asia separatist movements brought about regional autonomy. The arms trade fuelled a conflictive ethnic civil war in Sri Lanka.

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However, democratisation processes flourished in South Korea and Taiwan. Most Asian countries have tried to maintain order by repression. Indonesia and Cambodia have suffered one of the cruellest genocides in human history. During this century, economic improvements and investments from China have also induced peace and democratisation processes in Asia, recently in East Timor, which has become unstable again, in Aceh (in Sumatra), where a settlement was reached after the Tsunami of 2004, and in Myanmar when a multiparty election ended five decades of military rules. Furthermore, the ability of the Far East (Japan, China, Taiwan), of South East Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam) and South Asia (India) to prosper with economic development and technological improvement has pushed this region fully into the globalisation process. By supporting education, science and technology, during the last two decades these countries transformed the whole region into a major innovative economic player that was able to conquer markets and create jobs for its rapidly growing populations. Today the purchase power parity of many Asian citizens is already comparable to that in Europe and North America, by creating a large internal market. It is also the region with the highest rate of poverty reduction. Its increased level of investment in education, science and technology has been creating a brighter future for its present and coming generations. This has been the only region that has been able to substantially reduce hunger in the former traditional rural societies. However, the new development processes have also aggravated rural-urban gaps and induced environmental destruction and climate change threats. As well as having (with the exception of China and some smaller countries), a high population growth rate, their massive industrialisation has taken place at the cost of the environment and agriculture, and the intensive (ab) use of natural resources has created new threats for health and human survival. The huge ‘brown cloud’ over China and India due to inadequate energy management (burning of coal, cow dung, firewood and massive transportation systems with low quality fuel) has threatened the health of their people and future development and the quality of life (IPCC 2013, 2014). Latin America developed in a different way. World War II offered the opportunity to promote economic processes based on a substitution of imports for a stable development and improvements to the quality of life for its population until military coups occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. The period after World War II coincided with an intensive industrialisation and urbanisation process. The liberation of Cuba from the Batista dictatorship in 1959 changed the relationship within Latin America during the Cold War, due to its geostrategic position in the vicinity of the USA. Cuba also obtained major economic and military support from the Soviet Union. To counter this influence, the USA used the reference to a ‘domino theory’ to avoid other countries following the same route, especially those nations with active guerrilla fighting (e.g. in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru). Both directly and indirectly the USA supported the ousting of progressive democratically elected governments by military coups (e.g. in Brazil in 1964, in Chile and Uruguay in 1973 and in Argentina in 1976). Later, they promoted with the support of these

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military regimes a neoliberal economic model, which was supported by the local bourgeoisie, who allied with the military and dictatorial regimes, without any consideration for human rights. Thus, since the 1970s, internal repression, dirty wars, repression through the ‘Plan Condor’4 and the consolidation of small local elites widened the existing internal gaps. These repressive governments supported the economic transformation from a model of import substitution with stable economic growth to a neoliberal model with low growth rates, contraction of salaries, and an increasing concentration of wealth. The privatisation and transnationalisation of the economy strengthened the local bourgeoisie. As a result the dependence on international business and on the US have increased. During and after the Cold War the Organization of American States (OAS) stabilised this process. Furthermore, through free trade agreements and the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund increased the concentration of wealth within these countries and between North and South. Some European countries and human rights activists in North America forced the US government to reduce its military support for these authoritarian and repressive governments. The emerging new democratisation process fostered human rights and strengthened democratic processes and institutions in Latin America. During the 1990s, several military and authoritarian regimes were replaced by democratically elected governments. In the new millennia, the electorate voted for progressive governments who have tried to reduce the income gap with progressive taxation, democratic land reform and in some cases with the nationalisation of natural resources (Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador). Until 2015, during a wide process of democratisation, Latin America achieved a high concentration of wealth and progress in poverty reduction. With the exception of Mexico and Honduras, all other countries were able to reduce their poverty rate and improve their quality of life (CEPAL 1980–2015). Nevertheless, in 2016 there is a strong process of reversion, and newly elected neoliberal governments may abolish the achievements of the last decade through coups in the parliaments (e.g. in Brazil in 2016 and in Paraguay in 2012), the violent destitution of Manuel Zelaya (in Honduras in 2009) or as an outcome of elections (e.g. in Argentina in 2015). In Africa, since independence a process of neo-colonialism, of unjust terms of trade and an increase in tribal tensions and unresolved border conflicts emerged due to the colonial heritage and proxy wars. When the Cold War ended, small arms and other military equipment from Europe, Russia, the Ukraine and the US were redirected – often illegally – to war lords and dictatorial governments, who consolidated their regimes with despotic rules and internal repression. The results have 4

The Operation or Plan Cóndor (the eagle of the Andes) integrated the military regimes in South America (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia) under the leadership of the US (CIA and DIA). Their goals were to eliminate the opposition to their military regimes and the neoliberal economic model imposed on society. Plan Cóndor targeted especially left-wing young people in order to limit their opposition, which was often influenced by the Cuban Revolution, but also to control the secret services of France in the 1970s (Salguero 2011).

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been internal conflicts and failed states, increasing poverty, tyrannical rulers and severe health problems (e.g. HIV–AIDS, malaria, Ebola, and others, see UNFPA 2015), that have been reinforced by low levels of education and hunger. In this complex situation, South Africa overcame Apartheid – one of the cruellest systems of rule – on the 17th of June 1991, and transformed peacefully into a diverse political system with a multiracial population. This is an example how ahimsa could enhance peace, democracy and participative government. The experience of Africa, Asia and Latin America) has been very different from that of Europe, North America and Australia with regard to the Cold War and post-Cold War era, environmental destruction and integration into a globalised world system based on instant global financial flows, instantaneous communication and an increasing cultural homogenisation. Therefore, peace and development processes have developed differently around the globe. This has created new and regionally specific security and equity concerns (Sen 1995), which are beyond the traditional narrow military and national security issues. Furthermore, the unsustainable management of the environment has created new threats linked to global environmental and climate change. Since the industrial revolution (1780), developed countries have historically been responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, while less developed ones have primarily suffered the effects of extreme hydro-meteorological events. These countries often lack the financial and technical capacity as well as the resilience to deal with these new dangers and protect their people against these new threats. The contradictory security development worldwide opened multiple ways for increasing peace, which were mostly lost due to the agendas of oligopolies and their national leaders, who did not represent the interests of their citizens. There was no peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. In 1991 and 1992 the European Union faced its first major refugee crisis with several hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers from the wars among former Yugoslav member states (Croatia and Slovenia vs. Serbia, in Bosnia Herzegovina and on the independence of Kosovo), and in 2015 and 2016 from the wars in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq as well as from many parts of North and Sub-Saharan Africa. In June 2016, a small majority in the referendum of the United Kingdom voted for leaving the European Union (Brexit). In 2016 the US has experienced a complex electoral process, in which an openly xenophobic and racist President wanted to change the sole superpower by “making America great again”. Africa and Latin America are suffering from the fall in the prices of their raw materials, the Middle East is getting more unstable, and Asia depends basically on the investments from China. Thus ambitious and new peace efforts are crucial to reduce local, regional and international conflicts. In 2016 UNHCR noted that there are more than 65.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, 21.3 million refugees and 10 million stateless.5 Over half are younger than 18 and 54% come from Afghanistan, Somalia, Eritrea and Syria (UNHCR 2016). This enormous number of vulnerable people creates a challenge

5

http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html.

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for peace, solidarity and humanitarian thinking in most countries, especially in prosperous nations where egoism, threats and fears of terrorism prevail. Thus, peaceful thinking at a personal and social level is necessary to elect governments open to managing the current and future challenges effectively, particularly since the impacts of disasters and global environmental change are projected to increase.

2.2

New Challenges for Peace and Security in the 21st Century

The changes in the global context are posing new pressures and dangers, but also opportunities for the world and humankind in specific regions, countries, and for diverse social classes, gender and minorities. Undoubtedly, the crucial processes that have emerged after World War II and the end of the Cold War are globalisation (Stiglitz 2010) and global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009a, b, 2011). Both cannot be addressed from a traditional narrow vision of military security and from the perspective of the nation state. Therefore, a multidisciplinary and regionally diverse perspective must combine security, globalisation, development and the environment (Dalby 2002), while a gender balance may contribute new concepts and modes of analysis. Since the 1990s, security has widened both horizontally – from the national military to political, economic, societal and environmental dimensions – and vertically, from the interest of the state to concerns of human and gender security. This also points to a process of ‘deepening’ from the individual up to global society (Buzan et al. 1998). Sovereignty of the nation state has been unable to guarantee security in a globalised world and deal with the new processes of global environmental change. Therefore, besides global security concerns that are being considered by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and NATO, there are several contradictory processes of regional and local liberation struggles. They call for autonomy and are reinforcing new ethnic and regional identity processes in a globalised world. Finally, a sectorialisation of the security concept has evolved, which refers to energy, water, soil, health, food and livelihood security (Brauch et al. 2008). By linking the security concept with peace, development, culture, gender and environment, the interrelationship among these concepts becomes dynamic and corresponds to dissipative processes (see Chap. 21). These new geopolitical arenas are creating unknown complex and open systems with processes of self-adjustment that are not always predictable (Galaviz 2013). These processes can often generate security threats and violence, but also peace-building and resilience. From a traditional Asian point of view and from indigenous traditional societies in Africa and Latin America, a potential for new peace concepts exists (Oswald Spring 2004). However, more than five hundred years of violent (post)colonial domination and exploitation for humans and nature have been aggravated by present neoliberal rules, which could also cause more conflicts and security challenges.

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Thus, Galtung (2007) explored how training in peace research and negotiation processes could be professionalised to enhance efficiency. When peace studies are linked to peace research, it is possible to satisfy needs and a livelihood for all, hence, a culture of peace is linked to concrete goals. As a consequence, in conflict situations mediation is possible and may transform through peaceful means and thus prevent violent outcomes. Education may support a greater and faster peace-building, supported by mass media and new communications (internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). It may consolidate nonviolence and soft processes of living together. By removing post-traumas after violent conflicts, massacres and genocide, new live perspectives may emerge and old threats and confrontation may be defeated. The reintegration of former soldiers into a peaceful life and productive processes offers all those involved possibilities for a stable peace and thus for a dignified livelihood. At another level, Galtung argued that pragmatism in foreign policy must be coupled with peace efforts and a new ethical behaviour to overcome violence through negotiation processes. The United Nations Charter (1945) has used international peace with security (Simma 1994). Brauch (2007) suggested deepening and widening the narrow security concept from national towards environmental and human security. Brauch (2003, 2005, 2008) distinguished among four phases of environmental security and pointed to four pillars of human security (Brauch 2005), which enable regional processes of new security thinking to be understood diachronically. The human-induced global environmental threats and risks are mostly generated by industrialised countries. However, they primarily affect poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. As global phenomena they have different repercussions, but their effects on specific regions have threatened humankind as a whole. These challenges must be addressed at a global level, yet no world government exists to assume responsibility, and the biggest polluters are the countries which currently wield the power to maintain hegemony over this destructive process, thus increasing the dangers for all, including for themselves. In each region extremely socially vulnerable groups exist, especially women and girls, who have difficulty developing the resilience to cope better with environmental threats. Dalby, Brauch and Oswald Spring (2009) discussed four phases of research on environmental security and peaceful conflict resolution when scarce and polluted environmental resources trigger conflicts that may threaten the survival of wider communities and social groups. The authors addressed the causal links between natural hazards and violent societal consequences; natural hazards and disaster-induced migration and drought, food insecurity, famine, migration, and conflicts. Brauch and Oswald Spring (2009) have further argued with their proposed concept of ‘soil security’ that lack of precipitation induces drought, then bad harvests, famine, disaster-induced migration, potential clashes among migrants and farmers and often hunger riots. This violent outcome is countered with traditional military security procedures, where police and armed forces try to restore the order. On the other side, the conflicts may trigger war refugees and often famine, due to the destruction of harvests and the abandoned agriculture. This enhances societal

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and environmental vulnerability to hazards and disasters (drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, epidemics), often aggravated by the loss of governance and economic crises. Climate change and environmental stress often trigger extreme weather events and environmentally-induced migration that in some cases escalate to crises and even violent conflicts (Oswald Spring/Serrano/Álvarez et al. 2014). The degree of social vulnerability, gaps among social classes, ethnic groups, gender and regions may increase the conflict potential, but also scarcity due to the lack of institutions that are able to deal with redistribution processes. Whenever the government, societal groups or the business community fail to find a just response for everybody to agree on peacefully, the distribution of scarce and polluted resources conflicts may arise. Crisis situations can turn into armed confrontations, where regional and multilateral bodies may intervene as mediators, trying to avoid long-lasting civil and trans-border wars about natural resources. Negotiations about scarce resources require political and diplomatic intervention in transborder contexts. From a gender perspective, Blazquez (2014) analysed the existing discrimination and obstacles in the award of academic prizes, publications, leadership positions and stimuli, where women face the glass ceiling compared with their male colleagues. Only an intensive dialogue involving all sectors of society and acknowledgement of the existing gender discrimination, can resolve the unequal distribution of scarce resources and awards, and avoid fatal outcomes where everybody will lose. Verhagen (2007) has proposed a complex pattern of interdisciplinary studies together with ethical and value-centred behaviour to improve the livelihood of those who are today marginalised. A ‘sociology of sustainability’ offers a building block and a holistic answer for various questions with regard to the predicament arising from population growth and dwindling resources. By linking perspectives of social and ecological sustainability with the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) and the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015), a holistic answer to various questions related to humans and resource growth can be found. These collective efforts should be able to mobilise individuals, societies and their institutions towards sustaining futures that are based on the social and ecological values of the Earth Charter, which are linked to human rights and sustainable practices of production and consumption. The links between sustainable development with peace-building and non-violent conflict resolution may strengthen human security and therefore reduce a violent outbreak of conflicts. In a broader sense, the present global tensions could be lowered through activities such as demilitarisation, by police and judicial reform, with equal economic development, democratisation and transparent elections. An alternative sustainable development process, based on liberty, equity, justice, democracy, and human rights may redirect public policies among the countries committed to the Sustainable Development Goals 2015–2030. The seventeen agreed goals includes changes in political, economic, social and environmental processes, whereby structural, cultural, gender, environmental and physical violence is changed through solidarity, support of the vulnerable, renewable energy promotion and the restoration of environment. These collective activities among

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organised citizens, an ethical business community and transparent governments may re-establish the lost confidence in government and business, and enhance the participation of citizens in a pluralist state, with dignified and well-paid jobs, food security and a healthy environment. This process of implementing sustainable development goals requires a different globalisation strategy that may eliminate the regional gaps where one-fifth of the world population consumes four-fifths of available resources. Oxfam (2016) has indicated that 62 oligarchs own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world´s population. Thus, industrialised countries should assume proportional responsibility for their historical and present pollutants, profits from speculation, trade terms, violence and crime, but also less developed nations should get access to renewable energy, modern health knowledge, science and technology to enter into a clean and sustainable production and consumption. Further, corruption must be eradicated everywhere and solidarity promoted for the most vulnerable and those affected by disaster. A global commitment for a combined security concept is based on scientific-technological progress, which also incorporates traditional knowledge. This integrated knowledge guarantees a promising future, which centres on justice, freedom, equity and democracy. Hence, a culture of peace (UNESCO 2002) starts within the family, where women are treated equally and are empowered to decide on their own lives, their reproductive health and societal concerns. Such equality should be implemented in education, culture, salaries, political participation, public decision-making processes and access to resources and land. These comprehensive security processes, together with policies orientated towards the former goals, will improve social investments and may foster an impartial application of justice, contributing to human well-being and peaceful conflict resolution. Thus, peace work transcends peace research and peace studies. Interdisciplinary communicable and verifiable knowledge involves the individual in peaceful behaviour and a learning process. When peace professionals focus on unresolved present conflicts they launch a mediation process for conflict transformation by peaceful means, in which socio-therapy is linked to a system of actions. Transcend University has proposed a method of negotiation in four phases (Galtung 2007). First, all parties meet one-to-one; second, empathic dialogues are promoted to elicit creativity; third, transcending goals are shown and a new system is created that can accommodate the legitimate goals of all parties. Finally, joint actions are undertaken to transform conflicts, with the previously noted processes included and thus widened. Often mediators listen and balance power among the parties. The role of the mediator is to catalyse the emotions of the parties (De la Rúa 2007). He or she is an agent of reality, trying to avoid exorbitant demands. The mediator generates an environment of respect for all participants and keeps the channels of communication open. He or she stimulates a special atmosphere where everybody listens and will be listened to. Underlying interests are explored and claims are understood. Mediators may clarify misunderstandings, take care of the relations among the parties, and promote agreements through a proactive process of dialogue which improves the quality of life for all involved. As a participatory process conducted

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by a neutral third – the mediator – the participants have stable support, which induces a constructive dialogue. Mediators look also for ground-based areas of agreements, generating a shared vision of the future that encourages solidarity and collaboration. They stress the importance of the conflict as a motor and something to be solved among the involved parties. Community mediation not only looks for common areas of agreements, it also focuses on re-establishing and strengthening the social networks, participation, decision-making and consensus-building that can create multiplying effects. These processes may stimulate the education for a culture of peace, with respect for human rights and responsibility for the assumed commitments.

References Ameglio Patella, Pietro (2004). Defensa noviolenta de una ciudad contra las megatiendas Cosco-Comercial Mexicana, in: Úrsula Oswald Spring (2004) (Ed.). Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías, Mexico, D.F., Coltlax, CLAIP, Fundación IPRA, F. Böll, pp. 405–424. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Maria Mies (1999). The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy, London, Zed Books. Boulding, Elise (2000). Cultures of Peace. The Hidden Side of History, New York, Syracuse University Press. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring (2009). Securitizing the Ground; Grounding Security, Bonn, UNCCD, Government of Spain. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Bechir Chourou, Jörn Birkmann (2011) (Eds.). Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Heinz Krummenacher, Navnita Behera Chadha, Béchir Chourou, Patricia Kameri-Mbote (2009) (Eds.). Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter (2007). “Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerability and Risks”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.). International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems, Vol. 39, Chapter 4, Oxford, UNESCO-EOLSS. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Pal Dunay, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Peter H. Liotta (2008) (Eds.). Globalisation and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualising Security in the 21st Century, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, Jaap de Wilde (1998). On Security. A Framework of Analysis, Boulder, Lynne Rienner. CEPAL (1980–2015). Balance Preliminar de la Economía en América Latina. Santiago de Chile, CEPAL. Dalby, Simon (2002). Environmental Security, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. De la Rúa, Diana (2007). “Mediation: Empowering people for better understanding (Mediation and Peacebuilding)”, International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.). Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems, Vol. 39, Chapter 12, Oxford, UNESCO-EOLSS.

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Galaviz, Tania (2013). Las mediaciones en el proceso de paz entre el gobierno colombiano y el Movimiento-19 de Abril, 1980–1990, Ph.D. Thesis, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Mexico, D.F., UNAM. Galtung, Johan (2007). “Peace Studies: A Ten Points Primer”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.). International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems, Vol. 39, Chapter 3, Oxford, UNESCO-EOLSS. Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1993). Ghandi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Boston, Beacon Press. Gandhi, Mohandas K. (19962). Non-violence in Peace and War, London, Penguin Books. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] (2014). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. King, Martin Luther (1998) (Ed. by Clayborne Carson). The Autobiography by Martin Luther King, New York, Warner Books. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald, Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Fátima Flores Palacios, Maribel Ríos Everardo, Hans Günter Brauch, Teresita E. Ruiz Pantoja, Carlos Lemus Ramírez, Ariana Estrada Villanueva, MT Mónica Cruz Rivera (2014). Vulnerabilidad social y género entre migrantes ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRM-UNAM. Oxfam (2016). An economy for the 1%. How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_ attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf. Salguero, Cecilio Manuel (2011). El Plan Cóndor Origen, Desarrollo y Consecuencias (1973/ 1983), Córdoba http://www.papelesdesociedad.info/IMG/pdf/el-plan-condor.pdf. Saxe Fernández, John (1999) (Ed.). Globalización: Crítica a un Paradigma, Mexico, D.F., UNAM-IIEc-Plaza Janés. Sen, Amartya (1995). Inequality Reexamined, Cambridge, Ma, Harvard University Press. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2010). Freefall. America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, New York-London, W.W. Northon. Sustainable Development Goals (2015). UNDP, New York http://www.undp.org/content/dam/ undp/library/corporate/brochure/SDGs_Booklet_Web_En.pdf. UN Millennium Project (2005). Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, Report to the UN Secretary-General, London, Earthscan. UNESCO (2002). Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Paris, UNESCO. UNFPA (2016). “News on World Population Trends” http://www.unfpa.org/world-populationtrends. Verhagen, Frans V. (2007). “Humankind and Consumption of Renewable and Non-Renewable Resources: Limits of Growth as a Challenge or Unlimited Growth as a Solution?”, International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems, Vol. 39, Chapter 9, Oxford, UNESCO-EOLSS.

Chapter 3

Peace and Sustainability in a Globalised World

3.1

Introductory Remarks

On the eve of a new millennium we are facing a globalisation process1 which embraced, for the first time in human history, what could be termed all of life’s phenomena. This process continues to go beyond those aspects, which are strictly productive: the economy, technology, scientific progress and the relations of a predetermined productive process (Hunter 1995). It interrelates personal and local processes with regional, national and international ones, penetrating the most intimate spaces of human feeling and social representations (Serrano 2010). The question as to which direction the development of the planet (or indeed a continent, country, social or ethnic group, or a human being and his individuality) is expressed with increasing rigour and urgency (Oswald Spring 2001). The revolution in the communications industry, including the conscious and subconscious bombardment of ‘world values’, has generated a crazy consumerism globally. The instant access to manipulated news all over the world – images and content capable of reaching the innermost feelings of a human being – has a bearing on the construction of a very distinct culture and system of values (Wallerstein 1994). They are based on religious, ethnic, and moral considerations, although a trend towards homogenisation on a worldwide scale can also be observed. Violent scenes featuring the (usually white) hero, and the concepts of beauty à la Miss Universe are imitated all over the world from the sand dunes of the desert to the uppermost reaches of the Himalayas. The beauty myth, television, films, the internet and social media create beguiling flights into fantasy. However, the cold truth in a world on the edge of collapse is 1

The original text was translated from Spanish to English by Catherine Barnett Wade and was published in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.) (2000). Peace Studies from a Global Perspective. Human Needs in a Cooperative World Delhi, Maadhyam Book Services, pp. 88–104. The author has updated some reflections. The final revised text was language edited in January 2018 by Vanessa Greatorex. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_3

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that 1300 million people live in poverty, 70% of whom are women (UNICEF 1995), and in 2018, 870 million people are undernourished. This hunger is the result of a decrease in the amount of grain produced for the human diet. Grain has increasingly been sold for animal feed and biofuel since 1984. The situation has been aggravated by an annual reduction of 7% in fishing hauls since the historical peak in 1989 (Worldwatch Institute Report 1995:177), and changes in the use of farmland and forests, air pollution, land erosion, desertification, salinisation of surface and groundwater supplies, the depletion of irrigated land, the exhaustion of aquifers, and both toxic and domestic solid wastes deposited on cultivated lands. When a mother is powerless to answer her baby’s hungry cry because she is unable to provide the necessary food, her individual sense of helplessness increases, but also social frustration and dissatisfaction. Thus, the relationship which human beings have with themselves is changing, and origins, fate, loneliness, fears, aspirations, society, surroundings and transcendence are questioned. On the one hand, humankind opens up to previously unsuspected realities, but on the other, a new being is created, less protected by family, social and national norms, willing to select world views and values from a sea of information which surrounds each human being. This being is made more vulnerable by personal, environmental, and social catastrophes, which consequently limit the capacity to exercise greater selectivity and sensitivity and, at the same time, also involve growing exposure to risk (Beck 1999), fear and a sense of impotence. In addition to and in spite of this global intercommunication, at the individual, and especially at the social level, people are increasingly exposed to physical, structural, and psycho-moral violence. Unfortunately, social scientists are talking about a situation in which the majority of the human race lives in these conditions not only in one continent or in one region, but globally. Whereas in developing countries, structural and physical types of violence predominate over other forms of conflicts and anxieties, in the northern countries the fight is more against alienation and loneliness. As well as the issues already mentioned, global changes are occurring at an increasing speed. From the Nineties onwards, a distinct geopolitical system has emerged: with the disintegration of the conflict between East and West (Giddens 1994), the differences between North and South are sharpening, and the global financial system might shatter the whole world monetary system. For these reasons, it is necessary to reflect on the solutions to military, political, economic, social, and environmental conflicts (Sachs 1993), and to reinforce human rights and peaceful conflict resolution, in order to find a different path to the resolution of ancient and emerging problems. The new forms of behaviour also need to take into account a rise in local conflicts, such as the surge of fanatical fundamentalism, regionalism and nationalism, accompanied by xenophobia, racism and discrimination against women (Persram 1994), race, ethnic groups, elderly people and children. For its part, medical progress is changing the traditional demographic equilibrium: the decrease in infant mortality has converted developing countries into predominantly young

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populations and their governments are obliged to face serious problems in their basic infrastructures, services and job creation schemes, with very limited budgets (Lezama 1998). In developed countries, however, advances in medical care and hospital services have increased life expectancy substantially, and older people are now putting pressure on social security systems, which are, in turn, supported by a shrinking active workforce sharing high rates of unemployment. Also high medical costs are increasing, threatening the health system in industrialised countries.

3.2

Sustainable, Equal and Diverse Development Processes

The complexity of these global problems requires deep reflection and new solutions, which are capable of linking a general concept like that of sustainable development (Urquidi 1997) to universal values such as equality, justice, peace, and democracy (Aguilar 1997). As the paradigm to achieve well-being for everybody, an ever increasingly interrelated and globalised world clashes with the idealisation of market forces as the only tool capable of achieving scientific progress, efficiency, well-being and quality of life. Facing almost two lost decades of progress in the developing countries, the growing number of deaths due to a lack of water, famines, and environmental disasters, under- and unemployment, violence, and insecurity, gives rise to criticisms of the neo-liberal model, not only from progressive groups, but also from traditional sectors of the Christian Church. At the same time, the antidemocratic practices of bureaucratic socialism have destroyed faith in the innate goodness of humankind, and have shown the cruel reality of the subterfuges of a dictatorial power, justified only by the fact of its existence. The collapse of the inefficient and bureaucratic communist world, and the destructive nature of market capitalism – insensitive to notions of equality, equity, sustainability, well-being and quality of life for everyone – demonstrate that the doctrinaire formulae of the past simply do not work; a new model is urgently required. As the last century drew to a close, the ‘end of history’ meant no more than a suppression of any trace of social commitment and the victory of multinational capitalism, interested only in profit and not in human beings or nature. The reality of this situation is demonstrated by the existence of refugees of fratricidal and religious wars and populations forced to flee their homelands because of environmental destruction, such as desertification, salinisation, land, air and water pollution. Permanent flooding caused by sea level rise, due to the greenhouse effect, degenerative illnesses and conditions, which affect the immune system, are products of toxic substances and the depletion of the ozone layer. All these processes are really the result of an increasing depredation of any natural resource in order to maximise profits. These are the reasons that necessitate the increasingly urgent application of global policies, which face up to these problems with neither ideological veils nor the justifications of social groups or classes. To counteract the

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negative effects previously described, it is also critical that we put into effect feasible and desirable measures in the short term, as well as proposing development policies compatible with social and environmental requirements on a local, regional, and global scale. When seriously considering the future of the planet, the continent, Latin America (Foro del Ajusco 1994) or Mexico (Miklos/Tello 1991), it is essential to analyse past experiences, critically evaluate them, free them from inappropriate assumptions, premises and hidden interests, and build a new socio-economic and environmental mosaic, which is all-inclusive, complex (OECD 1997), plural, self-regulating, and peaceful. There is no doubt that the whole world, and especially my country, Mexico, has followed a different path over the last few decades, imitating foreign hegemonic doctrines, where individual economic freedom is defended above any consideration of socio-environmental justice (Centro de Estudios Sociológicos 1997). World and regional policies make, at most, the principle of equal opportunities a priority, but without including, at the same time, the equality of social, political, economic and life conditions. The fundamental dilemma is the historical dissonance of an exclusive group of multinational businesspersons (Forrester 1998), who impose a one-dimensional future on social subjects, converting them into mere objects of manipulation, lacking either history or a goal in life (Herrera 1994). Subsequently, the conqueror or winner has the privilege of writing the official story, be it called colonialism, feudalism, socialism, or capitalism, as if it were the only truth. The models of the 1990s, whose philosophy was the opening up of markets to free competition, distance themselves more and more from the path towards democracy, harmonisation, participation, well-being and quality of life for all (Leff 1994). The most significant proof of this anti-democratic evolution is clear: the losing groups become increasingly more marginalised from the decision-making process, widening the gap between the State and its subjects, condemning the latter to become silently extinct in their own misery and hunger. In this way, the neoliberal doctrine helps to bring about a sextuple exclusion: economic, social, gender, environmental, cultural, and political. Along with the growth in social inequity, direct exploitation exists, in which the human and social costs are considered unimportant. This includes the discrimination against women, their lower wages and lack of political participation, and also the destruction of the environment. The destruction of the ozone layer, the availability of fresh water, the collapse of marine fisheries, the increase of dead zones in the oceans, the loss of forests, the destruction of biodiversity, climate change and the continued growth of the population have produced a global imbalance on Earth. Taking all this into account, the concept of utopia is complex and, as a new paradigm, might include and add instead of dividing and taking away (Catton/ Dunap 1978). It is no coincidence that the commitments made by 180 nations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 entered into force in 1997. The complexity of the natural and anthropogenic interrelations requires scientists and politicians to work together to find sustainable solutions for the future of the planet, the human race and the ecology (Prospectiva 1998). The whole of society should get involved and must think globally, but act locally. In addition, no government in the world can solve all

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problems of destruction, both human and ecological, alone. The democratic participation of the entire population is needed to resolve these problems, which include the exhaustion of resources, the creation of mountains of waste and overall pollution, and also climate change and ozone layer depletion. Only by government and society acting together, both committed to a better future, might it be possible to face these challenges and begin the third millennium with a process of ecological security, peace, quality of life, social equity, gender equality and democracy (Millennium Development Goals 2000). This transformation process also means starting at home and ending in the stratosphere (Habermas 1998).

3.2.1

Regional Development and Sustainability

Mexico, like other biodiverse countries in Latin America, China and many other Asian and African nations, has great potential to take advantage of its natural resources. Mexico enjoys an extensive biodiversity, as the result of the overlap of the neoarctic and the neotropical ecosystem. Suitable management of these resources would be capable of overcoming existing poverty and generating clean and dignified jobs, if the ecological parameters relate to the economic ones. Natural resources should be managed to improve social relations with greater equality and democratic participation between all sectors of society. The reinforcement of the links between ecology, economy, quality of life, and scientific-technological progress places unsustainable development in a new geopolitical axis (Licha 1996). It includes the use of traditional wisdom, scientific knowledge and values that enrich the modern way of thinking. They should be able to create a new human being, capable of facing up to the challenges of the coming millennium in social, personal, ethical (Kras 1994), and economic terms (Sachs 1993). The new paradigm relates to the two meanings of oἶjo1: the economy with ecology, which assigns economic values to natural resources. This economisation could make the productive processes more efficient, but only if they are accompanied by policies to generate greater equality and equity. In this way, ecology will become profitable, a scarce commodity, where the natural resources which have taken millions of years to come into being acquire real value and are consequently governed by market relations of free supply and a real demand. Rational and efficient management of natural resources allows enormous savings of energy, less pollution and takes advantage of economies of scale. Alternative sources such as solar, wind and water energy, technological advances in the saving and conservation of energy, recycling processes of solid waste, complete processes of combustion, biotechnological sustainable advances, which substitute chemical fertilisation, polydiverse agricultural production with biological control, all open novel challenges for a distinct globalisation, within a framework of sustainability, democracy, equality, and well-being.

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In addition, such an approach has a bearing on the general savings (more than the purely economic) of a country and therefore reduces the dangers of an economic crisis, in which governments try to overcome imbalances in public finances and macroeconomic parameters at any cost, generally without taking care of the environment. Finally, a real danger exists regarding the advances made in alternative biotechnological techniques, energy efficiency in use and conservation, green technology, recycling, and the substitution of hazardous materials, as nearly all of these patents are in the hands of multinational groups (Schmidheiny 1992; Pérez 1996). This phenomenon sharpens the disparity between the Global North and South, as world prices and terms of trade are unfavourable to developing countries and raw materials, while they favour technology, services, and capital commodities. Nevertheless, atomic fusion, the burning of barrels of oil, thermoelectric production, genetically modified organisms (Oswald Spring 2001) and other forms of resource management, in the past and still very much the present, have brought very delicate ecological changes to the world, which mortgage not only the future of the planet, but also the present. For example, if the whole world had a similar level of emissions per capita as the US or Germany – and, since 2007, also China – had and still have in 2018, we would need five planets to absorb the negative effects of these emissions. However, countries like Mexico, characterised as middle-range or threshold countries with extensive biodiversity, trained scientists generating useful knowledge and an indigenous culture ancestrally capable of conserving fragile ecosystems, might find ways to conserve biodiversity (Leff/Carabias 1993). The conservation of their native culture can be achieved through the full and active participation of all their citizens (Ron 2011), creativity, and democracy. Indigenous and peasant groups, especially women, have the ability to recover destroyed ecosystems and overcome the industrialisation and pillage of natural resources, which are threatening the existing biodiversity. On a world scale, the international environmental conferences in Stockholm on Sustainable Development (1972), in Rio de Janeiro on biodiversity (1992), in Kyoto with an agreement on greenhouse gases (1997) and the Basel protocol on toxic waste, which entered into force in 1992, manifest the global environmental problems and the demand for speedy solutions. Finally, the term human ecology (United Nations 1993, 1991) has generated new ideas by linking individual and social development paradigms. This starts from an indivisible totality, where well-being, health and world solidarity are based on new values. At the same time, they question habits and cultural prejudices (ethnocentricity), typical of the occidental countries, where a greater income is normally achieved at the cost of free time and rest. Greater geographical mobility is accompanied by the loss of human relations, social commitments, family ties and community relations (Tourraine 1997). Paid work has become a substitute for the work previously carried out in the family for its survival. Subsistence agriculture (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1999, 2001) and small-scale production offer alternative job creations and sustainable soil management, which might improve food security.

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Success and social mobility limit the quality of personal relations, producing phenomena of stress and leaving less free time. For these reasons, the challenge of sustainable development (Azuela et al. 1993) covers the economy, health, quality of life, and personal relations, favouring happiness and social mobility, not at the expense of other people, nations or nature, but rather in solidarity and with strict control of resources and savings, and sobriety. Proposals from different world conferences are incorporated, for instance: ‘small is beautiful’; ‘think globally, act locally’; ‘less consumerism, more quality of life’; ‘justice and peace for all’. Their Southern counterparts expect this distinct globalisation, alien to the processes of monopolies and multinationals, as much as the people of the Northern countries do. To be explicit, in the North, society suffers from a process of depersonalisation, illnesses related to stress, immunodeficiency, lack of time and impaired quality of life. In the South extreme poverty, inhuman conditions, lack of income, unemployment, acute inequity, and a growing gap between social groups are creating conflict and social malaise. Only with an approach of individual, social, economic, political and environmental sustainability, where greater equality might be achieved in terms of gender, the family, the community, the nation, the continent and the planet, which will equal a real quality of life.

3.2.2

The Sustainability Challenge

The International Peace Research Association (IPRA) includes researchers from different disciplines. They are dedicated to the systematic analysis of conflict resolution, sustainable development policies in their regional contexts (Semarnap 1996), and the exploration of general, regional and local practices which favour this kind of development. This is of the utmost importance, particularly when improvisation and the interests linked to multinational needs dominate the world scene. Because of this global pressure, any kind of alternative development must put the human being and its relationship with nature at the centre of progress. These researchers propose strategies of economic, social and regional growth, which can overcome inequity and violence, while simultaneously taking maximum advantage of natural resources, preserving them for future generations and preventing pollution and the generation of waste. This implies clean production processes, which encourage the equal distribution of wealth and the destruction of poverty, making the management of natural resources more efficient, improving birth control, and promoting civil co-responsibility, based on values of human rights (Oswald Spring 1996), respect and solidarity. It promotes urban and territorial organisation, all within a process of the co-responsible participation of the whole of society (Havel 1991). In short, sustainable development redefines the relationship between humankind, society and nature, and guarantees well-being and equity (Bennholdt-Thomsen 1998) in the twenty-first century in a context of globalisation and multinationalisation, based on worldwide solidarity and common global interests of conservation and survival.

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Medium-Term Goals

What can or should humanity do in the short and medium term as world citizens, researchers for peace, and creators of currents of public opinion and innovative thoughts? 1. The historical evolution of environmental production processes in their ecological time and space is closely related to scientific and technological progress, generated in the developed countries. To explore and systematise existing, alternative technologies at a lower cost and based on the idiosyncrasies of each social group, it is crucial to avoid pollution and the generation of waste. This new way to maintain sustainability starts with production processes that reduce toxic discharges into the atmosphere, water and soil. It optimises the rational management of natural resources and promotes quality of life. General well-being might be greatly improved by local development processes. 2. Regional comparisons of the generation of employment in micro, medium-sized, and large companies should now include the total human cost, the prevention and production expenses, the environmental externalities and the costs of remediation. Only in this way can the efficiency and reduction of pollution in production process unmask the implicit costs and externalities involved. Local trade and local food production will reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Fair trade among northern and southern countries helps to stabilise commodity prices and establish a human relationship between producers and consumers. Women in low-income countries, who have lost their quality of life due to global processes (climate change, globalisation), might find in this local and fair trade the potential to reduce the dominance of the greedy, corrupt and rich elites in the north and the south. In the present division of labour in the so-called-sweatshop jobs, these women are often obliged to work an excessive amount of hours, and suffer stress, anguish, deterioration in health, misery, and abandonment of children and homes. They lack social security, labour protection, dignified salaries and are often raped and sexually harassed by the local and international bosses of multinational companies. Thanks to this overexploitation, big businesses have increased their profits and impoverished the workforce. 3. Regionally and globally, peace researchers and landscape planners need to study development processes such as urbanisation, industrialisation, commercial agriculture, livestock, fishing and subsistence consumption to find sustainable ways to feed the world’s population. Processes that affect the environment, such as the extraction of mineral resources by opencast mining, must be changed into sustainable practices. Further, globally agreed and internationally enforced laws might reduce the legal and illegal arms trade and the socially discriminative behaviour of multinational enterprises. Different global control mechanisms and social involvement on a national and international scale might change the present arenas of physical and structural violence and counteract organised crime more effectively. Additionally, the creation of a

3.3 Medium-Term Goals

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

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basic infrastructure, services, communication, culture, recreation and sports might create consciousness about the limits of the planet and promote a better balance with regard to the use of natural resources. Sustainable resource management could reinforce ecological sustainability where rigorous accounts are kept of the costs of natural resources, environmental management, conservation processes, recuperation and substitution of scarce resources. In conjunction with an equal social policy, which includes public security, poverty alleviation and the eradication of hunger, ethnic and religious discrimination, this might boost citizens’ participation and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. A sustainable approach must take into account a comparative analysis of socio-production processes, which women and indigenous people have consolidated over many generations, creating cultures able to conserve threatened environments. Local and regional well-being are consolidated by promoting policies that link traditional and modern production processes, especially sustainable subsistence consumption (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1999, 2001). When vertically and horizontally integrated production processes are further integrated in a circular economy, a regenerative system is created. In this circular management, resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimised. Material, waste and energy loops are closed or reduced through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling. This productive integration takes maximum advantage of production process inputs, reduces socio-economic costs, and prevents pollution and waste. A global policy of ‘clean’ production processes generates employment and well-being at a local level. At the same times, it reduces the inequity among different social groups and regions. Encouraging solidarity in the community and family promotes human ecology values and establishes an arena of conflict-resolving conditions with the capacity to prevent tensions and conflicts. Stable financial policies, with a substantial reduction of internal and foreign debts at local, regional, national, and global level, are crucial to promote a sustainable development that is respectful of nature, humanity and each culture. A sustainable alternative transition explores policies, which promote co-responsibility between citizens (Brauch et al. 2016). Dark interests must be critically analysed. They are often subsumed under terms like ‘progress’, ‘profit’, ‘crisis’, ‘postmodernity’ (Ballesteros 1993), ‘security’ (Jiménez 1995) and ‘globalisation’, which attempt to slow down authentic development processes (Jiménez et al. 1994) and concentrate wealth among the financial oligarchy. Deeper equality in South-South and North-South relations should be based on the fact that the Earth is a common good on the verge of collapsing. It is the performance of homo sapiens and its anthropogenic behaviour of depredation (von Weizsäcker 1993) that is further destroying ecosystem services. The conservation of these natural resources and the restoration of a dynamic equilibrium, accompanied by an integral social development process, might

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open the way to a ‘green market’, with fewer environmental and social conflicts. 9. Governments and institutions have developed a global legal framework through the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the existing free trade agreements – Common Market in Europe, NAFTA and now USMCA in North America, Pacific-Basin and Mercosur (an economic community comprising Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay) – with very different reaches. All these agreements should take into account that, among regions and social groups, there exists an illusion of abundance of natural resources. Unequal mechanisms of commerce, called terms of trade, currently produce abundance and pollution in the Global North, and poverty and destruction in the Global South. The fulfilment of all basic human rights identified by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015) might support both hemispheres and reduce the conflict situation in the South. These SDGs include gender equity, a healthy life in a clean environment, fair work for fair wages, decent housing, and production processes, which promote physical, social and ecological safety for the individual and society as a whole; in short, respectable conditions of life and recreation, and the freedom to think and act within a social context of co-responsibility and gradual overcoming of problems. 10. Finally, to fulfil the SDG, the revised development policies need to be implemented globally. The proportional responsibilities of every nation regarding the bioremediation processes and historical and present emissions in the atmosphere, water and soil might generate a global fund for compensatory mechanisms. This fund could be used to help poor countries conserve their biodiversity and the rest reverse the deterioration already suffered. The crucial item is to propose a policy of development that takes into account the recovery capacity of natural resources and the limits of our earth, as clearly specified in the Agenda 21 of 1992. This proposal addresses commitments for the world, the nation, the region, the community, and each person. Only within this integrated approach might the general conditions of life for whole continents, marginal social groups, all genders, races, ethnic groups, children, the elderly, minorities and the handicapped be sustainably improved.

3.4

Where Should We Put Our Best Effort to Achieve a Better Future?

Given the complexity of this sustainable development in a globalised world, I am only able to briefly outline some possible steps towards a sustainability transition and a green future. These might promote development on a global scale (Lelé 1991), where the conditions of globalisation are converted into advantage and not necessarily destruction (Hirst/Thompson 1996), and where peace and the resolution of conflicts are a permanent impetus to improve the quality of life. Respect for our

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neighbours and environment, and personal and social integration in harmony with ourselves and those close to us are the first steps toward fewer conflicts. When combined with sustainability, peace, ecology, and dynamic harmony (Gilman 1983), there is potential to create a utopia in the coming millennium. There is no doubt that the social process, which has had the greatest impact globally during the past 30 years is urbanisation. Moving from the countryside to the slums of the great urban centres of the Third World has been a key indicator of the growing ‘development of underdevelopment’ (Strahm/Oswald Spring 1992). Continuing this tendency, any kind of reordering, in terms of ecology and population, in those urban areas with industrial and service activities is very difficult and almost impossible. Thus, a government policy of regeneration of agriculture and natural areas (FAO 2010), especially in Africa and Asia with high rates of population growth, offers the potential to create and sustain jobs for young people in rural areas. These conserved and recuperated areas are providers of food, primary materials and ecosystem services. These reserve areas of renewable resources recharge aquifers, purify air, fix soil particles, maintain habitats for wild flora and fauna, and establish recreation and rest areas for humans and nature (Oswald Spring 1992). There will be no better future without a radical change in productive processes. The industrial cycles require both a vertical and a horizontal integration, whereby pollution is prevented through clean, productive processes and waste is reduced, reused, and recycled, especially toxic waste. In synthesis, a decarbonisation and dematerialisation of the productive and consumption processes is needed. A scientific-technological revolution is the starting-point of a rational management of energy (Harrison 1993), as the savings in the productive process not only lower costs, but also reduce pollution and secondary effects like global warming. Without great advances in renewable energy sources (as fossil energy reserves are limited and continue to pollute), there will be no future for the ‘blue planet’. Even if distinct and more secure forms of handling uranium are found, gas and oil supplies, like those of uranium and coal, are becoming exhausted, and the prices of raw materials, will increase in the longer term if there is a world scarcity, although they have dropped recently. Nevertheless, the current waste of primary resources (Meadows et al. 1992) and the situation of artificial ‘oversupply’ have created global financial speculation on raw materials in the stock market. This behaviour has created an illusion of abundance and supported the cornucopian model (Gleditsch 2003) of the elite, which has led to a squandering of resources. This conduct has produced a fundamental change, described by Crutzen (2002) as the Anthropocene. It represents a new epoch in earth history, in which crucial resources for future generations are being lost and polluted. The economy and ecology – the oἶjo1 – must again be aligned in the near future (Maihold/Meza 1989), but always in harmony with the quality of life and the resolution of conflicts. Scarcity, as a factor produced by the free market, fixes the prices of natural resources. In the next few decades, a more realistic approach is necessary that includes the costs of the loss of non-renewable resources, their management, their decontamination, and their substitution (Lyle 1994). According

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to a study of the European Common Market (Bund/Misereor 1996), if the real environmental costs were calculated, including the externalities and the cost of replacing natural resources, the global GDP would be 5% lower. Further, a vast ‘green market’ exists, which is currently held by Germany, the United States, and Japan, which might be able to promote sustainable development with quality of life and well-being (Restrepo 1995). Their market mechanisms are the regulation of prices and subsidies, the creation of incentives, taxes, preferential credits and fines for polluters. All these processes have increased inequality during the past 20 years, thus it is convenient to change the emphasis of these individual market mechanisms and to socialise patents. The promotion of traditional and alternative knowledge might support the fast development of ‘clean’ production, service and distribution processes, with organised society in the North and South critically participating in order to change potential deviations. In conclusion, achieving ‘Utopia’ entails, in the first place, overcoming structural and physical violence, inequity and poverty. In a world polarised by over- and under-consumption, there is no quality of life and a lot of conflicts. In Scandinavia the model of social democracy is accompanied by the highest level of suicides, while the happiness index of Bhutan has been unable to overcome poverty in this mountainous country. It is therefore essential to promote different development processes, calibrated to produce well-being, peace, mental and physical health in each region (Fox 1984). Only through a worldwide effort by each citizen to overcome all these problems and a harmonious link between modern and traditional sciences might it be possible to promote the different aspects of human creativity that can be used in the service of sustainability and healthy human ecology (Ferry 1992). It is possible to transform the deterioration of our planet into a brighter future, where globalised neighbours and proportional responsibility for emissions and pollutants in both Northern and Southern countries are established by enterprises, local and national governments and social organisations, and peace researchers play a crucial role. There is also a global commitment by all peace researchers to taking action on climatic changes, and water, air and earth pollution. The shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer is just one example of how, under the direction of the UNDP, technical alternatives – in this case to chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) – and global changes in consumer habits can make a positive difference to the long-term well-being of the planet. Scientific-technological progress, and, in particular, active worldwide consciousness of co-responsibility by the whole of society, will lead us towards a promising future of peace, justice, equity, quality of life and well-being, where national and religious discrimination is challenged. However, time for action is limited and only a global collaboration for one planet earth will be able to grant the future generation livelihood and well-being.

References

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References Aguilar Fernandez, Susana (1997). El Reto del Medio Ambiente, Madrid, Alianza Universidad. Azuela, Antonio, Carabias Julia, Provencio Enrique, Quadri Gabriel (1993). Desarrollo Sustentable: Hacia una Política Ambiental. México, D.F., Coord. de Humanidades-UNAM. Ballesteros, Juan (1993). Postmodernidad: Resistencia of Decadencia, Madrid, Tecnos. Bartelmus, Peter (1994). Environment, Growth and Development: The Concepts and Strategies of Sustainability, London, Routledge. Beck, Ulrich (1999). World Risk Society, Cambridge, Polity. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Verónika (1998). Juchitán, la Ciudad de las Mujeres, Oaxcaca, Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas. Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Maria Mies (1999). The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy, London, Zed Books. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Nicholas Faraclas, Claudia von Werlhof (2001) (Eds.). There is an Alternative. Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization, London, Routledge. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Jürgen Steffan (2016). Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer. Bund/Misereor (1996) (Ed.). Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland: ein Beitrag zu einer globalnachhaltigen Entwicklung, Basel, Birkhauser Verlag. Catton, R.E., W.R. Dunap (1978). “Environmental Sociology: A New Paradigm”, The American Sociologist, Vol. 13, pp. 41–411. Centro de Estudios Sociológicos (1997). México en el Umbral del Milenio, México, D.F., Colegio de México. FAO (2010). Sustainable Crop Production Intensification through an Ecosystem Approach and an Enabling Environment: Capturing Efficiency through Ecosystem Services and Management, Rome, FAO. Ferry, L. (1992). El nuevo Orden Ecológico, Barcelona, Tusquest. Foro del Ajusco (1994). Desarrollo sostenible y reforma del Estado en América Latina y el Caribe, Mexico, D.F., El Colegio de México/PNUMA. Forrester, Viviane (1998). El Horror Económico, Mexico, D.F., FCE. Fox, W. (1984). “Deep Ecology: A New Philosophy of our Time?”, The Ecologist, Vol. 14, No. 5/6. Giddens, Anthony (1994). Beyond Left and Right. The Future of Radical Politic, Redwood City, Stanford University Press. Gilman, Robert (1983). “Sustainable Peace. Putting the pieces together” http://www.context.org/ iclib/ic04/gilman2/. Habermas, Jürgen (1998). Facticidad y validez, Madrid, Ed. Trotta. Harrison, Paul (1993). The Third Revolution. Population, Environment and a Sustainable World, London, Penguin Books. Havel, V. (1991). La responsabilidad como destino, Madrid, Aguilar-El País. Herrera Castro, Guillermo (1994). Los trabajos de ajuste y combate: naturaleza y sociedad en la historia de América Latina. Ensayo histórico-social, La Habana, Casa de las Américas. Hirst, Paul, Graham Thompson (1996). Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance, Cambridge, Polity Press. Hunter, C. (1995). Sustainable Production: The corporate challenge, industry and environment, London, Routledge. Jiménez Guzmán, Lucero (1995) (Eds.). Derechos Humanos y Seguridad: Estrategias para un Desarrollo Sostenible en el Siglo XXI, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Jiménez Guzmán, Lucero, Yolanda de los Reyes, Gustavo Esteva, Alexis López, Carlos Sánchez Ruiz, Margarita Velázquez (1994) (Eds.) Desarrollo Sustentable y Participación Comunitaria, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM.

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Kras, Eva S. (1994). El desarrollo sustentable y las empresas, México. D.F., Grupo Editorial Iberoamericano. Leff Enrique, Julia Carabias (1993) (Eds.). Cultura y Manejo Sustentable de los Recursos Naturales, Vol. I and II, México. D.F., Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Mexico. Leff, Enrique (1994). Ecología y Capital. Racionalidad Ambiental, Democracia Participativa y Desarrollo Sustentable. México, D.F., Siglo XXI. Lelé, Sharachchandra M. (1991). “Sustainable Development. A Critical Review”, World Development, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 607– 621. Lezama, José Luis (19982). Teoría Social, Espacio y Ciudad, México, D.F., El Colegio de México. Licha, Isabel (1996). La Investigación en la Universidades Latinoamericanas en el Umbral del Siglo XXI: Los Desafíos de la Globalización, México, D.F., Ed. UDUAL. Lyle, John Tillman (1994). Regenerative design for sustainable development, New York, Wiley. Maihold, G.Y., L. Meza (1989) (Eds.). Ecología: motivo de solidaridad, México, D.F., Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Meadows, Donella, H. Meadows, L. Dermis, Jorgen Randers (1992). Beyond The Limits. Confronting Global Collapse Envisioning a Sustainable Future. Post Mills, Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Miklos, Tomás, Ma. Elena Tello (1991). Planeación Prospectiva: Una Estrategia para el Desarrollo del Futuro, México, D.F., Centro de Estudios Prospectivos de la Fundación Javier Barrios Sierra, A.C. & Ed. Limusa. Millennium Development Goals (MDG) (2000). Millennium Development Goals, New York, United Nations General Assembly. Neira Alva (1996) (Ed.) El desarrollo sustentable y las metropolis latinoamericanas, México, D. F., Segundo Foro del Ajusco. OECD (1997). Ed. Marilyn Yakowitz, Desarrollo Sustentable. Estrategias de la OCDE para el Siglo XXI, Paris, OECD. Oswald Spring Úrsula (2001). “Bioética, transgénicos, bioprospección y patrimonio natural”, Regiones y Desarrollo Sustentable, Vol. 1, No.1, pp. 5–27. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1992). “Sistema alimentario y desarrollo social: El reto de la investigación multidisciplinaria”, in Rául Béjar Navarro (Ed.), El diseño de la investigación y la metodología en ciencias sociales, México D.F., Cuadernos del CIIH-UNAM, pp. 41–72. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1996). Medio Ambiente, Desarrollo Sustentable y Derechos Humanos, México, D.F., Com. de Derecho Humanos de la Cámara de Diputados, Vol. 5. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2001). “Sustainable Development with Peace Building and Human Security”, in: Tolba, M.K. (Ed.). Our Fragile World. Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development, Forerunnner to the Encyclopedia of Life Support System, Oxford, Oxford-EOLSS Publisher, Vol. 1: 873–916. Perez Adan, J. (1996). “Tecnología y Desarrollo: Una crítica a la sostenibilidad”, Inguruak, No. 14, pp. 177–196. Persram, Nalini (1994). “Politicizing the Feminine, Globalizing the Feminist”, Alternatives, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer), pp. 275–314. Prospectiva (1998). Perspectiva de la Educación Superior Frente a los Retos del Desarrollo Sustentable, México, D.F., UNAM, ANUIES, UAM-X. Restrepo, Ivan (1995) (Ed.). Desarrollo Sustentab1e, México, D.F., Centro de Ecología y Desarrollo. Ron, Israel (2011). Global Citizenship. A Path to Building Identity and Community in a Globalized World, The Global Citizen’s Initiative http://www.theglobalcitizensinitiative.org/. Sachs, Wolfgang (1993) (Ed.). Global Ecology. A new arena of political conflict, London, Zed Books. Schmidheiny, S. (1992). Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and Environment, Cambridge, The MIT Press. SDG (2015). Sustainable Development Goals, New York, United Nations General Assembly.

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Semarnap (1996). El Modelo de Desarrollo. El Desarrollo Sustentable. Una Alternativa de Politica Institucional, México, D.F., Cuadernos/ SEMARNAP. Serrano Oswald, S. Eréndira (2010). La Construcción Social y Cultural de la Maternidad en San Martín Tilcajete, Oax., Doctoral Thesis, Mexico, D.F., UNAM-Instituto de Antropología. Strahm, Rudolph y Oswald Úrsula (1992). Por esto somos tan Pobres. Cuernavaca, CRIM/ UNAM. Tourraine, Alain (1997). ¿Podrémos Vivir Juntos?, México, D.F., FCE. United Nations (1993). Action 21. Conference des Nations Unies sur l’Environnement et le Développment, New York, UN. United Nations (1991). El Desarrollo Sustentable: Transformación productiva, equidad y medio ambiente, Santiago de Chile, CEPAL-UN. Urquidi, L. Víctor (1997) (Ed.). México en la Globalización, México, D.F., FCE. United Nations [Comisión Mundial para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo: PNUMA] (1987). Nuestro Futuro Común, Madrid, Alianza. Weizsäcker, Ernst-Ulrich von (1993). Política de tierra, una política ecológica realista en el umbral del siglo del medio ambiente, Madrid, Sistema. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1994). El Moderno Sistema Mundial, Madrid, Siglo XXI eds.

Chapter 4

Ahimsa and Human Development: A Different Paradigm for Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution

4.1

Introductory Remarks

Entering soon the third decade of the new millennium, and facing changes on a global scale, a distinct geopolitical order has emerged in which the East-West conflict has disintegrated and the North-South divide intensified.1 People from Asia, Africa and Latin-America, as well as the countries of the former Soviet Union, have reservations about the control exerted by the World Monetary System and the Bretton Wood Institutions, such as the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Just eight corporate CEOs control the same wealth as 3.5 billion poor people (Oxfam 2017), and the concentration is getting worse. It is therefore urgent to reflect on peaceful solutions to political, economic, social, military and environmental conflicts, with the aim of finding distinct paths to resolve ancestral and recent problems related to climate change. New behavioural norms need to overcome local conflicts, such as the rise of ‘regionalisms’ and ‘nationalism’, accompanied by xenophobia, racism, fundamentalism, the oppression of women and children and the abandoning of the elderly. This complex assortment of global problems requires deep reflection and the search for new peaceful solutions which facilitate the resolution of current conflicts in an active and nonviolent way, also called ahimsa. This concept, originally developed by Jainism,2 links ‘sustainable development’ to universal values like Part of this article was published in Úrsula Oswald Spring (2000). “Ahimsa and Human Development”, in: Indian Journal of Asian Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 1–2, June–December, pp. 133– 153, and was adapted. The permission of the original publisher was granted. 2 Jainism is a very old religion and has existed for thousands of years. The principals of Jainism are: self-control, which includes control over physiological instincts, such as hunger, sex, other desires and emotions; meditation; introspection; concentration; and healthy interpersonal relationships, which thus contribute to mental health. The soul consists of four infinities: infinite knowledge (Ananta Gnana), infinite intuition (Ananta Darsana), infinite happiness (Ananta Sukha) and infinite potency (Ananta Virya) (Bhadraprabhu 1986). 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_4

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equity, justice, peace, sustainability and democracy. In terms of a paradigm, an increasingly interrelated and globalised world clashes with the idealisation of market forces as the sole tool capable of achieving scientific progress, efficiency, well-being and quality of life. However, global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2012) and climate change impacts (IPCC 2014a) indicate that this Westernised approach is unable to grant the survival of earth and humankind. The paradigm shift relates the two meanings of ‘oἶjo1’ – the economy and the ecology – in a holistic way. It suggests companies make their productive processes more efficient, clean and environmentally and human friendly. At the same time, public policies and distributive tax regimes should watch and counterbalance the increasing inequity, protecting, in particular, women, children, elders and other vulnerable groups. The nonviolent or active peaceful process of conflict resolution intervenes before struggles explode into greater violence or war. Nonviolence is promoted from childhood onwards and reinforced through education, mass media, informal communications and peace games. Rational and efficient management of natural resources allows energy savings and less pollution. Economy of scale can take advantage of the horizontal and vertical integration of productive processes and, through recycling, the local articulation of markets and subsistence agriculture (Mies 1983). Alternative sources of energy (wind, water, solar, geothermic, biomass; REN21 2017) exist, along with technological advances in the saving, conservation and efficiency of energy (IEA 2017) and complete processes of combustion. Further, management of solid and liquid waste (IWMI 2017), biotechnical advances which replace chemical fertilisers with organic ones and do not need genetically modified organisms (GMO), combined with mixed agriculture and biological controls, open new opportunities towards a different type of globalisation. This soft management of natural resources promotes a framework for peace, sustainability, democracy, equity, job creation3 and well-being for everybody. However, this alternative future is impeded by structural obstacles linked to the shareholders of multinational enterprises, with their greed for greater profits at the cost of human and natural exploitation.

4.2

Armed Terror, Militarism and Ahimsa

World military security is basically exercised by one superpower and its hegemonic allies (NATO), based on the strength of their arms and military research. Although politicians led us believe that the arms race engenders greater security, in view of the possibility of the total destruction of our planet, militarisation is actually increasing global insecurity. During the Cold War the equilibrium of arms power between the USSR and the US probably acted as a deterrent which prevented the repetition of large-scale destruction such as World War II and the atomic attack on

3

Only renewable energy have produced in 2017, 9.7 millions of new jobs (REN21 2017).

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, during the same period, proxy wars in the Global South have caused misery and death through hundreds of armed conflicts and millions of refugees. If we include the two World Wars, it is now evident that this presumption of military security is too narrow and must be reanalysed in a different reality of post-Cold War conditions and globalisation. We currently inhabit a world where a staggering 3000 k of TNT exist for every inhabitant – the equivalent of one million Hiroshima bombs (Strahm/Oswald Spring 1991). The original group of five countries with nuclear bombs has been increased by India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. This fact changes the geopolitics in South East Asia, where China used to dominate the military panorama and is now emerging globally as a powerful economic force. Global military spending stands at 781 billion dollars per year (UNDP 1999). SIPRI (2017) estimated a global expenditure of 1686 billion dollars on military expenditure in 2016 or 227 US dollars per capita, which represents 2.2% of the global GDP (SIPRI 2017). US has the highest expenditure, with a military budget of 818.2 BD4 in 2017; 874.4 BD enabled in 2018 and 886 BD proposed for 2019.5 Current global military expenses are highly unequal, with Oman spending 14.6% and the Solomon Islands zero per cent. The highest military expenditure in relation to percentage of GDP occurs in these 12 countries: Oman (14.6); Saudi Arabia (13.5); South Sudan (10.3); Iraq (7.3); Algeria (6.2); Bahrain (5.6); Azerbaijan (5.6); Israel (5.4); Russia (5); Namibia (4.8); Lebanon (4.8) and Jordan (4.3% of GDP).6 According to other data banks, Saudi Arabia is in first place with 9.8% in relation to its GDP7; Israel 5.8%; UAE 5.7%; Russia 5.3%; South Korea 2.7%; India 2.5%; France 2.3%; Australia 2.0%; and China 1.9% (SIPRI 2017). If we examine the amount spent on military expenditure compared to budget on health and education, we can clearly see how a redistribution of the military budget in favour of real human development could solve many of the world’s social problems. For example, the world’s total military expenditure for 1990–91 stood at 38.1% of that spent on health and education together. Some regions, such as North Africa, spend 4.3% on military and 3.8% on health, while the Middle East spends 4.6% and 3.0% respectively, and Eastern Europe spends 4% on military and 3.2% on health. If we took all this money spent on weapons and training men to kill, maim and destroy our natural environment, and instead invested it in human development, i.e. eliminating poverty, improving health care, scientific research, environmental protection and providing education for all, we would see the emergence of a different world order. By reinvesting the money allocated as military budget for just two and a half years, world poverty could be eliminated together with the total external debt in the

4

BD: Billion dollars, understood as a thousand million throughout the entire text. https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-military-budget-components-challenges-growth-3306320. 6 https://uk.businessinsider.com/12-countries-highest-military-budgets-percentage-of-gdp-2017-7/jordan-431-of-gdp-1. 7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/06/25/the-biggest-military-budgets-as-a-percent age-of-gdp-infographic-2/#4fe852414c47. 5

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Third World countries. This proves the urgent need for an alternative security paradigm, based on human development and life quality. Shifting the focus from militarised security, we could overcome the centrality of the violent State, which is acting in the name of ‘national interest’ or against some ‘external’ or ‘internal enemy’, often to maintain a despotic and undemocratic leadership. If we focus on the concept of human security, we could reduce structural and physical violence, gender injustice and security, and ecological threats, and eliminate poverty, discrimination and inequality. In addition, scientific-technological advances taking advantage of minority sectors have increased the potential military and environmental destruction without preventing misery and malnutrition among the world’s majorities. The past century brought the most numerous and creative discoveries in human history, yet none was capable of preventing conflicts or improving life-quality for all. The pressing need for a shift away from the current patriarchal, state-centred, militarist security paradigm is obvious when we consider the current state of war in the world. Far from providing a situation of sustainable peace, the current military security paradigm has given us a total of 93 wars involving 70 states between 1990 and 1995, killing five and a half million people, including one million children. Another alarming statistic is that of the 40 million refugees worldwide, the majority are women and children. “By the end of 2016, the number of displaced people had risen to 65.6 million – more than the population of the United Kingdom. The number is an increase of 300,000 on the year before.”8 In 2018, there are 65 million displaced people – the highest number World War II. Almost 90% come from only 18 countries, with Syria and Sudan accounting for the highest number of internally and externally displaced people.9 Irreversible environmental damage is often caused through the use of biological and chemical weapons, disproportionately affecting women as they are responsible for the well-being of their families and also due to their reproductive role. They often have to bear the consequences of chemical warfare by giving birth to severely deformed or ill children.10 For poor women, this is an extra burden in their already hard lives, dealing with destroyed fields, lack of food and safe water and mostly with no governmental help to bring up sick or mutilated children. 8

UNHCR 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/there-are-now-more-refugees-thanthe-entire-population-of-the-uk/. 9 https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2018/1/5a71f6914/unhcr-releases-draft-outlining-new-globalrefugee-deal.html. 10 In the Tu Du hospital in Saigon thousands of foetuses in alcohol exist, as a result of 76 million litres of herbicides thrown down on Vietnam between 1961 and 1972, especially the Orange Agent, a mixture of 2,4-D (2,4-diclorodifenoxiacetic acid) and 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-triclorofenoxiacetic acid). In the Vietnam war it got polluted in a concentration of 50 ppm (in herbicides normally 0.05 ppm) with TCDD (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin), an undesirable by-product of 2,4,5-T. The TCDD shows higher toxicity than the dioxin and produces severe illnesses such as cancer, chloracne, hepatic and genetic alterations. More than 500 thousand children were born with malformations due to these toxins, and the reproductive health of the US soldiers stationed in Vietnam was also affected (Westing 2013a, b).

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The arms trade between states, with the Northern countries exporting arms to their Southern neighbours involved in warfare, strengthens the hegemonic interests of the remaining superpower and the ‘major powers’. In 1997 the United States produced and partially exported 1,406,505 small weapons and 2,235,136 bigger ones, as shotguns, machine-guns and rifles, a total of 3,641,641 (Newsweek 23 August 1999: 36–37). In the Global South, both income and the proportion of the budget designated for social investment are reduced. A privileged elite in the Third World is created within the armed forces, which, through direct repression and the ominous presence of paramilitary groups, often stands in the way of true democratisation processes and a redistribution of wealth. Recent military coups show the vulnerability created in developing countries by the arms race, which is left in the hands of personal and Caudillo interests, provoking the possible genocide of millions of inhabitants in the interests of maintaining power (as has occurred, for example, in Laos, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Burundi, Congo, Rwanda and Zimbabwe). Lastly, the strengthening of the arms race has reduced the development potential of any country, as we are talking about an extremely inefficient industry, given that the excuse of ‘top secret’ means that production and technological development processes are not evaluated externally. Global development is currently measured by the diffusion of new technologies, now secret and orientated towards destruction, instead of the well-being of humanity. Furthermore, when scientific technological advances become open to world interaction, they will foment creative careers of imitation, absorption and adaptation on a planetary scale, as well as reinforce traditional wisdom with innovative knowledge in favour of the entire world, its people and nature. By contrast, disarmament opens up peaceful alternatives for scientific advances, generates employment in other sectors of the economy and has multiple effects in both halves of the globe.

4.3 4.3.1

Sustainability and Natural Resources for Peace and Conflict Climate Change and Its Impacts

Expansive and wasteful consumerism contaminates the earth and degrades natural resources. Since 1950, the burning of combustible fuels has increased five-fold. The richest fifth of the world is responsible for 53% of carbon dioxide emissions, while the poorest are responsible for only 3%, but suffer disproportionately from climate impacts. In 2017, China, the European Union (EU) and the US contributed more than half of the total GHG emissions, while the poorest 100 countries only accounted for 3.5%. China, with fast economic growth, increased its CO2 emission by 4% between 2012 and 2013, equivalent to 365 million metric tons (mt). When the global CO2 emissions are calculated per capita, Saudi Arabia is in first place

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with 16.85t, Australia 15.83t, US 15.53t, South Korea 11.58t, Russia 10.19t, Japan 8.99t, Germany 8.93t, South Africa 7.77t, Iran 6.98t and China 6.59t.11 Climate change is caused by these toxic GHG emissions (IPCC 2013) and has a profound effect on the balance of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans. It is causing stronger and more frequent hydrometeorological events, which affect all countries to some degree, but the Global South is more exposed than the rest of the world. Its social and environmental vulnerability is higher, the extreme events stronger and the governmental preparation lower. The phenomenon of global warming is one of the most notable effects of the massive GHG emissions into the atmosphere, causing sea-level rise and subsequent floods in many parts of the world, especially in low-lying countries with long coastal areas, such as Bangladesh, the Netherlands and the small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean (IPCC 2012, 2014). The Kyoto Summit in 1997 estimated that the emissions of greenhouse gases will produce an estimated rise in the world’s temperature of 1.2° by the year 2050. This means there will be at least 15 million people affected by floods, droughts, famine, hurricanes, altered monsoons, increasingly devastating forest fires, storms, earlier spring, heatwaves, melting glaciers – 37,000 km2 lost per year (Time, 13 December 1999: 10) – polar warming and rising sea levels, together with vanishing biodiversity, drought, loss of food security and the spread of diseases (especially malaria, dengue, yellow fever, zika, chikungunya). Bunyard (1999: 72) calculated that the melting of permafrost could release about 450 billion tons of carbon dioxide and methane, reinforcing global climatic change. “Oceans, instead of a vital sink for carbon, could turn into a net source… with fifty times more carbon dioxide than is in the atmosphere.” The Hadley Centre predicted that global warming could cause the Amazon Basin to become a desert by 2050. The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet alone could raise sea levels by five or six metres, destroying fertile deltas (a rise of only one metre will snatch 30% of the world’s coastal cropland), flooding important towns and infrastructure, including nuclear plants. Computer simulation shows that global warming could ‘shut down’ the Gulf Stream and plunge part of Europe into a mini ice age. The phenomenon of global warming is one of the most notable consequences of GHG emissions. In Bangladesh it is particularly worrying, as its most fertile lands are located in coastal regions that, during floods caused by rising sea-levels and cyclones, have suffered from a process of salinisation which has reduced food production. During the monsoon floods from July to September 1998, a loss of around 2.2 million tons of rice was reported, causing a 14% decrease in the national production. As an extremely poor country with increasing levels of hunger, Bangladesh has few resources with which to mitigate and adapt to this problem. Warmer temperatures could also be ruinous for Chinese farmers. A sea-level rise of just one metre could affect 73 million peasants and an area of 125,000 km2.

11

Data from November 2017 at: https://www.ucsusa.org/global…/each-countrys-share-of-co2. html.

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Within a five-year period (1993–98), there was an average of 1258 forest fires a year in Mexico, and in 1998 the worst drought in 70 years occasioned thousands of forest fires, causing the death of 50 people, 300,000 heads of cattle and destroying 248,000 ha in just the first five months. In Indonesia a similar drought caused agricultural and livestock loss, bush fires and forest destruction. Climate change is also producing extreme effects in our lives due to natural events, which are becoming more frequent and increasingly more destructive. In the past two years, more than 100,000 people have lost their lives through a disaster, and at least a billion lost or were forced to reconstruct their homes, according to the Worldwatch Institute. Damage was estimated at more than 200 billion US dollars. The impact of these statistics can be compared with the decade of 1980, when during the whole decade, 55 billion dollars’ worth of destruction were reported. The 1998 data also represented an increase of 48% on the 60 billion dollars reported in 1996. The biggest disasters in 1998 occurred with hurricane ‘Mitch’, which totally devastated large parts of Central America. The floods in China and Bangladesh, an ice-storm in Canada and New England, and, in 1999, the floods in Venezuela, India, China, the ice storms in Europe and, in 2000, the hurricanes in Mozambique, Madagascar and South Africa and the forest fires in Indonesia are expressions of greater climate change impacts. ‘Mitch’ was classified by Worldwatch as the most lethal hurricane to hit the Americas in more than 200 years, with deaths estimated at 11,000 in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. In monetary terms, damage was estimated at 48 billion dollars in Honduras alone, which amounts to one-third of its GDP, and a billion in Nicaragua. After the disaster, almost half of the Honduran population had to be evacuated, 70% didn’t have access to drinking water, and diseases widespread. The situation was made even worse by the fact that it was impossible to reach the victims as many bridges and main roads were completely destroyed by the hurricane and the landslides. The tragedy did not stop there; 95% of crops were destroyed in a country where almost two-thirds of the economically active population work in agriculture. This signifies long-term economic damage for the majority of the population and for the service sector. One possible alternative for the affected people was a temporary or definitive emigration to the United States. The most recent data from SwissRe (2017) indicated that the prognoses were conservative. The strong Niño year in 2015–16 (Zambrano 2016) and the Niña in 2017 have produced global calamities. Swiss Re asserted that the US suffered the biggest devastation from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. Only the cost of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 were even higher. While the global cost of disasters in 2016 was estimated at 188 billion dollars and 10,000 deaths, in 2017 the cost rose to 306 billion dollars, due to strong hurricanes, wildfires, floods in Bangladesh and several earthquakes. The deaths were estimated at more than 11,000 (SwissRe 2017). The fact that natural disasters affected the extremely poor countries of Central America, Asia and Africa meant even wider destruction and even greater loss of life and livelihood. Why? Poor people are always severely affected by natural disasters because of their dual vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2013). They are more likely to

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live in dangerous, insecure areas where disaster can easily strike. Mountainous regions are prone to landslides, and ravines and riverbanks to flooding. In all these risky areas rich people do not want to live, thus these are the places where the poor can set up home at little expense. They usually build their shelters with cheap or recycled material, often what we would consider rubbish. These precarious materials offer little protection under normal climatic circumstances, and even less when faced with heavy winds, flooding, earthquakes, fires, and other natural calamities. Just as a poorly constructed building will be the first to fall in an earthquake and a house made of cardboard will be destroyed by heavy rain, a shack on a mountainside does not need much to be carried away by a landslide, taking its many occupants with it. If poor people had very little to start with, a disaster can rob them of the little that they possessed. It leaves them with little chance of regaining their belongings and lost homes.

4.3.2

Water and Soil as a Conflict Potential

Over two decades, the consumption of drinking water has doubled. Twenty countries suffer from severe shortages, with less than 1000 m3 available per person and year. This scarcity can be easily translated into a potential conflict situation, especially considering that around a third of the world’s population is without access to safe water. At the beginning of 1980, intelligence services in the United States estimated that there were ten regions in the world that could become involved in a war because of water scarcity (Starr 1992). The Centre for Natural Resources, Energy and Transport (CNRET) published a register of international rivers in which 214 river basins and lakes belong to two or more countries. Approximately 47% of the globe is located within international basins, and 44 countries exist where at least 80% of their territory lies in two or more areas (Biswas 1993). This implies potential conflicts and emergency situations, especially in the Middle East. Countries like Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq are considered to be located in the most conflictive international river basins of the rivers Jordan, Euphrates and Nile. The 28 large dams built in the Eighties across the world show serious negative effects in social and environmental terms. These dams not only displaced indigenous people with the loss of their traditional knowledge, biodiversity and agricultural land, but also brought new illnesses, especially vector and water-related diseases. Malaria alone is causing over a million deaths per year, basically associated with stagnant water. The World Health Organisation states that more than 500 million people suffer from water-borne diseases (bilharzia, malaria, diarrhoea, onchocerciasis, cholera, typhus, dysentery) or have been infected by polluted water. In developing countries, around 81% of preventable deaths occur because of non-potable water, with a rate of 25,000 deaths per day (UNEP 1997): “13 diseases that can be transmitted by water. The 13 selected diseases have been implicated in waterborne disease outbreaks or are otherwise known to be transmitted by water: Acute otitis external, campylobacteriosis, cryptosporidiosis, Escherichia coli

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(E. coli) infection, free-living amoeba infection, giardiasis, hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection, Legionnaires’ disease, nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infection, Pseudomonas-related pneumonia or septicaemia, salmonellosis, shigellosis and vibriosis or cholera.”12 Erosion is not only a result of deforestation, but also of inappropriate cropping practices. According to FAO, half of the highlands, which affects an estimated 400 million people, are involved in this destruction process, especially in the Andean, Himalayan and Sahel regions. In Ethiopia alone, 270,000 km2 are significantly eroded; 140,000 severely eroded; and 20,000 so deeply that no more farming is possible. The island of Java is another example: the increase in the rate of erosion per year is about 200,000 ha, affecting 12 million peasants (IFAD 1992), and Mexico has erosion problems on about 83% of its agricultural land. UNCCD (2017) estimates that one-third of the fertile soil is degraded, and every year 24 billion tonnes are lost through intensive farming and the increasing demand for biofuel, animal feed and human food. About one-fifth of the vegetated surface indicates a declining trend in yield, and more than 1.3 billion small producers are trapped on marginal dryland with limited alternatives for subsistence crops. They are often led along by the Government, which invests in infrastructure and economic development for export products. The dominant agribusiness model produces immense stress on natural resources, land degradation and water pollution (often including aquifers). However, the dominant food production, distribution and consumption patterns fail to offer safe and sustainable food to everybody and more than 815 million people still go hungry to bed. The majority of people directly affected by famine live in only eight countries, which are involved in internal wars.13 17 million people, or 60% of the population, are facing acute food insecurity, while in South Sudan the figure is 4.8 million or 45% of its people. The other countries ranked as having the highest proportions of food-insecure people are Syria, Lebanon, Central African Republic, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Somalia, according to a report by the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Further, FAO (2013) indicated that almost half of the food is lost through waste and inadequate management of storage and transportation. The globalised food system is increasing the inefficiency of local food supply and raising GHG due to global transportation. Agribusiness also favours large-scale mechanised production, often at the cost of the expulsion of small-scale producers. Land grabbing by multinational enterprises and insurance companies is a significant conflict producer. Wangari Maathai asserted that a way to promote peace is greater sustainable management and a more equitable distribution of the existing natural resources. 12

https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/burden/current-data.html. In Yemen 60% of the population or 17 million; in South Sudan 45% or 17 million; in DRC 7.7 million, in Afghanistan 7.6 million; in Sudan 3.8 million people suffer from acute hunger. Other countries with high levels of food insecurity are Syria, Lebanon, Central African Republic, Ukraine and Somalia (FAO 2017).

13

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Deforestation brings wind and water erosion. Considerable territories previously covered by dense forests and jungles are currently exposed to the sun and natural forces, which lead to a quick process of loss of fertility and erosion. In these forest areas, the soils with high-quality humus are swept away. Meanwhile, in urban areas, obsolete sewage systems get plugged with this humus, polluting groundwater, seas, rivers and deltas. Dams are also filled with eroded particles. Forests have been reduced from 11.4 to 7.3 km2 per thousand inhabitants since 1970. Between 1970 and 1990, 7 million hectares of tropical forest were lost in Latin America and the Caribbean, 4 million in Asia and 4 million in Africa. In order to satisfy the demand for paper, wood and meat from industrialised countries, rainforests have been destroyed and extended livestock was established. “From 1998 to 2013, approximately 20% of the Earth’s vegetated land surface showed persistent declining trends in productivity, apparent in 20% of cropland, 16% of forest land, 19% of grassland, and 27% of rangeland. These trends are especially alarming in the face of the increased demand for land-intensive crops and livestock” (UNCCD 2017: 13). Industrial projects, mining, hydroelectric reservoirs, commercial timber, extensive livestock and commercial crops are some of the most significant ‘development projects’ with high social and ecological costs. In addition, severe degradation of forests is caused through acid rain, fires, agriculture, livestock and change of land use for agriculture, urbanisation and tourism. Figure 4.1 indicates how, during the last 8000 years of agricultural, industrial and IT revolutions, wildland was destroyed by more than half and semi-natural lands remain in only 16.9% of the world; a similar amount also remains for croplands. Rangelands for livestock have

Fig. 4.1 Transformation of the biosphere over 8000 years. Source UNCCD (2017: 31)

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increased, especially in the drylands, and today occupy 35% of the ice-free land. This is the most destructive process occurring in land use change. Densely settled areas are located in 6.1% and wildlands remain only in 25%. An additional concern is the decreasing productivity that can be observed on 20% of the world’s cropland, 16% of forest land, 19% of grassland, and 27% of rangeland (UNCCD 2017). Specifically, the biggest change in land use has also produced the lowest productivity. This is impacting on both capture of bio dioxide and food production. A further concern is related to climate change. Enteric fermentation produces 42%, manure 28%, synthetic fertilisers 13%, rice cultivation 10%, crop residues 4% and the cultivation of organic soils only 3% of the global emissions of greenhouse gases (idem). Rangeland change and deterioration is particularly serious, considering that the tropical rainforest produces 42% of the world’s biomass and oxygen (Strahm/ Oswald Spring 1991: 94). Forests are also the natural habitat of flora and fauna, maintain biodiversity, ensure the natural recharge of aquifers, limit wind and water erosion and constitute the natural reserves for wild species, recreation, culture and landscapes. Two billion hectares, a sixth of the whole planet, are eroded due to irrational cultivation practices. Wild species became extinct 50–100 times quicker than would have occurred naturally, specifically due to land use change. The amount of waste has tripled in industrialised countries in just two decades and plastic in the oceans is affecting marine flora and fauna. Fishing has quadrupled during the last two decades, one fourth of all species have become extinct and 40 countries, with a population of one billion people, run the risk of losing an important food supply. Total world fish production, including aquaculture, has stagnated at around 100 million tons per year. 300 million people still depend on fish for food and income (FAO 1994a: 10–11). Further, fewer fish proteins increase the pressure on land and meat production, leading to additional land use changes. Clean air, pure water and treated solid and liquid waste reduce threats to health. Food, water and air security are basic human rights which are currently not respected, and in the last few years the lack of these essentials has caused more deaths than wars. WHO estimated that in 2017, 9 million people died because of toxic air, unsafe water, contaminated soils and polluted workplaces. This means that one in six human beings die because of an unhealthy environment. Children are highly sensitive to pollution and one in four children and 25% of children under five years old die because they live in an unsafe environment where cooking with biomass is a key assassin of children and women. Air pollution, especially in megacities with lack of efficient public transport, kills about 6.5 million people every year. Further, 2.1 billion people lack safe water, and poverty strikes in low and middle-income countries in particular.14

14

https://www.wateraid.org/facts-and-statistics; https://www.unicef.org/media/media_68359.html; https://www.stateofglobalair.org/sites/default/files/SOGA2017_report.pdf.

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Sustainable Development Policies for Peace-Building

The above-mentioned nexus between air, water, soil, biodiversity, health and food obliges peace researchers to search for new paradigms capable of ending poverty, gender discrimination, war and current environmental destruction. This should be the top priority on the development agenda and was included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015). The concept of sustainable development aims to address the deep-rooted causes of the current problems of poverty, inequity, discrimination, violence and environmental degradation. Intergenerational equity looks after the interests of both the present and the future generations. However, the SDG are worthless if the new approaches to the development of poor countries are double-edged: on the one hand, they are encouraged to adopt a fast industrialisation process in an attempt to catch up with rich countries, and on the other, they must reduce emissions and preserve their abundant natural resources. To overcome this contradictory development agenda, new approaches to growth must emerge. Raising awareness in society might encourage more active participation by poor people, including women and girls. Education in all aspects of technological change is necessary to sustain transformation of the productive and consumption processes. Existing damage and pollution must be stopped and ecosystems restored. Renewable energy and a profound compatibility of economic development policies with environmental preservation might promote the care of natural and social resources. In short, sustainable development means a new way of doing politics, covering basic human needs, creating well-paid jobs in an environmentally-friendly productive system. The rhetoric of development programmes has to be reoriented towards the limits of the natural ecosystems. Creating sustainable rural development orientated towards the local necessities of food security and the local market will improve the quality of life and reduce hunger in rural areas. ‘Sustainability’ is not a new concept. Before becoming trendy it was used in agriculture. In the Seventies it included the handling of human impacts in the environment (UN, Nairobi). It was popularised by the Brundtland Commission (1987) in its report Our Common Future, in which sustainable development was defined as satisfying current needs without interfering with the development of future generations. Nowadays, dozens of definitions can be found: the restructuring of the growing processes; becoming aware of society and promoting its active participation; the technological changes required to sustain it; the transformation of the relationship between existing depredation and pollution towards a process of renewal development; and compatibility of economic development policies, not only for environment preservation, but also for the recovery and protection of natural resources. Growth at any cost is replaced in every case by responsible development which protects the resources of the present and future generations and their right to a dignified life. It must be made clear that there cannot be any sustainable development with the current problems of poverty, social insecurity, high demographic rates, inequality, gender discrimination, any other discrimination and environment

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depredation. Therefore, overcoming the results of underdevelopment are intertwined with actions of environment conservation and recovery, job creation, basic goods production and the reduction of consumerism and wastefulness. Sustainability is concerned with efficient water use and its saving devices, reuse, recycling and consumption reduction. Irrigation-saving techniques in agriculture and at the basin level is based on multi-level resource optimisation techniques, beginning with lineal programming up to complex modelling (Arreguín 1991; Oswald Spring 2011). Sustainability implies alternative productive processes, the awareness of a new growth model, the active participation of society, and radical technological changes towards renewable energy and recycling techniques. To accomplish a sustainable development, a process of renewed activities is required. In other words, development policies must be compatible not only with the preservation of the environment, but also with its recovery, restoration, rational management and social commitments. The global response to these ever-urgent ecological problems seems, however, to be extremely slow. In an effort to confront the seriousness of these environmental problems, 180 state chiefs fixed an Agenda in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) and five years later NGOs evaluated their results. Only a few items had been accomplished. In the eight years following the Rio Summit of 1992, very little was done to reduce the dangerous levels of emissions. During the Kyoto Summit in 1997, the participants agreed on a reduction of between 6 and 8% in the production of the most well-known gases responsible for causing the greenhouse effect (carbon-dioxide, methane, and nitrogen-oxide, among others) by the year 2010, based on existing levels in 1990. The lack of real global will to confront the ecological disaster of climate change can be seen in the fact that developing countries did not sign these agreements, including two countries with high industrialisation rates, India and China. The United States, responsible for around 25% of global emissions (around 18,000 tons of toxic gases), signed the agreement but with the condition that it could only ratify it when the Senate agreed on the terms. This never happened, because they were waiting for more serious commitments from developing countries, especially China. It was a vicious circle which prevented any concrete achievement, and countries conveniently shrug off their own responsibilities and concentrated on the failures of others. What basically hindered implementation of the agreement was the fact that both developed and developing countries saw it as too costly in economic terms? They had never before invested in externalities and financed nature. Most countries preferred to leave things as they were, exploiting the natural environment in order to increase immediate profits. However, they left environmental impacts for the coming generations and climate change impacts also for the present one. It seems that these issues will only be taken seriously when it is too late to prevent catastrophic outcomes. However, in 2015, more frequent and serious disasters moved countries to the negotiation table in Paris. Although there was no firm agreement on penalties for failure to meet the prescribed measures, with the exception of the US, which stepped down from the commitments in 2017, the rest of the countries are

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compiling the (I)NDC: (Intended) Nationally Determined Contributions. The climate tracker,15 an independent science-based assessment, informed that with the present NDC, the temperature might increase up to 3 °C, thereby producing catastrophic impacts globally, especially in low-lying regions in the Global South. The commitment was to restrict the increase in carbon dioxide to under 450 ppm. However, at the beginning of 2018, emissions had already reached 405 ppm.

4.4

Free Market, Income, Trade and Equity

Between 1994 and 1998 the world’s 200 richest people increased their net wealth from 440 billion to 1.042 trillion, equivalent to 41% of the world income. Just three of the richest people own more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries. A yearly contribution of 1% (7–8 billion dollars) of these 200 richest human beings could offer universal primary education for everybody on the planet (Forbes Magazine 1998). Oxfam (2017) informed that eight men now own the same wealth as 3.6 billion poor people. Tax evasion, tax havens, corruption and pressure by large multinationals for tax reduction deprive poor countries of at least 100 billion dollars each year in tax revenues – enough money to finance educational services for the 124 million children without schools or health services that could prevent the death of at least six million children each year.

4.4.1

Global Finances

Overall global consumption has increased at an unprecedented rate, reaching 24 billion dollars in 1998 – 16 times the 1990 level. Nevertheless, despite significant population growth, the richest fifth of the world population today consumes 86% compared with the poorest fifth, who are left with only 1.3%. Africa today consumes 20% less than 25 years ago and per capita consumption is rising in industrialised countries (UNDP 1998). As Fig. 4.2 indicates, 85% of investments, 85.5% of savings, 84.2% of international trade, and 84.7% of the GNP (Gross National Product) are also concentrated in the hands of the richest 20% of the world population. The other side of the coin shows the world’s poorest 20%, who are left with the thin edge of the wedge, with only 0.9% of investments, 0.7% of savings, 0.9% of international trade and 1.4% of GNP (UNDP 1996). The world financial bodies, grouped into the Group of 7: G-7, whose financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are supported by regional development banks (Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and African Development Bank), should together guarantee the smooth running of

15

https://climateactiontracker.org/.

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Fig. 4.2 Unequal global access to wealth. Source The Author

the world economy. Nevertheless, Bretton Woods required severe modifications in the face of the Asian Crisis, which involved the world’s second power, Japan, whose contradictions and structural imbalances, such as the internal debt of more than 300 billion USD, could have destabilised the world monetary system. The greatest contradiction of the present economic system can be located in the speculation process in the international financial and commodity markets, where an increasingly smaller minority appropriates the world’s surpluses. This financial speculation brought the entire system, including banks and stock markets, into a crisis in 2008, from which most of the people in emerging countries have not yet recovered ten years later. The amount of dollars outside of the United States, also called ‘hot money’, totalled two billion dollars in 1962 (Roberto Martínez Le Clainche) while in 1990 this figure reached historic highs of 250 trillion dollars. This amount is equal to 50 times the total value of international trade and is ten times that of the global GNP (Bill Orr 1990). Given that this money is in constant movement in the search for better investment opportunities and profit, there is no legal framework which can control it. The result is an increasing instability in world finances, which provokes

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exchange crises all over the world, dragging millions of human beings into extreme poverty while a privileged sector becomes scandalously rich. These fortunes already surpass the wealth generated by productive processes and multinational goods worldwide, according to some experts. They also threaten to withdraw capital from the productive processes, manufacturing and employment. Putting it in a more evocative way, the world financial system is being converted into a great global casino and the games go by the name of stock market, currency speculation and other financial inventions. We have to ask ourselves, therefore, where, in fact, world financial security can be found? “The financial turmoil in East Asia in 1997–1999 demonstrated the risks of global financial markets. Net capital flows to Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand rocketed in the 1990s, reaching 93 billion in 1996… These flows reversed overnight – with an outflow of $12 billion in 1997. The swing amounted to 11% of the pre-crisis GDP of these countries.” (UNDP 1999: 3–4). The human impact still persisted after a long recovery. Bankruptcies spread, and education and health budgets were also affected. Bank failures are another mechanism for transferring huge amounts of public earnings to a financial elite. Not only in South East Asia, but also in Latin America and Sweden, there were enormous amounts of collectively earned money transferred to a small group under the argument that the bank system has to work efficiently. For instance, between 1991 and 1992, 18 banks were privatised in Mexico and six years later people had to pay 5.3 times the value of the original privatisation with hunger, poverty, low rates of educational achievement and reduced quality of life. Two years later, in 2000, the full amount of the now multinational bank rescue is about one third of the GDP of the country. Congress agreed to transform these private debts into public ones, and its whole federal budget has been limited for the next 20 years in order to rescue an inefficient and structural speculative system. In the public budget for the year 2000, 18% is used for debt management alone, compared with 4% for education. That means the production processes of small and medium industries are not improving at creating well-paid jobs and enhancing the quality of life. Is there any justification for taking away from an emerging country the limited money that should be assigned to education, health and poverty reduction in order to transfer it to speculative bankers? Are these the new ethics promoted by the IMF and the WB? Is this nonviolence, progress, efficiency and development? Another contradiction inherent in the late development of capitalism is growing unemployment. Mexico, with a considerable real growth rate of 24.4% in manufacturing production between 1994 and 1998, generated only 92.1% of the human hours worked and gave employment to only 97.6% of the personnel employed in 1993, the year before the 1994 economic crisis (INEGI 1993–1999). The phenomenon of shrinking workforces in order to make production processes more efficient and maximise profits, characterised by mergers, privatisation and massive demission of workers, is called industrial modernisation. It will prevent full employment of the workforce in the future, particularly among women and young people, who are obliged to seek employment in the temporary job market or create a space for self-employment within the informal sector, with low pay and little or no

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social security. Growing unemployment rates are the result of restructuring by multinationals, the transfer of labour-intensive production processes to low-salary countries and the abandonment of medium- and small-scale local industries in the interests of transnational globalisation. Due to impoverished workers in both hemispheres, homogenised consumption patterns (monopsony), increased product prices, increased public transport costs and the destruction of local and regional market networks have also affected food security.

4.4.2

Trade Blocks

The trilateral formation of commercial blocs (Europe, Asia, North America), promoted in the Seventies by Henry Kissinger, strengthens the internal markets of these blocs, although the weakest nations are marginalised from many advantages because of their lack of aggression and competitiveness. In the medium and long term, the pre-eminence of multinational enterprises in terms of finances, production, commerce, transport, communication and diffusion are overcoming the limits imposed by the formation of these blocs and their tariff barriers. Expansion of their holdings to the centre of these three blocs makes them immune to supranational and multilateral controls, but at the same time promotes the destruction of small- and medium-scale local industry. The negative consequences in the generation of employment, especially local production and its diversity, provoke a growing homogenisation of supply, accompanied by worldwide publicity campaigns, which crystallise the global consumer society. Monopolies and monopsonies are governing world supply. Frustration and aggression exist among poor populations facing a total lack of economic power, and if chronic hunger does not permit such reactions, apathy, misery, chronic illnesses and premature deaths occur. Export of goods and services, together with the control of terms of trade in the developed countries, is one of the mechanisms of capital transfer from the Global South to the Global North. Well-being is not directly related to trade, as the free market paradigm tries to portray. Among the 45 countries with a high human development index (HDI), only nine countries, all of them small, depend on their exports: in Hong Kong they account for 132% of their GDP, Bahrain 104%, Luxembourg 91%, Malta 84%, Ireland 76%, Belgium 68%, Czech Republic 58%, Slovenia 57% and Slovakia 56%. The medium human development areas which depend on exports are basically small countries and islands: Equatorial Guinea 101%, Guyana 100%, Malaysia and Panama 94%, Swaziland 82%, Estonia 77%, Seychelles and Saint Lucia 68%, Gabon 64%, Mauritius 62%, Bulgaria 61%, Belarus 60%, Fiji 57%, Botswana and Papua New Guinea 56%, Mongolia and Lithuania 55%, Namibia and Moldova 53%, Dominica and Jamaica 51%. Of the low human development countries, only Angola, rich in natural resources and involved in armed conflicts, exports 68% of its GDP. Export of food instead is not a solution for poor countries trying to improve their population’s current standard of living and also grant food security to the marginal.

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But also, high dependency on imports is not always favourable for better development: in the high human developed countries Hong Kong imports 135% of its GDP, Malta 94%, Luxembourg 81%, Bahrain 72%, Slovakia and Belgium 64% and Czech Republic 63%. Generally, they are relatively small countries, highly dependent on energy imports and possessing few natural resources. Of the 97 medium human development countries, 37 are highly dependent on imports; and of 35 countries with low human development, Guinea-Bissau imports 89% of its GDP, Angola 65%, Gambia 61%, Djibouti 57% and Yemen 52%, all of them poor and lying in coastal areas of Africa or the Middle East. An imbalance between exports and imports must be paid for in hard currency and is generally obtained by higher extraction of money from the poor or new debts. Neither improves human well-being and both reduce the possibilities of development inside such poor countries. Conversely, the development of regional markets, linked to a policy of self-sufficiency in food and basic services, together with excess production for foreign markets, could improve life quality for everybody, independent of trade links and the availability of foreign devices (UNDP 1999: 45–47). As Sen (1992) pointed out, the HID “has been rather successful in serving as an alternative measure of development, supplementing GNP. Based as it is on three distinct components, it is not exclusively focused on economic opulence”.

4.4.3

Foreign and Internal Debts

A highly destructive phenomenon currently present in the majority of the developing nations is, without doubt, the growing internal and external debts. In 2017, emerging market debt is “an investment universe of more than $3.5 trillion, having grown into a major asset class spanning hard and soft currencies, as well as the government and private sectors.” Debts and the service of these debts do not only generate new debts, but also mortgage the future development of these countries. Of the 35 countries with a low HDI ranking, 15 have external debts higher than their own GNP and nine more than 75% of GNP. Highly indebted are Argentina, Brazil, Sao Tome and Principe, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Mexico, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Indonesia. The highest debt crisis is still in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNDP 1998–1999: 193–196). Latin America has shown a yearly increase in net transfers of capital to financial centres from 20 billion dollars in 1981 to 39.125 billion dollars in 1996 (World Bank/CEPAL 1998). Servicing debt, speculative practices with the subsequent devaluation of local currencies and flights of capital abroad, increase in interest rates due to high debts, low priced raw materials and unequal terms of trade extract from the Global South the resources which are necessary for sustained development. As an example, over the last three decades Latin America has returned five dollars for each dollar received. For this reason Galeano (1980) speaks of ‘open veins’ in this subcontinent.

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Added to the flight of capital abroad by the national elite of the Global South, which obliged Brazil to devalue the Real facing the flight of 25 billion US dollars in a very short time, the instability of the exchange rate is one of the favourite mechanisms of speculative capital that impoverishes millions of people in the South. Together with corruption, the importation of luxury goods for privileged sectors of these poor societies, which are not compensated with exports and therefore generate imbalances in national finances, as well as the punctual payment of the service of national and international financial commitments, impoverish growing population. The precepts of the IMF (Fig. 4.3) support this unjust behaviour. IMF promotes a public policy of freezing salaries, despite: increases in the price of basic products; the reduction in social spending such as poverty alleviation, public education and health care; subsidies for agribusiness and reduction in basic food; currency devaluation; high domestic interest rates; price rises on imports; and price falls on raw materials. A crucial pressure from the IMF is the expatriation of profits, patents and royalties. Multinational enterprises make additional profits through speculative capital and dual accounting procedures. Further, the privatisation of public

Fig. 4.3 IMF conditions imposed on highly indebted countries. Source Strahm/ Oswald Spring (1992: 130)

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companies, an increase in the price of services, the elimination of selective subsidies and the liberalisation of commerce destroy national companies, which are absorbed by multinationals. The outcomes are unemployment, poverty, malnutrition, deterioration in life quality, while at the same time cheap, low-quality goods flood the internal market. In short, the internal contradictions of the model alienate two-thirds of possible consumers in the world, burdening an increasingly reduced society, totally saturated by consumerism and with serious socio-environmental and health problems caused by unhealthy ways of life and consumption. In conclusion, the paradigm of the free market cannot generate full employment, quality of life, or financial stability. Poverty remains and social savings are not managed productively. The whole system hangs permanently by a thread, and the case of Japan and the collapse of Lehman Brothers indicates how dangerous an economic global crisis could be. The economic cycle, with periods of expansion and depression, is a reality, even though there are doubts concerning causes and relations (Soros 2006; Stiglitz 2002, 2016).

4.5

Social Justice and Democracy

Life quality is individually and socially determined. Basic achievements of human development can be understood by statistical indicators, but also by qualitative comprehension of social, environmental, gender, economic and political conditions and constraints. The rapid disintegration of the former Soviet Union demonstrated that an economic transformation from a centrally planned to a free market system, without democracy and the participation of the people, brings a drastic loss of well-being for a significant proportion of the population. The same situation happens in most developing countries, where a small elite accrues the benefits while the rest cannot even satisfy their basic needs, such as food and education. For this reason the UNDP complemented the statistical background given by the IMF, WB and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with different measurements: • HDI (Human Development Index) • GDI (Gender Related Index), improved by the GEM (Gender Empowerment Measure) • HPI-1 (Human Poverty Index), measuring human deprivation in developing countries • HPI-2 Showing that human poverty is not confined to developing countries (UNDP 1999: 127).

4.5 Social Justice and Democracy

4.5.1

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Poverty

Statistically in 1998, 80% of the world’s poor were found in only 12 countries, namely: India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Mexico, Kenya, Peru and Nepal. Although overall human consumption per capita has constantly increased, the poorest 20% have been excluded from basic health services and primary education at the same time as suffering chronic malnutrition, whilst more than two billion suffer from anaemia. More than a third of the world’s population doesn’t have access to drinking water and many adults are illiterate. Of the billion illiterate adults in the world, 60% are women (WB 1998). In addition, 60% lack sewage facilities, 25% lack decent housing, and 20% of children do not attend primary school. The foregoing shows that poverty and absolute poverty are also linked to disparities within countries, between North and South, rural and urban areas, regions and districts, ethnic groups, women and men, political groups and professions. In particular, strong disparities and human deprivation exist in India, especially in the State of Bihar, where HPI-1 is 54%, compared with Kerala, 23%; in Botswana’s urban area the inequality is 11.7% and in the rural zones 27%; Nepal Brahmins have a life expectancy of 61 years and 58% are literate, but among the Muslims it is only 49 years and 22%. The most perverse poverty is found and continues in Africa, since two-thirds of the low-income countries belong to this continent. “Sub-Saharan Africa has more than twice as far to go as Latin America and the Caribbean, South East Asia has three times as far as East Asia” (WB 1999: 129). The social situation is particularly dramatic in Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Uganda, Malawi and Chad. At the end of last century, this continent was home to 11.5% of the world population, generated 3.3% of GNP, exported 2% of goods and showed a 1% growth rate in 1997/98 (IMF 1999). Today population has grown, but economic conditions have not increased. The countries of the Nile Basin account for illiteracy rates of between 30 and 80%, while in the Sahel zone they fluctuate between 48 and 95%. Life expectancy is lowest in Sierra Leone, at 39 years, followed by Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia, where the population reaches an average age of 50 years (World Bank 1998). In 2017, the countries with the lowest life expectancy are: Swaziland 48.8; Lesotho 50.5; Sierra Leone 52.0; Chad 52.4; Ivory Coast 52.6; Central African Republic 52.9; Angola 53.5 and Nigeria 53.6 years (World Population Review 2017). The AIDS pandemic has been an uninvited guest on the African continent over the past 30 years, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 70% of new infections occurred in 1998, rising to 90% in children under the age of 15. A staggering 83% of total AIDS deaths have occurred in this region, and 95% of all AIDS orphans have been African. This is extremely grave when we consider that only around one-tenth of the world’s population live south of the Sahara. No country in Africa has escaped the virus, but some are more affected than others. For example, in Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, estimates show that over one

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person in five between the ages of 15 and 49 has HIV or AIDS. WHO (1999) puts the total worldwide figure of people living with HIV at 33.4 million, and only last year a further 5.8 million women, men and children were infected, at a rate of 11 per minute, with around half the cases affecting young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Of these infections, four million occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa, leading to an estimated 5500 funerals per day. WHO (2017) reported that one million people died from HIV-related causes globally; there were approximately 36.7 million people living with HIV and, globally, 1.8 million people became newly infected in 2016. The crude reality is that around 95 per cent of all HIV positive people live in the developing world, the vast majority of whom do not know that they are infected, and in many countries the dominant mode of transmission is heterosexual. Women are being increasingly affected by the pandemic due to both social and biological reasons; young people, too, are now at greatest risk of being infected due to taboos and lack of sexual education. Often girls become infected at younger ages than boys. In a recent study in Kenya 22 per cent of 15– 19-year-old girls were infected with HIV against only 4 per cent of boys the same age. These patterns can be understood within a context of extreme gender and social inequality exaggerated in the poorer societies, one of rape or forced sex in return for money, gifts, or social prestige. AIDS is the cost of a world order based on stark socio-economic disparities, prejudice, ignorance and gender discrimination. (UNAIDS 1999)

Extreme poverty (less than 1.9 dollar/day) has fallen between 1981 and 2013 from 550 million (44%) to 170 million people (9.6%) (WB 2016). India and especially China are responsible for most of the decrease. In 1820, 80% of China’s population lived in extreme poverty, but in 2016 only 10%. Today Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of extreme poverty, affecting in Nigeria 86 million, South Africa 36.2 million, Tanzania 22 million, Ethiopia 20.4 million, Madagascar 17.9 million and Mozambique 15.9 million people. Worldwide, more than half live in Africa and 60% of these poor people are in rural areas. India still accounts for 218 million of the 327 million Asian poor people, and Indonesia accounts for 24.7 million. In Latin America Brazil has 9.9 million poor people, after a successful programme of what the Brazilian politicians Lula and Rousseff called ‘zero hunger’ (Inter-réseaux 2012). There are not only abysmal differences between rich and poor countries, but also within each country, especially in the developing world, which increases hand in hand with the degree of integration into the world market. Latin America is the champion in the field of social inequalities. In Brazil, one per cent of the rich have the same participation in the ‘National Economic Pie’ as half the poor Brazilians. Paraguay, Ecuador, Chile, Panama and Mexico follow in terms of inequality. In Mexico, the richest 10% earned 19 times that of the poorest 10% in 1950. 40 years later, this gap has increased to 38 times, and the Household Survey indicated in 1996 that poverty in Mexican homes had increased from 69 to 78%, due to the financial crisis from 1994 onwards. Poverty also increased from 40.5 to 55% and was marginally reduced in 2017 to 43.6% or 53.4 million people (Coneval 2017).

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4.5.2

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Consumption, Youth and Gender

Regarding consumption on a global scale, the richest 20% have access to 45% of meat and fish, 58% of energy, 74% of telephone lines, 84% of paper and 87% of motor vehicles. On the other hand, the poorest 20% consume only 5% of the world’s meat and fish supplies, use 4% of energy, 1.5% of telephone lines, 1.1% of paper and 1% of motor vehicles. Also, nearly 60% of the world’s population lack basic plumbing, a third have no access to clean water and another quarter no decent housing (UNDP 1998). However, poverty is not exclusive to the Third World; in rich countries such as Sweden and the United States, 7% and 17% respectively of their populations share the fate of poverty (UNDP 1997). Integration into trading blocs impoverishes these populations even more. During the first four years of NAFTA (North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement), Mexicans paid for this integration with the loss of 51.4% of their GDP per capita, which fell from 3500 to 1800 US dollars, more than 48% of what Italy lost during the entire Second World War. According to Chomsky (1998), if hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs have been lost in the United States, in Mexico “millions of jobs have been lost due to the collapse of the productive apparatus; this was predictable, in fact it was the reason to oblige them to open their borders, in order to be taken over by multinationals.” Globally, 1.5 billion people cannot satisfy their necessities, and 70% of these are women and children, so that inter and intragenerational disparity is made worse by globalisation. Twenty per cent of the world’s population controls 75% of the resources in the planet, whereas, at the other extreme, the poorest fifth receives only 2%. The GDI shows that life expectancy, educational attainment and income are lower among women. In 1999, comparing 143 countries, the GDI is lower than the HDI as a result of unequal female progress opportunities, including in countries such as Ecuador, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates. Australia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Thailand and Uruguay are improving gender equality with concrete policies, and globally, countries with a higher HDI have less gender discrimination. In other words, the underdeveloped countries discriminate more strongly against their women in order to promote and maintain an unequal development (UNDP 1999: 132). These politicians forget the wise advice of the late Brazilian philosopher Paolo Freire: ‘Educate women and you educate a nation’. Rape is one of the most serious offences against women globally. One out of three women has suffered this form of attack, and in 80% of the cases the crime was committed by someone known to the victim. Two-thirds of these women are also less than 18 years old. Rape is a particularly common occurrence around military bases, refugee camps, migrant worker towns, mines and maquiladoras. At the same time, more than half of the world’s youth live in poverty, 30% suffer from malnutrition and another 30% have never finished primary school. This is the population which must compete for employment and whose chance of survival is often related to organised crime (UNESCO 1999).

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The syndrome of poverty and misery which begins with low incomes, low expectations of salaried work, lack of public services, deficient or non-existent education, gender discrimination, disintegration of youth, destruction of families and unemployment, creates a vicious circle for the future, which instead of improving the current situation with the aid of technological development, makes it worse by perpetuating inequalities. Africa is without doubt the continent with the least development and greatest conflicts, with significant military expenditure, low political governance, miserable earnings and well-being, AIDS and almost no integration of women in modern life. The quintuple exclusion – poor, rural, uneducated, sick and female – leaves the African continent with gloomy prospects.

4.5.3

Urbanisation

Urbanisation, together with poverty and gender discrimination, are the most prominent social phenomena of the last quarter of the past century. Whereas in 1970, 67.1% of the population in industrialised countries lived in cities, by 1995 this figure had risen to 73.7%. In emerging countries this increase was from 24.7 to 37.4% and, in the whole world, 45.4%. In 1998, 2.8 billion people and in 2016, 4 billion or 55% lived in urban areas. UNDP (1998) estimated that urbanisation might rise to 9.725 billion or 66% by 2050. Most of this change – about 90% – will occur in Africa and Asia.16 The flight from the countryside towards shanty towns surrounding the major Third World cities is a clear indicator of the increasing ‘development of underdevelopment’. Whereas in 1900 nine out of ten of the world’s largest cities were in Europe, in 1999 seven out of ten belonged to the emerging countries, with a total population of 107 million inhabitants (Worldwatch Institute 1994–1999). A process of urbanisation, which has occurred at an alarming rate over the last few decades in developing countries, especially in Latin America, adds to these problems, greater pressure on already saturated sanitation systems, waste disposal, drinking water supplies etc. It is causing greater amounts of waste in the streets, more pollution due to chaotic traffic and lack of efficient public transportation, greater misery and hence higher crime rates. It is estimated that more than 60% of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2020, when Europe, Latin America and North America will have more than 80% of their populations living in urban areas. Most of the world’s urban population now live in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, particularly where poverty and lack of job opportunities in the countryside have forced people to flee their homelands and migrate into cities. The majority of these poor people have ended up in shanty towns surrounding the major cities of the emerging countries, in appalling slum conditions, often without access to running water, inside bathrooms, sanitation systems, electricity and other necessary services.

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https://www.urbanet.info/world-urban-population/.

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According to different empirical studies, only one in every seven immigrants manages to find a stable job, while the other six, accompanied by their families, survive by living in shanty towns or cardboard cities and work in the informal sector of the economy. They put pressure on governments to obtain public services, regulation of land, food subsidies and medical attention. Generally, local governments ensure their re-election by offering meagre crumbs to these desperate slum-dwellers. However, the so-called urban poverty programmes in formerly poor regions promote radical changes in life conditions. They push out the poor people, who settle in shanty towns in the suburbs. Other poor social groups, especially women, take action together and have substantially improved their standard of living. Without doubt, despite precarious living conditions, cities always offer better services, subsidies and public security than the countryside (Oswald Spring 1991). The urbanisation process has also affected public security; rates of crime and violence increase at a worrying rate. Some parts of emerging megacities are becoming the most dangerous in the world, with high rates of homicide, robbery with violence, and drug dealing. Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador are among the most violent globally. Drug-traffickers, robbery, kidnappings, political assassinations, corrupt police and judges exacerbated by organised crime produce in these countries high criminality, accompanied by impunity. This insecurity leads to a population living in fear and feelings of helplessness in the face of police and governments involved in organised crime. However, living conditions and opportunities are better in towns than in rural areas. The highest rate of undernourishment, illiteracy and unemployment is found in the rural area. Migration flows therefore seem set to continue over the next few decades, especially in Asia and Africa. With the present economic policy, no foreseeable change appears likely in the emerging countries. Only concrete economic and technical support in rural areas might increase the food security of whole countries and urban areas and reduce the rural-urban migration.

4.5.4

Malnutrition and Food Security

Malnutrition and hunger are both part of a complex and interrelated system of social, agricultural, economic, cultural and ecological realities. The current policies of high indebtedness, replacing production of internal basics with export goods, such as vegetables, tropical fruits and flowers, exploitation of livestock instead of basic food, the destruction of local and regional markets in the interests of multinational monopolies, the forced bankruptcy of small-scale producers facing high interest rates and constant increases in agrochemical and other consumables, falling prices of raw products, increasing imports of basic grains highly subsidised by industrialised countries, as well as the prolonged food aid to those countries south of the Sahara, have ignored the needs of peasants, indigenous and women and expelled them from their rural livelihoods. Around 80% of malnutrition is found in rural areas, especially among women and children, where it is more frequent and

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much more serious. Only with a change in agricultural policies can food security be achieved. This includes public investment in rural infrastructure, compensation in the face of low subsidised international prices, agrarian reform, and more security regarding land tenure and special support for rural women. Production methods should be based on the idiosyncrasies of impoverished peasants and their fragile tropical soils. Indigenous peoples, women and peasants have offered ecosystem services to urban areas and the whole planet without any payment for thousands of years. Thus governmental and social efforts should especially support those with lower incomes and greater need to ensure their survival and food security in rural areas. Without food sovereignty (Oswald Spring 2009) based on local production, no country in the world will be able to improve the livelihoods of the poorest during the present millennium, and no government will be able to protect vulnerable populations from hunger produced by increasingly frequent disasters. Scientific progress in medicine has changed the traditional demographic balance: the reduction of infant mortality has transformed developing nations into young populations, who have to survive on limited budgets and cope with serious problems in basic infrastructure of services and employment. Most of these youths live in rural areas, to avoid further urban slums and violence, governments and international organisations must reinforce sustainable rural developments. On the other hand, in industrialised countries, medical progress has increased life expectancy and older people are putting more pressure on social security systems, sustained by an active work-force rapidly diminishing due to high unemployment and low birth rates. Greater migration from the Global South might balance this demographic disequilibrium. However, both emerging racism and xenophobia in rich countries are limiting their own development and increasing insecurity and violence globally. The present neo-liberal model has produced a clear dilemma: (a) a minority elite will systematically destroy the majority, through hunger, epidemics, misery, wars, ecocide and genocide, or (b) world and local efforts of fair resource distribution will be developed along with global solidarity and social investments able to improve the livelihoods of everybody. Resources are plenty to cover the needs of all people and the planet, if their management and access are democratically and equally managed. In conclusion, side by side with growing social inequity, soaring poverty, gender and youth discrimination, urbanisation, disease and hunger, the free market offers no solution. On the contrary, it encourages direct exploitation, not taking into account the human, social and environmental externalities. This structural violence is one of the most negative phenomena of the present century and millennium. Only a collective effort to overcome these structural mechanisms of impoverishment, inequality and exploitation in social, economic and environmental terms might be capable of improving ahimsa and life-quality for all.

4.5 Social Justice and Democracy

4.5.5

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Basic Needs Produces a Sustainable, Peaceful Security

Thinking about the environment as an essential part of human security is not too difficult when we know that the environment keeps us alive, gives us air to breathe, food to eat, water to drink, and a climate the human body tolerates. All of these services are taken for granted, but not all human beings enjoy these benefits fully. Following the present process of development, in the future what we now take for granted could become a distant memory, due to disasters and violence (IPCC 2012). Everybody needs air to breathe, but how many people live in cities suffering from huge pollution problems? Just remember that the most polluted towns are Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Beijing, Mexico City, Sao Paolo and Lagos – all of them situated in the so-called emerging countries. How many deaths are directly caused by pollution through thermal inversion, or indirectly, by chronic degenerative illnesses? The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health and the WHO (2017) estimated that nine million people – frequently small children – die annually from such causes. Most of these deaths – 92% – occur among people living in poor or emerging countries, such as India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Kenya, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. There is strong criticism of the town councils of these megacities for not promoting safe public transport. These authorities continue to encourage private cars, building highways and second floors, but do not protect the residents from the effects of pollution such as respiratory illnesses, chest infections, headaches, and sore eyes. This can clearly be seen as a breach of human rights, forcing millions of people to live under these appalling environmental conditions. People are dying because of the toxic air situation, which could be improved with enough political will and citizen participation. It is very difficult to envisage in the near future an alternative to the whole neo-liberal ideology, which is deeply ingrained in the culture of governments and multinational enterprises. They emphasise private transport, i.e. its royal highness, the car, while ignoring the need for safe and healthy public transport. This neo-liberal ideology was first expounded in the Eighties by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and is now applied all over the world through the processes of globalisation. Bretton Wood organisations such as the IMF, with their letters of structural adjustment to the emerging countries, and the WB, with loans for megaprojects, promote a multinational expansion that has increasingly put most countries in debt. Further, WTO and the unequal terms of trade, subsidies and commercial blocs have concentrated wealth in few hands (Oxfam 2017). This inhuman ideology stresses private over public interests; macro-economic policies over micro social life quality; and gives full reign to private businesses and speculative capital. Legal modifications in most countries have freed multinational enterprises from the constraints of state control, privatising anything possible at the cost of the people. The Eighties, Nineties and Millennial generations prefer to stay in their houses (often their parents), watching their iPhone, their television, their video, reading

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their newspapers or comics, and travelling in their car. How many times do we see cars with only one occupant with so many people waiting, frustrated, for inadequate public transport? There seems to be no will to put more funds into public transport systems, whereas governments consider it important to invest billions in building new highways and sumptuous buildings. Under the auspices of neo-liberalism, everyone has the right to be selfish and any kind of community spirit, mass movement, the philosophy of caring and sharing, has been completely abandoned. However, more extreme disasters and emergencies are occurring, and only local support, solidarity and resilience may be able to save lives in the first hours of an emergency. The self-destruction done by humankind simultaneously converts humans into their own victimisers. How will neo-liberal individualist behaviour deal with these anthropogenically produced threats when the social fabric is destroyed and people only hang on their iPhone? The challenges for a different world order are very complex, especially to the interrelation of social, political, economic, gender and environmental problems. The dominant ideology promoting greed and egoism is unable to promote an alternative paradigm, where not only the top one per cent, but also the remaining 99% get a dignified livelihood. Without any doubt, the promotion of ahimsa with sustainable peace and gender equity offers alternatives to restore the environmental destruction and to give equality also to the most vulnerable.

4.6

Concluding Remarks

1. Future thinking obliges us to create a New World Order based on human security without violence, “a maximum degree of realisation…in terms of basic values, such as peace, well-being, justice, Eco-balance and positive identity… a minimum level of security that is allowed to overcome the most prevalent forms of physical insecurity, including war (international and/or civil), hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, political oppression or other forms of violence” (Sakamoto 1981). Peace researchers and activists guide their research to find solutions to the problems of violence and injustice experienced daily and also develop procedures that avoid future escalation and aggravation of conflicts through early alert (Rupesinghe 1998). 2. Bio-diversity needs political plurality for its conservation and development. Therefore, participation and plurality are synonyms of democracy and sustainable development, which in itself is a democratic process that begins with environmental protection, examining first the causes of earth destruction and later the marginalisation of people. The neo-liberal project not only exploits the environment and will continue to pollute it as long as it is profitable in monetary terms, but also forces millions into even more desperate poverty, ensuring that for many the only survival strategy is cutting down forests, hunting and trading endangered species, getting involved in organised crime, polluting rivers and affecting nature’s balance or migrating to urban slums. We need a

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sustainable development project to forge a just society which takes into account tomorrow and not just today, Earth and humanity and not just discrete egos. Extreme events and disasters further indicate that the time frame is getting very short for seriously changing our destructive behaviour, so we must take action before it is too late. 3. Biology shows that wars are not genetically programmed. The Declaration against Violence, signed by Nobel laureates and scientists, indicates that there exist cultures which have survived for hundreds of years without any manifest aggression. Human evolution is not the selection of the most aggressive but of the most cooperative, and there is no instinct of violence or war. Genovés’ experience on a small raft proved that six women and five men can live together for 101 days in a small area, crossing the Atlantic and overcoming a desperate situation of survival purely through collaboration and cooperation. Mahatma Gandhi and the Jainists’ concept of ahimsa has made the most significant contribution to nonviolent conflict resolution. This active strategy not only led to India’s independence, but also deeply influenced the whole struggle for autonomy in Africa, especially South Africa, where Nelson Mandela led a peaceful liberation from violent Apartheid. 4. There will be no sustainability or security if it is not linked to decentralisation and local-regional development (Schumacher 1973), which protect the weakest. One of the main procedures is decentralising all activities of daily life. National and international governments are making norms that should avoid human and environmental destruction, as well as conciliate antagonistic interests between states and continents. However, their efforts have failed. Therefore, execution and surveillance should be in the hands of local governments and social groups concerned about environment and global well-being. A regionally based economy will have multiplying effects and co-benefit from economies of scale, local subsistence and regional market articulations (Barraclough et al. 1997). This will create job opportunities thanks to the promotion of micro and small industries and the economy of solidarity (Richards 2018). Well-paid jobs and social protection of the most vulnerable groups through special programmes will also improve quality of life in emerging countries (Mies 1983; Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1998, 1999, 2001; Boff 1980; Boulding 1992; Vaughan 1997, 2004; Wilder et al. 2010). 5. A global commitment to human security, based on scientific-technological progress which incorporates traditional knowledge, guarantees a promising future in both the Global North and South when it is centred on justice, equity, liberty and democracy. A culture of peace initiates within the family, which is especially significant as women make up half of the world’s population and produce half of the global food, but face violence and lack of decision-making power. These women are also the mothers of the other half and socialise all men. Greater equity in education, culture, salaries, political participation and access to resources, together with social investments and impartial application of justice, improves human well-being, world solidarity and peace.

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6. Global norms, laws, surveillance mechanisms, sanctions and legitimacy based on political, religious and administrative organisation for each region will reinforce local efforts and existing historical processes of peace. The exacerbation of nationalism, racism and regionalism must be overcome through systematic conflict resolution, for which mass media and alternative communication networks are crucial. The rupture of political blocks, disintegration of small nation states, xenophobic behaviour, homogeneity, religious and ideological fundamentalism, separatist tendencies and parsimonious interests are threats to an alternative security and its future construction. The outbreak of World War II indicated that peace is not built through the affirmation of the victors’ power over the vanquished. The leitmotiv for peaceful behaviours and decisions will be based on an integrated security, where equality, equity and sustainability are granted to everybody. This HUGE (Human, Gender and Environmental) Security will definitively surpass armed terror and the imposition of superpower and multinational interests (see Chap. 10). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015) for humanity and Planet Earth will use their civilising capacities to reinforce cultures of peace which favour life, solidarity, personal realisation, happiness and harmony between humankind and nature. 7. The HUGE peace process, based on equity, justice, democracy, liberty and human rights, should be able to redirect public policies towards new goals, whereby structural and physical violence must be overcome through full citizen participation in a pluralist state, well-paid jobs, food security and a healthy environment. Globalisation processes, whereby one-fifth of the world’s population uses four-fifths of available resources, now obligate the adoption of a different development process. There is also an ethical problem: neighbours involved in conscious rising of pollution and resource-hoarding must assume a proportionate responsibility for pollutants, benefits, speculation, terms of trade, violence and crime in both hemispheres. The UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 insisted that global freedom, justice and peace are based on the recognition of the intrinsic dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family. 8. Particular emphasis must be given to the following questions: What has happened to conflict resolution and peace education? Where are the policies, teachings, games and networks that are able to reduce early conflict escalation by peaceful means, and where are the successful practices? How can mass media that promote violence, aggression, scandals and human perversity be controlled? Who is promoting massive positive messages of respect to ourselves and the nature? What is the role of science in improving health, sustainability and food-security, destined to nurture a population that will grow to 9.5 billion in a few decades? 9. The world trade system, currently in the hands of multinationals in fierce competition for markets and consumers, requires multilateral codes of conduct to overcome extreme poverty and guarantee labour rights and environmental standards. Taxing financial speculation (Tobin tax), cancelling the debts of poor

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developing countries and the transformation of military budgets into social ones might avoid potential risks and increase human security. Monopolistic communication systems, currently homogenising consumerist values, violence and perversity, must be transformed into culturally diverse ones, which encourage peace-education and learning and practising ahimsa in daily life. Stable public finances, well-paid jobs, social security, public investments and fair market prices, in a context of democracy and liberty, might promote quality of life for everybody. Peaceful negotiation of conflicts and grass-roots protection systems work against violence, proliferation of small arms, terrorism, organised crime, drug-trafficking and wars. Self-determination of nations and non-intervention in internal affairs has always consolidated peaceful coexistence for the weakening nation states especially in the Global South. 10. Ahimsa implies an alternative development from bottom-up, which is reinforced with top-down sustainability (not the idealised trickle-down effect that should drip the wealth from the rich to the poor). It requires world and local solidarity; green life quality for everybody and a circular economy; subsistence agriculture and local markets; rational international division of labour; and technological transfer from North to South of renewable energy. Cultural, social, ethnic and gender diversity are some of the basic elements for inclusive globalisation. In this socially enlightened global society science and technology are not in the service of arm-raising and destruction, but used for human well-being and environmental restoration. Profits and competition are currently producing artificial scarcity, hunger and toxicity. Thus a policy of poverty alleviation, conflict resolution and cultural diversity must promote a global learning process, where happiness, life-quality and resilience-building are at the centre of concerns and investments. In this alternative understanding, conflicts become a motor of well-being and ahimsa peace processes are ways to negotiate peacefully competing interests. This way might integrate the existing complex world community and reinforce respect for nature and human beings. 11. The promotion of cultures of peace (Boulding 2000) indicates a sustainability transition (Brauch et al. 2016) with a long-lasting peaceful development. This path requires ongoing collective efforts towards disarmament, negotiation and the reduction of the use of armed force in the management of international affairs. As Pope Francis (2018) insisted, peace is a precondition for development. It implies fighting injustice and eradicating, in a nonviolent way, the causes of discords that lead to wars. He maintained that “integration is ‘a bidirectional process’, with reciprocal rights and duties”, based on the recognition of the intrinsic dignity of every human being with equal and inalienable rights to life and livelihood. Ahimsa promotes the integration of both human and gender security and environmental security as one of the ways to achieve sustainable globalisation for everybody, with solidarity and global well-being.

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References Álvarez, Enrique, Úrsula Oswald Spring (1993). Desnutrición Crónica o Aguda Materno Infantil y Retardos en el Desarrollo, Aporte de Investigación 59, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Arizpe, Lourdes (1997) (Ed.). Dimensiones Culturales del Cambio Global, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Arreguín, Felipe (1991). “Uso Eficiente del Agua”, in Ingeniería Hidráulica en México, Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua, pp. 2–22, May–August. Arreguín, Felipe, M. Buenfil (1990). Recomendaciones para Ahorrar Agua en Domicilios, Riego e Industrias, Jiutepec, Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua. Barraclough, Solon, Krishna Ghimire, Hans Meliczek (1997). Rural Development and the Environment, Geneva, UNRISD. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika (1998) (Ed.). Juchitán la ciudad de las mujeres, Oaxaca, Instituto Oaxaqueño de las Culturas, Fondo Estatal para la Cultura y las Artes. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Maria Mies (1999). The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy, London, Zen Books. Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, Nicholas Faraclas, Claudia von Werlhof (2001) (Eds.). There is an Alternative. Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization, London, Routledge. Bhadraprabhu, Vijay (1986). In K. Ramappa (Ed.), Guidelines of Jainism, Mehsana, Sri Vishwa Kalyan Prakashan Trust, pp. 22–33. Boff, Leonardo (1980). Teología del cautiverio y de la liberación, Madrid, Paulinas. Boulding, Elise (1992) (Ed.). New Agendas for Peace Research. Conflict and Security Reexamined, Boulder, Lynne Rienner. Boulding, Elise (1993). “States, Boundaries and Environmental Security”, in Dennis Sandole, Hugo van der Merwe (Eds.), Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice. Integration and Application, Manchester, Manchester University Press, pp. 194–208. Boulding, Elise (2000). Cultures of Peace. The Hidden Side of History, New York, Syracuse University Press. Brundtland Commission [World Commission on Environment and Development] (1987). Our Common Future, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Brundtland, Gro Harlem (1993). “The Environment, Security and Development”, in SIPRI Yearbook, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 15–26. Bunyard, Peter (1999). “How Global Warming Could Cause Northern Europe to Freeze”, The Ecologist, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 79–85. CEPAL (1998). Latin-America and the Caribbean: Policies to Improve Linkages with the Global Economy, Santiago, UN/Fondo de Cultura Económica. Chomsky, Noam (1998). “A Century Later”, Peace Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 313–321. Coneval (2017). Pobreza en México, Mexico City, CDMX, Coneval. Falco, Maria J. (1996) (Ed.). Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft (Re-Reading the Canon), University Park, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press. FAO (1994a). Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, Rome, FAO. FAO (1994b). Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, Part 1: Latin America and Asia, Rome, FAO. Friedrich, J., M. Ge, A. Pickens (2017). “Interactive Chart Explains World’s Top 10 Emitters and How They’ve Changed”, https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/04/interactive-chart-explains-worldstop-10-emitters-and-how-theyve-changed. Galeano, Eduardo (1980). Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, Mexico, D.F., Siglo XXI Eds. Gandhi, Mahatma (1983). Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, New York, Dover Publications. Genovés, Santiago (1991). Expedición a la Violencia, Mexico, D.F., FCE. Genovés, Santiago (1995). Ciencia y Trascendencia, Mexico, D.F., IIA-UNAM.

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Genovés, Santiago (1999). “Human Evolution and Violence”, in Maciej Henneberg, Charles Oxnard (Eds.), Perspectives in Human Biology, Vol. 4, No. 1, Crawley, Center for Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Harvard University (1999). International Conference on Biotechnology in the Global Economy, 3 to 6 of September, Boston, University of Harvard. IEA (2017). Energy Efficiency 2017, Paris, IEA. IFAD (1992). The State of World Rural Poverty, New York, New York University Press. IMF [International Monetary Fund] (1999). World Economic Indicators, Washington, D.C., IMF. INEGI (1999). Encuesta Nacional de Gasto-Hogar, Aguascalientes, Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Geografía. Inter-réseaux (2012). “Brazil’s ‘Zero Hunger’ Strategy”, Inter-réseaux-Développement rural, September, https://www.inter-reseaux.org/IMG/pdf/Note_FaimZe_ro_Sept2012_EN_vp.pdf. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IWMI [International Water Management Institute] (2017). IWMI Annual Report 2016, Colombo, IWMI. Mandela, Nelson (1995). Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, London, Abacus. Mies, María (1983). “Subsistenzproduktion, Hausfrauisierung, Kolonialisierung”, Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis, Vol. 9, No. 10, pp. 115–124. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1991). Estrategias de Supervivencia en la Ciudad de México, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1992). “Ecodevelopment: What Security for the Third World”, in Elise Boulding (Ed.), New Agendas for Peace Research. Conflict and Security Reexamined, Boulder, Lynne Rienner, pp. 121–126. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1999). Fuenteovejuna o Caos Ecológico, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009). “Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Issue”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 471–500. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2013). “Dual Vulnerability Among Female Household Heads”, Acta Colombiana de Psicología, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 19–30. Oxfam (2017). “Una economía para el 99% Es hora de construir una economía más humana y justa al servicio de las personas”, London, Oxfam. Pope Francis (2018). “Discurso del Papa al Cuerpo Diplomático acreditado ante la Santa Sede”, 8th of January, https://www.aciprensa.com/noticias/texto-completo-discurso-del-papa-al-cuerpodiplomatico-acreditado-ante-la-santa-sede-64757. REN21 (2017). Renewable Energy, Paris, REN21. Richards, Howard (2018). “Solidarity Economy: A Key to Justice, Peace and Sustainability”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald (Eds.), Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin America, Cham, Springer, pp. 309–320. Rupesinghe, Kumar (1998). “Coping with Internal Conflicts: Teaching an Elephant to Dance”, in Chadwick Alger (Ed.), The Future of the United Nation System: Potential for the Twenty-first Century, Tokyo, UNU Press.

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Sakamoto, Yoshikazu (1981). “Introduction”, in E. Jahn, Y. Sakamoto (Eds.), Elements of World Instability: Armaments, Communication, Food, International Division of Labour, Proceedings of the International Peace Research Association Eighth General Conference, Frankfurt, Campus Verlag. Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small is Beautiful, Madrid, Eds. Hermann Blume. Sen, Amartya (1992). Inequality Reexamined, New York, Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press. Seville Declaration (1999). Statement on Violence, in Maciej Henneberg, Charles Oxnard (Eds.), Perspectives in Human Biology, Vol. 4, No. 1, Crawley, Center for Human Biology, The University of Western Australia. Singh, Jasjit, Thomas Bernauer (1993) (Eds.). Security of Third World Countries, Aldershot, Dartmouth and UNIDIR. SIPRI (1998). Yearbook 1998, Stockholm, SIPRI, Oxford, Oxford University Press. SIPRI (2017). Yearbook 2017, Stockholm, SIPRI, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Soros, George (2006). The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror, Washington, D.C., Public Affairs. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2002). Globalization and Its Discontents, New York, New Press. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2016). The Great Divide. Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them, New York, Norton. Strahm, Rudolf H., Úrsula Oswald Spring (1991). Por Esto Somos Tan Pobres, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. SwissRe (2017). “Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters 2017”, Zurich, Swiss Re. UNAIDS (1999). Report 1999, Geneva, UNAIDS. UNCCD (2017). Global Land Outlook, Bonn, UNCCD. UNDP (1996–1999). Statistics, London, UNDP. UNDP (1999). Human Development Report 1999, London, UNDP. UNICEF (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998). The State of Infants, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, New York, UNICEF. Vaughan, Genevieve (1997). For-Giving: A Feminist Criticisms of Exchange, Austin, Plain View Press. Vaughan, Genevieve (2004). The Gift; Il Dono, New Series 8, Rome, Meltemi, University of Bari. WB (2016). Poverty and Shared Prosperity, Washington, World Bank. Westing, Arthur H. (2013a). Arthur H. Westing: A Pioneer on the Environmental Impact of War, Berlin, Springer. Westing, Arthur H. (2013b). Texts on Environmental and Comprehensive Security, Cham, Springer. WHO (2017). “Key Facts”, Geneva, WHO. Wilder, Margaret, Christopher Scott, Nicolás Pineda, Robert G. Varady, Gregg Garfin, Jamie McEvoy (2010). “Adapting Across Boundaries: Climate Change, Social Learning, and Resilience in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 100, No. 4, pp. 917–928. World Health Organization (1999). The World Health Report, Making a Difference, Geneva, WHO. World Population Review (2017). https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancyby-country/. Worldwatch Institute (1994–1999). State of the World, 1994 to 1999, New York, W.W. Norton. Zambrano, Eduardo (2016). El Niño 2015–2016. Evolución y Perspectivas, Guayaquil, Centro Internacional de Investigación para el Fenómeno el Niño.

Chapter 5

On Environmental Security and Global Environmental Change

5.1

Introduction

Environmental security analyses the threats to the environment posed by humankind, communities, state activities and nations.1 Climate change and global environmental change (GEC) have focused the concept on the potential for human conflicts, national struggles and clashes between international relations or transborder problems. These conflicts are related to the (ab)use of natural resources, pollution, its effects on vital ecosystems and the potential for non-violent conflict resolution among states and, internally, different users of ecosystem services. The objective of the present chapter is to understand the evolution of the concept ‘environmental security’ and the links between the conflict potentials due to abundance or scarcity of natural resources from an integrated human, gender and environmental (HUGE) security approach; e.g. equality, equity and sustainability. The deterioration of the existing natural resources, aggravated by climate change and GEC, is directly affecting many regions, especially the Global South. Further, corporate globalisation (Brinkman/Brinkman 2002) has aggravated the situation and converted the present neoliberal model into a global phenomenon which, through migration, is impacting all regions on earth (Oswald Spring et al. 2014). The present chapter first explores the different phases of the consolidation of the concept of environmental security. From a narrow military security approach, pollution was understood to be a key factor of environmental deterioration, caused by military bases (Prins 1990), the impact of war on the environment (Westing 1989b), the use of depleted uranium munitions (Bleise et al. 2003), the destruction of war materials (IEA 2009) – especially dangerous nuclear and chemical weapons – and armed manoeuvres (5.2.1). However, multiple conflicts arose at local and regional level (Kenya, Nigeria), and civil war sometimes affected entire countries (Sudan). The second phase of

1

This text was translated from Spanish and was based on several oral presentations and lectures given in Mexico since 2005.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_5

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environmental security researched the root causes of such clashes. They included scarce and polluted resources, especially water (Gleick 1993, 2001, 2004). This led scientists to understand the conflict potential of limited natural resources and deteriorated ecosystem services (5.2.2). Within a third phase, multiple interdisciplinary and global research groups analysed the complex interrelations between human development, environmental deterioration and conflicts. IPCC (1992) identified the changes in the global atmosphere as a new factor in conflict potential. Later, land use changes, land-grabbing, desertification, and the pollution of air, soil and water were triggering factors for increasing social nonconformity and unrest inside countries and between neighbour nations (Liberia, Sierra Leone). The concept of global environmental change (GEC) and climate change emerged, and the loss of livelihoods and the well-being of countries (Kaplan 1994) and regions (GECHS 1999) was considered to be an additional stressor for conflict, often producing environmental-induced migration as well (5.2.3) (Pellegrino 1995; Phillips 2011; Piquet et al. 2011). These global factors produced a third phase of environmental security. Confronted with this greater potential for conflict, governments,social organisations and multinational organisations (UNESCO 2002) have developed multiple strategies for conflict resolution. The global discussions during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) scrutinised the patterns of production and the production of toxic components such as lead in gasoline, toxic waste, radioactive chemicals and biological pollutants.2 The global establishment of Agenda 21 and the national and local Agenda 21 programmes also included the fight against poverty. Comprehension of the interrelation between complex processes explained how human induced environmental changes have changed the history of earth and produced the era of the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). Therefore, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG 2000) and, in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015) linked development policy with environmental factors. Mitigation, 2

During the Earth Summit Government, delegates also discussed alternative sources of energy to replace the fossil fuels understood to cause global climate change. New public transport systems were explored in order to reduce the polluted air and smoke in cities arising from congestion caused by personal vehicles and emissions of particles by industries, households and cars, which increasingly affect human health and ecosystems. A third crucial theme was the unsustainable use and pollution of fresh water from the surface and aquifers. Discussions covered the destruction of crucial ecosystems and their services, which is compromising natural resources such as water, air, soil, food; supporting services such as nutrient recycling, primary production, flood protection, water purification; regulating services such as pollination, carbon sequestration, climate regulation, waste decomposition and detoxification, purification, and air and water and pest and disease control; and cultural services, which include material and immaterial processes, historical and spiritual experiences, ecotourism, science, education and therapeutic activities. Finally, the loss of fertile top soil by erosion, desertification and inadequate land management is affecting the conservation of ecosystems and agricultural productivity. The Earth Summit also opened for signature important legally binding agreements: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

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adaptation, resilience and poverty alleviation enable global environmental, climate and social threats to be tackled in a cohesive way (IPCC 2014a, b). This humankind impact has forced researchers to include human security as well. In addition to freedom from fear, access to necessities and protection from extreme events were considered, together with the right to live in a state of law with respect for human rights (Annan 2005) and social diversity (Brauch 2005a, b). Finally, gender security focuses on the inequity and inequality within regions, social groups and classes and the concentration of wealth in an increasingly smaller group of extremely rich people, at the cost of the poverty of the majority (Oxfam 2017), while environmental security addresses the different phases of ecosystem deterioration and the growing potential for conflicts and violence (Dalby et al. 2009) related to hierarchical power structures and concentration of wealth (5.2.4). Global environmental conflicts and threats were also taken into account through collective negotiation processes, whereby the fourth phase of environmental security and peace-building enabled regional conflicts to be avoided (Prins 1990) and prevented some of the most dangerous outcomes of climate change and GEC (Oswald Spring et al. 2009). Part 5.3 reviews the threats to humankind and nature. Population growth (UN-DESA 2017; Roser/Ortiz 2018) and urbanisation are both key drivers of ecosystem deterioration (Global Footprint Network 2010) through land use change, and biofuel or food requirements (5.3.1; FAO 2015). This human and productive expansion has seriously threatened ecosystems and destroyed crucial ecosystem services (5.3.2; Steffen et al. 2015). Climate change (5.3.3) and GEC (5.3.4; Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011) are critical outcomes of this irrational behaviour. The exploitation of natural resources through mining, livestock, productive activities and human waste is a key factor of destruction (WRF 2015) and represents a complex interrelation with GEC and climate change (IPCC 2012, 2014a). The chapter finishes with a reflection on the latest global agreement in Paris (2015; Northrop et al. 2018; Rojelj et al. 2016) and its global and regional impact on environmental security (5.4).

5.2

Evolution of the Concept

During the 20th century the theoretical debate in international relations was influenced by two macro theories: ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ in the tradition of Kant and Wilson. In the realist tradition of Machiavelli, Hobbes and Morgenthau, power, violence and control dominate. In the idealist approach legal considerations and international institutions (League of Nations, UN; Kant 1795) matter. During the Cold War period and the US intellectual dominance, the realist, neorealist and structural realist approaches dominated both the political security debate and the related national security discourse (Prins 1990). Since 1950 scientists stressing

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rigorous methods and models challenged the liberal – later neoliberal – state-centred approaches (Dewitt 1994), while pragmatic international security approaches maintained the realist approach (Matthew 1992; Kaplan 1994). There was a third tradition in the sense of a more pragmatic Grotian approach, which stressed common security (Palme 1984), comprehensive security (Westing 1989a, b, 2013) and cooperative security (Carter et al. 1992; Dewitt 1994). From the concept of cooperative security emerged, at UNDP in 1994, a human security understanding (Brauch 2005a, b), which centred security on people and not territory or national sovereignty. This deepening approach from the individual to the family, the community, the nation and the world also addressed good governance and the rule of national and international law. Within the sphere of international relations in Europe there evolved a different understanding, called social constructivism, which is independent from the three former perspectives (Buzan et al. 1998). Social constructivism is understood as a sociological theory of knowledge that claims that the analyst constructs the reality socially, because of being influenced by norms, culture, socio-political context and the perceptions of observers. Influenced by the philosophical debate on social constructivism, Waever (1995, 1997) developed the theory of securitisation, which has been interpreted by some as a synthesis of constructivist and classical political realism and international security (Dewitt 1994; Carter et al. 1992). This theory analyses how certain issues are described as security matters by a specific policymaker or a securitising actor. According to Wæver (1995, 1997) the securitising move consists of three components: (a) the securitising actor, i.e. an entity that makes the securitising move/statement; (b) the referent object that is being threatened and needs to be protected; and (c) the audience, which is the target of the securitisation act that needs to be persuaded and accept the issue as a security threat and the audience accept the often implicit restrictions or new controls. According to this theory the securitisation move is successful once the audience is convinced. This theoretical approach may be used to analyse the process of securitising environment as an issue of policy debate among politicians and societal actors, and also in the scientific discourse (Wæver 2000, 2008). However, the two processes (policy debate and scientific analysis) differ and should be clearly distinguished. Declaratory politics are always the result of negotiation processes between stakeholders with different interests, whereby often contradictory agreements arise. Scientific analysis allows knowledge to develop through systematic reflections on the goal and makes it easier to understand implicit processes within the negotiation process. Wæver’s theory of securitisation can be used to analyse both processes of securitising the environment by focusing on the four pillars of environmental security, which are characterised by different key components, reaches and theoretical understandings. Thus, securitisation occurs when a politician has declared that environment is an issue ‘of utmost importance’ (climate change, GEC) that requires extraordinary means (mitigation, Kyoto Protocol or Paris Agreement, renewable energies, energy efficiency) to be protected, and the audience or the affected people have accepted the speech act, which may include some restrictions. The policy of reduction of GHG emissions or investments

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in renewable energy may represent some of the desirable outcomes to address GEC and climate change (Ren21 2018). With these short theoretical approaches, the next part analyses the evolution of the four pillars of environmental security.

5.2.1

Phase 1: Wars and Military Pollution

The first discussion on environmental security emerged in the US, when the Cold War was waning. Ullman (1983), Matthews (1989), Myers (1989), and Prins (1990) promoted an environmental security from a US national security issue perspective. These authors assumed that environmental disruptions would lead to conflict, produce wars in order to access scarce resources (Kaplan 1994) and destroy the existing resources. Westing (1989, 2013), an officer in the US army in Vietnam, observed that soldiers coming back from the war often had children with mutagenic defects. Therefore he studied the impact of potentially toxic herbicides in Cambodia and established that the Orange Agent polluted with dioxin was causing these mutagenic effects in the next generations of people exposed to them. In this first phase of environmental security, wars, military manoeuvres, certain types of weapon (depleted uranium bullets; Bleise et al. 2003), military bases and the destruction of obsolete weapons were responsible for the deterioration of the environment and humans. Consequently, environmental security supported the environmental viability for supporting life and tried to oblige the military to repair, as far as possible the damage done to the ecosystem and its natural resources (IEA 2009). After further analysis environmental security was also regarded as a way to prevent future scarcity of key resources (especially oil and water) and promote efficient resource management (WRF 2015; Global Footprint Network 2010) in order to avoid upcoming crisis and conflicts.

5.2.2

Phase 2: Scarcity of Natural Resources and Conflicts

Environmental violence jeopardises the sustainability of the planet, and also generates intra and intergenerational inequity. The environment is also a constitutive element of human security in its three expressions: in the form of goods (animals, flora, food, medicines), services (oxygenation, pollination, fixation of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, homeostatic regulation, recycling of biodegradable materials) and information (genetic, biochemical, ecological, environmental). Within this second phase of environmental security (Dalby et al. 2009), which influenced environmental thinking between 1991 and 2000, theoretical and empirical studies proved that scarcity produces conflicts. The Canadian research group of Homer-Dixon (1999, 2000) studied the water conflicts in the Middle East. Bächler (1999) and his research group in Switzerland also understood environmental scarcity and degradation to be key factors for stress and conflicts, and

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additionally found that environmental cooperation generally prevented violent outcomes and peacefully resolved scarcity issues among affected social groups and nations. Barnet (2003, 2010) from Australia introduced the concepts of risks, vulnerability and resilience to reduce environmental degradation for vulnerable people and increase the adaptation potential of social groups exposed to greater environmental stress and disasters. This author based his reflections on the environmental dimension of the human security concept, first exposed by UNDP (1994). Both approaches put human beings at the centre of interest, therefore this second phase diverged from the narrow military approach of environmental security. Respect for Mother Earth prompted feminists to take a different approach which led to the inclusion of environmental movements in conflict negotiation (D’Eaubonne, 1974). Politically, Gaia (Naess 1989; Devall/Session 1985) and the movements of deep ecology have also contributed ideas about decentralisation and ‘small is beautiful’ (Schumacher 1973). There were also different proposals for peace and non-violent conflict resolution (Glasl 1994), and green parties and environmentalists defied the anthropocentric deviations of the current model of predatory globalisation (Maathai 2003, 2006). In different countries, the (neo-) Malthusian approach (1798) insisted on imposing birth control and reproductive health education on poor countries as a condition of their international aid. During this phase of environmental security, the so-called ‘leftist ecologists’ promoted a radical biocentrism that produced in developed countries an anti-industrial and anti-capitalist understanding of environmental security (Mastini 2017), which mostly did not touch on the growing inequality between regions and social groups (Dobson 2007; Oxfam 2017). In short, the critics of the exploitative, predatory, utilitarian and materialistic behaviour which is characteristic of contemporary consumerist society are demanding a responsible and sustainable life for Planet Earth – one which leaves the smallest possible environmental footprint (Naess 1989; WRF 2015). None of these approaches deeply analysed the complexity of socio-environmental interrelations, therefore a third phase emerged internationally.

5.2.3

Phase 3: Climate Change and Global Environmental Change as Environmental Stressors for Conflicts and Migration

The process of securitisation may be analysed both from a state- and a people-centred perspective. The third phase of environmental security began in 1995 and is embedded in a diversity of methodological approaches, which have tried both globally and regionally to prevent or respond to environmentally caused conflicts. In the modern political debate the major referent object remains the nation state (national security) or the community of nation states (international security). In

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1994 UNDP introduced the human security concept, putting humans at the centre of concern. In 2003 the UN-sponsored Commission on Human Security (CHS 2003) included ‘freedom from want’, UNU-EHS introduced ‘freedom from hazard impacts’ (Brauch 2005a, b), and Kofi Annan incorporated the ‘state of law, human rights and living in dignity’. The Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS 1999) science plan related to the International Human Dimension Program (IHDP; Rosenberg/ Krafft 2009). GECHS focused on both social and environmental vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2013b), risks, extreme events (IPCC 2012) and the potential of individuals and communities or regions to cope and adapt to the increasingly difficult conditions (IPCC 2014a). GEC is a global process but poses different threats to different people. However, everybody has the same needs and basic rights to an integrated development. Thus this interdisciplinary research programme insisted in a full development process and not just conflict management (Matthew et al. 2010). Sen (1992) inspired GECHS with the five freedoms: economic opportunities, political freedom, social opportunities, transparency and protective security. Later cultural diversity (Boulding 2000) and resilience-building were added and GECHS was able to increase the perspectives and research findings with an interdisciplinary dialogue between humanities and natural sciences. The German Government (WGBU) with researchers (Schubert et al. 2007) analysed the syndromes of GEC and a project in Switzerland focused on the syndromes of mitigation and political potential to overcome conflict situations (Bächler et al. 1996). Depending on the macro-theoretical world-view of the analysts, in the scientific discourse water security has been addressed mostly from both frameworks – national-international military and human security – and Chap. 16 analyses water security primarily from a scientific human security perspective. Internationally, global research groups consolidated this third phase of environmental security. PRIO (2005) began systematic research on the emergence of civil wars, found multiple direction, but not one key factor of scarce or abundant natural resources. Several parallel efforts were undertaken to understand the conflictivity of scarcity of natural resources and researchers in Senegal found that new irrigation programmes, e.g. resource abundance, are also sources of potential conflicts, especially when small-scale farmers are eliminated from their fields by powerful armed groups or multinational enterprises. In conjunction with six universities in the region, Willaarts et al. (2014) analysed conflicts related to water and food security in Latin America, and found that mining, development projects, renewable energy and infrastructure imposed by multinational enterprises, groundwater sharing and unstable borders were additional conflict drivers besides GEC and climate change. In all these different global researches, the role of the State for protection was crucial. When a government is able to reduce environmental and social vulnerability by promoting early warning, training people for evacuation and installing systems for early warning and disaster risk reduction (DRR) and management (DRM), extreme events are managed and not converted into disasters. Livelihoods can be re-established in relatively short periods thanks to this existing resilience-building (Reghessa-Zitt et al. 2018). A crucial theme in most of these

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studies is the integration of local knowledge and wisdom, training for extreme events, civil participation in DRR and the acknowledgement of the state that some regions and social groups require special attention due to their historical and physical vulnerability.

5.2.4

Phase 4: Conflict Resolution, Mitigation, Adaptation and Resilience for Achieving Environmental Security with a HUGE Security

In the political realm, the sectorialisation of security (Brauch 2009) has been apparent since the 1960s, when several international organisations used security language in their mission statements. From the perspective of the theory of securitisation, sectorialisation can also be observed when policy-makers declare in institutional documents that their key missions – e.g. food (FAO 1983), energy (EIA 2015), health (Leaning 2009), water (WWF 2000) and soil (Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009) – are issues of the utmost importance that require extraordinary measures. In most cases the reasons and the motives for this process of a sectorial securitisation are unknown, and their primary goals have not been framed as sustainability issues or as key tasks of strategies and policies aiming at sustainable development. A second process is related to preventive protections and restoration of the environment, where mangroves and coastal lagoons are able to mitigate the impacts of hurricanes and storm waves. Reforestation and the protection of natural areas reduce the risk of landslides, facilitate permeation of extreme rainfalls, protect river basins and also avoid flash floods downstream. Therefore protecting the environment is considered an inherent moral value and especially a proactive protection process. During the first three phases environmental security focused primarily on the nation, but the global changes by the end of the Cold War, China as a new player, the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and the widened and deepened understanding of security influenced the reconceptualisation of environmental security. The deplorable conditions of physical, environmental, human, societal and gender security brought researchers to focus on vulnerable groups, often exploited and dominated by traditional and new corporate monopolies (Brinkman/Brinkman 2002). These patriarchal, violent and exclusive structures have affected differently women and men, children, indigenous and unemployed people (Oswald Spring 2008). Therefore a HUGE security approach (Oswald Spring 2009) integrated social, human, gender, environmental, political and identity concerns. IPCC (2012) stressed the likelihood of stronger extreme events, which especially affect vulnerable people in the Global South. Heavier droughts and floods have increased in both the environmentally and socially vulnerable countries (Oswald Spring 2013b), producing crises, violent conflicts, post-conflict situations, hazards and complex emergencies. Poor countries

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have had to deal with the physical difficulties, and Homer-Dixon (1999) contended that frequently ‘resource capture’ by local and multinational elites has not only increased the vulnerability of affected people, but also produced violent outbreaks. Therefore, IPCC (2014a, b) insisted on improving adaptation, resilience-building, coping strategies and the mitigation of GHG in hazard-exposed regions. Therefore, environmental security also required a widened understanding, which focused on reducing the dual vulnerability, protecting the ecosystem, food security and sustainable urban planning. Oswald Spring et al. (2009: 1291) asserted that interdisciplinarity “needed to investigate the complex interconnections of many causes of social vulnerability…[which,] triggered by extreme events, may lead to conflicts”. These authors concluded that “the fourth phase of environmental security research needs to be more comprehensive than earlier phases, and it needs to integrate physical and human science in ways that do neither focus simply on states… Ecological thinking with its focus on adaptability, resilience and interconnection now understands security in contrast to earlier formulations assuming central control and violence as the essence of security” (idem 2012: 1294). Confronted with more complex and uncertain conditions, humanity further requires ethical behaviour that is able to negotiate upcoming conflicts and promote conditions that reduce violent outcomes. This includes support for poor countries highly affected by climate change and transferring technology to the Global South to reduce GHG and promote a sustainable livelihood. Earth continues to be the sole planet capable of maintaining the growing population and providing well-being, joy and diverse cultural services.

5.3 5.3.1

Global Threats to Environmental Security Population Growth and Urbanisation

The second part of 20th century was characterised by two global tendencies, which continue in the 21st century: population growth and urbanisation. Two hundred years ago, there were less than a billion people on Earth; today there are 7.5 billion (Fig. 5.1). For thousands of years the population grew slowly. It was only when public health, antibiotics and general vaccinations were introduced that the world population growth rate peaked up to 2.1% in the Seventies, though now it is slowly going down. In 1950 every fourth child died before the age of five, but now this problem has reduced substantially even in the least developed countries. Therefore, world population may be expected to reach between 10 (UN-DESA 2017) and 11.2 billion (Roser/Ortiz 2018) in 2100, with a growth rate of only 0.1%. Un-DESA (2017) estimates that between 2017 and 2050, half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in nine countries (India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, USA, Uganda and Indonesia. The 47 least developed countries still had a high fertility rate of 4.3 births/woman between 2010 and 2015.

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Fig. 5.1 World Population, 1750–2015 and Projections until 2100. Source Roser/Ortiz (2018: 2)

The second crucial phenomenon is urbanisation. By the end of 2008 half of the world’s population had moved to cities. Rural people abandoned the fields and migrated into suburban areas. Urbanisation occurred because of better services, housing, transportation, education and jobs in the towns. In developing countries, subsidised imports of basic food, conflicts over land, land-grabbing, landlords and a lack of rural policy forced people to migrate. The tendency of rural-urban migration will increase in developing countries and is estimated to reach 64% in 2050, while in industrialised nations 86% of people will live in urban settlements (Fig. 5.2). In 1970, only three megacities existed in industrialised countries (Tokyo, Osaka and New York), but in 2000 the number had risen to 17 and by 2030 24 new megacities with over 10 million inhabitants will have been added, mostly in developing countries. Poor living and job conditions are push factors, and better health and educational opportunities have also increased the migration trend. Further, droughts, floods, desertification, lack of availability of productive land and minimal economic opportunities for the youth are additional push factors for leaving the countryside. In most poor countries this unplanned migration has led to the rapid growth of slums, often in risky areas since real estate in safer areas is often reserved for middle-class developments. These informal, overcrowded houses built closely together represent serious risks during a fire or earthquake. Most of these houses are built around towns in unofficial settlements, frequently with inadequate materials. They lack electricity, access to water and have little or no sanitation. Politicians often take advantage of these poor living conditions with inadequate health care facilities, insecurity and organised crime by offering minimal improvements to

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Fig. 5.2 World’ Urbanisation. Source UN-DESA (2017)

living standards to win votes. Therefore poverty is the most critical issue in these urban slums and the precarious conditions degrade both environmental and social conditions. Urban settlements also produce most of the GHG emissions and most cities lack of sufficient green areas and parks.

5.3.2

Ecosystem Deterioration

Global Footprint Network (2010) enumerates five types of surface with approximately 13.4 billion hectares (bha) of biologically productive land and water. If each person requires 2.7 ha, 7.5 billion people need 20.25 bha, which is more than the calculated 13.4 bha. Therefore, the current consumption pattern exceeds the available resources and humanity is creating environmental debts. Currently, the most industrialised areas (US, EU and Japan) are high ecological debtors, because they have exhausted their own natural resources. Globally, over 80% of the world’s population lives in countries that use more resources than those provided by their ecosystem. If humanity exceeds 10 billion people in 2050, there will not be enough resources for clean air, soil, water and food. This increases environmental degradation, land use change, loss of vital ecosystem and ecosystem services (ESS), pollution, urban overpopulation, landfills, water pollution, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and climate change disasters such as storms, wildfires, etc. with direct and indirect impacts on human health and well-being. Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded ‘safe’ levels – human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use (Fig. 5.3). Steffen et al. (2015) found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilisation has been able to advance significantly in life and living standards.

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Fig. 5.3 Limits of Planetary Boundaries. Source Steffen et al. (2015)

Carbon dioxide levels, at 410.9 ppm (parts per million), are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm. Steffen et al. (2015; Fig. 5.3) explained that humanity has already raced past four of the nine boundaries keeping our planet hospitable by cutting down forests and polluting other natural resources. There are serious threats from nitrogen, phosphorus and loss of genetic diversity, while new threats such a land-system changes and climate change are challenging the survival of humanity.

5.3.3

Climate Change

Climate change is an addition risk, and the complex interrelations between the composition of the earth, the changes in the oceans (acidification) and on the ice have reduced the absorption of solar energy and accelerated the melting of ice in the sea, on the glaciers and from permafrost. Five decades ago the Club of Rome noted a change in the pattern of economic growth (Meadows et al. 1972) and recent models indicate that overconsumption and overpollution may lead to the collapse of the well-being of multiple countries and regions. Thus, Heinberg (2011) proposed a post-carbon era and Brauch et al. (2016) explored a transition to sustainability with peace-building and conflict resolution to overcome the global environmental

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change. However, in June 2018 NOAA measured 412 ppm of CO2 at Mauna Loa, so swift action is clearly essential.

5.3.4

Global Environmental Change

Global environmental change (GEC) is broader than climate change and interrelates humankind with natural processes. GEC analysis explores the transformation produced by human beings in the ecosphere, which affects the hydrosphere (the combined mass of water found in the ocean, above, on and under the surface of the planet); the atmosphere (the layer of gases surrounding the surface); the biosphere (the global ecological system where all living beings exist); the lithosphere (the outer layer of the Earth); and the pedosphere (the soil and subsoil) (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011). The complex interrelations between economic activities, population growth, urbanisation, climate change and the whole process of modernisation have produced massive deforestation of billions of hectares of forest and woodland. Tropical rainforests are the lungs of the planet, and today the massive deforestation is driven mostly by the production of biofuel. Forests produce almost 42% of the regenerative oxygen of the Earth from biomass; in temperate and mixed areas 14%; and in the Nordic boreal forest about 9%. Overall, forests renew two-thirds of the oxygen on Earth; steppes and savannahs contribute about 18%; and 9% of oxygen production is related to crops (Ehrlich et al. 1977: 76). The process of deforestation is accompanied by soil erosion, and in Africa the Sahara is advancing two and a half kilometres southward per year, causing around 180 million environmental migrants and millions of hungry people. Currently, 80% of the grasslands are eroded, while 60% of rain-fed soil and 30% of irrigated land are in processes of salinisation and desertification (FAO 2016). Mining and oil extraction not only produce GHG emissions, but these extractive activities and the chemicals involved cause severe pollution of soil, water and air and often also produce dangerous oil spills. Without any doubt, humanity has reached its limits of survival and globally new agreements and regionally and locally different consumption patterns must be explored.

5.4

Outlook: Where Are We Now After the Paris Agreement?

The planet has experienced 33 consecutive years of temperature rise as a result of GHG emissions (IPCC 2013; NOAA 2018). More extreme events, environmental migration and conflicts over scarce water and food resources have obliged countries and regions to seek greater collaboration to mitigate the outcomes of climate change

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(IPCC 2014b) and adapt to the more dangerous impacts (IPCC 2014a). In 2015, COP21 of UNFCCC brought together most of the countries, and the Paris Agreement was signed and ratified by almost all countries. However, the Intended National Determined Contributions (INDC), today NDC, are insufficient to revert the increase in temperature and, pressured by the oil lobby, the US has withdrawn from the agreement. Further obstacles include technical issues related to the transparent measurement of GHG; the low budgets available in poor countries for investment in technology and the development of renewable energies; and global consumerism. All these factors are limiting the capacity to achieve the agreed maximum of 450 ppm of CO2 by 2025. Governments participating in COP21 also agreed that the future is directly related to green investments and decarbonisation of the productive process. Although the Paris Agreement is a milestone in climate policy, the targets for international GHG reductions are not enough and the rise of renewable energies is still related to market dynamics, where the present subsidies on fossil oil are limiting faster evolution of these clean technologies. Globally, and especially in the industrialised countries which are the biggest emitters, there is still a lack of legal and economic stimuli to push the economy towards a carbon-free society. However, the dramatic increase in extreme weather events in 2017 is forcing countries exposed to climate disasters to pressure internationally for global warming to be maintained far below 2 °C. There is also a lack of corporate leadership to support governments in their efforts to comply with the commitment in Paris and producede carbonised production and sustainable consumption patterns. Figure 5.4 synthesises the evolution of GHG emissions from 280 ppm in the preindustrial time to the present 410.94 ppm (June 2018) of CO2 measured at Mauna Loa. A decade ago, GHG emissions were 388.41 ppm, meaning that GHG emissions have risen by 22.53 ppm in just ten years. This means that with the present policy of business as usual, we may not achieve the goals of 2 °C, thus several small islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean will find their territory salinised due to sea level rise when stronger hurricanes and storm surges accelerate the intrusion of seawater into aquifers and productive land. Confronted with this survival dilemma, these people will not only have to migrate, but also lose their homeland, their culture, their nation and their historical sites. Therefore, new efforts to grant environmental security to the most vulnerable – women, children, indigenous people, marginal social groups and poor social classes – make it essential to understand the three phases of environmental security, which demonstrate how military pollution, scarcity and global environmental change affect poor and vulnerable people the most. Therefore, the fourth phase of environmental security (Oswald Spring et al. 2009) is exploring peace-building and conflict resolution, whereby governmental and societal activities cooperate in a collective effort towards sustainable transition. Within this fourth phase, sustainability, gender equity and greater equality among regions, social groups, races and ethnic groups are key elements for increasing societal and environmental security for reducing the threats of extreme events and violent outcomes. Only a collective effort of

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Fig. 5.4 Increase of CO2 at Mauna Loa since pre-industrial times. Source NOAA 2019 (https:// www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_trend_mlo.pdf)

decarbonisation and dematerialisation will grant the future generation livelihood and well-being. Time to achieve these goals is short, and only a global common effort will enable the desirable future to be achieved.

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Chapter 6

Ecology and Threats to Human Survival

6.1

Introduction: Ecology Threatened

Ecology has the same origin as economy and means in Greek oἶjo1 (house or environment) and kocίa (study of).1 This science analyses the interaction between organisms and their environment, both biotic and abiotic components. In particular, this branch of biology includes the study of biodiversity (or biological diversity), distribution, population of organisms and biomass. As dynamic interacting systems, the study of ecosystem processes investigates the nutrient cycle, primary production, the construction of niches and pedogenesis, whereby flux of energy and matter are regulated. “Biodiversity refers to the variety of life and its processes. It includes the variety of living organisms, the genetic differences among them, the communities and ecosystems in which they occur, and the ecological and evolutionary processes that keep them functioning, yet ever changing and adapting” (Noss/ Carpenter 1994: 76). The sum of the ecosystems existing on earth is called the biosphere, and ecological relationships regulate the energy flux, the nutrient cycle and the climate from the individual plant up to the planetary scale. The emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) by the massive use of fossil fuels has anthropogenically altered the CO2 and O2 composition in the atmosphere, which has also been affected by the biogenic flux of gases coming from respiration and photosynthesis (Lovelock 2003). The Gaia hypothesis (Naess 1989; Lovelock 2003) postulates a selfemergent regulatory phenomenon at planetary scale, whereby a feedback loop which is generated by the metabolism of living organisms maintains the average temperature of Earth and atmospheric conditions within a narrow self-regulating range of tolerance. Excessive GHG emissions are threatening the dynamism of the whole planet (Lovelock/Margulis 1973).

1

This text was translated by the author based on previous lectures she presented in Spanish at conferences in Mexico since 2005.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_6

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Therefore, biodiversity includes the varieties of species and genera and their interaction in a specific ecosystem, which freely offers nature and humankind multiple ecosystem services (ESS). These ESS (MA 2005) could be systematised in four general categories: provisioning (food, water, fresh air, grass etc.); supporting (food supply, flood regulation, water purification, carbon cycle, sulphur cycle); regulating (pollination, carbon sequestration, waste decomposition and detoxification, water and air purification, pest and disease control); and cultural service (education, natural heritage sites, immaterial values of harmony, peace, spirituality, history, traditional medicine, etc.). However, productive activities and consumerism have affected most of the crucial ESS. Ecosystem services decisions require complex choices at the intersection between agriculture, livestock, forestry and fisheries. All benefit from and influence ecosystem services, but also impact them negatively. Therefore decision-making must take into account both ways and simultaneously consider the value of ecology, the effects of technology, land use change, urbanisation and economy among the multiple stakeholders. Productive activities have seriously affected the natural flows and therefore nature also requires regulatory practices, where multi-objective interests, based on uncertain data and models, often limit understanding of the complexity of the natural dynamic. Górriz-Mifsud et al. (2017: 1) have identified twelve challenges “for which technical recommendations are offered. We navigate through decision making procedures, geographical cohesion, legitimacy and trust-building, transparency and internal communication, trade-offs in efficiency and equity, local idiosyncrasy, management committee dynamics, risk aversion vs. flexibility, legal aspects, joint motivations and long-term vision, and intermediary’s efficiency. Existing policy tools help in overcoming some of the economic and technical aspects. Nevertheless, internal governance challenges require a concerted effort from participating forest owners”. FAO (2018) estimates among the positive impacts on ESS that agriculture provides habitat to wild species (Daskin/Pringle 2018), forests regulate water and air, animal excreta are nutrients and disperse seeds which can maintain soil fertility, while mangroves protect from storm surges, wind and tides. Pesticides, excess of anthropogenic nitrogen, deforestation, poor soil management and excess of animal excreta can lead to water pollution, flooding and landslides, while overfishing destabilises the food chain and destroys the natural habitat of aquatic species. Trees retain soil and infiltrate water into the ground, thus reduce flash floods and landslides, which increase during tropical storms and frequently destroy human lives, well-being and landscapes. Consequently, natural resources are crucial for the survival of earth, biota and humankind. Without oxygen a human being sustains brain damage within minutes, and lack of water produces dehydration, thirst, fatigue, headache and the collapse of the human body. Droughts are silent killers of significant populations affected by lack of water. In 1928 a severe drought in China caused an estimated death toll of three million people.

6.2 Clean Air

6.2

115

Clean Air

Air is the invisible gaseous substance that surrounds the earth, and is a mixture of mainly oxygen and nitrogen with small amounts of other gases. As air is crucial for nature and human survival, air pollution results from both natural and human actions. Natural events include forest fires, volcanic eruption, wind erosion, natural radioactivity, pollen dispersal and evaporation of toxic compounds in the soil. However, most of the serious deterioration in air quality is produced by anthropogenic pollution from manufacturing plants, which send smoke and fumes from chimneys and waste incineration, organic compounds and other chemicals into the air. Almost 80% of air pollution in cities is related to transportation (cars, trucks, trains, shipping vessels and aeroplanes). Emissions from automobiles contain both primary and secondary pollutants. They emit dangerous gases, such as carbon monoxide, dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbons and particulates. These gases also react with the environment and sun activity and produce further toxic gases (e.g. ozone). Finally, household and industrial cleaning products and paint, crop dusting and fumigation in fields are additional factors of air pollution, together with a lack of aeration inside households. The most common pollutants of air are: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds (VOC), lead and ground-level ozone. Particulate matters from burning coal, wood, diesel, industrial processes, farming and unpaved roads can worsen heart and lung diseases and cause severe respiratory problems. The WHO (2017b) estimates that every year about seven million people die prematurely because of polluted air and 91% of world inhabitants live in places with low air quality. From these deaths, about 4.2 million annually are related to outdoor air pollution and 3.8 million to pollution inside the household as a result of smoke from dirty cook-stoves and fuels. The WHO (2017b) maintains that these non-communicable diseases are the result of air pollution and smoking: 1.4 million or 24% of all strokes; 2.4 million or 25% of heart disease; 1.8 million or 29% of lung cancer; and 43% of all lung diseases are caused by polluted air. Particularly exposed are children under five years, and in total 1.7 million of these small children die prematurely. From this number, about 570,000 small children die from respiratory infections, such as pneumonia due to air pollution and smoking inside the house (WHO 2017a). Therefore air pollution is still a silent but dramatic assassin of people and especially small children, and most of this pollution is related to anthropogenic activities.

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Fresh Water and Sanitation Surface Water and Sanitation

Water is crucial for life and development, and is thus at the centre of socioeconomic processes. Water maintains health, enables food gathering and production, sustains ESS and provides well-being and cultural services to humans. Nonetheless, 663 million people in the world still lack drinking water and often water gets polluted due to old and rotten infrastructure and a lack of basic sanitation services. Additionally, 900 million people practise open defecation, although around 2.1 billion have gained access to latrines since 1990. Nevertheless, globally, only 68% of the population have access to basic sanitation and 39% to safely managed sanitation. Regionally, 70% of Sub-Saharan Africa and 63% of South Asia lack sanitation for their people. Therefore, the MDG (2000) target for sanitation was missed by about 700 million people (SDG 2015). The SDG (2015) proposed that everybody should have access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation by 2030. The World Bank (WB 2017) reported that 57% of poor urban dwellers lack access to toilets, 16% to basic sanitation services and about 100 million urban residents practise open defecation with high health impacts on informal settlements and pollution of groundwater. Figure 6.1 indicates the level of access to clean water. While in North America, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Botswana people have covered their water necessities, most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, Laos, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Yemen, Afghanistan and Mongolia suffer from a serious lack of clean water. For the highest populated countries, such as China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Brazil, providing safe drinking water for their population represents a significant challenge and requires major investment. Unfortunately, this global data does not show the differences between rural and urban inhabitants within each country or between poor and rich people. Finally, old infrastructure, lack of maintenance, intrusion from deeper wells, deteriorated sanitation and absence of hygienic habits inside the household further compromise the quality of drinking water and frequently produce water-borne diseases. Yearly, 361,000 small children die because of polluted water and diarrhoea related to lack of clean water; 270,000 die during their first months because of unsafe water, lack of sanitation and hygiene; and an additional 200,000 children are victims of malaria that could be prevented by eliminating the breeding sites of mosquitos. But also lack of care and accidents affect an additional 200,000 children through toxicity, falls and drowning. These deaths of small children could be avoided by preventive behaviour, education and better health care. Therefore campaigns about washing hands after going to the toilet and before eating have reduced early child mortality.

6.3 Fresh Water and Sanitation

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Fig. 6.1 Percentage of population with access to clean water by Country. Source Reddit (2016)

Water scarcity is further increased by climate change, due to higher temperatures and more erratic precipitations. SDG (2015) estimated that in 2015 about 40% of people lacked a permanent water supply. The same source assessed that by 2050 at least 25% of people will be affected by recurring water shortages, which will oblige multiple nations to improve international cooperation, manage wetlands and river basins better, share water treatment technology and recycle treated water in agriculture. Climate change is especially affecting the Global South, where existing poverty and often poor public administrations are limiting efficient investment in drinking water. Therefore, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (2000) estimates an increasing water stress of over 40% in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sudan and South Africa. The United States, Mexico, Kenya, Nigeria, Europe and China are also threatened by the possibility of 20–40% less fresh water, with urban areas and megalopolises in the Global South especially highly exposed to water scarcity. The World Resources Institute (2015) estimated extreme high water stress (over 80%) in Chile, the east coast of the US, North Africa, the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, and southern Europe (Fig. 6.2). This institution postulated high stress (between 40 and 80%) in the US as a whole, Mexico, Peru, the southern part of Africa, India, China, Mongolia, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Nevertheless, all countries will be affected by climate change and most regions will be better equipped when they conserve their biodiversity. Confronted with greater water scarcity, in the future people will rely more on the extraction of groundwater stored in aquifers.

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Fig. 6.2 Increasing water stress by 2040. Source World Resource Institute 2015 (Projection based on business-as-usual using SSP2 and RCP8.5)

6.3.2

Groundwater

Live Science (2015) calculated the availability of water in aquifers at about 23 million km3 and considered groundwater a hidden reserve. The National Groundwater Association estimates that the primary source of fresh water comes from glaciers and ice caps, while groundwater is infiltrated by rainfall. EPA (2015) estimates that about 5.5 million cubic miles of groundwater are within reach of 2 km of the continental crust. Isotopic studies indicate further that only between 24,000 and 129,500 cubic miles are less than 100 years old, thus mostly potable for humans. This precious reserve is under threat due to over-exploitation of one-third of these groundwater basins. Richey et al. (2015b) assessed that the world’s 37 biggest aquifers are over-exploited and not sufficiently replenished (Fig. 6.3). The most extreme case is the Arabian Aquifer System located beneath Yemen and Saudi Arabia, from which 60 million people draw water for human use and agriculture.2 Aquifers with older water (over 100 years old) are located at greater depths and often contain dissolute minerals such as arsenic, flour, uranium, etc., which affect

2

Names of global aquifers

6.3 Fresh Water and Sanitation

119

Fig. 6.3 Global aquifers. Source Richey et al. (2015a: 5200)

the health of humans and biota. This water can also be saltier than the ocean and is often not suitable for human use, agriculture or production activities. Confronted with groundwater stress, Richey et al. (2015b) have developed a Total Groundwater Stress (TGS) ratio, which establishes the timescales of depletion in the world’s largest aquifer systems. These authors (p. 5198) found: that the current state of knowledge of large-scale groundwater storage has uncertainty ranges across orders of magnitude that severely limit the characterisation of resilience in the study of aquifers. Additionally, we show that groundwater availability, traditionally defined as recharge and redefined in this study as total storage, can alter the systems that are considered to be stressed versus unstressed. We find that remote sensing observations from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment can assist in providing such information at the scale of a whole aquifer. For example, we demonstrate that a groundwater depletion rate in the Northwest Sahara Aquifer System of 2.69 ± 0.8 km3/yr would result in the aquifer being depleted to 90% of its total storage in as few as 50 years given an initial storage estimate of 70 km3.

Richey et al. (2015b), together with other regional studies (Al-Ibrahim 1991; Llamas et al. 1992; Sweezey 1999; Wallin et al. 2005; Tujchneider et al. 2007), have established global amounts of groundwater volumes for Europe of 1.6 km3; Asia 7.8 km3; Africa 5.5 km3; North America 4.3 km3; South America 3 km3; and Australia-Oceania 1.2 km3, totalling 23.4 km3 across the globe. With the aid of remote sensing observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, Richey et al. (2015a: 5208) have identified that the highest rate of depletion is occurring in the Ganges, with approx. 19.6 mm of depletion per year, producing, in a time range of about 10 years, 90% depletion. The Tarim Basin has the lowest depletion rate, but low water availability by recharge, with a depletion rate of 800 years to reach 90% depletion. Local and regional variations and the uncertainty of climate change may additionally increase or decrease the calculated TGS (Wada/Heinrich 2013). Therefore, timescale in the depletion of aquifers is highly relevant in regions prone to drought, where only

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proactive management of groundwater may avoid highly stressed Central Valleys with low natural recharges in the precise location of the vulnerable megacities of the Global South (Richey et al. 2015b).

6.3.3

Water Footprint and Virtual Water

Water scarcity, climate change and still a dominant 70% of water use in agriculture and livestock production are limiting the availability of water for humans and other productive activities. Only small quantities of recycled treated waste water are used in agriculture, thus the pressure on aquifers and surface water is increasing the global water stress, especially in the drylands (Brauch/Oswald 2009). Countries with low precipitation, high temperatures, low soil quality and a large population generally import food items from countries with better climate and soil conditions. The high input of water into the food production processes is called ‘virtual water’ (Allen 1997). Figure 6.4 indicates the content of virtual water in different foods. Tomatoes, spinach and potatoes have the lowest content of virtual water, while a kilo of cheese needs 6000 l and one kilo of beef 19,600 l of water. Thus, water-rich countries often produce water-intensive crops for export, and those with scarce water resources in Asia, Latin America, and in the Middle East have been importing cereals, fruit, vegetables and dairy products for several decades. Table 6.1 indicates the water footprint of different products and industrial activities. One cow requires 4000 m3 of water, while a kilo of rice needs 1.9 m3. To achieve both food and water security in any country there exist complex linkages where factors of production, storage, food culture, nutrition, food preferences and virtual water trade interact. Taking into account the water footprint of our food habits may help to reduce water use, especially when the daily diet contains limited amounts of meat. These changes in food habits will have positive impacts not only on water conservation, but also on soil and biodiversity, since livestock and palm oil are currently the two principal productive processes that destroy rainforests and deplete tropical soils.

6.4

Soil and Desertification

Sustainable land management and the protection of soils are crucial for food, climate, and human security (Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009; Amundson et al. 2015). Nevertheless, land degradation has become a global problem which affects both low income and industrialised countries (Fairbrother 2012). Fertile soils are non-renewable resources and mostly take thousands of years to consolidate, especially in tropical regions. For this reason, the management of soils has wide-ranging consequences for human well-being in the present and for the coming generations.

6.4 Soil and Desertification

121

Fig. 6.4 Virtual water in food items. Source FAO (2010) (1000 l/kg)

Table 6.1 The water footprint. Sources Oswald/ Brauch (2009: 196)

Product

Unit

Water use in m3

Cow Sheep Fresh chickens Cereals Rice Citric fruits Palm oil Roots and tubers Milk Shoe Coffee T-shirt Steel

Head Head kg kg kg kg kg kg l Pair l Piece Ton

4000 500 6 1.5 1900 1 2 1 1 8000 1.2 4000 190,000

The conservation of soil and its deterioration are related to environmental, economic and societal dimensions. The degradation of soils is related to fertility and biodiversity loss, especially forests. Soil degradation may accelerate with lack of precipitation, drought and deforestation where agriculture, livestock and urban centres cause changes in land use. The elimination of cover-vegetation dries out the natural humidity of soil, destroys the microorganisms inside the soil and reduces the natural fertility of soils. Conversely, a coherent soil security strategy will maintain and improve the world’s soil resources to ensure continuity of quality food, fibre and fresh water, making major contributions to energy and climate sustainability and maintaining biodiversity and the overall protection of ecosystem goods and services (McBratney et al. 2014). These authors have established complex relationships between soil and water, food and energy security, ESS, biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation (Fig. 6.5).

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Fig. 6.5 Soil security. Source McBratney et al. (2014: 204)

Soil and water are providers of ESS and sustain food production, for plants, animals and human beings, which have been threatened by human activities, due to population growth, land use change, deforestation, urbanisation and climate change. The loss of natural soil fertility, wind and water erosion, and salinisation with compaction of soils have accelerated the process of desertification. The land and the quality of the soil have degraded, and the impact of drought has increased, triggered further by climate change and temperature rise. FAO (2016, 2017) reports worldwide that 75 billion tons of soil are eroded every year from arable lands, which represents an estimated financial loss of US $400 billion per year. Land use change is the driver of soil erosion by wind and water (Table 6.2), and inadequate agricultural and livestock management reduces the natural fertility of soil. Steep and high mountains without forest cover are highly exposed to both water and wind erosion. Table 6.2 also indicates that the Andean region in South America (the Andes) suffers most from extreme water and wind

6.4 Soil and Desertification

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Table 6.2 Severity of water erosion by continent (per cent of surface area). Source Borrelli et al. (2013: 4) Continent

Light (1–2)

Moderate (3)

High (4)

Extreme (5–7)

Africa Asia Europe North America South America Oceania

80.3 80.6 94.5 87.7 81.9 96.2

6.0 4.9 2.1 3.7 4.6 1.7

6.0 6.9 1.7 4.3 5.2 1.2

7.7 7.6 1.6 4.3 8.3 0.8

erosion, followed by Africa and Asia, while Oceania and Europe have the lowest levels of water erosion. Borrelli et al. (2013) asserted that the expansion of cropland and the deforestation of natural forest are key causes of soil degradation. “Cropland covers about 11% of the studied land in 2001 and 11.2 percent in 2012…is responsible for 49.7 and 50.5% of the total predicted soil erosion…The average soil erosion in croplands is more than four times higher” (Borrelli et al. 2013: 4) than the overall erosion and 77 times higher than in forests and seven times more than in other natural vegetation. Therefore soil erosion is human-induced, and better land management and, especially, the conservation of natural forest areas can avoid further destruction of soils. To conserve fragile soils better, improve agriculture and food production for a growing population, and restore eroded lands, the FAO (2010) promoted a paradigm shift from the ‘green revolution’ approach, with its high-impact agrochemicals and heavy machinery, towards sustainable crop production with an intensification of natural fertility through an ecosystem approach. By preserving the environment through ecosystem services and management, food production is now mostly produced in orchards or small plots of land. Via Campesina (1996, 2002, 2005, 2016) promoted food sovereignty among its members, and the FAO (2013) endorsed this paradigm with its approach to climate-smart agriculture, especially when global data indicated that industrial agriculture is not producing food, but biofuel and animal feed (IPCC 2014a). Therefore, sustainable soil management is directly related to the conservation and recovery of forests and natural areas to avoid further destruction of a non-renewable natural resource.

6.5

Biodiversity Loss

Biodiversity has four essential elements: genetic diversity, ecosystem diversity, species diversity and molecular diversity. Biodiversity loss is estimated to be up to a thousand times greater than the natural extinction rate (Ceballos et al. 2015) and includes the extinction of species (plants, animals) and the regional and local reduction of ecosystems and habitats. Loss of biodiversity reduces the natural habitat

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of flora and fauna. Ceballos et al. (2015) considered this loss the most serious aspect of the environmental crisis because humans are limiting crucial ESS, such as crop pollination and water and air purification. Major pressures on the natural system are land use change and habitat loss with biotic stresses on flora and fauna. Unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, land use change from forest to agriculture, opencast mining and pollution with chemicals, together with an excessive nutrient load, have polluted water, air and soils. Unsustainable fishing methods and hunting, armed conflicts, urbanisation and the expansion of agricultural land are additional factors in biodiversity loss. The invasion of alien species, which compete efficiently with indigenous species, impacts the dynamisms of ecosystems further, while climate change, heat stress, drought and flash floods place additional strains on biodiversity. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (2018) has systematised about 1.8 million species: 1.3 million are animals and the IUCN estimates that its sample includes between 88 and 100% of known species of mammals, birds, and amphibians, while the data on vertebrates (current and fossil) are the most reliable. In the present era, humans are the greatest threat to biodiversity, but humankind is also the most affected by its own destructive activities. In 2016, forests covered about 29.7 million hectares and about 51% of natural forests have been lost (World Resource Institute 2016). Table 6.3 assesses the total forest cover, including new plantations. Africa has lost 75 million hectares during the last two decades, Asia has increased its vegetal cover with oil palm plantations, and Europe has reforested with wood plantations. North and Central America have almost maintained their forests, while South America has lost 83 million hectares and Oceania 8 million hectares. Globally, the planet has lost 135 million hectares of natural habitat. Fires are the most common cause of deforestation. Fires rarely occur naturally in tropical rainforests, especially in the Amazon and Indonesia, where land use change are the key drivers of deforestation. Humans generally use fire to clear existing forests. Secondary forests (plantations) or degraded regions are easier prey for wildfire, while climate change, drought and higher temperatures are increasing the risks of extensive fires.

Table 6.3 World forest cover 1990–2010. Source FAO (2010)

Region

1990

2000

2010

Africa Asia Europe North and Central America South America Oceania World

749 576 989 708 946 199 4168

709 570 998 705 904 198 4085

674 593 1005 705 864 191 4033

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Without any doubt trees are not forests and forests are not the same in the north and in the tropics. Biodiversity loss in the tropical forests of developing countries cannot be compensated for by reforestation in Europe or the US. Protection of natural habitat requires more than prohibition of logging. With a reduction in the demand for tropical wood, paper and other wood products, it is possible to act proactively to conserve and raise awareness of the intrinsic and explicit value of all forests, especially tropical rain and dry forests, in maintaining the ESS.

6.6

Ecosystem Services and Human Well-Being

Drastic changes in the structure of biodiversity, ecosystem loss and its effects on ESS also represent growing threats to human health. Ecosystem services are crucial and regulate multiple processes, including climate change. Its biotic and abiotic land and marine ecosystems regulate multiple GHG and the ocean still absorbs most of the CO2 emissions (IPCC 2013). It is also the ocean that regulates the temperature and improves human health: during the day it cools the atmosphere and during the night it warms up coastal areas. Coral reefs and mangroves provide additional support. They protect coastal areas from storm surges and hurricane-strong winds, thereby acting as buffer zones against natural hazards, and even tides and coastal erosion. Wetlands, with their trees, root mats, grasses and mangroves, retain large amounts of fresh water, snowmelt and flash floods and protect coastal shorelines from tidal erosion and currents. A significant amount of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in Houston in 2017 resulted from the invasion of coastal wetlands by real estate activities. Similar impacts occurred with Hurricane Wilma in Cancun, where 30,000 hotel rooms had been constructed on a sandy barrier. During Hurricane Wilma (2005) this barrier opened and let the salty water flow into the coastal lagoons. This natural phenomenon generally improves the productivity of fishery and aquaculture in these brackish waters. Finally, these special ecosystems also treat waste by breaking down organic components through microbial communities that filter water. Indeed, the dilution of large amounts of water also reduces the toxicity and diseases in seafood. Land and sea provide multiple food items and also medicinal plants. Wild and cultivated meat, seafood, fish and plants, fresh water, fibre, fuel, together with biochemical and genetic resources, are gifts from nature. Fresh water runs through rivers, lakes and reservoirs, while rainwater infiltrates aquifers for storage to mitigate droughts and lack of precipitation. Genetics and biology use multiple animals and plants for breeding and technological advances; e.g. the construction of fibre optics technology is based on the property of sponges, and high-speed trains were inspired by the anatomy of sea birds. ESS also support humankind and its activities. The nutrient cycle and the transformation through photosynthesis of carbon dioxide into oxygen is still a

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crucial process for mitigating GHG emissions. Different nutrient cycles move nutrients through an ecosystem for biotic and abiotic processes. Carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus are also absorbed by plants, animals and fish and give support to human health when ingested. The ocean, in particular, is the greatest pool of nutrients which are recycled through the life cycle of organisms. Composting organic waste facilitates the recovery of soils and the production of healthy food items. Multiple ecosystems, such as coral reefs, mangroves and rainforests, also serve as habitats for many other species. For a long time, humans used caves and trees as habitats and shelter. The immaterial world of humans is related to cultural services for promoting aesthetic, cognitive, spiritual and recreational activities. Water environments give crucial inspiration for art, music, architecture and handicrafts, and the water movement in rivers, waves and waterfalls relaxes stressed people. Ecotourism is an additional cultural service with multiple expressions (surfing, swimming, snorkelling, diving, birdwatching, mountain-biking, etc.). Taking all the four functions of ESS together, multiple support services simultaneously regulate processes naturally, provide necessities and produce cultural services. It is only recently, with the diminution of the pollination process, that people started to be aware of the ESS and the marvellous interconnected functioning of all these biotic and abiotic processes. Without any doubt, most of the ESS have been seriously affected by water, soil and air pollution, loss of biodiversity and habitat. Therefore, it is urgent to find ways to live in harmony with this biodiverse environment and its services.

6.7

6.7.1

Alternative Knowledge, Wisdom and Behaviour for Integrated Environment: Ecosystem-Based Adaptation (EbA) Wisdom and Science for Changes in Human Behaviour

Once humans have understood the complexity of ESS and the benefits they have provided to plants and animals for millions of years and later also to people, a change in our mentality may occur. We are only one small part of this complex biodiversity interaction, and this means that we are not the owners, or the sole users. Over thousands of years, indigenous people, women and peasants have developed specialised knowledge to improve productive processes, irrigate fields during the dry season and obtain water from the ground, and it is only during the last five decades that the equilibrium between nature and humankind is getting lost. Crutzen (2002) understood this dramatic shift as a new global era in which the history of the planet is no longer transformed by geology – the Holocene – but by humankind – the Anthropocene. The massive use of fossil energy and the pollution of soil, water

6.7 Alternative Knowledge, Wisdom and Behaviour …

127

and air are also taking humankind to its limits of survival. The human-induced deterioration of biodiversity and the loss of ESS mean we are both our own victimisers and the victims of an irrational behaviour that destroys our natural means of sustenance. The millions of premature deaths, chronic illnesses and widespread suffering, and also the growing inequality between the Global North and the Global South, and between social classes within each nation and region testify to these irrational and self-destructive behaviours. Confronted with these threats to survival, multiple changes are required and multiple forces exist to deal with the self-created disasters in a rational way. Indigenous people continue to provide multiple ESS to urban areas without any payment, but the urban inhabitants have not yet become conscious of this. With traditional wisdom, these autochthonous cultures have produced their livelihoods by caring about the fragility of soils and the changing conditions of precipitation and temperature. Their varieties of seeds have allowed them to survive for thousands of years and to adapt to climate variability. The other social group able to promote changes is women. They not only produce more than half of the food globally, but also care for their families and communities. Changes in the environment and in social relations have given women an increasingly protagonistic role in promoting gender-differentiated outcomes. Instead of capital accumulation and power concentration, a sustainable future must be based on actions orientated towards equality and equity. Therefore, women need to gain positions as agents of change to collaborate with men. Without doubt, this gender perspective will shape strategies and promote alternative socio-economic outcomes in which the survival of humankind and nature is taken into account. Multiple experiences mean that different organisations use different terms for their strategies, but all take into account sustainability, equity and equality: the ‘economy of solidarity’ (Richard 2018); ‘gift economy’ (Vaughan 1997, 2004); ‘Earth Charter’ (Verhagen 2007); ‘food sovereignty’ (Via Campesina 2016); ‘climate-smart agriculture (FAO 2013), etc. People who are confronted with stronger and more frequent extreme events (IPCC 2012) have also experimented with new ways to reduce their social and environmental vulnerability and improve their adaptation and resilience to deal better with unknown future threats.

6.7.2

Ecosystem-Based Adaptation

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is another upcoming strategy to deal better with more adverse conditions at local level and mitigate the impacts of climate change (Rubio Scarano 2017). From the 1994 Rio Earth Summit onwards, the Convention on Biological Diversity defined EbA as “the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change”. As it is still a top-down approach, the international organisations of the UN have promoted the use of “sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems, as

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part of an overall adaptation strategy that takes into account the multiple social, economic and cultural co-benefits for local communities” (CBD 2009). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2000) aimed to overcome the high level of poverty and marginality and achieve greater equity within 15 years, but environmental factors were not put at the centre of actions. Thus, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015) agreed at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) recognised the potential for a better environment. Therefore, EbA focuses on the restoration of ecosystems and the involvement of women as keystones for improving or at least maintaining the quality of life in communities exposed to the impacts of climate change. The restoration of ecosystems will provide the community with the necessary services for survival. As in the past, governmental efforts and community work should be able to provide food and water, increase the protection from extreme events and retain the water from flash floods and for irrigation. In this sense, EbA combines both climate change mitigation by reforestation and water harvesting and adaptation to climate change impacts. This new approach of EbA links expertise from universities and government organisations with the wisdom and experience of local residents to adapt global solutions and develop ad hoc answers to specific local problems. This approach also understands that existing social and economic gains must be maintained, but only within the limits of economic and social sustainability. There is no possible future without a healthy planet. As known, the impacts of climate change are not equally distributed and most of the negative outcomes are threatening the Global South, where GHG emissions are low and often basic needs are not satisfied. These global differences create an ethical dilemma, where climate change impacts are produced in nations where the impacts are lower, while the nations which are almost carbon-neutral suffer from extreme events (IPCC 2012), destruction of livelihood, environmental-induced migration (Oswald Spring et al. 2014) and often the loss of precarious livelihoods and well-being. As shown in Fig. 6.5, WWF (2012) proposed an alternative, but did not take up this ethical dilemma. The graph shows on one hand the basic necessities, such as healthy food, clean water, air and energy, within a sustainability approach at local level; on the other, from a global planetary perspective, there must be crucial changes to preserve the natural capital. We must use better methods, e.g. without carbon or material footprints, and consume more wisely. Financial investments have great responsibility in this transition process. They should promote sustainable infrastructure with resource governance, whereby the needs of people who currently lack access to basic necessities are satisfied. People generating excessive levels of waste must drastically change their consumerism through new habits. How to achieve this degrowth3 (Mastini 2017) among a consumerist society? This is probably the most difficult change. However the rise in chronic diseases may force

3

The degrowth approach is a critic of the traditional idea of the development process that is based on infinite economic growth.

6.7 Alternative Knowledge, Wisdom and Behaviour …

129

Fig. 6.6 One planet perspective. Source WWF (2012: 32)

numerous people and entire social groups to reduce their consumption of meat and sugar and return to a more vegetarian diet (Whitmee et al. 2015; Fig. 6.6). Carbon footprint has very seriously affected the climate of the planet. The systematic measurement of CO2 at Mauna Loa by NOAA (2018) indicates that the Climate Agreement in Paris of limiting the increase of CO2 to 450 ppm in order to reduce global temperature rise to pre-industrial levels is almost impossible to achieve globally. In recent years CO2 emissions have increased substantially at Mauna Loa and in June 2018 CO2 emissions of 411.25 ppm were measured. The yearly rise in 2015 was 3.00 ppm, in 2016 2.98 ppm and in 2017 1.95 ppm, while the level of CO2 emissions in 1960 was 310 ppm and over the course of 57 years increased by 101.25 ppm. GHG must therefore be drastically cut down to avoid global warming. The hurricane season in 2017 brought disasters and costs comparable only to those of 2005, but with more deaths, in the US and especially in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands.

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Besides the carbon footprint, there are other primary threats to the survival of Planet Earth, such as the previously mentioned over-exploitation of water, phosphorous, minerals, the change and degradation of the habitat, loss of biodiversity and ESS, the loss of the habitat for wild plants, animals and humans, climate change, water, air and soil pollution, the emergence of unknown diseases and the aggravation of chronic illnesses (diabetes, strokes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer). Fortunately, there are multiple ways to overcome the present disaster and promote renewable energies, integrated water resource management, sustainable and vegetarian food culture, and disaster risk reduction and management. SDG, climate-smart agriculture and food sovereignty are some of the possible ways towards this urgent sustainability transition (Brauch et al. 2016). There is a final theme that must be discussed in this chapter. Conflicts over scarce resources are frequent, especially in regions with high climate impact and low governance structure. Sustainable conflict resolution with nonviolent (ahimsa) practices (Chap. 4), engendered-sustainable peace and security efforts (Chap. 12) and hydrodiplomacy (see Chap. 7) interrelate peace and sustainability withhuman, gender and environmental security, a HUGE security (Chap. 11). All these mentioned studies also indicate that our planet and humans are connected and interrelated. Therefore, we must collectively find solutions for safeguarding our present and future, but we must also take into account the ethical dilemma of people living in extreme poverty, who are more strongly impacted. There exist multiple ways to live in harmony with other humans and with nature, and EbA is one way. We have only one sole planet with all the possibility and resources for live in dignity, but not in excess. There is no other habitable planet within reach, therefore let us collaborate to keep our planet safe, healthy and biodiverse by reducing our consumerism to reasonable levels and promoting solidarity with those who have less and are highly affected by climate change.

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Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring (2009). Securitizing the Ground; Grounding Security, Bonn, UNCCD, Government of Spain. CBD (2009). Connecting Biodiversity and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Report of the Second Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Biodiversity and Climate Change, Montreal, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ceballos, Gerardo, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anthoy D. Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert M. Pringle, Todd M. Palmer (2015). “Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction”. Science Advances, Vol. 1, No. 5, http://advances.sciencemag.org/ content/1/5/e1400253.full. Crutzen, Paul J. (2002). Geology of Mankind, Nature, Vol. 415, No. 6867, p. 23. Daskin, Joshua H., Robert M. Pringle (2018). “Warfare and wildlife declines in Africa’s protected areas”, Nature, Vol. 553, pp. 328-–332. EPA (2015). Ground Water Contamination, https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-08/ documents/mgwc-gwc1.pdf. Fairbrother, Maclcolm (2012). “Rich People, Poor People, and Environmental Concern: Evidence across Nations and Time”, European Sociological Review, Vol. 29, No. 5 (July), pp. 910–922. FAO (2010). World Forest Cover, Rome, FAO. FAO (2016). Status of World’s Soil Resources, Rome, FAO. FAO (2017). GSP. Global Soil Partnership Endorses Guidelines on Sustainable Soil Management http://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/resources/highlights/detail/en/c/416516/. FAO (2018). “Ecosystem Services & Biodiversity (ESB)”, http://www.fao.org/ecosystemservices-biodiversity/valuation/en/. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organi of the UN] (2010). Sustainable Crop Production Intensification through an Ecosystem Approach and an Enabling Environment: Capturing Efficiency through Ecosystem Services and Management, Rome, FAO. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] (2013). Climate smart agriculture. Sourcebook http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3325e.pdf. Górriz-Mifsud, Elena, Luis Olza Donazar, EduardoMontero Eseverri, ValentinoMarini Govigli (2017). “The challenges of coordinating forest owners for joint management”, Forest Policy and Economics, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934117301752. Gorriz-Misfud, Elena, L. Secco, E. Pisani (2016). “Exploring the interlinkages between governance and social capital: A dynamic model for forestry”. Forest Policy and Economics, Vol. 582. Live Science (2015). “Map of World’s Groundwater Shows Planet’s ‘Hidden’ Reserves, https:// www.livescience.com/52965-groundwater-resources-map.html. Llamas, R., W. Back, J. Margat (1992). “Groundwater use: Equilibrium between social benefits and potential environmental costs”, Hydrogeol. J., Vol. 1, No 2, pp. 3–14. Lovelock, J. (2003). “The living Earth”. Nature, Vol. 426, No. 6968, pp. 769–770. Lovelock, J., Lynn Margulis (1973). “Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: The Gaia hypothesis”, Tellus, Vol. 26, pp. 2–10. MA [Millennium Ecosystem Assessment] (2005). Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: Desertification Synthesis, Washington, D.C., Island Press. Mastini, Riccardo (2017). “Degrowth: The Case for a New Economic Paradigm”, Open Democracy, https://www.opendemocracy.net/riccardo-mastini/degrowth-case-for-constructingnew-economic-paradigm. McBratney, Alex, Damian Field, Andrea Koch (2014). “The Dimension of Soil Security”, Geoderma, Vol. 213, pp. 203–213. MDG (2000). Millennium Development Goals, New York, UN. NOAA (2018). “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ full.html. Naess, Arne (1989). Deep Ecology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Noss, R. F., A. Y. Carpenter (1994). Saving Nature’s Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity, Washington, Island Press.

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Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch (2009). “Securitising Water”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.) Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 177–205. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald, Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Fátima Flores Palacios, Maribel Ríos Everardo, Hans Günter Brauch, Teresita Ruiz Pantoja, Carlos Lemus Ramírez, Ariana Estrada Villanueva, M. Mónica Cruz Rivera (2014). Vulnerabilidad Social y Género entre Migrantes Ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-DGAPA-UNAM. Reddit (2016). “Percentage of population with access to clean water by country” https:// www.google.com.mx/search?rlz=1C1GYPO_enMX785MX785&biw=1536&bih=710&tbm= isch&sa=1&ei=V5IhW5muM46gtQXRzIe4DA&q=+Maps+with+clean+water%2F+country& oq=+Maps+with+clean+water%2F+country&gs_l=img.3...25887.38808.0.39187.15.15.0.0.0.0. 98.1342.15.15.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.0.0....0.d8PPJJu31dM#imgrc=NZacqA78zgloyM:. Richards, Howard (2018). “Solidarity Economy: A Key to Justice, Peace, and Sustainability”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald (Eds.), Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin America. 40 Years of the Latin American Council of Peace Research (CLAIP), Cham, Springer, pp. 309–320. Richey, A. S., B. F. Thomas, M.-H. Lo, J. S. Famiglietti, S. Swenson, M. Rodell (2015a). “Uncertainty in global groundwater storage estimates in a Total Groundwater Stress framework”, Water Resources Research, Vol. 51, No. 7 (July), pp. 5198–5216. Richey, A.S., B.F. Thomas, M. Lo, J.T. Reager, J.S. Famiglietti, K. Voss, S. Swenson, M. Rodell (2015b). “Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE”, Water Resources Research, Vol. 51, No. 7 (July), pp. 5217–5238. Rubio Scarano, Fabio (2017). “Ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change: concept, scalability and a role for conservation science”, Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 56–73. SDG (2015). Sustainable Development Goals, New York, UN. Sweezey, C. (1999). “The lifespan of the complex thermal aquifer, Algerian-Tunisian Sahara”, Journal of African Earth Sciences, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 751–756. Tujchneider, O., M. Perez, M. Paris, M. D’Elia (2007). “The Guarani aquifer system: State-of-the-art in Argentina”, in L. Chery, G. de Marsily (Eds.), Aquifer System Management: Darcy’s Legacy in a World of Impending Water Shortage, Leiden, Taylor and Francis, pp. 253–268. Vaughan, Genevieve (1997). For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Austin, Plain View Press. Vaughan, Genevieve (2004). The Gift; Il Dono, Rome, Meltemi, University of Bari, New Series 8. Verhagen, Frans V. (2007). “Humankind and Consumption of Renewable and Non-Renewable Resources: Limits of Growth as a Challenge or Unlimited Growth as a Solution?”, International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems, Vol. 39, Chapter 9, Oxford, UNESCO-EOLSS. Vía Campesina (1996). Food Sovereignty. A Future without Hunger, Rome, FAO. Via Campesina (2002). “Food sovereignty”, Document distributed during the World Food Summit + 5, Rome, Via Campesina. Vía Campesina (2005). “Agreement on Gender in Via Campesina”, Sao Paolo, MST. Via Campesina (2016). “La Via Campesina, Building an International Movement for Food and Seed Sovereignty” https://foodfirst.org/la-via-campesina-building-an-international-movementfor-food-and-seed-sovereignty/. Wada, Y., L. Heinrich (2013). “Assessment of transboundary aquifers of the world-vulnerability arising from human water use”, Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 8, No 2, p. 24003. Wallin, B., C. Gaye, L. Gourcy, P. Aggarwal (2005). “Isotope methods for management of shared aquifers in northern Africa”, Ground Water, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 744–749. WB [World Bank] (2017). “Water”, http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/water. Whitmee, Sarah, Andy Haines, Chris Beyrer, Frederick Boltz, Anthony G Capon, Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, Alex Ezeh, Howard Frumkin, Peng Gong, Peter Head, Richard Horton, Georgina M Mace, Robert Marten, Samuel S Myers, Sania Nishtar, Steven A Osofsky,

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Subhrendu K Pattanayak, Montira J Pongsiri, Cristina Romanelli, Agnes Soucat, Jeanette Vega, Derek Yach (2015). “Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health”, The Lancet, Vol. 386, pp. 1973–2028. WHO (2017a). Inheriting a Sustainable World: Atlas on Children’s Health and the Environment, Geneva, WHO. WHO (2017b). “Air Pollution”, http://www.who.int/airpollution/en/. World Resources Institute (2015). “Increasing Water Stress by 2040”, http://ow.ly/RiWop. World Resources Institute (2016). “Global Tree Cover loss rose 51 Percent in 2016, http://www. wri.org/blog/2017/10/global-tree-cover-loss-rose-51-percent-2016. WWF (2012). WWF’s One Planet Perspective, Washington, WWF.

Chapter 7

Water Conflicts, Megalopolises and Hydrodiplomacy

7.1

Introduction

During the last few decades, scientific and popular literature about internal and international water conflicts has increased (Westing 2013a, b; Gleick 2004; Homer-Dixon 1999, 2000), and international organisations (UNESCO 2016; UNESCO-IHP 2001; UNESCO-WWAP 2012; WB 2012; IUCN: Dore et al. 2012) have also developed different tools to prevent and to negotiate in these conflicts.1 The crisis of urban fresh water in 2018 in Cape Town is a stark warning to many other megacities in drylands in the Global South. The WB (2012) noted that the high annual growth rate of urban migration in Sub-Saharan Africa (6%) may increase urban population from 40 to 45% between 2015 and 2025. This urban growth also implies a steep increase in the demand for a water supply and in wastewater and will require considerable investments in drinking water facilities, sewage plants and recycling water in agriculture. The same consideration holds true when considering the relationship of fresh water to international conflict, negotiation and cooperation. The Event Database of the UN-WWAP (2009) included 263 current international basins and two historical basins where population, climate and water availability at basin level allowed correlations between these variables and the event data to be established. UN-WWAP (2009) hoped with this methodology to predict and avoid some of the potential conflicts and overcome the critics of these types of data management from the past due to lack of structural relations that could cause conflicts and freshwater scarcities (Hopple et al. 1984). Therefore, this chapter first explore the resource conflicts and specific water conflicts. The chapter reviews the concept of the megalopolis and the potential of

This text was first presented in Spanish by the author to a meeting on ‘Conflicts in megacities’ at the Chamber of Deputees in Mexico City in 2017 and later translated by the author into English and language edited by Dr. Vanessa Greatorex.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_7

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hydrodiplomacy for resource conflict management. The second part links the availability of natural resources to conflicts (Sect. 7.2). Especially, this subchapter explores upcoming water conflicts (Sect. 7.2.1) related to mining (Sect. 7.2.2) and to the construction of development projects, such as dams, real estate and tourism (Sect. 7.2.3). Confronted with these water conflicts, the author proposes the concept of hydrodiplomacy (Sect. 7.3) to resolve upcoming or past confrontations over water. A case study with this concept analyses a negotiation process concerning the 3,145 km border in the desert between the US and Mexico, where the weaker countries are located downstream of the Colorado River and the Rio Grande. The chapter finishes with some conclusions about the potential for peaceful negotiations of water conflicts (Sect. 7.4).

7.1.1

Water Conflicts

Conflicts are understood, in social sciences, to occur when two or more actors want to control the same natural or social resource, especially the scarce ones. Conflicts can be started by individuals, social groups, public authorities or States. Kriesberg (1996: 22) defines conflict as activities “that permeate and penetrate all aspects of human interaction and social structures”. Often they relate to confrontations such as wars, revolutions, strikes or uprisings. The Cambridge Dictionary2 speaks about an “active disagreement between people with opposing opinions or principles … fighting between two or more groups of people or countries”. No doubt, most of the multiple wars that have been conducted between states or within states are directly related to the access to natural resources which are considered economically vital, especially water. Often these resources are becoming increasingly rarer or are getting seriously contaminated (Scheffran et al. 2012). In turn, Galtung (1967) insisted that conflicts arise in everyday life, thus conflicts are opportunities for change. This means that situations, behaviours, accesses or pollution of natural resources should be modified using peaceful tools that avoid any violence.

7.1.2

Megalopolis

A megalopolis or super city is generally a region adjacent to a metropolitan area which has merged into a continuous urban area. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a “very large, heavily populated city or urban complex”.3 While in the past megacities have developed in the industrialised world, such as Tokyo-Yokohama, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, New York, Seoul-Incheon, London, Paris, Los Angeles and Moscow, in the present, rural-urban migration has produced megacities and slum

2

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/conflict. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/megalopolis.

3

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developments in developing countries: Jakarta, Delhi, Manila, Shanghai, Karachi, Beijing, Guangzhou-Foshan, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Mumbai, Dhaka, Cairo, Bangkok, Kolkata (in order of population growth in 2018). The UNSTAT estimates that the fast-expanding cities in the future will be in the Global South, especially Lagos, Dhaka, Shenzhen, Karachi, Delhi, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Manila, Mumbai, Istanbul and Cairo. Megacities have become synonymous with economic growth, services, job opportunities, well-being and economic progress. But the chaotic traffic, low velocity of cars, high air pollution and greater public insecurity are changing the paradigm towards the term concept of smart cities, where Shanghai, Nairobi and Mexico City are trying to transform their metropolitan areas into healthier future cities. The digital age and artificial intelligence will drastically transform all these megalopolises, which are traditionally based on a combination of manufacturing, commerce, retail, professional services and public services. Modern development will not depend on these traditional jobs, and the question is what will happens to all these young rural-urban migrants, settled in suburban slums around the southern megacities? On the other hand, the size of a megacity allows the State to rationalise multiple services and reduce the cost of drinking water, sewage, supply of food and other goods, etc. The retail service in particular will undergo fundamental changes in the future, where malls which attracted people towards megacities are replaced by e-commerce and global competition. Forbes4 estimated in 2017 that in China, where e-commerce is taking over from traditional shopping, one third of all the malls will shut down in 2020. Another effect is job creation, where outsourcing has changed the existing work possibilities in the Global North and the Global South. Together with artificial intelligence, especially in the medical sector, thousands of specialists across the countries will build on global diagnosis platforms,5 which will allow people with limited access to public health to improve their diagnosis and treatments. However, drastic changes in jobs, service and commercial conditions may also create multiple conflicts and leave millions of young people without any opportunity to find a decent workplace or a potential livelihood.

7.1.3

Hydrodiplomacy

New mechanisms of conflict negotiation will be necessary to avoid greater confrontation and violence. Multiple researchers have warned that severe water scarcity and water conflicts between and within regions and countries are growing (Petersen-Perlmana et al. 2017; Detges et al. 2017). Confronted with this potential outcome, Oswald Spring (2005, 2006, 2007) proposed the use of hydrodiplomacy

4

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/10/10/how-chinas-shopping-malls-survive-andthrive-in-the-e-commerce-age/#61eba4181d43. 5 https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/medicine/medical-informatics-platform/.

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to negotiate scarce and polluted water resources among transborder watersheds and aquifers as well. The World Water Council (WWC 2010: 7) recognised these conflicts in the water sector and proposed a ‘true hydro diplomacy’: “Political decision makers need to demonstrate a genuine will to include water on the highest level. The Council has therefore placed much focus on expressing the Voice of Water and doing what has come to be known as ‘International hydro-diplomacy’. The water cause will only make progress as long as it is debated peacefully and objectively.” Pohl from Adelphi (2014: 2) took up the call for transboundary water conflicts: “Water issues in these basins often involve volatile political dynamics. In the context of limited institutionalisation of political and regional processes, water disputes can contribute to or even trigger conflict, whether at the local or transboundary level. Eliasson (2015), the UN Deputy Chief, also called for peaceful management of these conflictive situations and promoted hydrodiplomacy, especially as the world is facing growing water shortages. In the cases where basin relationships are unstable, hydro-diplomacy “may be able to build on technical collaboration to facilitate stability and peace. Such collaboration can and should simultaneously be used to foster regional integration by supporting the spill-over of cooperative practices into other sectors, such that water may become the nucleus of more formal integration via legal rules and shared institutions”.

7.2

Conflicts Over Natural Resources

Demographic changes, urbanisation, increasing and polluting consumption, environmental degradation and climate change, as the most important global trends, are placing significant pressures on the availability of natural resources, such as land, water, clean air and ecosystems. The present trend is indicating the potentially unsustainable management of these resources, their pollution and therefore a faster scarcity. UNEP (2009) estimates that during the last 60 years about 40% of the conflicts were related to scarce or polluted natural resources. “From Kosovo to Afghanistan, Sudan and the Gaza Strip, UNEP has found that armed conflict causes significant harm to the environment and the communities that depend on natural resources. Direct and indirect environmental damage, coupled with the collapse of institutions, lead to environmental risks that can threaten people’s health, livelihoods and security, and ultimately undermine post-conflict peacebuilding” (UNEP 2009: 4). Ban Ki-moon further stated that “[W]e stress the critical importance of protecting the environment in times of armed conflict and restoring the good governance of natural resources during post-conflict reconstruction. We also recognise the important role that natural resources play in supporting the livelihoods and resilience of all members of society, especially women, and the implications of sustainable natural resource management for conflict prevention and peace.”

7.2 Conflicts Over Natural Resources

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The UN proposed a new legal instrument that grants protection for critical natural resources and protected areas during internal or international armed conflict. The UNEP (2009) insisted especially on the protection of watersheds, groundwater, grazing lands, parks, national forests and endangered species, where they proposed to establish ‘demilitarised zones’. In these zones military operations are forbidden for all the parties involved. This report also insisted on the prohibition of biological weapons (living organisms) that infect their victims, causing incapacitation, often death and long-term environmental threats by contaminating soil, biota and water. Without any doubt, lack or serious pollution of water is one of the most crucial problems for survival of humans and nature, and water conflicts are still the most frequent among internal and international conflicts.

7.2.1

Water Conflicts

“All societies are dependent upon readily available fresh water for domestic needs, cultural practices, food production, livelihoods, power generation, industry and/or navigation. However, water resources are subject to change over space and time due to precipitation and temperature cycles, which are becoming increasingly unpredictable due to the effects of climate change. Responding to this variability, users have altered water resources through various engineering efforts, changing the availability, quantity, or quality of water resources for different users. Such alterations can potentially create conflict. Therefore, the management of shared water resources requires innovative and flexible approaches to ensure cooperation between various communities of users” (Petersen-Perlmana et al. 2017: 105). When Hillary Rodham Clinton was Secretary of State, she stated that “…water represents one of the great diplomatic and development opportunities of our time. It’s not every day you find an issue where effective diplomacy and development will allow you to save millions of lives, feed the hungry, empower women, advance our national security interests, protect the environment, and demonstrate to billions of people that the United States cares, cares about you and your welfare. Water is that issue…”6 In 2012 the United States National Intelligence Council issued an Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded that “…during the next 10 years, many countries important to the United States will experience water problems – shortages, poor water quality, or floods – that will risk instability and state failure, increase regional tensions, and distract them from working with the United States on important US policy objectives.” Thus water might lead to more international conflicts with increasing frequency (Westing 1986; Elliott 1991; Gleick 2004; Homer-Dixon 1999; Allan 2002a, b; Empinotti et al. 2014).

6

Speech of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, 22 March 2010, at the National Geographic building in Washington DC.

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In particular, the past few decades have seen an increase in geopolitical, international relations, and environmental security literature on water’s role in international conflict (Yoffe/Larson 2001; Yoffe et al. 2003; Zeitoun et al. 2011; Martínez et al. 2017; WWC 2010). OECD (2017) elaborated a water risk map in 148 countries, where the United States, China and India, the most populated and economically leading countries, are highly exposed to water risks. Further, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Algeria and Australia have a water risk of up to 49%, while most of the drylands in North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, the Near East and most of Europe have an estimated risk of between 30 and 39%. Only the Scandinavian countries are considered to have a low level of water risk (Fig. 7.1). OECD considers that only countries with a less than 30% risk may not suffer water conflicts. The organisation refers to most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, part of Europe, Russia, Japan and South-East Asia, with the exception of the former mentioned. However, precipitation and monsoon conditions may alter with the aggravation of climate change (Table 7.1), including climate variability, water shortage or excess, and lack of water quality. These risks may increase again in the three

Fig. 7.1 Water risks in 148 countries. Source OECD (2017: 34)

Table 7.1 Water risks. Source OECD (2017: 32)

Future Current Total

Risk of shortages

Risk of excessive water

Risk of climate variability

Water quality risks

Total

59 28 87

20 3 23

4 1 5

3 0 3

86 32 118

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141

leading countries (USA, China and India). Therefore, not only environment, ecosystem services and biodiversity are threatened by the alteration of the rain patterns (ecological flow), but also the productive processes, livelihoods and the whole economy may be confronted with multiple, often unknown risks related to water scarcity and pollution. From now on, all these risks require preventive action, especially in the 87 countries with present and future water stress, which is often also related to lack of quality in water, high pollution and water-borne illnesses. In this complex environmental-political arena, Zeitoun and Warner (2006) developed the concept of hydro-hegemony as a framework for analysing transboundary water conflicts. With growing water scarcity and uncertainty in the monsoon, an increasing number of countries are extracting groundwater, with limited knowledge of or increasing uncertainty about the global storage and recharge capacity of these aquifers (Richey et al. 2015). They resolve problems for the moment, but could leave the coming generation serious problems of water scarcity even for drinking and survival.

7.2.2

Mining

An additional factor in water pollution and conflict potential is mining activities. These extractive actions also impact on land use and often produce conflicts between large-scale mines and community groups, especially indigenous communities. According to Arach (2018: 101), violence is intrinsic to extractive activities, which, he says, are underpinned by an epistemic violence, “that is, the way in which scientific knowledge is used to design, legitimate and implement these undertakings”. Conflict resolution strategies for mining management are becoming increasingly challenging for governments and mining companies, which require a significant amount of area to operate, where they destroy the ecosystems and also pollute water, air and soil. Their coexistence with surrounding communities of indigenous people is complex and contradictory. These generally poor people depend largely upon the land and the ecosystem services for their survival and livelihoods, but they also defend immaterial values and sacred sides. Generally, governmental interventions are often minuscule and most of the responsibility for negotiation relies on the mining companies. In other cases, such as in Latin America (Burbano et al. 2018), the government forges alliances with mines and tries to ensure that land use conflicts are resolved through payments, jobs in the extractive sector, development projects etc. However, there are still limited examples of cases where an increase in or escalation of conflicts has been prevented, and often community consultation between the parties is manipulated through corrupt local leaders. Only when regional governments assume a leadership role in transparently coordinating the efforts of international agencies and granting the appropriate compensation packages might there be a process that mitigates the impacts of mining activities on communities and sometimes even establishes partnerships

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between mostly multinational mining companies and small-scale miners. Thus, several countries have obliged mining companies to conduct both an environmental and a social impact study to prevent upcoming conflicts and fully compensate the affected people, so that they do not lose their livelihoods. This means that community feedback must be listened carefully to avoid a permanent process with violent actions that have the potential to occur when an accident with an extractive process happens. To protect people and the environment, water and air quality must be monitored, but attention must also be paid to the health concerns of the people living within the range of potential affectation of an extractive activity. Most conflicts in Latin America are related to water scarcity and pollution by mining companies, destroying the health and livelihoods of local people and often forcing them to migrate to cities with a totally different lifestyle.

7.2.3

Development Projects: Dams, Real Estate and Tourism

Development projects also change the traditional way of life, produce social change and may increase conflicts. Similar to extractivism, the construction of dams, real estate developments and international tourism may produce social conflicts when these proposals lack sufficient and transparent consultations and insufficient economic compensation. The key problems are linked to different expectations of economic benefit, where environmental and cultural concerns are often not managed in an integrated manner and land use changes are poorly compensated. There still exist few examples of foreign investors who engage in an alliance with the local landowners, enabling both parties to profit from the development project in a long-term perspective instead of treating the existing community only as a cheap labour force or causing them to become migrants. Failure to act ethically fuels or exacerbates social conflicts and destroys a potential base of confidence and trust between the local community, the government and the private investor. Generally, the outcomes are widespread abuse, social injustice, expropriation without adequate compensation and sometimes even State crimes. There exist also conflicts between local and national authorities, where communities are manipulated through a local leader or authority who will get additional benefits or the sole compensation. Without any doubt, the purchase of land for development projects is the most common cause of conflicts between governments, private enterprises and communities. Oliver-Smith (2001) analysed voluntary and forced resettlement of people for a dam project and found nothing that would compensate socio-culturally for the loss of the former homeland. In most resettlement projects the skills of community members are not taken into account. As well as a new house, they need sufficient access to natural resources, such as agriculturally productive land, fishery areas, forestry, etc. Indigenous people are particularly damaged by resettlement processes due to their strong spiritual and cultural links with the land, the water and the sacred places on which they live.

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Finally, climate change places an additional pressure on forced resettlement, especially on communities affected by sea level rise, flooding of agricultural land by seawater or intrusion of salt water into the aquifer used for drinking. Migration forced by climate change was called “Climigration” by Bronen (2011). She asserted that “failure to recognise the signals of ecosystem changes will critically impede a community’s capacity to adapt and can lead to social and economic collapse. Government agencies will also be hampered if they are unable to identify the early ecological warning signals requiring a community to relocate. Funding will be one of the key factors which will facilitate the relocation process. The sooner a community and governmental agencies recognise that relocation must occur, the sooner funding can be diverted from disaster relief to the relocation effort. Determining which communities are most likely to encounter displacement, they will require a complex assessment of a community’s ecosystem vulnerability to climate change, as well as the vulnerability of its social, economic and political structures” (idem 2011: 2–3). During the Paris Summit at COP 22, Oliver Smith (2015) exposed that “the displaced have suffered some form of violation of their basic human and environmental rights. They have been uprooted against their will and their communities have been destroyed or made uninhabitable by social and/or ecological forces”. Specifically, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), plus further conventions and agreements, especially the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, established the basic human right to health, livelihood, decent jobs, safe water, air and food, decent housing, education, culture, equality, gender equity and non-discrimination. Therefore, violent conflicts might grow within the present model of development, but also arise due to involuntary climate change processes where disasters such as fire, landslides and sea level rise are the most common processes that oblige people to leave their homeland and their cultural background. How is it possible to deal better with conflict prevention and how to determine which natural resource is mostly involved in conflicts? Without any doubt, in mining, dams and development projects, water is the crucial factor of conflict due to scarcity, pollution and change of use from agriculture to extractivism. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a hydrodiplomacy that is able to resolve upcoming conflicts peacefully.

7.3

Hydrodiplomacy: A Peaceful Way to Water Conflict Resolution

“Natural resources – such as land, fresh water, minerals and fishing rights – are critical for the livelihoods and economic well-being of individuals and entire communities. Partly for this reason, they often become loaded with concepts of identity and ethnicity. They are also subject to rapid fluctuations in value or the interest of multinational corporations in ways that can make them highly

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contentious. In countries with weak governance or a history of conflict, resource disputes can become violent and destructive, damaging development, affecting people’s lives, and posing a significant threat to long-term peace and stability. Avoiding violent conflict requires that national governments address resource disputes more effectively, especially in states that are already fragile.” (Brown/ Keating 2015: 27). The United States National Intelligence Council (2012) estimated that water is a leverage, a weapon that could produce terrorism on infrastructure, dams, cyber-management of irrigation and flood-dams, together with pressure on local, state and national authorities. The WWC (2010) identified different situations where hydrodiplomacy may be useful. They recognised historical factors of international freshwater conflicts and past cooperation. WWC (2010) proposed using these indicators to create a framework that identifies and evaluates the risks for potential future freshwater conflict in international river basins (OECD 2017) by determining the driving forces that may cause conflicts or cooperation in water. These processes must first be analysed in collaboration with all the stakeholders involved in the process. The result must be transparently shared, then the stakeholders can develop socially agreed control mechanisms which will lead towards peaceful negotiations of the conflict, where again all phases are evaluated by different participants. To overcome the present conflicts about natural resources, especially water conflicts, better leadership and conflict management should reinforce the coordination of involved stakeholders and propose consistent actions to resolve the sources and underlying processes of the existent conflicts and establish mutual accountability. However, Cascão and Zeitoun (2010: 27) maintained that an active hegemony at the basin scale may occur over the control of transboundary flows, especially when more powerful actors are involved. Similarly, Warner (2008) claimed that it is necessary to distinguish between four scales of analysis to understand and deal with hydro-hegemonic relations, such as the national, basin, regional and global level. Often international arbiters evaluate the fulfilment of the agreed negotiation process. A model of hydrodiplomacy for internal and international water conflict management was established by Oswald Spring (2001, 2005, 2007), who proposed a nonviolent approach between the powerful upstream country, the United States, and the weaker downstream country, Mexico, to sort out an enormous water debt in drylands.

7.3.1

Hydrodiplomacy Between Mexico and the United States: A Case Study

“A 1944 agreement between the United States and Mexico stipulates the terms of water-sharing between the two countries, with water delivery obligations on each side. The Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers, as well as their major tributaries, are

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covered in the agreement. The agreement allows the United States access to tributary contributions from Mexican rivers, and no Mexican access to contributions from US tributary rivers, and therefore many view the agreement as unfair. Delayed water deliveries, and even efforts to reduce canal water leakage, have occasionally complicated broader relations but have not been a major source of stress” (United States National Intelligence Council 2012: 12). In this agreement the water allocation is revised every seven years. The Treaty fixes the amount of water given to Texas farmers by the River Concha in Mexico – an amount that is permanently re-evaluated (Sánchez-Munguía 2011). Meanwhile, Mexico gets, from the River Colorado, four times more water designated to the hyper-arid region of Baja California. The US and Mexico signed this treaty in 1944, during World War Two. It involves the United States’ fourth and fifth largest rivers, the Rio Grande, which is 3,034 km long with a basin of 607,965 km2, and the River Colorado, with a length of 2,334 km and a basin of 629,100 km2. Both rivers are used by the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas in the US and the five border states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas on the Mexican side, including the eleven border municipalities. The water was used for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes in both countries, and the natural flow irrigated the Desert of Chihuahua, one of the most biodiverse arid ecosystems in the world. Multiple river storage projects were agreed, such as the Colorado River Storage Project Act (1956), which authorised the construction of the Clen Canyon dam and the Central Arizona Project (1986). Diverse interests have competed for the primary use of the water. Currently, more than 80% of the water serves for irrigation, and multiple deviations have been established. The restoration of the Rio Grande is crucial, since it is the only river in the USA that is at risk of drying out during the next few decades. Multiple efforts have been undertaken to recuperate the swamps and the dried-out marshes. The restoration of the natural equilibrium could increase the residual humidity, restore ecosystems, sustain productive processes and improve the life quality of inhabitants. All these efforts are beneficial for both sides, where severe contamination exists from agro-chemicals, human settlements and industries. How could this river be shared in a peaceful and sustainable way when confronted with a growing demand, contamination, and climate change leading to severe water shortages affecting both sides? What can Mexico do as a developing and threshold country located downstream without political or military strength to get its traditional and natural water rights respected – rights that date back prior to the agreement of 1944 with its powerful neighbour? A similar situation applies to the indigenous population living in reserves and the historical owners of this natural resource of both countries. The history of the water sharing by both countries has been complex and always full of tensions. Big dams and other hydraulic projects severely affected the habitat and the aquatic species. In 1992, a group of US environmentalists succeeded in ensuring that the Grand Canyon was protected, requesting the users of the lower basin to take care of their own ecosystem. Due to the intervention of these ecologists and the determination of the US Supreme Court, there is hope of a major change in the

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hydro-politics of the USA. But this example also illustrates further contradictions: first an ecosystem and specifically a fish are protected before the poorer Mexicans are supplied with water. It also showed the complexity of the management of the river. Diverse legal disputes have risen over the interpretation and fulfilment of the international bilateral treaty signed in 1944 for the shared River Grande or Bravo and River Colorado between Mexico and the US. Due to desertification and drought, for a decade the river has not reached the sea during the dry season, because of multiple upstream uses of agriculture, services, industries and upstream deviations. Furthermore, the quality of water has been severely deteriorated through manifold contamination, above all by the agricultural sector. Municipalities, states, and national governments mutually blame each other for not caring about the health of the river. Over the past five decades the population on the Mexican side has increased by 10 million inhabitants. The migrants were attracted by the growth of the assembly industry (maquila) in this border region (INEGI 1990–2010). In both countries there was also a higher demand for agriculture, and rivers were overexploited due to unsustainable irrigation. Further, high pollution by agrochemical, domestic and industrial waste and waste water without treatment dried-out some affluent during the dry season. To compensate for the lack of water, aquifers in fragile drylands were used and overexploited. The ecosystems were affected, frequently leading to the destruction of the biodiversity in this very arid environment. Further, strong Niña years in 1998–1999, followed by another Niña cycle in 2000–2001,7 drastically reduced the availability of precipitation and therefore the flow of running surface water. Within these complex natural conditions, where environmental stress, combined with population growth, ecosystem deterioration, soils depletion and loss of biodiversity, had affected both countries, Mexico was unable to pay the agreed water debt. Thus, the socio-environmental conditions deteriorated and the pressure from Texan farmers increased drastically. In this highly conflictive situation a hydrodiplomatic exploration began. But there are not only conflicts on the northern border. Since the 1980s the collaboration between both countries has been consolidated. In 1983, the Agreement of Cooperation for Protection and Improvement of Environment in the Border Area was signed, resolving the sewage discharged into the river and the bay of San Diego. In the framework of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an Ecological Commission on Border Cooperation was set up, and the North American Development Bank (NADB) is financing environmental projects. Both agencies have tried to strengthen citizens’ participation, control corruption, and improve the technical capacity in Mexican municipalities. In this complex international relationship hydrodiplomacy was developed by academics from both countries. Within these various levels of geopolitical interests between the two countries, different states and municipalities, an integrated model with six points of integration

7

http://www.stormfax.com/lanina.htm.

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against geopolitical pressure, and in favour of organisation of all the stakeholders and capacity-building of key leaders, fostered the creation of an arena for negotiation. Both neighbouring countries, organised societal groups and individuals (academics, diplomats, local, state and national authorities) sat together and searched for a sustainable solution to resolve the water debt. In these critical conditions, a North American environmental NGO criticised the Texan farmers for their abuse of water for irrigation from the River Grande, where an endemic grey fish was threatened to disappear. The judge endorsed the criticism and ordered a substantial reduction in the allocation of water for irrigation. Within this political conjuncture, an alliance between academics and environmental NGOs from both countries allowed an organisational process in both countries. The goal was to develop a common strategy for sustainable management of the River Grande and care of the endemic grey fish. Within this framework, the key process was to maintain a permanent flow in the river to grant the preservation of the exceptional biodiversity of flora and fauna in the Chihuahua desert. Hydrodiplomacy simultaneously addressed geopolicy, organisation and training (Fig. 7.2). The geopolitical approach included long-term plans to deal with greater water shortages and vulnerability. Climate change and population density in urban zones have altered rainfall patterns. Both may generate more extreme climatic conditions. Given this challenge, it is urgent to establish and reinforce norms and laws to protect the existing natural systems, channel demographic growth into zones with less environmental impact, reorientate water projects towards sustainability on both sides of the border, and avoid any destruction of native forests and vegetation.

Fig. 7.2 Hydrodiplomacy for resolving water conflicts. Source The Author

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The higher complexity also affects social aspects, where opposed interests require a resolution of conflicts by training each citizen and organising social groups in alternative water management. The Native Americans in their reservations – the original owners of these resources – were demanded sustainable management of the river without dams, the recuperation of their traditional land and the protection of their native flora, fauna, and natural ecosystems. The promotion of social organisation inside Mexico helped to improve its long tradition of solidarity (Lopezllera 2003), which fosters existing networks of extensive families, compadrazgos (godfathers and godmothers), communitarian festivals, urban colonies activities and economic organisation. Linking productive organisation, commercialisation and consumption with training (point 4), integrated chains of small businesses and highly specialised productive processes with an economy of solidarity (Cadena 2003, 2009) were created. These activities facilitated a reduction in precarious informal economic activities, generated employment, provided services, and improved the quality of commodities and life conditions, not only in the border region, but, due to the remittances, also in other marginal regions of Mexico. Links between geopolitics and social organisation (point 2) could be conflictive and unpredictable, unless a bottom-up strategy involving the local society is able to develop strategies for different social and professional groups. Further training of diplomats in hydrodiplomacy is urgent for both countries and the entire world. These people should be able to negotiate non-violent and sustainable solutions between foreign governments and within a country. Another task is reducing the contradictions in geopolitical and social terms by deepening the collaboration between the three levels of government, which means including the population in the planning, execution, and maintenance of public works, according to existing territorial, environmental, economic and associated cultural conditions. An independent technical agency handled the situation involving Mexico and the United States with a methodology composed of systemic water management alternatives and funds for the needed and updating infrastructure. The investments were partially paid through service quotas and environmental services, and fresh money came from the NADB. This reduced the initial amount of investments, guaranteed the costs of maintenance and ameliorated the environmental conditions. Adopting an integral management approach for the whole river basin and its micro-basins also helped to facilitate the control, transparency and efficiency of the local budgets, guaranteeing foreign investments and satisfying the requirements for sustainable development. An independent bi-national technical agency handled projects within the framework of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) within NAFTA, to which Mexico and the US belong together with Canada. Further, the Kyoto Protocol (UNFCCC 1998), and later the Paris Agreement of 2015, may allow Mexico to receive some additional funds for the consolidation of its hydrodiplomacy. In the field of training, science and technology creative inhabitants with academic support reinforced the plans for environmental management of the region. Undoubtedly conflicts exist and may escalate in the future due to organised crime, but the social organisation was able to control Mexican corruption and promote

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honest public administrators together with environmental management that corresponded to the arid conditions. Indigenous advice and the active participation of citizens with new created norms were able to contain or slow down the impacts of climate change. These strategies also included the creation of economic opportunities that were able to reduce some of the disparity between the two countries, the higher and less developed zones and the differences between social classes. Some progressive taxes on capital, private investments and social solidarity supported this joint policy. All these activities controlled individual, short-term interests, many of which were unsustainable. Mass media, workshops and daily practices supported these economic, organisational and training processes, including the creation of a collective environmental culture for integral management of natural resources and waste. Existing tensions between highly specialised technicians and democratically elected representatives (point 6) could be reduced and an academic career for public officers, with periodic certification, was created. This led to better professional handling of the water resources, with long-term plans and qualified specialists responding to the demands of society and the elected authorities, which change every electoral period. The professional support maintained stability and continuity in the water management project. In the environmental field, the crisis helped to promote a new culture of water, the sustainable management of solid waste and a recuperation of destroyed ecosystems, threatened by desertification, where massive reforestation with native plants occurred. Some biodiversity in ecosystems is unique to this region and declared patrimony for humanity. Finally, water-extraction policies concerning aquifers have led to the overexploitation and salinisation of water and soil (Oswald Spring 1986, 2011). Therefore, productive processes, environmental protection and water saving helped to improve the fragile environment in this desert region. Figure 7.2 also systematises the levels of interaction and links between actors – e.g. the government and its agencies – with processes and specific activities, such as organising and training. Since both nations had agreed to reinforce a peaceful and sustainable development, a common agreed policy could reduce the pressure of migration and avoid future environmental migrants. The model of systemic interaction permitted the construction of a complex interaction scheme, where sovereignty among Nation-states was involved (Mead/Kaplan 2003), and where inequality between Mexico and the US in cultural, political, economic, military and organisational terms was tackled with specific advantages for Mexico in the environmental field. Both nations had signed the Treaty and additional agreements to live peacefully together. Thus conflict negotiations could be handled in such a way as to give the weaker nation an opportunity to reduce the existing inequalities. To balance the power discrepancy, Mexico was able to offer a better integrated system of environmental services that was lacking in the region on the US side. Integrated environmental management also benefited the US region and may also stabilise the joint frontier and the undocumented migration, a sensitive issue for US. Within these socio-environmental aggravated conditions, the hydrodiplomatic model searched for a peaceful solution to the water debt, which should satisfy both

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countries and all the involved stakeholders. The academics from both countries were able to quantify the contributions of all the Mexican tributaries that contributed to the ecological flow in the River Grande. Less precipitation and higher dryness exerted additional political pressure over Mexico, and President George W. Bush was further pressured by his brother, Jeff Bush, who was then the Governor of Texas (number 1). Both the federal and the state authorities insisted that Mexico must immediately pay the immense water debt of 2 billion m3 to the US, but Mexico had no water available due to the drought. The official diplomatic negotiators from Mexico were not trained in water issues and their technical tools were insufficient to deal with the complexity of the pressures from the neighbouring country. On the Mexican side, the organisation among the water stakeholders was incipient (number 3) and the sewage from the municipalities was not treated and recycled. Therefore, an integrated water management with different stakeholders took place, where the first priority was to give the inhabitants safe drinking water. It was decided that treated sewage water could be used for industrial cooling processes and agriculture. This process required a general capacitation of all stakeholders, first to reduce their water use (4) and second, to define the required quality of water. Special training allowed water resources to be optimised and the water supply to be reduced by half (5). Further capacitation of diplomats and local water managers allowed to the water quantity to be improved, despite significant population growth and greater demand for local food (6). Scientific and technological training helped to optimise the existing financial and physical resources (Eliasson 2015). In addition, the organisation of all sectors of society with a bottom-up approach promoted a new culture of water (Oswald Spring 2005) in an arid region with extreme climate conditions. The resolution of disputes through hydrodiplomatic activities (Fig. 7.2) was able to reduce the threats to Mexico’s poor urban population and their activities resulting from the violations of the Treaty demanded by Texas farmers. Both border regions have also been seriously affected by climate change in the desert of Chihuahua. Powerful farmers from Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico living upstream had deliberately retained water to satisfy their economic interests, and thus the water reaching Mexico was seriously reduced and contaminated. This could transform the border zone from a highly conflictive into a violent area, especially due to population growth on the Mexican side, partly due to migration and stagnant economic development. This has also limited the expansion of the maquila enterprises, which exploited the cheap labour force south of their border. As a positive outcome, with scientific quantifications of the whole basin of the Rio Grande, scientists from both countries agreed that Mexico had contributed from multiple sources and not only from the Concha River. During the last seven years the 2 billion m3 of debt had been paid, thanks to this integrated understanding of sustainable management of the whole river basin. Through nonviolent negotiations during water disputes, a consensus was achieved among antagonistic groups and economic demands. In geopolitical terms, the separation from global military interests (Fisher et al. 2002) improved the possibility of a win-win situation for both

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countries and the environment. Technical solutions (desalinisation of brackish and sea water), infrastructure for sewage recollection, treatment plants, and recycling facilities increased the availability and quality of the vital liquid, supporting the complex and fragile ecosystem better. However, in future the water debt must be renegotiated every seven years and new tensions may arise, because the Treaty of 1944 does not include the groundwater, nor the additional water from Mexico. Furthermore, the competition for water within each country will continue to grow on both sides of the border, creating potential new conflicts, although so far close co-operation has prevailed. However, the models of climate change impacts predict less precipitation in this border region, higher evaporation and the run-off of the river will get reduced due a hotter climate and human factors. Therefore only a hydrodiplomacy with sustainability may avoid new conflicts and grant this arid region a future with peace and cooperation between both countries. Hydrodiplomacy planned to simultaneously reduce the water demand in both countries and increase its supply for humankind. It proposed a commonly agreed integrated river basin management (IRBM; Jaspers 2003) in an arid ecosystem. It agreed to include all other natural resources between both neighbouring countries (Achiron-Frumkin/Frumkin 2018). To adapt the existing offer to its real supply (Oswald Spring 2005), aquifers (Richey et al. 2015) and surface-basin management (Hartmann et al. 2006), land and water use changes were explored, such as virtual water (Allan 1997), rainwater harvesting, recollection of sewage, treatment plants, and reuse of treated water in agriculture and industries. Neighbouring governments and different social groups proposed alternatives for economic and sustainable management of this scarce resource (Fisher et al. 2002). Both resource-management (Jaspers/Frank 2003) activities and concerns about a human, gender and environmental (a HUGE) security (see Chap. 11 in this volume) should also reinforce the negotiation process. Furthermore, the aquifers are overexploited and a severe ban on new drilling has been declared. However, illegal drilling is taking place. There are also fewer recharges of aquifers due to the complex process of climate change (Garatuza et al. 2011). The loss of natural vegetation by anthropogenic practices, such as the expansion of urban-industrial areas, population growth, deforestation, and farming, are reducing the evaporation from soil and the evapotranspiration from inexistent plants, affecting the formation of clouds and precipitation, inducing growing conditions of aridity. The conjunction of these phenomena reduces both the recharge of the joint aquifers and the availability of surface water. A larger population and bigger demands from industry and agriculture can induce citizens to start violent actions to appropriate the vital liquid. This crisis situation could oblige the authorities of both countries to intervene, and one of the extreme outcomes could be an armed conflict over the use of this scarce resource, destroying the fragile region further. The farmers of Texas, despite their unwillingness to sacrifice their cultivated land and risk their profits, must now execute the judicial decision and restore the equilibrium in the lower river basin. It may be expected that this process of

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environmental care will improve the disposal of water for ecosystems and human supply, especially on the Mexican side, where drinking water is lacking. In the medium term, this could require a renegotiation of the agricultural quotas for irrigation in Texas. Both collaboration and hydrodiplomacy can reduce the irrational exploitation of aquifers by improving irrigation (micro-aspersion, drip-irrigation, covered irrigation channels, water-saving techniques, change in cultivation cycles and crops), which could save about 40% of the water. Furthermore, changes in the water use from golf courses to agriculture, recycling treated water in agriculture and industry, reducing subsidies of water and energy for industry and farms, and raising tariffs to cover the full costs of sanitation and maintenance, may reduce water use. The creation of hydro-infrastructure has also opened a market for integral water management and environmental services. Without doubt, this hydrodiplomacy allowed urgent water problems to be resolved, improved the conservation of the ecosystem of the Chihuahua Desert, reduced the tensions between both countries and the border region and included the indigenous in the project of integrated basin management. New tensions have periodically arisen, especially when the seven-year evaluation period was approaching. There is also no guarantee that in the future the US Government will agree to include all the Mexican tributaries of the Rio Grande and only may quantify the ones providing water from the River Concha, as stipulated in the Treaty. However, the past has shown that, through negotiation, an intensive conflict situation could be defused without violence and with a win-win for both countries, enhancement of livelihood for poor immigrants, clean drinking water for everybody, improvement in environmental conditions, and a rational management of water and its recycling in agriculture and industries.

7.4

Some Conclusions: Water Challenges in Latin America

Water conflicts have different origins, but are generally related to changes in water use, supply, demand and pollution. Conflicts are created by different actors and they are normally linked to productive processes in agriculture, extractive activities (oil, gas, mines), domestic use and industries. Agriculture uses between 75 and 78% of available fresh water in all Latin American countries, 12–15% is for domestic use and the rest for industrial activities. In the region, more than 70 basins are shared by two countries or more; 60% of the territory belongs to transboundary basins (see Table 7.2). Only the Amazon Basin includes eight countries with more than 8,000 km of shared borders (Rebagliati 2004). The eight countries sharing water from the Amazon agreed a Treaty in 1978, and in 2002 they signed the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Most of the other shared basins in Latin

Local

Irrigation

Farmers do not respect the amount of water they should take from the water body

Paraguay– Argentina– Brazil Mexico-USA

Local, regional and national

Itaipu and Corpus on the Parana River, use of surface water Use of surface water of River Colorado and Bravo Region under water stress

Local, regional, national and international

Construction of hydropower plants and dams in all Latin America n countries Hydropower and dams between different states

Water diversion

Amazon: Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Surinam and Venezuela Orinoco: Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil Chile shares water basin with Argentina, Bolivia and Peru Bravo, Colorado: Mexico-USA Loss of land and livelihoods as consequence of reservoir construction

International

Transboundary water

Issue

Scale

Source

Table 7.2 Water conflicts in Latin America. Source The Author

2

4

3

8

Rural workers, natives, NGOs, unions, associations, Church, State Farmers

Rural workers, sometimes natives, the State, private sector, non-governmental organizations Governments of 3 nations Government of USA and Mexico

Sectors/Actors involved Government of states Government of states Government of states Government of states

(continued)

Watershed councils and users councils

Efficiency in water use and irrigation, agreements on pollution Agreements and financial support NADB, NAFTA cooperation International Water Tribunal (NGO) Water National Council; Ministry of Environment, Chamber of Deputies, appeal to the supreme court

Electricity, irrigation, flood control; upstream-downstream water use and pollution idem Tension between different ways of using water and living in the Brazilian northeast region, Mexico’s northwest Pressure over water access, rules in place, usually informal, are not respected

Hearings during the license process Appeals to the supreme court Compensation of affected people Reconstruction of villages National Water Tribunal (NGO)

Treaty of Cooperation 1978 & 2002 Amazonian Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) No agreements Protocol & Treaty on Environment Agreement 1944, North American Development Bank (NADB), NAFTA cooperation

Mechanisms for resolution

Different understandings on how water should be allocated, reflecting different views of development

1/5 of world water resources and 1/3 of flora and fauna worldwide Pollution and water allowance Water allowance and quality Water allowance and quality Water allowance and quality in drylands

Reasons

7.4 Some Conclusions: Water Challenges in Latin America 153

Uruguay– Argentina

Local and regional, mainly metropolitan areas in all Latin America Local

River pollution

Urbanization

Concessions

Local, national, international

Local and regional

Mining

Access to river banks

Scale

Source

Table 7.2 (continued)

Fishermen and rural workers lose their access to water because the riverbanks are blocked by ports, fences and infrastructure Privatization of drinking water, sewage plant with inadequate service and high quotas

Areas with water availability are turning into areas of water stress as consequence of water contamination

pollution of river Uruguay through celluloses production

Impact over water quality: pollution

Issue

Multinational enterprises, local and national government, international tribunals (WTO)

Fishermen, natives, rural workers, private sector and state

State, municipalities– NGOs

Fishermen, rural workers, urban population, environmentalists

Sectors/Actors involved Fishermen, rural workers

Change in land use as consequence of development interventions. Clash between different models of growth and livelihood Lack of money, old infrastructure, chaotic urbanization and an increasing number of poor people with loosing governmental support

Population concentration, lack of sanitation services–water contamination and increasing pressure over water offer

Different understandings on how sewage water should be treated

Disrespect to legislation

Reasons

Concessions to multinational enterprises, revision of fulfillment of agreed conditions, revocation of concession, international demand and obligation to pay for the loss to the MNE

Denounces to environmental agencies and to justice system Legislation Denounces to environmental agencies and to the Intern. Court of Justice, Mercosur Common monitoring of parameters of pollution State and Municipal Policies to reduce contamination of waters–basically investment in sewage system and treatment Pressure from social movements and Water Basin Committees Relocation of fishermen, new job opportunities, learning of high sea fishing with ships subsidized by regional or national government

Mechanisms for resolution

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7.4 Some Conclusions: Water Challenges in Latin America

155

America do not have any agreements concerning water resources, and in these regions hydrodiplomacy may help to avoid violent outcomes. Therefore, most of these transboundary conflicts are managed with treaties, where overuse and pollution of powerful upstream countries is negotiated through water assignation treaties and water quality parameters in downstream countries. Watershed councils at local and regional level, involving all stakeholders and conflicting interests, may be able to negotiate during conflicts at local and regional level. Further, there exist globally no agreements about the use of groundwater. Climate change and higher temperatures will oblige authorities to use more water from aquifers, and in the drylands there exists an overexploitation of this blue water (Richey et al. 2015). An agreement on the use of the Guarani aquifer, common to Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay, is missing. It is the biggest drinking water reserve of Latin America with an extension of more than 1 million km2 (OAS 2005) and may create future conflicts between the neighbouring countries in the region. A second source of conflicts in Latin America is related to the construction of dams. The rapid growth rate of economy obliged Latin American countries to increase its energy supply. In 2009 IEA estimated the demand for electricity to be 850,000 GWh, and it may double by 2030 (Yépez-García et al. 2011). Brazil is the ninth largest energy consumer in the world and the third largest in America, behind the USA and Canada. Brazil produces 29% of its energy requirements by hydropower. Compared with the rest of the world, Latin America still has a low density of dams, with the exception of Mexico. However, new projects have created intensive conflicts in upstream basins. Usually, constructions of dams affects the livelihood of poor indigenous people and peasants. Generally they are built as multipurpose, mostly for energy, irrigation and flood protection. Recently, due to climate change, they are also built for integrated disaster prevention downstream. Conflicts are related to a complex set of variables, with different understandings of water allocation, national and regional priorities, contrasting views of development and environmental care, cultural and economic interests, and livelihood defence. To mitigate conflicts, governments have built villages for displaced peoples without accounting for the cultural loss and the impact on cultural identities. Oliver-Smith (2001) indicated that there is no dam project with forced relocation in Latin America that could be considered successful. The development of dams brought dispossession and the resettlement of people in different countries. Special conflicts emerged with transboundary dam projects (Itaipu and Corpus on the Parana River), where water allocation, electricity and water quality were negotiated through agreements between the states involved. However, most of the treaty did not take into account the people affected, their cultures, their productive processes and their livelihoods. There exist new plans for building 140 large dams in the Amazon Basin, involving Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. These projects would not only damage the existing high biological diversity and deprive local populations of their subsistence, which depends on a healthy riverine ecosystem, but these dams would also seriously affect the global climate, the generation of oxygen, the sink of GHG and the biodiversity.

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Water diversion is a third area of conflict in Latin America. It creates similar outcomes as the construction of dams. It affects the environment, the biodiversity and the livelihood of displaced people. Water diversion is often related to irrigation projects (Yaqui tribe in Sonora, Mexico; Oswald Spring 2014) and politically it can favour big cities and metropolitan areas. However it also affects local peasants and indigenous groups, who depend on this water for their survival. There are very few cases in which the cosmovision and cultural importance of water are taken into account. Indigenous groups are not only deprived of their natural resources, but also of their intangible cultural heritage. Aqueducts have been built in Latin America since the conquest and have always benefited extensive irrigation areas, sugar cane factories, urban residential areas and only recently megacities. Irrigation systems are frequently inefficient and water overuse in the agricultural sector limits the supply for people and the environmental flow. Agricultural production is often exported in terms of virtual water to other nations (Allan 1997). In these water diversion processes, the historical context, the collective memory, the sacred places and the uses and customs of water are rarely taken into account, affecting indigenous communities physically and culturally in their cosmovision. There are also new tensions at local and regional level with clashes of modernisation projects, which are promoted by Governments and private investors (resorts, beach developments, tourism). Increased pressure over water resources, real access and water use changes require transparent rules that must first be negotiated by all stakeholders involved. Only later may the authorities sign treaties which reinforce these social agreements. Regional and national problems could also be resolved by federal tribunals. Urbanisation, especially in metropolitan areas, is creating an increasing demand on water resources and also produces sewage. Improved sewage facilities are lacking in the entire region, and there is limited reuse of treated water in industries, services or agriculture. In Latin America, several megalopolises are located in semi-arid areas (Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Santiago, etc.). Rainwater harvesting during the monsoon season is incipient and alternative water production is absent. Therefore, overuse of aquifers produces subsidence and damages the public infrastructure and buildings. People suffer and nobody takes responsibility for the reparation costs. Further, chaotic urbanisation, destruction of crucial ecosystem services and pollution of aquifers are common in the metropolitan areas of Latin America, where governments at different levels are unable to coordinate sustainable regional planning of local water resources. Tensions at local level could be diluted through agreements between regions that are transferring water resources. This needs adequate compensations, development programmes in the zone of extraction, and water basin councils with all relevant stakeholders, who determine the amount of transfer and the economic compensations. Privatisation of water services though concession is an additional conflict in Latin America (Finger/Allouche 2002). The lack of investment for the creation of public services, the rapid growth of urban populations, old infrastructure, low federal support and high maintenance costs have obliged local and federal governments to transfer water supply and sewage facilities to multinational water

7.4 Some Conclusions: Water Challenges in Latin America

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enterprises. These private investments often lack effective governmental control or are the result of corrupt administrations. Often, these enterprises increase prices without complying with the conditions of clean water. There private companies are frequently unwilling to expand the drinking water infrastructure towards poor suburbs and shanty towns, where no profits exist. In these regions governmental subsidies are required to grant a basic human right to everybody. Resistance against private water concessions has risen in the whole region, and some Governments have been obliged to cancel these concessions due to massive public opposition (Cochabamba, Buenos Aires, etc.). These multinational water enterprises (Suez-Ondeo, Vivendi-Veoli, Nestlé, etc.) sued local or national Governments at international courts, so the cost of their demands increased in such a way that even federal Governments were unable to pay these excessive levels of compensation. Mining is another major conflict creator, because it is destroying soil, biodiversity, water, and aquifers in almost all countries of Latin America. Mining companies often disrespect the terms of the concessions and the national environmental legislation. These companies are not only destroying forests, but their generally untreated sludge is highly toxic and stored in open deposits, which easily leach into the nearby rivers or aquifers. Governments are confronted with a dilemma: to abolish the concession, lose taxes from these industries and employment in rural and mountain areas, or pressure the enterprises to comply with the environmental obligations. These dilemmas are often exaggerated by mining companies, and their economic profits are generally transferred outside.8 The pollution of rivers and groundwater is also affecting fishermen and urban populations, and there is local opposition to mining companies. Reinforcement of legal applications and increased remediation costs may perhaps force mining industries to apply environment protocols and avoid polluting. A similar phenomenon occurs with other polluting industries (e.g. the cellulose industry using the water of the river Uruguay), where Mercosur and common stake-holders agreed parameters of water quality among affected countries in order to reduce the opposition in Argentina. Further, there also exist five transboundary mining conflicts, such as Pascua Lama, which started in 2000; after eleven years of intensive pollution the glaciers between Chile and Argentina and the water supply are threatened. Ecuacorrientes is also polluting the glacier in the Andes between Ecuador and Peru. The struggle against Crucitas is based on the pollution of River San Juan and the planned project Pachón is uncertain, while the toxic metals may affect the water resources in Chile and in Argentina. Finally, Cerro Blanco received opposition from El Salvador and Guatemala. All these mining enterprises started between 1989 and 1997, and have polluted glaciers and rivers for years, affecting the health of the local population and transferring their profits out of the countries where the mines are located.

8

For example, in Mexico mining companies extracted 250 tons of gold in only eleven years. This is 2.5 times more than the gold extracted during the 300 years of the Spanish colonial system.

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Finally, climate change is producing growing tension between people and productive activities, because of water scarcity, hazards and extreme weather events. Higher variability of rainfall is seriously affecting semi and arid regions. Flash floods are creating new threats, especially in the Andes. Drought may be one of the most important push factors for environmental-induced migration (Bronen 2015) in rural areas (Oswald et al. 2014). Central America, The Caribbean Islands, and Mexico are also exposed to a greater number of more intensive hurricanes, often combined with landslides in mountain regions (IPCC 2012, 2014). In the short term, the loss of glaciers in the Andes is directly threatening the water supply of millions of people. Water scarcity, together with flash floods, may create new conflict constellations in Latin America with concerns about the access to drinking water and for agricultural production. Finally, in a middle-term perspective, sea level rise is impacting small islands and urban cities located in coastal areas, and may oblige numerous people to leave their traditional livelihoods. Mangroves and coral reefs are also highly vulnerable, and their destruction may drastically reduce the income of local fisherfolk. In synthesis, there are different conflict constellations in Latin America related to productive processes, modernisation projects, culture and tradition, anthropogenicinduced pollution of water, soils and aquifers, as well as corruption and weak implementation of environmental laws and norms. Confronted with economic crises and lack of resources, but also with growing megacities, most of the countries have introduced legal changes in their constitutions to involve private investment in drinking water facilities and sewage facilities. Nevertheless, corruption among public functionaries and private investors has resulted in deficient services with high prices for poor consumers. In this complex and multicausal situation, hydrodiplomacy may offer a sustainable way to negotiate conflicts and to find ways for win-win situations among all the involved stakeholders. The experience of the Latin-American Tribunal of Water, created by committed environmentalists and NGOs, may be an example of how to deal with complex conflict constellations, using scientific knowledge, organisation of stakeholders, their training and geopolitical understanding to bring greater transparency into present water conflict constellations.

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Chapter 8

Peace, Environment and Security: A Gender Perspective from the Global South

8.1

Preliminary Remarks

The end of the Cold War1 coarsely exposed North-South differences (World Bank 1995). In the South it revealed the disparity between social classes (CEPAL 2003; Oxfam 2017), ethnic and religious groups (Oswald 2004; Bensasson 2018), urban and rural areas (CEPAL 2003), and especially gender-based discrimination (UNFEM 2003; CEPAL 2003; WB 2014). Multilateral organisations (World Bank [WB], IMF, UNDP, UNESCO) in charge of finance, development tools, debts, debt service and education established the Millennium Development Goals (MDG 2000), in order to reduce the gaps between the three worlds (Nuscheler 1995; Senghaas 2003), and mitigate the disparities within each country (CEPAL 2004; Galtung 1972; Senghaas 1972; Nussbaum/Sen 1993). The core goals consisted of eight objectives and eighteen concrete goals2: reducing extreme poverty (less than one dollar PPP per day), reduction of infant malnutrition rates, halving infant mortality by the year 2015; and complementary actions such as gender equality, alphabetisation, education, and health improvements (UN 2000). In order to attain these goals, tremendous financial resources were required in most developing countries. However, multilateral support and financial aid for development had stagnated for decades (WB 1995). The MDG were never achieved and the 0.7% limit agreed by each industrialised country – a compromise assumed 30 years ago by developed nations and reconfirmed at the UN Summit on Development Financing in Monterrey, 2003 – never occurred. Only few Scandinavian nations and the Netherlands took the compromise seriously and orientated their development-aid 1

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the language corrections and helpful comments by Dr. S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald. The conference was given in Groningen, Netherlands in summer 1990 and updated by the author under the title “IPRA 40 Years after Groningen”. 2 In Latin America UNDP, CEPAL (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) and the Institute for Economic Applied Research (IPEA, in Spanish) developed a methodology to evaluate the advances of the Millenium Goals up to 2015. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_8

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quota to poor countries, privileging the least developed nations in Africa and Asia. Bigger nations, particularly the superpower USA, Germany, France and Japan, never achieved this amount and basically supported nations in relation to loyalty or their geopolitical and other interests, independent of their development stage. This aid has included military support and even coups led by the military elites in almost all Latin American nations (Chile, Central America, Uruguay, Paraguay). In 2018, Israel still receives one of the most generous aid budgets from the USA (WB 2003; Sharp 2018). The result after five decades of development indicates a greater North-South gap, also reflected between social classes within countries. This gap is especially critical in countries with high levels of poverty, malnourishment, loss of subsistence crops, price reductions in raw material exports, and insufficient educational facilities and infrastructure (Arnsprenger 1999), leading to failed states among several least developed countries (LDC) or the so-called “Fourth World” by Nuscheler (1995). Colonial structures inherited from European rule have also limited postcolonial independence: due to artificially imposed boundaries with ethnic ties, neocolonialism and warlords, linked to the personal interests of elites and the Politics of the Belly (Bayart 1993), transformed part of the Black African continent into failed states (Tezlaff 2003). Most industrialised countries have been indifferent to this human drama, deepened as the HIV/AIDS epidemic brought millions of deaths, increasing social and political problems in this already fragile equilibrium. New threats to global and personal security, linked to 11/9 and 11/3 terrorist acts, gave scientists and peace researchers a renewed opportunity to think about the importance of development processes and human security. It was clear that the development paradigm was becoming more complex (Küng 2003). However, it was also being homogenised by the process of neoliberal globalisation, characterised by instant world communications (Castells 2002; Habermas 2001b), financial flows with speculation (Mesiasz 2008), and an increasing trade interdependence (Surugiu/ Surugiu 2015), mostly controlled by multinational enterprises (Stiglitz 2002, 2016). Free market ideology, private competition, deregulation and increasing privatisation processes and enterprise mergers, promoted by the WB, the IMF, and the G7, have reduced State intervention and investments. Multinational corporations have become the new ‘growth motors’ championed by multinational enterprises and multilateral organism of Bretton Woods. The mortgage of this economic model of late capitalism (Habermas 2000; Stiglitz 2007), which concentrated income and wealth through unemployment, excluding youth and elders from the labour market, is politically and militarily supported by the remaining superpower (United States), its allies (Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea), and the economic elites in the rest of the world, including the ones in developing countries. Military superiority and an increasingly homogenised culture (Hollywood and Bollywood, Fox News, internet) based on consumerism and mass media manipulation (Castells 2002) diverge widely from the proposed growth model and have created four main conflict foci: poverty, marginalisation and exclusion; militarism and physical violence; gender, indigenous and minority discrimination; and environmental destruction with natural resource depletion and climate change impacts.

8.2 Sustainable Development Goals

8.2

165

Sustainable Development Goals

In this complex geopolitical arena emerged China as a new economic and technological power, challenging the military equilibrium in the South-East Pacific when the country established new military bases on small islands to expand its control over these maritime regions (CRPM/CPMR 2015). After a critical evaluation of the MDG and their shortcomings, during the General Assembly in 2015 the affiliated Government decided to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015; Fig. 8.1), which included care of the environment and gender equity as two transversal new development strategies. The seventeen general goals were disaggregated into 169 targets in order to eradicate extreme poverty and discrimination by 2030 by promoting sustainable development. The new agenda consists of an action plan for people, the planet, prosperity, peace and joint work with international solidarity. The ultimate goal is to achieve peaceful, just and inclusive societies with the participation of all countries, stakeholders and institutions. This ambitious agenda proposed shared economic prosperity with social development and environmental protection for all countries. The new agenda included an independent goal for gender equality, and the empowerment of women where the gender-sensitive goals were limited by the existing national laws and customs. Since 2017, Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) have monitored the progress made since the previous year. Eleven countries have improved their index score since 2017. Fifty-five countries agreed to meet their commitment, twenty-four were partially ready and only five did not report any improvement, while two other countries did not report sufficient data to get an informed assessment. However, there are still multiple lacks, and climate change impacts with increasingly more disasters are challenging the resilience of many poor countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Further, the dramatic

Fig. 8.1 Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Source UNGA 2015

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concentration of wealth in even fewer hands is another keystone that is limiting the advances (Oxfam 2017), together with an increase in corruption in almost all poor countries (Transparency 2018). So far, the MDG (2000), SDG (2015) and several decades of development projects promoted by the World Bank and the United Nations have not produced the programmed improvements to living standards. However, the World Bank (2014) estimated that the middle class may increase from 5 to 25% by 2030. Without any doubt, China is pushing its people out of poverty and India is also improving the living standards of numerous citizens. Latin America was improving its economic conditions until 2008, thanks to the high price of raw materials, but the global financial crisis has reduced almost all the achieved improvements in this region, and radical change towards a neoliberal model in Brazil and Argentina is limiting poverty alleviation in both countries.

8.3

Human Security

Poor results from six decades of development, with at least two lost decades in Latin America and elsewhere, and an increasing security concern all over the world, led the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to shift the traditional security concept linked to nation states to a new concept, directly related to people: Human Security. According to the UNDP, human security focuses on life dignity instead of military threats and includes “protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards” (UNDP 1994: 23). Through a new foreign policy and world view, and as alternative to arms races or military confrontation, the Canadian and Norwegian governments promoted Human Security globally. Military ideology was replaced by progressive attitudes, such as respect for human rights, international human laws, refugee protection, promotion of humanitarian aid in the case of natural catastrophes and wars, development based on gender and social equity, and cultural diversity with religious freedom. Politically, the concept led the middle-range powers in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to appraise the possibility of a general discussion regarding humanitarian principles and human rights issues. This approach was supported by countries from the Global South in order to resolve structural problems arising from globalisation that had affected their living conditions. They insisted on debt reduction, improvements to terms of trade, and higher foreign aid for poverty alleviation; in essence, protection for the most vulnerable. Amartya Sen had already elaborated the first Human Development Index (HDI; UNDP 1980), and human security was immediately taken up by the UN and the UNDP (Suhrke 1999). Human security refers to frames of reference, dimensions, people and groups, facts, areas, circumstances and changing historical conditions, not just threats to national sovereignty and terrorism. Security is therefore a basic value of well-being

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and a goal for any human being, community, nation state or international organisation. Security is also redefined in each cultural context and expressed in terms of experiences and perceptions. But among politicians and mass media the military security understanding still predominates, not the human one. The human security approach evolved further and added new pillars to its initial understanding. Besides the Canadian approach of “freedom from fear”, Sagata and Sen recognised the underlying conditions of poverty within the present system of globalisation and advocated “freedom from needs” (CHS 2003). UNU-EHS linked the growing threats from climate change and Brauch (2005) postulated a third pillar as “freedom from hazard impacts”, whereby social vulnerability and risk reduction were central to survival and well-being. During the first evaluation of the MDG Annan (2005) found the lack of transparency in multiple government to be a key factor. He asserted that without living in a state of law and with full respect for all human rights, there is no human security. UNESCO, within the frame of the ‘Decade of Culture of Peace’ (2000–2010), claimed that big transformations are based on cultural diversity and integration of all different cultural expressions. In the meantime, Brauch et al. (2008, 2009, 2011) thoroughly revised the UNDP approach and linked it directly to environmental, economic, gender and societal security. Faced with the mounting threat of global environmental changes, Brauch developed three research phases in human and environmental security and peace. In environmental terms, Brauch (2008) firstly revised the impact of wars and the military outlook on the environment. Secondly, he assessed resources scarcity and the upcoming conflicts. Thirdly, he explored conceptual and empirical models of conflict resolution. The interactions between climate change, soil erosion, agriculture, hydrological cycles, along with chaotic urbanisation and population growth, were drivers for conflicts. In his survival hexagon, Brauch (2008) revised the long-term structural input factors; the medium and short term political processes; and the short, medium and long-term outcomes, where state, economy and society have to take decisions in order to prevent, mitigate or handle disasters, crises and conflicts (Brauch 2008: 35–143). Møller (2003) compared national, societal and human security in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Starting with the social constructivism of International Relations and looking into the expansion axes of the security concept, he asked “security for whom?…of what?…and from whom or what?” (2003: 278–279). Based on these questions, he developed an expanded concept of security. Like Crutzen (2002) when he proposed the concept of the Anthropocene, the androgenic analytical framework spoke about mankind instead of humankind, thus excluding the female half of the world’s population. Within this androcentric concept of security, Møller included environmental security. Sustainability, then, is the value at risk, and the source of threat is humankind as a whole, but also nature, due to extreme events that may destroy lives, livelihoods and well-being.

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8.4

Gender Security

Oswald Spring (2005) deepened these security approaches with a trans-radical understanding, proposing gender security. Relations including gender, indigenous and minority status were her reference model, and equity and identity (Serrano 2004) are the values at risk. According to this paradigm, the source of threat came first from the patriarchal order, characterised by violence exercised by totalitarian institutions, such as authoritarian governments, churches and global elites. Patriarchy can be understood as a “hypothetical social system based on the absolute authority of the father or an elderly male over the family group. Inspired by classical Darwinism, Lewis Henry Moran and Henry Maine envisioned cultures as having developed through evolutionary stages, one of which was patriarchy…. Later anthropologists were sceptical of such evolutionary schemes, and ethnographers found absolute male authority to be rare even in societies with patrilineal descent systems” (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1991: 200). In the works of Plato and Aristotle, the old theory of states and societies focused on the character of families in pre-state (patriarchy), or the significance of the family as a specific cell of the State and society. Compte (1773–1799) and Fustel de Coulanges (1891) sustained this viewpoint and claimed that the composition of states and societies sprang from individual families and still represented some variants of precarious natural laws. Their analyses never answered the questions regarding the transference of the “patria potestas” to a wider net of State and society, where the contractual rights of society and power had to be redefined. Bachofen (1861) unveiled “mother rights”, questioning the primacy of patriarchy. However, “mother rights” were initially only linked to natural biological laws and religious taboos. Sir Henry Sumner Maine (1861) analysed multiple forms of patriarchy, all of them linked to constructivism. Engels (1884) related the origins of the family to private property and the State, but took for granted the division of labour between women (domesticated wives, carers and mothers) and men (breadwinners). Anthropologists and archaeologists dismissed this traditional role division and researched the matriarchal family organisation from native cultures. Mauss (2007) described the circulation of women as well as the circulation of other goods, establishing an economic relation of reciprocal interchange, and from her fieldwork experience in Samoa, Mead (1928) also scrutinised the biological role given to maternity and paternity. The disciplines of feministic studies stressed “that feminine and masculine identity(-ies) must be constructed and should be understood as cultural achievements” (Moore 1994: 42). Lacan (1985) argued that the constellation of ‘self’ does not possess any essential attributes, but is bound up within a world of images and representations; contextualised in an important system of meanings and signification that constitute ‘subjectivities’. In this sense, patriarchy represents the deepest ideology of an occidental system of domination, where for thousands of years a social division of labour violently subjugated women, sanctioned by a specific social, cultural and legal system (e.g. WB 2014).

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Feminists, from the beginning of the last century onwards, started to promote first women’s right to vote and, later, gender equality and equal participation in society, policy, culture and the economy.3 They linked existing patriarchal structures (Mies 1998; Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999; von Werlhof 1983a, b) with violence (Oswald Spring 2007) and war (Reardon 1996), domination (Young 1990, 1992), power (Arendt 1958, 1970, 1979; Bartky 1997), classism (Nuñez/Gutiérrez 2004), racism (Cresnhaw 1990), indigenism (Warren 1998), conflicts (Butler 1990), (hetero)-sexism (Calhoun 2000; Holland/Adkins 1996; Ferguson 2014), democracy (Mouffe 2000), science (Haraway 1988, 1997), morals (Becker 1999; Mookherjee 2005), identity (Serrano 2004), culture (Arizpe 2004, 2015), and naturism (Warren 1997; Plumwood 1991; Wan Ho 1989; Shiva/Mies 1997). Related to the proposals of the Club of Rome (Meadows et al. 1972), and later to the sustainable development concept following the Brundlandt Report (1987), feminists also explained the existential links between the domination and discrimination of women, minorities (indigenous, Roma, black people), children and elders, regarding them as similar to the destruction of the natural world. Both obey this dominant exercise of patriarchal power relations through violence, exploitation, subordination, discrimination and destruction. The theoretical birth of ecofeminism was a logical consequence of this type of analysis and from the start it embraced a variety of approaches. Its complex cultural critique showed that necessities were multifaceted. The involvement of theoreticians and activists from the Global North and South also induced transgressive processes, which were multilocated. Varied and decentralised political processes related to political activism and scientific reflection offered a wide alliance with the upcoming movements of Altermundism in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Margaret Thatcher’s “TINA: there is no alternative” was supplanted by “TIAA: there is an alternative” (Mies 1998). In fact, “there are many alternatives – TAMA”, in plural (Serrano 2004). The feminist agenda was changing across space and time, but from the very beginning one of its main concerns was to investigate the effects, especially on women, of the upcoming technologies and scientific advances, such as genetically modified organisms, cloning, nanotechnology, internet and communication, cyberterrorism and genetic medicines. Globally, a feminist organisation called Diverse Women for Diversity emerged. This multidisciplinary approach permitted patriarchal attitudes to be challenged from different angles and made it possible to overcome their classical exclusivist dualistic hierarchies, such as good-bad, male-female, scientific-popular, developed by occidental androgenic thinking. The inclusion of cultural elements, such as sacred and religious beliefs, including goddesses and gods, linked ecofeminism to 3

Undoubtedly, the processes of political transformation were particularly adverse to women. Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) became a fervent defender of feminine emancipation. At her college in Islington, contemporary thinkers were criticised, including Rousseau and Burke. Her publications, such as A Vindication of Women’s Rights, have been fundamental to the subsequent suffrage movements led by Elisabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Current feminist struggles unveiled new aspects, particularly the relationship between globalisation and patriarchy.

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archaeomythologists. Systematic archaeological work had shown how, throughout history, matriarchal organisations were rarely militaristic societies before the Indo-Aryan invasion of Europe and the consolidation of stratified societies in Mesoamerica and Asia. People normally lived in small villages, surrounded by sacred places (Stonehenge, the temples of Malta, pyramid structures and the Temazcal ritual place, where the uterus-like construction was believed to bring security, health and community life to traditional societies). As bigger cities were established, patriarchal structures displaced local organisation. Militaristic sky gods (Zeus) replaced earth goddesses and gods as the ancient symbols of power. The Earth was linked with evil, hell and suffering, whilst paradise was located in the skies. Male gods killed female and animal deities, and Eve or the snake symbolised evil and human expulsion from earthly paradise. These mythological transformations gave rise to new ideological and religious projections, which were studied by “Deep Ecofeminism”. ‘Dao’ (the way) in Chinese society means harmony as the highest societal goal, exemplified by the physical world with its perennial rhythm of the four seasons. The harmony within human society starts with ‘Ren’, the main virtue of human beings in the sense of inner excellence, when they follow three basic relationships: cultivation within the family, “then between the human and physical world and nature, and, finally, the human and the physical world. A world of harmony where human society is free from war, crime, and all extreme forms of human conflict” (Watkin-Kolb/Qing Chao 2000: 46). This oriental outlook and its moral principles deeply questioned the patriarchal social system. It questioned the advances of a scientific knowledge whereby the “Fathers of Knowledge” had achieved a scientific revolution for dominating humans and nature (Francis Bacon 1620), as well as the ongoing process of exclusive globalisation and international ‘competition’. Both have brought the world to an overexploitation of natural resources and an extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a minuscule elite, exacerbating the impoverishment of the remaining world citizens. The inclusive frame of ecofeminsm also attracted several social movements, such as peace researchers, antimilitarists and antinuclear movements, and fostered the establishment of a global ecological sisterhood, although these approaches were criticised and denounced as essentialising women with nature. In addition, the greater interconnection with globalisation stimulated the critics from the Global South to question the western development model and mindset. This occidental mechanistic approach was challenged by African women, who emphasised the processes of racism and slavery. These women also criticised the domination of white women among ecofeminists, in number as well as in the theoretical discussions and presentation of new ideas. Thus, from the Global South, ‘Afrocentric ecowomanism’ opened a new door to a natural alliance with ecoindigenism. In Latin America, the dependency and ‘machismo’ theories helped to explain the existing class structures, based on patriarchy, racism and colonialism – all of them interconnected processes of oppression and exploitation of human beings and nature.

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“There are a number of people who interpret the end of the East-West confrontation as not only signalling the end of all socialist dreams and utopias, but also of all global ideology based on a universal concept of human beings and their relation to nature and other human beings. These ideologies have been ‘deconstructed’ as being Eurocentric, egocentric and – according to some feminists – androcentric, and materialist.” (Mies/Shiva 1993: 11). The deeper links of ecofeminsm and female discrimination were also confronted by Edwards Albeys’ (1975) eco-macho approach. Additional social groups developed a legal base to protect animal rights, together with human and gender rights. A special campaign criticised livestock, meat, chicken, fish and seafood production modes, promoted by industries especially in the USA and Europe, which are increasingly also imposed by multinational enterprises in the Global South. Diverse international summits and conferences took up these concerns, which were developed by distinct groups. The decade of women (1975–1985) brought together different scientists and activists. The Nairobi Agreement (1985) reinforced international connections and led to the project of a healthy planet (Miami 1991), and eventually to the Rio Earth Summit (1992). The Earth Charter was collectively developed, circulated, subscribed to and used as a source of educational materials all over the world. However, multinational interests, linked to the exploitation of natural resources (oil, water, minerals, microorganisms), limited its scope at the Johannesburg Earth Summit (2002) and tried to reduce the concept of sustainability or sustainable development (SDG 2015) to business, sometimes even ethical business. For instance, the Water Dome was basically used for the World Bank’s promotion of private-public-partnership relations, in order to control this basic natural resource and promote the introduction of multinational enterprises into this core business field. Today, Coca Cola, Nestlé and some other multinationals control the business of bottled water globally. On the other hand, patriarchal structures were affected by the multidisciplinary, decentralised and integrative approach of ecofeminism. The UN, together with the World Bank, decided to clarify – theoretically and practically – the ‘pay-off’ from all improvements concerning women. Diverse studies in the Global South brought up very interesting results: girls’ education in Arab countries raised the GDP per annum in these countries by an average of 1% (WB 2014), compared with neighbour states where such policies were not developed. There exist also complementary benefits: an educated woman has healthier children, better nourished families, a lower birth rate, less infant mortality and morbidity and fewer years of childbearing, because she gets married later. In economic terms, the FAO, the World Bank and regional development banks proved the boost to agricultural productivity resulting from the feminisation of agriculture and the development of human capital with trained and educated women. Based on research carried out by the FAO, IPCC (2014) proved that women globally produce more than half of the food in their orchards or small plots of lands, while modern agriculture concentrates its crops on biofuel and animal feed. When women get access to resources, the whole community benefits, since women invest more in family well-being, life quality and infant development.

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In politics, women also promote democratic structures and invest more in the development and infrastructure of basic needs, instead of public “triumphal arches”. An interesting process of modernisation has occurred in Turkey, where women in government confronted religious and cultural taboos simultaneously. This country was the first in the world to appoint a female minister to the Supreme Court (Serrano 2004). Facing increasing unemployment, small enterprises and microcredits alleviated poverty and 80% of micro-borrowers were women. The income generated went directly to their families and helped to improve the overall standard of living. The UN also rendered visible the role of women in peacekeeping. A special study group gave the Secretary General new suggestions for including female elements in both the missions of the Security Council, as well as in special peace missions. However, there are still deep differences among Arab states. For example, in Afghanistan, after the war generated by the US, warlords still fight with arms and there is repression of women’s rights. In addition, the US has not ratified the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), signed by other 175 countries. In Saudi Arabia there still exists a special moral police force to patrol and enforce discrimination against women. In a fire at a school, dozens of girls were killed when this moral police force prevented these children leaving the burning building because they were not “properly dressed”.

8.5

A Feminist Critique to the Human Security Concept

The widening (environmental, economic, societal) and deepening of security (human, gender) is understood to be the result of historical processes of development (for an in-depth explanation see Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011). It responds to certain political demands, but may be raised and articulated with other security concepts. Atvater (2004) claims that the UNDP concept is based on universal conceptions of sovereignty (Oswald Spring 2003; Kaplan 2003), normally satisfied by the nation-state structure (Shurke 1999) and obliged to provision public goods (UNDP 2003). However, as the globalisation process went global, basic services such as schools, health, water supply, social security and pensions were systematically supplied by private enterprises, (Public-Private-Partnership, WB 2004: Chamdessus Proposal), normally multinational enterprises. These transnational organisms are not accountable to one country, thus the services they deliver are often insufficient and international courts protect these enterprises against national governments. In this privatisation process, the UNDP (1996) human security concept is playing down the classical risks of traditional wars and new wars, such as the drug war and terrorism. Instead of consolidating social justice – the prime purpose of universal and indivisible human rights incorporated in the respective UN-Conventions – Altvater and Mahnkopf argue “that talking about human security is in fact part of an ever more widespread process of informalisation causing uncertainty, insecurity, defencelessness and vulnerability” (2002: 28).

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Historically, women’s emancipation movements have always demanded full rights for women as human beings (Sappho c. 650 BC; Japanese Lady Murasaki 61; Joan of Arc 1412–1431; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 1651–1695; Mahnkopf 2002). They always linked gender equity to a frame of social justice, which includes gender justice and the sustainable management of nature. Von Braunmühl questioned whether this “self-determined life should really be debated in terms of “security requirements” or whether it should “rather be discussed as human rights” (2004: 60)?” Being aware of these feminist critics, the proposed scheme takes into account the ‘securitisation’ of humankind, putting in the centre the basic human right: life. Figure 8.2 on the left side synthesises this general right and operationalises it with rights to health, food, shelter, education, employment, sustainable environment, political participation and plurality, free religious expression and non-violent conflict resolution. Such basic human rights must be the core elements of a new human security concept, where the determinants (right side of diagram) of equity, sustainability, justice, plural democracy, holistic peace (Serrano et al. 2016), care of the vulnerable, prevention of risks, and diversity would lead to a humanised and inclusive security process far away from the violent realist approach. From a “gendered perspective, women move from being subjects of discussion to agents of transformative change” (Taylor 1998: 87, emphasis mine). Feminism aimed to offer equal political, economic, social and cultural rights to women and

Fig. 8.2 The right to life. Source The Author

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minorities. It promoted the suppression of gender discrimination. The data shows that the demand of equal opportunities in all realms of human life is not yet guaranteed – even in Scandinavian countries where the equalisation process has been most advanced, thanks to pressure from group activists. Actions for gender equity usually integrate other discriminated groups, such as children, ethnic and cultural minorities and invalids, demanding the full right to opportunities in life and a healthy development, where men, too, can live without violence and the pressure derived from legitimising the pretence of superiority.

8.6

An Alternative Paradigm for Development and Peaceful Conflict Resolution

There is no doubt that the current global system of injustice is linked to deep-rooted ideological and power mechanisms of patriarchy, and that a sustainable management of nature and society implies rearticulating the above-mentioned elements in order to link human security to gender and environmental security: a HUGE Security (see Chap. 11). The present text proposes a successive approach, in order to also address uncertainty, risks, threats, resource scarcity, unconsciousness behaviour and enormous economic and environmental migrations – the results of this inhuman globalisation phenomenon. In order to contextualise human, gender and environmental security, this HUGE security (Fig. 8.3) analyses the impacts from three levels: individual and personal; micro-environment; and macro or global context. At the individual level, the goals include the satisfaction of all basic needs, such as education and skills, health, water and sewage, socialisation, family links, well-being, leisure, individuation processes,4 social organisation, protection from external and internal threats, extreme events and cultural integration. At this level, it is important to note that the interventions of unconscious, semi-conscious and conscious processes are visibilising intra-individual and also inter-individual processes in their fully-fledged complexity. At micro-environment level, factors such as nation state, family structure, household and community relations, intrafamiliar and intracommunity conflicts, social security, welfare, human development, employment, migration, poverty and gender relations affect small group dynamics, limit governance at local and national level, promote corruption and provoke the emergence of cliques characterised by nationalism, racism and xenophobia. Wealth disparity and rising poverty are crucial to understand nonconformity and opposition to local and national governments, “Individuation processes” refer to the universal condition whereby individual human beings recurrently come to actively engage in socio-cultural life processes that mould their identities, incessantly actualising their inalienable right to a particular individual identity within a framework of inclusive and diverse alterity. Please note that, unlike the age-bound ideological trend denominated ‘individualism’, ‘individuation’ is non-exclusivist and collectively compatible from its very basic dynamic (Definition: Serrano 2004). 4

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Fig. 8.3 Human, Gender and Environmental Security as basic human rights to life. Source The Author

where more democratic and participative institutions from the family to the State are crucial to stabilise the meso-environment. Human development, social security and welfare increase social identity with the nation and may be able to prevent intracommunity conflicts. The macro-environment is conditioned by processes interrelated with globalisation and the present concentration of wealth in a tiny elite, albeit their local effects are produced by the dominant financial system, free-market ideology based on world trade, Bretton Woods rules, multinational enterprises, the privatisation of public services, the consumerism stimulated through publicity, monopolised mass media (the Fourth Estate), science and technology, militarism, war, the geopolitical interests of the superpower and its major nations, terrorism, transnational crime, the sovereign interests of nations and divergent groups, as well as its articulation to the globalisation dynamic. This process is also called glocal. Where conflict mediation and management possibilities emerge, but also the influence of inequality between countries, efforts of multilateralism by UN, global environmental change (Chap. 5) and the effects of migration, disasters, displacement and refugees demand global negotiated solutions between regions and countries. These three levels of analyses are conditioned by deeply internalised global societal values, consolidated over thousands of years of patriarchy (Reardon 1996) and eurocentrism by rules of law from the Occident (Preiswerk 1984; Küng 2003), which have been accepted and validated in all parts of the word due to the conquest and colonialism of ancient civilizations (Chinese, Indian, Aztecs, Incas, Ethiopian,

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Ottoman). The global ideological outcomes are militarism (Tzun Tsu 2000; Hobbes 1658); private property (Richards 2000; Marx 1996; Polanyi 1944; Lopezllera 2003); state of law (Kaplan 2003; Reyes Heroles; Adorno 1972); division of power (Montesquieu 1716); democracy (Plato 340AE; Boff 1980; Okin 1989; Bobbio 1995; Padilla 2018; Sousa 2014, 2016) and the globalisation process (Wallerstein 1970). On the individual side, but also influencing the collective side, exist deeply internalised values, such as the consciousness of humankind (Shaoijun 2000); belief systems (Menchú 2004; Rouhani 2000); habits (Warren 1997); gender distinction (Plumwood 1997; Mies/Shiva 1993; Oswald Spring 2003; Serrano 2004); maternal care (Serrano 2010); socio-economic organisation (Marx 1996 [1818–1883]; Friedman 1962); rules and customs (Ivekovic 2000; Hutchinson 2000); changing world-views (Turner 1957; Malinowski 1945) and cosmovisions (Bonfil 1986; Stavenhagen 1975, 2013); religious systems (Eliade 1954) and sacred beliefs (Eliade 1965; Gandhi 1909); cultural material and intangible beliefs (Arizpe 2004, 2015); political behaviours (Fortes/Evans-Pritchard 1940; Adorno 1972), political organisations (Weber 1944; Adams 1975) and management of resource access (Fjeld 2005; Balandier 1967) and food production (Palerm 2004; Oswald 2011; McDonald 2016), to mentioned some conscious and unconscious processes.

8.7

Historical Evolution of Some Security Concepts

Diamond (1997) asserted, that human development and complex social structures are linked to militarism. Only when societies created surpluses – thanks of irrigation and improvement in food production – did the division of labour inside primitive societies commence (Meillasoux 1976), which also led to social stratification. With growing wealth, male elites took charge of Government, trained soldiers and then conquered other societies thanks to their military superiority. Technological and cultural integration of increased knowledge stemming from conquered peoples allowed the victors to benefit from the craftsmanship and skills of other societies. In the longer term, this additional richness brought wider development to the dominant societies and led to a new division of labour and social grouping, in which a male elite offered improved living standards, new salaries in return for hard work and land expansion in further territories. Empires evolved and tried to maintain this situation through open or covert military intervention. Within this political culture of aggression, military values such as patriotism, arms, heroism, superpower structures and armed interventions were ideologically inculcated. Given this military logic – “a tooth for a tooth” pragmatism – conquered territories and goods were always threatened externally by attacks by empires or tribes with better military strategies and equipment. In order to secure internal control, kings used ideological control though direct links with gods. Goddesses were replaced first by male gods and later by one male god. In this conjuncture a new paradigm emerged: private property. As Richards and Schwanger (2004) analysed,

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State of law was inaugurated in early Greek times, and gave traditional society the possibility of peaceful use of the conquered goods and territories. Once primitive accumulation consolidated, the division of labour brought specialisation and soon a greater division of powers, due to the excessive exploitation by despotic leaders, which itself produced instability and internal revolts. Leading elites had to legitimise the exercise of power – often autocratic – by claiming divine justification or converting themselves into gods (Egypt). Legitimacy is the moral justification of the origin and exercise of power, domination and violence. In the Middle Ages, monarchy was considered the most stable political expression. With the support of the Church and a restricted group of administrative governors, a monarch theoretically exercised absolute power, purportedly, according to some rulers, by divine right. Monarchies imparted justice, legislated and commanded the armed forces in a centralised manner. The expression of this absolutist regime was typified in King Louis XIV’s claim, “l’état c’est moi.” Until the decline of the ancien régime at the end of the eighteenth, the divine rights of monarchs were unquestioned in France. The French Revolution of 1789 and the American War of Independence reclaimed sovereignty for the people. The influence of the French Revolution spread the “Rights of the Citizens” to prosperous colonies in the hands of Britain, Spain and Portugal, where independence movements emerged, some of which have only recently concluded (e.g. East Timor). In the nineteenth century, the disintegration of great empires began (the Napoleonic and the Ottoman), followed by the Austro-Hungarian, Czarist, Hohenzollern, Chinese and Iranian. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries capitalism, based on the extraction of raw materials from the colonies and exploitation of the workforce, enriched colonial powers, but increased poverty in the colonised countries. Criticism from liberal thinkers (Montesquieu 1716; Rousseau 1762; Locke 1704) who questioned absolute power, led to the republican state, based on free elections and the impartial enforcement of laws. The control of the executive was in the hands of the legislative (Congress) responsible for maintaining peace and order in society and foravoiding corruption. From a one-party rule, current multiparty systems emerged. Public authorities, in charge of the exercise of power, become legitimised or delegitimised through popular approval. Free elections are a measure of the congruence between public expectancies and the exercise of power. The enforcement of free voting, power alternation and watching over governmental activities and independent organisms, constituted the legitimacy of the executive power and allowed a functioning governance (De Sousa Santos 2014). This division of powers increased during the French Revolution. Through the establishment of the division of powers at the end of the eighteenth century, weights and counter-weights were established in order to minimise power abuses. The division of powers also eased administrative performance and procedures of surveillance. However, it could not prevent the emergence of rightist and leftist authoritarian regimes. In the guise of Führer, Duce, Caudillo, General or imposed president by a single party, the result is the same: an authoritarian-despotic exercise of power in the hands of a minority, accompanied by the physical extermination of

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the opposition. Torture, concentration camps, forced labour (at Gulags in Siberia), genocide, purges, mass murders, terror, discrimination and prosecution are the most common forms of power abuses during the twentieth century, and the war in Iraq and an extraterritorial jail in Guantánamo have continued these inhuman practices into the twenty-first century. Corruption in the judiciary, legislative and executive branches also undermines the democratic and balanced modern exercise of power, especially when the basic principles of an efficient division of power and citizens’ participation in democracy in the decision-making process and control mechanisms are limited by the economic elite. Instead of imposition, conquest and inquisition, the concept of Social contract has been evolving over the last four centuries. Clearly expressed by Hobbes (1658) and Locke (1704), it formed the basis of the “Social Contract” of Rousseau (1762), the cooperation approach of Grotius, and the “Categorical Imperative” of Kant (1787, 1795). Despite suffering a profound modification throughout three centuries, the social contract is a product of the convergence of individual will and rights within a social context. Individual rights should be restrained by collective rights through negotiation and consensus (see Fig. 8.3). However, the achievement or the failures of a social contract may cause permanent tension between both realms. Keynes (1936) sought a middle way through the idea of a Welfare State, providing support to needy citizens when economic circumstances prevented them providing for themselves. From 1980 on, this paradigm was replaced by so-called neoliberal globalisation, which believed that trickle-down by free-market forces would automatically support those in need (Freeman 1962). But free forces of the market without counter-power have never produced social justice and today one per cent of the richest people own the same wealth as 3.5 billion poorer people (Oxfam 2017). Throughout human history, conquests have given dominant societies the opportunity to live at the expense of their colonies. Europe is a brilliant example, and most of its beautiful capital cities were built on the costs of exploitation of their colonies. In the name of Christianity, entire continents were colonised and eurocentrism was imposed as superior thinking over “the primitives”, who were given only the capacity to work as slaves, later as a cheap labour force. Industrialisation permitted the developed nations to liberate their slave workforces and transform most people into workers. Technological improvements enabled work and physical force to be replaced by machines. The scientific, informatics and communications revolution of the last fifty years changed the relationship between micro and macro-environments again, and artificial intelligence and robots may ultimately replace most of the human labour force. The creation of basic human rights, tensions between social and individual responsibility, class struggles and the consolidation of an increasingly polarised and unequal world in social, political and economic terms, saw different thinkers emerge throughout Europe. They tried to compensate for these negative, often dehumanising, processes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) lived in the century of Enlightenment and proposed general access to education as a means of improving social conditions for the poor. However, the accumulation of tensions and weak attempts to compromise when there were opposing interests normally led to armed conflicts and wars.

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Until the eighteenth century, European societies and their colonies were restricted to a feudal system of kings, big landlords, clerics, small-scale artisans, merchants and peasants, similar to the pre-colonial empires in America and Asia. Living in small towns and the countryside, work was close to households and men and women worked together to sustain the family unit. The Industrial Revolution introduced division of labour with its growing cities, and created the false dichotomy of a male “bread winner” and an economically dependent ‘housewife’, caring for free for the whole family. The growth of industrialisation processes pushed peasants out of their land and made them landless agricultural workers or factory workers in cities. In urban regions a middle class linked to services emerged, as well as a dominant class that owned factories and capital. The new social class configuration (Marx 1996; Engels 1884) caused different insecurities for workers and, as an intensive process of exploitation of the labour force, intellectuals and workers fought together to secure new rights5 (Montesquieu 1716; Rousseau 1762; Locke 1704; Jefferson 1784). The social struggles gained in forcefulness. Karl Marx (1818–1881) not only became the core theorist of socialism, but, inspired by Hegel [1812–1816] (1975), Feuerbach (1846) and French socialism, also wrote his main work, Das Kapital (Capital) (1867), denouncing the inhuman reality of British capitalism. Together with Friedrich Engels, he participated in the creation of the First International, a movement of economic and intellectual liberation, through the struggle of the working classes united against exploitation by the upper classes. Finally, the globalisation process radically changed this social organisation, but as a scientific category, it is the result of a lengthy historical and empirical process, whereby the evolution of social relations is reducing the need for workers, due to automation, robotisation and artificial intelligence (AI) in the productive processes.

8.7.1

Nation State and Social Movements

The different civilizatory processes (Diamond 1997; Bonfil 1987; Meillasoux 1976; Amin 1973; Arizpe 2015; Ivecovitch 2000) started from a nomadic society of hunters and gatherers, and moved through a feudal system with emperors into the 5

Different human rights were declared and socially consolidated. They apply to any human being and are inalienable and recognised by law. In the Declaration of the Rights of Citizens and Individuals, formulated by the French National Assembly and supported by the Delegation of Independence of the United States, freedom of property acquisition and resistance to oppression were recognised as natural rights. In the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed, grouping all the rights established beforehand. On 23 March 1976, the International Treaty of Civil Rights was instituted, linking the established rights with the self-determination of nations. In further meetings, human beings were constituted as the centre of concerns related to sustainable development and were given the right to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature. These rights know no frontiers and apply globally, but are based on Eurocentric laws.

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industrialisation process (Hobsbawn/Hartwell 1963) with social classes, leading to the present globalisation of late capitalism. All these processes generated active human developments. The violence of conquests, their destruction of traditional societies, and colonialism allowed Europe to consolidate its initial model of accumulation. The domination of England over all continents, plus French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonialism transformed Europe into a centre of science, economy and ‘modern’ culture, whose ethnocentric or Eurocentric ideology spread over the rest of the world (Preiswerk 1984; Senghaas 1974, 2003; Küng 2003; Habermas 2001a; Adorno 1972; Marcuse 1964). Industrialisation and colonial heritage prepared the soil for the globalisation process, or a second industrial revolution (Hirst/Thompson 1996), where giant global production and consumption are controlled by multinational enterprises. The internationalisation of economies required efficient systems of communication, an age of information, generating a communications revolution (Castells 2002; Habermas 2001b). The vertiginous progress of science and technology produced a society of knowledge. Universal values, characteristic of European history and reinforced with North American citizen values such as freedom, rights, law, democracy, the free-market and fierce competition, spread worldwide and today represent the economic paradigm and a unique world order (Wallerstein 1970). However, as history shows, with the exception of elites, the Global South was negatively affected by colonial and capitalist development, and globalisation is no exception. As González Casanova describes: …globalisation is a process of domination and appropriation of the world. Domination of states and markets, societies and communities is enabled by political-military, financial-technological and socio-cultural means. The appropriation of generated surpluses follows by special ways, where high levels of technological and scientific development are combined with very antique forms – even of animal origin – of depredation, exploitation and parasitism; today making an appearance as phenomena of privatisation, denationalisation, deregulation with transferences, subsidies, exemptions and concessions. On the contrary, it generates deprivation, marginalisation, exclusion and impoverishment, which facilitate macro-social processes of exploitation of workers and artisans, men and women, girls and boys (1998: 12).

The contradictory development of social classes and regions increased tensions, especially when most of the natural resources (see Fig. 8.3) are located in the Global South, often in territories held by indigenous societies (Gaitán 2004), which are seriously threatened by climatic changes (IPCC 2013). In order to promote a nonviolent and sustainable future for the whole planet, congruent with alternative globalisation processes, human rights and human security have to overcome the survival dilemma (Brauch 2008) and find ways to deal peacefully with new complex contradictions and constructive conflict resolutions. Most security analyses limit their analysis in realist term to the nation state. Armed security still predominates, as proven by military expenditure (SIPRI 2017). However, when terrorism hit highly industrialised countries (in North America and Europe), it became clear that it is not through wars, but though negotiation, social development and cultural diversity that terrorism can be defeated. Starting with

8.7 Historical Evolution of Some Security Concepts

181

Brauch’s survival hexagon, we can now submit that only a HUGE security concept may be able to address the whole complexity of the present global world order system (Wallerstein 1970). Returning to Figs. 8.2 and 8.3, human rights provide the global frame for a discussion on security, enabling us even to go a step further and operationalise the security concept. In 1948, the UN officially proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. During the past five decades new civil and environmental rights have been added through the International Treaty of Civil Rights in 1976 and the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The UN declared that “human beings constitute the centre of preoccupation related to sustainable development. They [humans] have the right to a healthy and productive life, in harmony with nature”. Frequently, an integral approach to complex issues remains in generalities. The present proposal intends to link the diverse variables operationally, defining the precise level of analyses and also their interaction. This should avoid the error known as “fallacy of erroneous levels” (Galtung 1975). Finally, the exposed model also tries to understand, in an interdisciplinary way, the role of deeply internalised – often unconscious – values coming from personal and social spheres. From a historical approach, the analysis has questioned underlying occidental concepts, such as colonialism, ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, cultural superiority and conflicts presented in the paradigm of globalisation. However, regional and local forces actively intermingle within these processes and constantly transform them through historical (indigenous societies) or modern resistance (see altermundism); delinking (subsistence approach by Via Campesina); or armed resistance (guerrilla, terrorism). Especially in Latin America, opposition to the occidentally-imposed model of inhuman globalisation is growing, and new ways of conflict resolution and new ways to live are being explored, expressed as vivir bien (living well).

8.7.2

Regional Alternatives and Inclusive Globalisation

The philosophy of these alternative movements and massive associations is rooted in three historical experiences: (a) the nonviolent resistance of indigenous societies (Gaitán et al. 2004; Stavenhagen 1975, 2013); (b) the tradition of Che Guevarism in ongoing guerrilla movements (EZLN, Shining Path, FLN) and mass organisation offering alternatives to exclusion and unemployment, such as the Movemento Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) in Brazil (MST 2010), which integrates more than one million landless peasants in a regional articulated productive scheme (MST 2003; Santos de Morais 2002); and (c) Bases of Christian Movement (Movimiento Cristiano de Base), inspired by the Theology of Liberation (Samuel Ruíz, Sergio Mendes Arceo, Camilo Torres, Fray Betto), the movements of solidarity and of alternative economy (Vaughan 1997, 2004; Lopezllera 2003) together with the environmental groups. The confluence of these three different strategies and activities found an initial articulation in the World Social Forum and its

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Assembly of Social Movements, where the mass organisations were careful to avoid any co-optation by international NGOs. Its basic principles were plurality, diversity, equity and social compromise, in order to promote a globalisation with a human face and solidarity, under the goal “Another World is Possible”. National and local governments in the Global South, and increasingly also in the smaller industrialised nations, are aware of the negative effects of the ongoing process of exclusive globalisation. Their citizens have demanded alternatives, articulated within a local or regional context. The complexity of the involved factors has obliged politicians and academics to reorganise their understanding on the strength of local developments inserted into a global process. From a historical perspective, this is not a new phenomenon, although it was never experienced with its present force and velocity in the past. Today, instant communications also make all these different efforts for a sustainable different world order more visible. The increasing complexity of interactions gave birth to the constitution of a “regional institutionalised system”, with a democratic structure for decision-making, approved and respected by all members, and with a legal frame and parliamentary organisation (European Union). This global organisation emerged from regional and local articulations within a globalised world, a process described by several academics as glocalisation (Kaplan 2003). Generally it represents amorphous forms of interaction that may be able to increase or decrease human rights. However, new right-wing governments inside the European Union are threatening these processes with a xenophobic and approach, aggravated by similar tendencies in the US.

8.8

Peace, Peace Research, Peace Movements and IPRA Within Its 40 Years After Groningen

In 1962, WILPF established a Consultative Commission on peace research. The IPR Newsletter appeared the following year, and a preliminary meeting was held in Switzerland. In 1964 the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) was founded in London, and in 1965 Holland organised its first international meeting in Gröningen. The fact that Norwegians Elise and Kenneth Boulding took residence in the USA gave IPRA the chance to coordinate research in both hemispheres. Several new peace study institutes in Sweden (SIPRI), Denmark (COPRI) and Finland (TAPRI) consolidated peace research in North Europe, actively supported by the Polemic Institute in Holland. The constitution of the European Peace Research Association (EUPRA) and the North American Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED) permitted IPRA to include subregional associations and activities. In 1972, IPRA organised the first congress in India, a Global South country where much learning from active nonviolent movements took place. During the Seventies, peace educators joined peace researchers in IPRA, and in the Eighties peace movements generated the third pillar of the organisation.

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In 1977, The National Autonomous University of Mexico organised the international congress of IPRA in its country. Mexico had accepted refugees from almost all Latin American countries, who had been expelled by repressive military dictatorships. With more than 150 Latinos present, the Latin American Council of Peace Research (CLAIP) was created. Its activities were basically linked to the democratisation processes occurring in Latin American nations, and international denunciations of torture, human right infractions, massacres and disappearances of social and political leaders were on the agenda. In Latin America analysis of inequality, gender discrimination, environmental destruction and mining conflicts formed part of the peace research agenda. The positive experience of CLAIP, given its links with universities in the subcontinent and social movements, induced the establishment of the Asian Peace Research Association, and the highly conflictive situation in Africa also stimulated the creation of an African Peace Research Association. In 1998, the international congress was held in Durban, South Africa, in order to learn from the peaceful transition processes led by Nelson Mandela. His leadership in Africa involved multiple peace efforts and reconciliation efforts between historically divided ethnic groups and struggling clans and the post-colonial conflict conditions inherited from Europe. The Southern regional associations enriched IPRA with valuable empirical peace and conflict resolution materials, opening the door to intercultural exchange and new theoretical reflections. From Latin America emerged the dependency theories, transformed into structural imperialism and the centre-periphery approach by Galtung (1972) and Senghaas (1998, 2003). Asia contributed with the nonviolent and ahimsa experiences, systematised by IPRA members. These approaches were transformed into peace education and nonviolence, symbols on which Martin Luther King’s supporters based their racial liberation movements in the USA. The peaceful transition from Apartheid repression towards democracy in the rainbow nation was crucial for future peace efforts in Latin America (e.g. El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala) and Asia (India-Pakistan, Tamil Tigers and several internal conflicts). The reconciliation processes between victimisers and victims created models of multidimensional integration, and “Truth Commissions” promoted a democratisation process in former war-torn countries. The balance of IPRA on its fortieth anniversary is positive. Several study groups have changed their initial research subjects, adapting to the new threats to peace, and other groups have started studying new themes. As an example, the Food Study Group inside IPRA changed after ten years to the Human Right Group and finally split into two commissions: one studying human rights, especially collaborating with those of children’s and women’s rights; and the other group centred on environmental security and the new threats of global warming, water scarcity, risks of disasters, migration and environmental pollution. The interrelation of peace education with practical peace learning courses, together with peace movements, brought new dynamism into the organisation. There were changes in the General Secretariat from the USA to Europe, to Japan and back to Europe. IPRA changed the role of President into two Secretaries

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General with first two men from Australia and Japan; later a women from Turkey and a man from Sierra Leone; and finally a women from Mexico and a man from Japan. Different study groups integrated in existing international networks and worked actively in the field of conciliation, mediation, transformative justice and the construction of peace theories. In sometimes tense relations between members, study groups and working groups, a dynamic expression of the complexity of global peace research exists inside IPRA. It is also a challenge to apply theoretical knowledge into the praxis of conflict management. However, the critical financial situation of IPRA has prevented more Southern researchers participating actively in the conferences of IPRA and its study groups. Convinced of the importance of forging a regional equilibrium, IPRA has tenaciously fostered gender balance. There is not only a special commission on Women and Peace, but in all public events and plenary sessions, gender equilibrium is now promoted. This priority has opened IPRA to new ideas and provided the organisation with direct opportunities to deal with internal conflicts in a peaceful way. However, in IPRA’s history only three women have been Secretary General: Elise Boulding, Nesrin Kenar and myself. The international recognition of peace research and education inside IPRA is reinforcing ongoing efforts and injecting new enthusiasm for analysing the increasingly complex geopolitical situation in the world and its growing tensions in multiple specific fields, where mass media, internet and social networks have been integrated into the peace efforts. These tensions also reflect the global world order, where old conflicts, such as the Palestinian-Israeli, Indian-Pakistan, China-Taiwan, African ethnic confrontations are linked to new threats and to conflicts over natural resources. This complex situation is reinforced by structural violence, such as poverty, abandoned children, marginalisation, gender discrimination, torture, extrajudicial executions, illegal judicial processes, human trafficking, drug violence and human rights violations. The end of the Cold War disintegrated the Soviet Union, but did not bring the long-awaited peace dividend. China has reorientated its economy to market forces, and a kind of “social capitalism” with high industrial growth rates has made China a major player in the international geopolitical arena. However, its activities have had negative impacts on the environment and resource extraction. IPRA and its regional associations still cover a large field of research. New challenges of peace education and a growing field to analyse and participate in the global activism are emerging. Most human beings want to live in peace and use processes of non-violent conflict resolution, thus governments must grant this peace and security through peaceful means. Further, conflicts are motors of change and development, but when reorientated towards personal ambitions and geopolitical interests, mismanaged conflicts and changed dynamics (Gluckman 1965) can destroy the entire world. Physical and structural violence is inherent in the highly competitive free-market system and its present dynamism of globalisation. Socialist attempts to establish Utopia were destroyed by repressive and bureaucratic communist regimes. Which utopian model is left to develop ethical principles, communitarian responsibility and environmentally sustainable development processes, in order to

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promote a “postmodern democracy of consensus?” How can equity, real citizen representation and life quality with human rights be achieved in daily life? The past history of wars, conquests, domination and destruction brought poverty and death; will the emerging postmodern civilisation guarantee diverse, just, equitable and sustainable coexistence with care for the vulnerable? This is the challenge for peace researchers, educators and actors, and IPRA has to renew its efforts to find concrete answers to these new challenges.

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Mookherjee, Monica (2005). “The morality of freedom and the patriarchal bargain”, Ethnicities, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 274–279. Mouffe, Chantl (2000). The Democratic Paradox, New York, Verso. Moore, Henrietta K. (1994). A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender, London, Polity Press. MST (2010). MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) https://www.infoescola. com/geografia/mst-movimento-dos-trabalhadores-rurais-sem-terra/. Nuñez, Xavier, Roberto Gutiérrez (2004). Classism, Discrimination and Meritocracy in the Labor Market: The Case of Chile, Santiago, University of Chile. Nuscheler, Franz (1995). Lern- und Arbeitsbuch Entwicklungspolitik, Bonn, Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung. Nussbaum, Martha, Amartya Sen (Eds.) (1993). Quality of Life, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Okin, Susan (1989). Feminist Perspective on Power, Stanford Encyclopedia on Philosophy http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2011). “Genetically Modified Organisms: A Threat for Food Security and Risk for Food Sovereignty and Survival”, in Brauch, Hans Günter et al. (eds.) Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1019–1042. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.) (2007). International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Book 39 of the Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems, UNESCO/EOLSS, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2004) (Ed.). Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías, Mexico, D.F., Coltlax, CLAIP, Fundación IPRA, F. Böll. Oxfam (2017). “Una economía para el 99% Es hora de construir una economía más humana y justa al servicio de las personas”, London, Oxfam. Padilla, Luis Alberto (2018). “Human Rights and Radical Democracy”, in Ú. Oswald Spring, S.E. Serrano Oswald (Eds.), Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin America, Cham, Springer, pp. 227–254. Palerm, Angel (2004). Historia de la Etnología. Taylor y los Profesionales Británicos, Mexico, D.F., Universidad Iberoamericana. Plato (360 AE [427–347 AE]). The Republic (translated by Benjamin Jowett), http://classics.mit. edu/Plato/republic.html. Plumwood, Val (1991). “Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism Enviromental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism”, Hyaia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring), pp. 13–15. Polanyi, Karl (1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origin of our Time, Boston, Beacon Press. Preiswerk, Roy (1984). À contre.courants. L´enjeu des relations interculturelles, Lausanne, Ed. d´en bas. Reardon B. A. (1996). Sexism and the War System, New York, Syracuse University Press. Richards, Howard (2000). “On the concept of peacemaking”, in Ú Oswald Spring (Ed.), Peace Studies from a Global Perspective, Delhi, Maadhyam Book, pp. 3–35. Richards, Howard, Joanna Schwanger (2004). “Otro Mundo es Posible: Introducción a una Metodología de la Esperanza y Propuesta de un Cambio de Paradigma”, in Ú. Oswald Spring (Ed.), Resolución noviolenta en sociedades indígenas y minorías, pp. 189–197. Riegel, Klaus Georg (2001). “Asiatische Werte. Die Asiendebatte im Kontext der Globalisierung, Zeitschrift für Politik, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 397–425. Rouhani, Sepideh (2000). “Building a New World Order through Spiritual Education: A Bahá´í Perspective”, in Ú Oswald Spring (Ed.), Peace Studies from a Global Perspective, Delhi, Maadhyam Book, pp. 280–291. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1762). Le Contract Social, Amsterdam, Marc-Michel Rey. Santos de Morais, Clodomir (2002). “Apuntes de Teoría de la Organización”, Library UNDP, New York, UNDP. Senghaas, Dieter (1998). Zivilisierung wider Willen, Frankfurt a. Main, rororo.

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Senghaas, Dieter (2003). “Welches Paradigma für die internationalen Beziehungen angesichts welcher Welt(en)”, in Hans Küng, Dieter Senghaas (Eds.), Friedenpolitik. Ethische Grundlagen internationaler Beziehungen, München, Piper Verlag, pp. 71–109. Senghaas, Dieter (Ed.) (1972). Imperialismus und strukturelle Gewalt, Frankfurt a. Main, rororo. Serrano Oswald, S. Eréndira (2004). “Género, migración y paz: incursiones a una problemática desde una perspectiva multidimensional e incluyente”, in Ú. Oswald Spring (ed.), Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías, México, D.F., CLAIP, Coltlax, IPRA-F, Fundación Böll, pp. 287–306. Serrano Oswald, S. Eréndira (2010). La Construcción Social y Cultural de la Maternidad en San Martín Tilcajete, Oax., Doctoral Thesis, Mexico, D.F., UNAM-Instituto de Antropología. Serrano, S.E., Ú. Oswald Spring, D. de la Rúa (Eds.)(2016). América Latina en el Camino hacia una Paz Sustentable: Herramientas y Aportes [Latin America on the path to sustainable peace: tools and contributions], Guatemala, ARP, FLACSO Guatemala, CLAIP. SDG (2015). Sustainable Development Goals, New York, UN. Shaoijun, Li (2000). Globalization and Chinese Culture”, in Ú Oswald Spring (Ed.), Peace Studies from a Global Perspective, Delhi, Maadhyam Book, pp. 70–81. Sharp, Jeremy M. (2018). U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, Congressional Research Service, https://fas. org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf. Shiva, Vandana, Maria Mies (1997). Ecofeminism, Melbourne, Melbourne, Zed Books. SIPRI (2017). Yearbook 2017, Stockholm, SIPRI. Sousa Santos, de Boaventura (2014). Democracia al borde del caos. Ensayo contra la autoflagelación, Mexico, D.F., Siglo XXI eds. Sousa Santos, de Boaventura (2016). La difícil democracia. Una mirada desde la periferia europea, Madrid, Ediciones Akal SA. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (1975). Social Classes in Agrarian Societies, New York, Anchor Press. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (2013). Peasants, Culture and Indigenuos People. Critical Issues, Cham, Springer. Stiglitz, Joseph (2007). Globalisation and its Discontent, New York, W.W. Norton. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2002). Globalization and Its Discontents, New York, New Press. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (2016). The Great Divide. Unequal societies and what we can do about them, New York, Norton. Suhrke, Astri (1999). “Human Security and the Interests of States”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 256–276. Sumner Maine, Henry (1861). Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas. London, John Murray. Surugiu, Mariys-Răzvan, Camelia Surugiu (2015). “International Trade, Globalization and Economic Interdependence between European Countries: Implications for Businesses and Marketing Framework”, Procedia Economics and Finance, Vol. 32, pp. 131–138. Taylor, Rodney L. (1998). “The Religious Character of the Confucian Tradition”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 80–107. Tetzlaff, Rainer (2003). S“taats- und Zivilisationszerfall. Wird Afrika anschlussfähig an die globlisierte Welt?”, in Hans Küng, Dieter Senghaas (Eds.), Friedenpolitik. Ethische Grundlagen internationaler Beziehungen, München, Piper Verlag, pp. 321–383. Turner, Victor (1957). Schism and continuity in an African Society: a study of Ndembu village life, Manchester, Manchester University Press. UNDP (1980). Human Development Report, New York, UNDP. Vaughan, Genevieve (1997). For-Giving: A Feminist Criticisms of Exchange, Austin, Plain View Press. Vaughan, Genevieve (2004). The Gift; Il Dono, Rome, Meltemi, University of Bari, New Serie 8. Von Braunmühl, Claudia (2004). “Human Security versus human Development”, in Heinrich Böll Stiftung (Ed.), Human Security = Women’s Security? Keine nachhaltige Sicherheit ohe Geschlechterspective, Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung, pp. 57–61. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1970).The Modern World-System IV Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914, Berkeley, California University Press.

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Chapter 9

Environmental Management in a Globalised World

9.1

Introduction

The globalisation process,1 characterised by instant world communications, financial flows and growing trade interdependence in the hands of multinational enterprises, has increasingly homogenised the development paradigm and consumption. Market liberalisation, competition and a process of privatisation, linked to shrinking state intervention, have become the motors of growth and concentration of wealth. The United Nations, multilateral organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF 2000), World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO), multinational enterprises and national governments, are all reinforcing this hegemonic development scheme. Overall, this process is leading to increasingly exclusive, violent and destructive globalisation, especially in the Global South. To be more precise, it translates into an irrational management of energy, water, biodiversity, and raw materials, which are appropriated by a complacent elite who exercise discriminatory exclusion against the majority of the Global South’s inhabitants, especially indigenous and poor peasants. Serious global crises prevail in both hemispheres, such as ozone layer depletion, global warming and extreme weather events converted into disasters, mounting poverty among vulnerable groups, hunger, under-employment and unemployment. This irrational exploitation of nature, human and a faulty resource allocation has led the Blue Planet into recurrent and more severe socio-environmental crises, which have especially affected the poor and vulnerable. The resulting world situation is conflict-prone as commodities, wealth, investments and trade are concentrated in a few oligarchs (Oxfam 2017). Military forces under NATO and secret intelligence agencies (CIA, Pentagon, KGB, Ministry of State Security, China, etc.) reinforce this world order and exacerbate resentments, for example with the ‘War against Terrorism’, which has recklessly divided humans

1

Presentation at the IPRA General Conference, in Suwon, South Korea, July 2002, with some updates.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_9

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into either ‘good’ or ‘evil’. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, among others, have claimed thousands of innocent victims, the destruction of civil infrastructure and millions of refugees, only to maintain the dominant interests in this patriarchal war system (Reardon 1996). This behaviour, which is largely driven by countries keen to maintain their geostrategic interests by controlling abundant oil, minerals and gas reserves, has, however, hardly been successful in maintaining a sustainable development scheme. Viewed from a Southern perspective, violence and public insecurity have increased, along with gender, age and racial discrimination. In Latin America, with the highest biodiversity in the world, globalisation processes mean that more than 200 million people live in poverty (Fig. 9.1), and it suffers from the highest

Poor

Homeless

Fig. 9.1 Evolution of poverty and indigence in Latin America: 1980–2015. Source CEPAL (2019: 97)

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Fig. 9.2 Evolution of inequality: 2002–2018. Source CEPAL (2019: 42)

inequality globally (Fig. 9.2). Around 80% of the population shares less than one fifth of socio-economic resources, a situation that affects life quality, and development remains nugatory for most of them. The privatisation of water, communications, oil, electricity and other public infrastructure services, alongside agrarian counter-reforms, abandonment of small-scale farming, land-grabbing and growing imported subsidised foods, have destroyed national food sovereignties and local food security (Oswald Spring 2009). Depreciating international agricultural prices, along with scant rural support for small farmers, have produced massive migrations into urban areas, aggravating negative social and environmental externalities. Further, foreign cheap massive consumer goods have destroyed internal market structures and produced an increasing number of overweight and obese people. The results are greater poverty and inequality (Figs. 9.1 and 9.2). The formerly best consolidated country, Argentina,2 was hit by various severe economic crises, which have affected the common market of the Mercosur and the trade between Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, and the associated nations of Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru. Neoliberalism and the periodic socio-economic crisis have also affected Mexico and Central America.

2

In 1928, Argentina was considered the sixth world economic power. However, internal mismanagement and the pressure on the oligarchs by the governments of the United Kingdom and the US, especially during 1974 and 2002, have destroyed the potential positive development of this country. Venezuela is worse, with inflation of over one million per cent in 2017–2018.

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Processes of Environmental Deterioration

Limited development paradigms and environmental violence in the South have global repercussions, affecting sustainability and inter-generational equity (Genovés 1999). Alternatively, environmental security (Dalby et al. 2009) could improve human security and global livelihood (Samantara 1998), but the extractivism is systematically destroying the ecosystem services and the biodiversity (Arach 2018). These ecosystem services and the associated environmental diversity may be conceptualised under four different genera: natural commodities (fauna, flora, food, medicinal plants, construction materials); services (oxygenation, pollinisation, nitrogen and dioxide fixation, homeostatic regulation, recycling of biodegradable materials); informatics (genetic, biochemical, ecological, environmental); and cultural services (material and immaterial goods). Atomic fusion with long-term waste pollution, burning of fossil fuels, thermo-electrical production, genetics and genetically modified organisms (GMO; Oswald Spring 2011a), the green revolution (Borlaug/Dowswell 2001) and other new technologies controlled by multinational enterprises have affected, and in some parts destroyed, the very delicate ecological balances. Concretely, the Latin American subcontinent faces severe problems: 1. More than three-quarters of the population live in urban areas. 2. The mounting scarcity and pollution of green and blue water (Cosgrove/ Rijsberman 2002; GEO 2000) and waste are threatening the health and life quality of humans and animals. 3. Latin America is the most biodiverse region on Earth. The accelerated destruction of tropical, dry and humid forests had consequential impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services losses (WCMC 1994). 4. The intensive extraction of oil, gas and minerals is creating conflicts with local inhabitants and long-term pollution.

9.2.1

Urbanisation

A key factor in the global imbalance is the population increase. According to calculations of the United Nations (UN-DESA 2017), every 35 years the world population will double and its growth will stabilise only in the middle of the 21st century, with a population of approximately 8–14 billion inhabitants. Latin America has one of the highest urban growth rates. Migrations from rural to urban areas commenced in the Fifties, due to substantial changes in agrarian policies, high demographic rates, environmental deterioration (GEO 2000), water scarcity (Postel 1992), soil depletion and loss of its natural fertility (FAO 2016). This situation continues to this day, although with lower urbanisation rates. The urban population in 1950 represented about 43% of the total population, increased in 1995 to 73.5%, was accounted at about 80% in 2018 and is estimated in 2050 to

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be 86% (BBVB 2017). The extreme examples of this trend are the cities of Mexico, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Lima and Santiago de Chile. The lack of planning in the urban development of these cities has generated vast shanty towns, where basic services are unavailable, pollution is high and life conditions are miserable (IFAD 1992). Population density, combined with economic activities and car traffic, have seriously affected the air quality of these cities. As an example, in Mexico City, chronicle respiratory illnesses affect more than 85% of children and 18% suffer from asthma. The future of life quality in big cities in Latin America and in all poor countries of the Global South is worsening, but also urban poverty and violence are increasing (UN-DESA 2011). Rapid industrialisation, intensive processes, centralised transport and distribution networks are the typical pattern of exhaustive resource use and pollution. Climatic changes are at least partially caused by toxic gas emissions, and are having a profound effect on the balance of the earth’s atmosphere, causing catastrophes which affect us all to a certain degree, some parts of the world far more than others (IPCC 2013). Latin America and especially Central America and Mexico are highly exposed to disasters, due to the warming two oceans (IPCC 2014). The emergence of some 30 new diseases, including AIDS, Ebola, Zika, Chikungunya and haemorrhagic dengue, is causing public health problems. In addition, the chaotic urbanisation process, agro-chemicals, air pollution, indoor pollutants and plastic waste have catalysed the propagation of dengue, malaria, leishmaniosis (transmitted through sand fly bites), diarrhoea, lung cancer, chronic respiratory illnesses, and heart and lung diseases (Leaning 2009). Waste disposal is another problem linked to urbanisation and is associated with inadequate management, but is also related to the much debated connotation of ‘progress’. During the last 30 years, as a result of the changes in consumption patterns, solid waste has tripled (Miezah et al. 2015). Latin America generates 275,000 tons of solid waste every day. Its burning requires 30,000 trucks of fuel or 350,000 m3 of soil for landfills. Thus, less than 60% of this waste receives adequate treatment and is deposited open-air beside streets and wasteland, polluting the air, soil, subsoil and aquifers and producing multiple vectors, which produce diseases (PHO 1995). In industrialised countries, the amount of waste has also tripled in just two decades. Worldwide, the output of hazardous waste is about 400 million tons per year, of which 300 million tons are produced by OECD countries (UNEP 2000). Industrial processes involve the use of chemicals, energy and waste. Pulp production, mining, leather and tanning factories often give rise to pollution in water (Bendig 1995) and soil with heavy metals, such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). Instead of an integrated management programme, about 1,000 tons are traded every year to developing countries with less strict waste disposal controls. Prior Informed Consent (PIC) is partially combating such trade; however corruption and lack of legal reinforcement exist everywhere (Brañes 1994). Exposure to high levels of heavy metals affects the immune system, is linked with mental retardation, various cancer types and kidney damage. POPs include a wide range of chemicals, persisting for many years and often found thousands of

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kilometres from where they were released. POPs endanger plants, food chains and health, and especially the reproductive system of humans and animals. Domestic waste is growing, especially in urban areas, and the US has a staggering daily average of more than 1.5 kg per person. In developing countries, plastic use increases waste production and is also linked to the propagation of vector illnesses, such as malaria and dengue. More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year, which is seriously affecting its ecosystem and fauna (Heinrich Böll Foundation 2017). Less than 25% of sewage water receives adequate treatment. In urban zones, faecal pollution constitutes one of the most significant health problems. Such water is responsible for most water-borne illnesses and a high number of infant deaths. Cholera epidemics in the Nineties, stemming from Peru, invaded the whole of Latin American and obliged the authorities to improve clean water services (CEPAL 1998). Inter-regional differences between various countries are significant. While in Havana, Cuba, all sewage water receives adequate treatment and 100% of garbage is collected, in La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia water treatment was zero but has improved since 1998. In 1995, in San Salvador only 2%, in Santiago 5% and in Brasilia 54% of sewage was treated (Habitat 1995).

9.2.2

Pollution of Air, Water, Soil and Climate Change

Expansive and wasteful consumerism contaminates the earth and depletes natural resources. Since 1950, the burning of fossil fuels has increased fourfold. The global emission of CO2 is around 24 billion tons, with an increase of 400 million tons from 1995 to 1996 (GEO-2000: 1). The richest fifth of the world is responsible for 60% of commercial energy use and 53% of carbon-dioxide emissions, while the poorest are responsible for only 3% (UNSTAT 1997). The United States, Japan and the European Union produce more than 40% of the global carbon dioxide emissions (CDIAC 1998; IPCC 2013). The United States contributes 20.5 metric tons per capita, Germany, 10.2; Mexico, 3.5; and China, 2.7, compared to only 0.1 in countries such as Madagascar, Rwanda, Sudan, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Nicaragua (UNDP 1998). WB (2018) indicates that OECD countries emit 9.5, US 16.4, Canada 15.1, Japan 9.5, Germany 8.9, Kuwait 25.2 and Qatar 45.4 metric tons/cap. As a result of the excess emissions of greenhouse gases, the alteration in the chemical composition of the air has altered the weather cycle and produced anthropogenic climate change IPCC (2013). The local effects are divergent, depending on the geographic and climatic situation of each region or country. Central America and Mexico are highly exposed to climate change impacts, due to two oceans with higher temperatures, thus producing more hurricanes, stronger droughts and bushfires. The severe Niño-Niña years have produced more extreme events, with high social impacts on vulnerable people (Binder 1996). Bunyard (1999) calculated that the melting of permafrost could release about 450 billion tons of carbon

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dioxide and methane, reinforcing the global climatic change. “Oceans, instead of a vital sink for carbon could turn into a net source… with fifty times more carbon dioxide than is in the atmosphere.” (p. 72) The Hadley Centre predicts that global warming could transform the Amazon Basin into a desert by 2050. The melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet could raise sea levels by 5–9 m, destroying fertile deltas used in food production. The ice shield in the Antarctic was relatively stable before 1992, with an annual shrinkage of 3.8 cm that increased in 2017 (NOAA 2018). A rise of only one metre might sweep away 30% of the world’s cropland, flooding important towns and infrastructure, including coastal nuclear plants. The increase of one metre of sea levels could affect 73 million peasants in an area of 125,000 km2 (IPCC 2014). Further, computer simulation shows that global warming could ‘shut down’ the Gulf Stream, plunging part of Europe, Canada and the US into a mini-ice age (Bunyard 1999). The phenomenon of global warming is one of the most notable consequences of climate change, especially in low-lying countries with long coastal areas, such as Bangladesh or the Netherlands. Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable, as most of its fertile lands are located in coastal regions, which during floods and hurricanes, coupled with rising sea-levels, have suffered from a process of salinisation which has reduced local food production. During the monsoon floods from July to September 1998, Bangladesh lost around 2.2 million tons of rice, causing a production decrease of 14%. Bangladesh, an extremely poor country with high levels of hunger, has few resources to correct this problem, contrary to the Netherlands, with an old culture of dam protection. Warmer temperatures could also ruin Chinese farmers and the rice production in India. Climatic changes are having extreme effects on our lives in the form of colossal natural events, transformed by lack of prevention and proactive behaviour into disasters. IPCC (2012) indicated that extreme events are becoming more frequent and increasingly destructive. Besides climate-induced events such as bush fires, floods, hurricanes, tropical storms, landslides and drought, exist the geological events related to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. All these extreme events occur mostly in environmental and socially vulnerable regions. This dual vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2013) transforms these extreme events into severe disasters, which destroy life and livelihood. Asia is the most exposed region and during 1980–2005 suffered 33% of world catastrophes, 67% of casualties and 28% of economic loss. Only 0.2% was covered by insurance policies. The losses resulting from these catastrophes were eight times higher in the 1990s than the previous decade and again increased during the 2010s. Earthquake with tsunami in Aceh on the 26th of December 2004 produced between 200,000 and 310,000 human deaths and also affected the African coast with an estimated cost of 81 billion dollars. The Tohoku earthquake with tsunami and the meltdown of three nuclear reactors in 2011 is an example of how lack of prevention could produce cascading effects, when 15,894 people died, 2,562 were missing and 6,152 were injured, with total costs estimated at between 235 and 360 billion dollars (WB 2014). The Haiti earthquake in 2010 killed 200,000 people,

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destroyed the houses of 2 million and affected 3 million people in total, then later a cholera epidemic increased the death toll. The eruption of volcano Ruiz in Colombia in 1985 killed 25,000 people, and the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005 produced 75,000 deaths and 106,000 injured. The biggest climate disasters have occurred during difficult Niño years in 1998, 2005 and again 2015–2016. The Worldwatch Institute (1998) classified ‘Mitch’ as the most lethal hurricane that hit the Americas in the last 200 years, causing 11,000 deaths in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. In monetary terms, damage was estimated at 48 billion dollars in Honduras alone, which amounted to one-third of the country’s GDP, and a billion in Nicaragua. After the disaster, almost half of the Honduran population had to be evacuated, 70% didn’t have access to drinking water, and diseases were increasing. The situation was made even worse by the fact that it was impossible to reach many of the needy victims as many bridges and main roads were completely destroyed by the hurricane. The tragedy doesn’t stop there; 95% of crops were destroyed in a country where almost two-thirds of the economically active population work in agriculture, signifying long-term economic damage for the majority of the population and hunger (Lappe et al. 1998). One possible alternative was a temporary or definitive emigration to the United States. In the same strong Niño year, China and Bangladesh suffered from floods, an ice-storm affected Canada and New England, and US flights were suspended on various days. Another difficult Niño year was 2005, when Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and Hurricanes Rita, Stan and Wilma in Central and North America caused damage costing between 108 and 250 billion dollars in the US, while Stan destroyed half of the GDP of the state of Chiapas in Mexico and killed 1,665 indigenous people in Guatemala and Chiapas. Its costs are estimated at 3.95 billion dollars and hit the poorest regions of Central America and Mexico. In 2005, the busiest hurricane season in the Atlantic, Wilma hit Quintana Roo in Mexico and Florida in the US with estimated losses of 22.3 billion dollars. After the strong Niño year in 2015– 2016, several dangerous hurricanes emerged and in October 2017 Harvey affected 6.6 million urban inhabitants of Houston, at an estimated cost of 125 billion dollars. In September 2017 Hurricane Maria affected Puerto Rico and may cost between 45 and 95 billion dollars. During the same period, Irma, a category five hurricane, destroyed 90% of the buildings in Barbuda, at an estimated cost of between 100 and 300 billion dollars, and was considered stronger than Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (SwissRe 2017). The fact that natural extreme events got converted into disasters and have affected extremely poor countries in Central America, Asia and Africa means even wider destruction and greater human losses. Poor people are always severely affected by disasters because they are more likely to live in dangerous, insecure areas where disaster can easily strike, such as mountainous regions prone to landslides (Mitch), ravines (Stan), or river-banks prone to flooding (Haiyan, Wilma). They are generally areas where rich people do not want to live and where the poor set up a home at modest cost, often using cheap materials or recycled rubbish. This shelter offers little protection under normal climatic circumstances,

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and even less when facing heavy winds, flooding, earthquakes, fires and other natural calamities. Just as poorly constructed buildings will be the first to fall in an earthquake, a house made of cardboard will be destroyed by one heavy rain. A shack on a mountainside will be carried away by a landslide, often taking its many occupants with it. If poor people have very little capital to start with, a natural disaster takes away what little they possess, leaving them with meagre chances of regaining their homes and belongings, which are rarely insured.

9.2.3

Management of Natural Resources

The intensive use of fossil fuel implies greater emissions of greenhouse gases and also an increase in conflict-prone situations. Mexico’s Gulf Coast is close to multiple islands of different sovereignties. The definition of patrimonial sea areas is not only relative to Mexico and the United States, but also to these various islands, creating conflicts over the potential management of fossil oil and gas resources in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. The perforation technologies to be developed over the next few years, will increase by almost tenfold the reserves in the oil camps known so far. Between 1992 and 1999, the United States increased the exploitation of crude oil in deep waters of this area by 550% and the exploitation of natural gas by 800%. In fact, this deep-sea exploitation of oil represents one fifth of the North American oil production.3 Who will have access to these new resources and who will own the necessary technologies to extract oil from the depths of these reserves? Recent negotiations between the USA and Mexico relative to the rights on these new resources have left Mexico at a disadvantage, with a loss of approximately ten per cent of the negotiated territory, which comprises some of the richest oilfields in the region (La Jornada 25-6-2000). In the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean a potential geopolitical conflict might develop. The problem does not only concern the claim of 200 miles of patrimonial rights that Mexico, US, Venezuela, Colombia and the islands have defended for the last 30 years, but also encompasses the natural resources in deep-sea floors, which could increase the quantity of reserves known today – including oil and gas by several times. The Mexican Gulf is thus a conflictive and strategic area with great natural resource potential. A similar situation exists in the Amazon, where different countries share natural resources, and in the Sea of China. Another area of conflict is the mounting pressure on water and safe water resources. Over two decades, the consumption of drinking water has doubled. 3

This exploitation of deep-sea oil, coupled with the technology of fracking, which extracts oil and gas from tar sands and bituminous soils, has transformed the US into the top producer of fossil hydrocarbons, above Saudi Arabia, and has increased the energy security of this country. However, pollution by toxic chemicals, the significant amounts of water required during the process, and the high cost of fracking the bituminous stones represents high risks to human health, animals and plants in the affected regions.

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Twenty countries suffer from severe water shortages with less than 1,000 m3 available per person and year. Scarcity can easily be translated into a potential war situation, especially considering that around a third of the world’s population has no access to safe water (Homer-Dixon 2000). By the year 2025, two out of every three world citizens will live under water-stressed conditions. Since the beginning of 1980, intelligence services in the United States have estimated that there are ten regions in the world that could easily resort to warfare due to water scarcity (Starr 1992). The Centre for Natural Resources, Energy and Transport (CNRET) published a register of international rivers which states that 214 river basins and lakes belong to two or more countries. Approximately 47% of the globe is located within international basins and 44 countries exist where at least 80% of their territory lies within such boundaries (Biswas 2011). This implies potential conflicts in the face of emergency situations (Miall et al. 1999), especially in the Middle East, countries like Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, given that the most conflictive international river basins are considered to be the Jordan, Euphrates and Nile Rivers. However, Latin America also suffers from water scarcity, as most of its ecosystems are semiarid or arid ones, with the exception of the Amazonas, Rio de la Plata and the Orinoco River. This situation should oblige governments to adopt a more rational approach and implement and develop efficient water-saving techniques (Arreguín/Buenfil 1990; Arreguín 1991), especially in agriculture, which still uses 70% of the fresh water. The River Colorado conflict between the USA and Mexico obliged the Mexican authorities to suspend irrigation on its side of the border, affecting millions of Mexicans (see Chap. 7). The All-American Canal, a 130 km-long aqueduct located in south-eastern California, has replaced the Alamo Canal. With the new 37 km canal, completed in 2009, the water was rerouted to the Imperial Valley irrigation district, preventing seepage into Baja California Norte in Mexico, and thereby affecting the agricultural valley of Mexicali (Oswald Spring 2014). About 20% of the world’s population has no access to safe drinking water and about half lack adequate sanitation systems. This affects the health of more than 1,200 million people and occasions the death of 15 million children under five every year (UNICEF 2000). The faecal coliform in Asian rivers is fifty times higher than the WHO recommended guidelines, and in Latin America only fifteen per cent of sewage receives real treatment. Sewage and industrial waste have permeated and polluted groundwater, exposing entire populations in the Third World. Over-exploitation of aquifers gives further entry to seawater (Rangel et al. 2011). As a result, salty water mixes with drinking water and jeopardizes agricultural processes. Islands and coastal areas have especially been threatened by salinisation, a direct result of global warming and rising sea levels. The 28 large dams built in the Eighties throughout the planet show serious negative social and environmental externalities. These dams have not only affected local and indigenous knowledge (Stavenhagen 2000) and biodiversity, but forest and agricultural land have also been lost and new water-borne illnesses were originated. Vector-borne diseases affected more than 700 million in one year (Gubler 1998) and the WHO (2018) estimates 2 million fatalities, basically children

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under five years. Malaria alone causes over a million deaths per year, and there are 500 million illnesses in 90 countries which are mainly associated with stagnant water. The World Health Organisation additionally states that more than 500 million people suffer from water-borne diseases (bilharzia, malaria, diarrhoea, onchocerciasis, cholera, typhus, dysentery) or have been infected by polluted water. In developing countries, around 81% of preventable deaths occur due to non-potable water, with a rate of 25,000 deaths per day (UNEP 2017). In Latin America, the opposition to new dam projects by indigenous, peasants and environmental groups is growing and the generation of hydro-energy is now promoted with a new concept of integral resource management, in order to allow no more large interstate dams (Movement of People Affected by Dams: MAB; Korres et al. 2017). Fishing has quadrupled over the last two decades, a quarter of all species have become extinct, and forty countries, with a population of one billion people, run the risk of losing an important food supply. Total world fish production, including aquaculture, has stagnated at about 100 million tons per year. However, 300 million people still depend mainly on fish as a source of food and income (FAO 1994a: 10–11). Fisheries in the Black Sea have collapsed (FAO 1997b). In Scandinavia, hundreds of lakes, particularly small ones, still suffer from acidification. Several rivers in the European part of the former Soviet Union and Siberia have been diverted into artificial lake chains. Bed sediments are seriously polluted and often verge towards an eutrophication process. The Aral Sea has lost one third of its area, two-thirds of its water and almost all its native organisms as a result of the diversion of its waters for cotton irrigation (UNEP 1994). In Latin America the annual capture of fish is estimated today at 21 million tons. Between 1985 and 1995 South America tripled its capture level, and Colombia increased it by five times. In Peru, capture has varied between 2 and 12 million tons per year, depending on the Niño-Niña cycle. However, according to FAO (1997a, b), the area has over-exploited its fishing resources by 35%. The situation of shrimp production is particularly delicate, and measures known as mariculture and aquaculture have been adopted to remedy the situation. Chile achieved an increase in its salmon production of 30% and established a record 145,000 tons at a value of 450 million dollars in 1997 after implementing aquaculture (Ministry of Finance, Chile 1997). Nobody evaluated the long-term pollution costs of these capital and resource intensive processes. Overfishing, chemical pollution and 5 trillion tons of plastic are the key enemies of the existing fish reserves (Johnson et al. 2017). Coastal areas have always attracted tourism. In the Caribbean, where 12% of known reefs are concentrated, 29% currently show severe damage produced by sedimentation or contamination, caused by hotels, ships and human settlements. As a result, public health, quality of life, marine ecosystems and tourism itself are in constant danger (Bryant 1998). Around 1.7 million different biological species are known globally, but the total estimate is around 12.5 million (WCMC 1992). Tropical forests are the most species-rich ecosystems. They extend over 8% of the world’s surface and hold probably 90% or more of the world’s species. They are located mainly in Africa,

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Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. Forests are the natural habitat of flora and fauna. They maintain biodiversity, ensure the natural recharge of aquifers, restrain wind and water erosion, and constitute natural reserves for recreation, food production and landscapes. Deplorably, wild species have become extinct 500–1,000 times quicker than would have happened naturally. del Campo et al. (2010) estimated that 25% of mammals (4,630) and 11% of bird species (9,675) worldwide are threatened. Most of them are land based and inhabit forests, although marine ecosystems are also vulnerable. In the United States, nearly 70% of mussels, 50% of crayfish and 37% of fishes are threatened (Master et al. 1998). In terms of biodiversity, Latin America contains 68% of the world’s tropical forests and 40% of all vegetal and animal species. Mexico is home to 51% of migrating birds, but growing deforestation means that natural habitats are being destroyed (Liew et al. 1998). Brazil has 71 species of mammals in the process of extinction and is the world’s richest country in terms of flora. Forty-seven per cent of its territory is covered with forests, 95% of which are tropical (525 million of ha). The northern part of the Amazons and Guyana represent the greatest extent of forests in the world and contribute 10% of global metabolism (IUCN 1994, 2012, 2016). Of the 300,000 estimated plants, 200 species have been domesticated as food providers; one fifth are crops of international importance. The evolution of food crops over many thousand years has increased the genetic variety. It is only recently, after the green revolution in the Sixties and the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMO), that wild species have been endangered. Also, new illnesses arising from monocultivation produced a 15% reduction in the 1979 maize harvest in the USA. Research in this technology-intensive field still lacks conclusions for general application. Field experiments are normally carried out in the northern semiarid ecosystem and there exists little knowledge about effects on biodiverse tropical crops and plants. The process of deforestation is accompanied by erosion. This means that in Africa the Sahara advances two and a half kilometres a year towards the south, causing around 180 million environmental migrants. At present, 80% of the prairies are eroded, while 60% of rain-fed and 30% of irrigated lands are in the process of salinisation. Altogether this phenomenon is called playa-duna (Oswald Spring et al. 1986). Eighty per cent of forests that originally covered the Earth have been cleared. The most important remaining forests are in the Amazon Basin, Canada, Central Africa, South East Asia and the Russian Confederation. Half of the 3,500 million hectares of forest are found in the tropics and the other half are in temperate and boreal zones (FAO 1997a). On the other hand, the processes of intensive agriculture and consumption habits have created severe imbalances that lead to famine in large areas of the planet. For example, a ton of meat requires 14.5 tons of grains and 9.5 million litres of water, which represents 3,785 equivalent litres of oil. Deforestation brings wind and water erosion. Forests have been reduced from 11.4 to 7.3 km2 per thousand inhabitants since 1970. In the last 20 years, 7 million hectares of tropical forest have been lost in Latin America and the Caribbean,

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4 million in Asia and 4 million in Africa. In order to satisfy the demand for paper and wood, mainly from industrialised countries, rainforests have been destroyed. Industrial projects, mining, hydroelectric reservoirs, commercial timber, extensive ranching and commercial crops are some of the main ‘development projects’ with high social and ecological costs. In addition, severe degradation of forests is caused through acid rain, fires, agriculture, livestock, illegal tree-cutting and change of land use for urbanisation and tourism (Chomsky 1998). This is particularly serious, considering that the tropical rain forest produces 42% of the world’s biomass and oxygen (Strahm/Oswald Spring, 1990: 94). The production of disposable diapers for a single baby consumes 20 trees during the first two years. Considerable territories previously covered by dense forests and jungles are currently exposed to the sun and natural forces, which lead to a rapid process resulting in low fertility. In forest areas, soils with a high quality of humus erode. Meanwhile, in urban areas, obsolete sewage systems get plugged with sludge, polluting groundwater, seas, rivers and deltas (Master et al. 1998). Dams are also filled with eroded particles. Erosion is not only a result of deforestation, but also of inappropriate cropping practices or imported, non-adapted technology (Macari/ Sounders 1997). Two billion hectares, a sixth of the whole planet, have eroded due to irrational cultivation practices. According to FAO, half of the highlands, and an estimated 400 million people, are affected by this destruction process, especially in the Andean, Himalayan and Sahel region. In Ethiopia alone, 270,000 km2 are significantly eroded; 140,000 severely eroded and 20,000 so deeply that farming is no longer possible. The island of Java is another example; the increase in erosion rate per year is about 200,000 ha, affecting 12 million peasants (IFAD 1992). Mexico has erosion problems on about 83% of its land (FAO 2016). Chemical fertilising is less popular nowadays than in the late Eighties. However its consumption in developing countries is increasing. Anthropogenic nitrogen is responsible for about 60% of the total inorganic nitrogen. Rising nitrogen loads combined with phosphorous produce plant and alga growth in freshwaters and coastal habitats, causing eutrophication in lakes and rivers and toxic algae (red tides). Leaching of minerals such as potassium, calcium and nitrogen shields against soil acidity, which is increased by aluminium ions in high concentrations and can kill fish or damage tree roots. Further emerging pollutants (antibiotics, contraceptives, etc.; Cortés/Calderón 2011) are producing a feminisation of fishes in the Caribbean and of turtles in the Australian Great Barrier Reef.

9.3

An Alternative Paradigm Is Urgent and Possible

Clean air, potable water, proper disposal of solid and liquid waste, causing no health hazards, as well as food security are basic human rights, which are currently not respected, and which have, in the last few years, caused more deaths than wars. The need for a new paradigm capable of ending poverty and stopping current environmental destruction is the top priority on the development agenda. The

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concept of sustainable development with equality aims to address the current problems of poverty, inequity, discrimination, violence and environmental degradation, looking after the interests of both present and future generations (Brundtland Commission 1987). UNGA first promoted among its member states the Millennium Development Goals (MDG 2000), which after some achievements, but also shortcuts were transformed into Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015), with special emphasis on the sustainability of natural resources and gender equity. However, development models for developing countries are double-edged: on the one hand, they are encouraged to industrialise as quickly as possible in an attempt to ‘catch up’ with the industrialised countries, and on the other, they are told to reduce emissions and preserve natural resources for the benefit of the whole planet. This implies a new approach to growth processes: raising consciousness in society to encourage more active participation; necessary technological changes to sustain it; the transformation of existing damage and pollution into renewable development; and the compatibility of economic development policies, not only with environmental preservation, but also with natural and social resources (Leff/Sandoval 1985). In short, sustainable development means a new way of doing politics (Brundtland 1993), covering basic human needs and creating well-paid jobs in an environmentally-friendly productive system. The rhetoric of development programmes has to be reorientated by the limits of the natural ecosystems (Meadows/ Meadows 1992) to create a different rural development path (Barraclough et al. 1997), primarily directed at meeting local necessities of food security and only secondarily at the export market. However, the pressure of debt payments, extractivism and mining are pressuring developing countries into a different growth process with deep impacts on biodiversity and human health and well-being (Gandhi 1983). Growth at whatever cost must be replaced by a sustainable development approach which is committed to the well-being of present and future generations and their right to a dignified life and equity. There cannot be any sustainable development with the current status of poverty, social insecurity, high demographic rates, violence, inequality (Sen 1992), discrimination, exploitation and environmental depredation (Galeano 1980). Therefore, overcoming the results of underdevelopment is intertwined with actions of environment conservation and recovery, dignified employment, satisfaction of basic needs, realistic consumption patterns, wastefulness and elimination of physical and social violence. Sustainability and SDGs are concerned with efficient water use and its saving devices, reuse, recycling and consumption reduction; water-saving techniques in agriculture and at the basin level; and multi-level resource optimisation techniques, beginning with lineal programming up to decomposition (Arreguin 1991; Oswald Spring 2011b). This includes a different production process, the awareness of a new growth model, active citizenship and radical technological changes, transforming depredation and pollution into a process of renewed development. In other words, development policies must be compatible, not only with the preservation of the environment, but also with its recovery, protection, rational management and social commitment.

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Global responses to these crucial ecological problems seem, however, to be extremely slow. In an effort to confront the seriousness of these environmental problems, 180 state chiefs fixed an Agenda at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992). Five years later NGOs evaluated their results and 20 years later Rio+20 emerged. Only a few items had been accomplished. Since the Rio Summit in 1992, very little has been done to reduce the dangerous levels of greenhouse gas emissions. During the Kyoto Summit in 1997, the participants agreed on a reduction by the year 2010 of between 6 and 8% in the production of the key gases responsible for causing the Greenhouse Effect (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen oxide, among others), based on existing levels in 1990. The lack of real global will to confront this ecological vulnerability can be seen in the United States’ failure to sign these agreements. The US Government decided at the Paris Summit in 2015 to keep temperature rise, as consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, under 2 °C. However, Johnsson et al. (2018) insisted that the global goal will not be achieved with the present accepted changes, and investment in renewable energies did not rise in industrialised countries during 2017. Present technological developments applied and patented by multinational enterprises in the fields of biotechnology, energy efficiency and conservation, renewable energies, methods for recycling and reusing hazardous materials are means that increase the disparity between the North and South. They are also hidden threats to the environment. The amelioration of environmental security (Boulding 1993) cannot be found in the transnational globalisation process while technological transformation remains in the hands of profit-driven monopolies. Environmental security is also linked to human and gender security. In the poorest countries life expectancy at birth is 44 years and the infant mortality rate is 206 per 1,000 births. In 1998, out of 817,000 births, 168,000 infants died before the age of five as a result of lack of access to safe water, insufficient food, and natural disasters. Only 45% of poor people have drinking water, reducing to 37% in rural areas. Sanitation systems cover 34% of urban areas and 26% of rural areas. Primary school enrolment ratios are 43.5% of males and 35% of females, with only 45% of the children reaching the fifth grade of primary instruction within the present system of male-dominated planning (Mies 1998). Education is one of the most important ways to overcome poverty when the gross national product is only 140 US dollars per capita a year. Environmental problems are related to social obstacles which reinforce the perverse cycle of underdevelopment, pollution, resource scarcity, gender discrimination and mounting poverty (UNDP 2017). Facing globalising and monopolising productive, military and communicative systems, alternatives for poor countries are limited. The recent World Summit on Food Security in Rome confirmed that global food security is under serious threat but also ratified strategies for reducing world hunger (FAO 2015). Each country should promote its own food sovereignty, with support and subsidies to small farmers, in order to guarantee permanent, healthy and culturally accepted food (Gorelick 2000). This implies democratic land reforms, and access to water and subsidies (Hume 2000). Poverty is deeper in rural areas, but also environmental recovery depends on sustainable agricultural management (FAO 1994a, b, c), far

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from the current corporate agribusiness reality. Small farmers produce varied and interrelated ecological services (Schumacher 1973): • Diversity: small farmers embody a diverse body of ownership, of cropping systems, of landscapes, of biological organisation, of culture and tradition (Arizpe 1997). • Environmental benefits: responsible management of soil, water and wildlife. • Community Empowerment: decentralised land ownership tends to produce more, and more equitable, opportunities for rural people.4 • Personal Connection to Food: farmer markets, community-supported agriculture and other such schemes bring consumers closer to where their food comes from, and make production externalities visible. • Economic Foundation: in many areas of the US, small farms are “vital to the economy”.5 • Job Creation: the transnational agribusiness has had a bitter impact on employment and wages of rural workers, particularly plantation workers. More than half of the world population still works in the agricultural and informal sectors of the economy (Richards 2000). • Political Stability: the combination of agricultural activities with aquaculture, accountable management of natural resources and forestry generates a better life-quality in rural areas and guarantees political tranquillity and environmental sustainability in whole regions. • Population Stability: in the Third World, rural areas still show higher reproduction levels than urban areas. Inadequate social security, high maternal and infant mortality rates, lower educational levels of women and governmental discrimination against poor rural populations are the main causes of extended family systems and low birth control practices. • Climate-smart agriculture: (FAO 2013) and Ecosystem Services & Biodiversity (ESB) management of landscape (FAO 2018) may also offer healthy food to small-scale farmers and indigenous peoples (Rosset 2000). The articulation of food markets at local and regional level increases economies of scale, which can be linked to recycling practices and subsistence agriculture (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies 1999). Fair resource distribution is able to improve life quality for everybody, including women and young people. Cultural and food diversity, based on a regional and seasonal frame, fosters different food cultures and maintains the cultural diversity of regions and food cultures. There is no doubt about the importance of improving the educational and productive conditions of women. Women produce between 60 and 80% of food in poor

4

Landowners, businesses and services that rely on local people are likely to be more responsible. US Department of Agriculture’s National Commission on Small Farms, 1998.

5

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countries and are responsible for more than half of the food production in the world6 (FAO 2000). However, 70% of the poorest people in the world are women. In order to support them, it is expedient to propose: • Legal reforms to reduce structural inequalities between men and women • Education of women in legal and productive terms • Alternative associations for women, such as co-operatives, popular banks, self-assistance groups • Access to land for women in terms of property and use: only 2% of land tenure in Africa is in the hands of the women (FAO 2000). The rational management of natural resources allows energy savings and less pollution. Alternative sources of energy (wind, water, solar, geothermic, oceanic) reduce dependency on fossil fuels. A complete process of combustion, solid and liquid waste management, green biotechnological advances, substitution of chemical fertilizers by organic ones, biological use of microorganisms, mixed agriculture and integrated environmental services, opens new avenues towards a different form of globalisation which fosters environmental security. The biodiversity found in nature corresponds with to political plurality needed for its conservation and development, whereby non-lineal and self-organised systems, far from the equilibrium point, promote a non-predetermined future.7 Therefore, participation and plurality are synonyms of democracy and sustainable development, which is itself a democratic process that begins with food sovereignty and participative environmental protection. In order to achieve sustainable globalisation, there is an urgent need to forge a just society, actively aware of what ‘a tomorrow’ can look like, instead of only concentrating on a predatory here and now. This may allow the Earth and humanity to constitute a diverse and interdependent system, instead of the fragmented sum of some encapsulated egos. Nonviolent conflict resolution in each family (Oswald Spring 2000), community and country constitutes the first step towards this utopia: rich, inclusive, sustainable and egalitarian globalisation, based on peace cultures (Boulding 2000, 1992).

6

In many African countries women provide:

• 33% of the workforce. • 70% of agricultural workers. • 60–80% of the labour that produces food for household consumption and sale. • 100% of the processing of basic food stuffs. • 80% of food storage and transport from farms to villages. • 90% of hoeing and weeding work. • 60% of harvesting and marketing activities (FAO (1999; SDWW: 2)). 7 For theoretical implications, see the open, self-regulating and dissipative system developed by Ilya Prigogine (1983).

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IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IUCN (1994). Red List Categories and Criteria version 2.3, http://www.iucnredlist.org/technicaldocuments/categories-and-criteria/1994-categories-criteria. IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] (2012). “The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species”, www.iucnredlist.org/. IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] (2016). Plants Under Pressure Project, www.plants2020.net/document/0207/. Johnson, Andrew Frederick Marcia Moreno-Báez, Alfredo Giron-Nava, Julia Corominas, Brad Erisman, Exequiel Ezcurra, Octavio Aburto-Oropeza (2017). “A spatial method to calculate small-scale fisheries effort in data poor scenarios”, PLOS One, Vol. 12, No. 4: e0174064, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174064. Johnsson, Filip, Jan Kjärstad, Johan Rootzén (2018). “The threat to climate change mitigation posed by the abundance of fossil fuels”, Climate Policy, https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062. 2018.1483885. Korres, George M, Elias Kourlinouros, Maria P. Michailidis (2017). Handbook of Research, Policies and Practice for Sustainable economic Growth and Regional Development, Hersley, IGI Global. Lappe, F.M., J. Collins, P. Rosset (1998). World Hunger: Twelve Myths, New York, Grove Press. Leaning, Jennifer (2009). “Health and Human Security in the 21st Century”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 531–552. Leff, Enrique, J. M Sandoval (1985). Primera Reunión sobre Movimientos Sociales y Medio Ambiente, Programa Universitario Justo Sierra, México, D.F., UNAM. Liew, S.C., O.K. Lim, L.K. Kwoh, H. Lim (1998). “Study of the 1997 forest fires in south East Asia using SPOT quicklook mosaics. Proceedings, 1998”. International Geoscience and Remote Sensoring Symposium, Seattle, Vol. 2, pp. 879–881. Macari, Emir José and F. Michael Sounders (1997). Environmental Quality, Innovative Technologies, and Sustainable Economic Development: A NAFTA Perspective, New York, American Society of Civil Engineers. Master, L.L., S.R. Flack, B.A. Stein (Eds.) (1998). Rivers of Life: Critical Watersheds for Protecting Freshwater Biodiversity. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, McFarlane. MDG (2000). Millennium Development Goals, New York, UNGA. Meadows, Donella H., Dennis Meadows (1992). Beyond the Limits, Mexico, D.F., Ed. El País-Aguilar. Miall, Hugh, Oliver Ramsbotha, Tom Woodhouse (1999). Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge, Polity Press. Mies, Maria (1998). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, Melborne, Zed Book. Miezah, Kodwo, Kwasi Obiri-Danso, ZsófiaKádár, BernardFei-Baffoe (2015). “Municipal solid waste characterization and quantification as a measure towards effective waste management in Ghana”, Waste Management, Vol. 46, December, pp. 15–27. NOAA (2018). “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ full.html. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Rafael Rodríguez, Antonio Flores (1986). Campesinos, protagonistas de su historia (la Coalición de los Ejidos Colectivos de los Valles del Yaqui y Mayo; una salida a la cultura de la pobreza [Peasants, protagonists of their history (the Coalition of Collective Ejidos of the Yaqui and Mayo Valleys; a solution to their culture of poverty], Mexico, D.F., UAM-X. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.) (2000). Peace Studies from a Global Perspective: Human Needs in a Cooperative World, New Delhi, Maadhyam Book Services.

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Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009). ‘Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Issue’, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 471–500. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2011a). “Genetically Modified Organisms: A Threat for Food Security and Risk for Food Sovereignty and Survival”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.) Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1,019–1,042. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.) (2011b). Water Resources in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2013). “Dual vulnerability among female household heads”, Acta Colombiana de Psicología, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 19–30. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2014). “Water security and national water law in Mexico”, Earth Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 7, pp. 1–15. Oxfam (2017). “Una economía para el 99% Es hora de construir una economía más humana y justa al servicio de las personas”, London, Oxfam. PHO [Pan American Health Organisation] (1995). Health in the Americas, Washington, PHO. Postel, Sandra (1992). Last Oasis. Facing Water Scarcity, New York, The Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series, W.W. Norton & Company. Prigogine, Ilya (1983). “La evolución de la complejidad y las leyes de la naturaleza”, in Una exploración del caos al orden, Tusquets Eds., pp. 221–304, originally published in: F. Lazlo, J. Biermann (Eds.), Goals in a Global Community, New York, Pergamon Press. Prigogine, Ilya (1994). “Introduction”, in: Federico Mayor Zaragoza. The New Page, Paris, Unesco. Rangel Medina M., R. Monreal Saavedra, C. Watts (2011). “Coastal aquifers of Sonora: hydrogeological analysis maintaining a sustainable equilibrium”, in Ú Oswald Spring (Ed.) Water resources in Mexico: scarcity, degradation, stress, conflicts, management, and policy, Berlin, Springer, pp. 73–65. Reardon, Betty A. (1996). Sexism and the War System, New York, Syracuse University Press. Ren21 (2018). Renewables 2018. Global Status Report 2018, Paris, Ren21. Richards, Howard (2000). Understanding the Global Economy, New Delhi, Maadhyam Book Services. Rosset, Peter (2000). “Small-scale farming: a global perspective from the North”, The Ecologist, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 36. Samantara, Prafulla (1998). People’s Struggle for Right to Livelihood, Orissa, Swabhimaan Pustak Kuteer. Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small is Beautiful, http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_ 5110/small_is_beautiful.pdf. SDG (2015). Sustainable Development Goals, New York, UNGA. Sen, Amartya (1992). Inequality Reexamined, New York, Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press. Starr, J. (1992). “Water Security: the Missing Link in the Mideast Strategy”, Special Issue, Canadian Journal of Development Studies and International Water Resources Association. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (2000). Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos Indígenas (Human Rights of Indian People), México, D.F., Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos. Strahm, Rudolf H., Úrsula Oswald Spring (1990). Por Esto Somos Tan Pobres (For this Reason we are so Poor), Cuernavaca, UNAM/CRIM. SwissRe (2017). “Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters 2017”, Zurich, Swiss Re. UN DESA [UN Department of Economic and Social Survey] (2011). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision, New York, United Nations, http://www.un.org/en/development/ desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/WUP2011_Report.pdf. UN-DESA (2017). World Population Prospects 2017 Revision, https://www.un.org/development/ desa/publications/world-population-prospects-the-2017-revision.html.

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UNDP (1998). Human Development Report 1998, Oxford, Oxford University Press. UNDP (2017). Human Development Report 2017, New York, UNDP. UNEP (1994). Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion: Assessment 1994, New York, UNEP. UNEP (2000). Global Environmental Outlook, Nairobi, UNEP. UNEP (2017). Global Environmental Outlook, Nairobi, UNEP. UNES [United Nation Population Division] (1997). Urban and Rural Areas, 1950–2030 (the 1996 Revision), New York, UNESA. UNICEF (2000). The State of World’s Children, 2000, New York, UNICEF. UNSTAT (1997). Energy Statistics Yearbook, New York, United Nation Statistical Division. WB [World Bank] (2014). Risk and Opportunity, World Development Report, Washington, D.C., World Bank. WB (2018). “Total greenhouse gas emissions (kt of CO2 equivalent)”, https://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/en.atm.ghgt.kt.ce. WCMC (1992). Global Biodiversity: Status of the Earth’s Living Resources, in B. Groombridge (Ed.), London, Chapman and Hall. WCMC (1994). Biodiversity Data Source, B. Groombridge (Ed.), Cambridge, World Conservation Press. WHO (2018). “Waterborne disease related to unsafe water and sanitation”, https://www.who.int/ sustainable-development/housing/health-risks/waterborne-disease/en/. Wilcove, David S., Lawrence L. Master (2005). “How many endangered species are there in the United States?, Ecological Society of America, https://www.lifediscoveryed.org/downloads/ 409/Wilcove%20article.pdf. World Bank (1992–1999). World Bank Development Report 1992 to 1999, Oxford, Oxford University Press. World Bank (2018). “CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita)”, https://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?view=map. World Health Organization (1998). The World Health Report 1998, Geneva, WHO. World Health Organization (1999). The World Health Report 1999, Making a Difference, Geneva, WHO. Worldwatch Institute (1994 to 1999). State of The World, 1994 to 1999, New York, W.W. Norton.

Part II

Texts on Gender and Human Security

Chapter 10

Gender Security

10.1

Introduction

As the relationship between men and women shows complex interlinkages and is partially related to societal security, threats are not always perceived as purely confrontational.1 Family structures, schools, work and clubs are organised to incorporate and reinforce specific gender patterns into daily life. This social pressure on gender identity, often not visible, also avoids gender being perceived as oppression and thus impedes affected people becoming better organised as social groups with common interests. Religions in the East and West strongly reinforce existing gender differences; similarly, the division of gender religious roles and norms is also socially constructed. Babies are born with a body, and generally with a specific sex, which acquires a social representation as female or male and gender identity (de Beauvoir 1949; Lamas 2002, 1996). Thus, from early childhood on, gender is socialised (Lloyd/Duveen 1992; Piaget 1972) and consolidated during a person’s life history, while humankind has organised itself along gender lines for millennia. Krieger defined gender identity as ‘a social construct regarding culture-bound conventions, roles and behaviours for, as well as relationships between and among, women and men and boys and girls’ (Krieger 2001: 693–700). It is a constructed reality and explains how a person is socially identified, or how society perceives him or her as a man or a woman. The gender concept could also refer to the process whereby other persons define an individual based on roles and behaviours (hair, clothes, behaviour). The formation of gender identity is a complex procedure that includes processes of gestation since birth, of learning during earliest infancy and

The original text was first published as: Úrsula Oswald Spring (2013). “Seguridad de género”, in Fátima Flores Palacios (Ed.), Representaciones sociales y contextos de investigación con perspectiva de género, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM, pp. 225–256. This text was significantly revised and updated to cover the scientific debate until 2018.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_10

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later the socialisation and acquisition of social roles. Many researchers have noticed that identification with a specific gender begins in earliest infancy and is further reinforced when gender roles (housewife, mother, breadwinner, etc.) are obtained (Piaget 1950; Freud 1996; Doise 1986). Gender differs from the concept of sex, which describes only the biological differences. Since it is socially constructed, it can be changed, although habits have been socially consolidated during millennia using gender distinction for social discrimination and oppression as something given by physiology (bio-physiological determination). In the symbolic field it represents cultural ideals and stereotypes of masculinity and femininity (Oakes et al. 1994; Lacan 1985; Foucault 1996), which are reflected in an institutional environment, in job opportunities, the salary level and the workload. This process generates roles within society where a systematic process of identification establishes the differences between the status, needs, positions and privileges of each gender (Falco 1987). These roles have two explanations. Firstly, they articulate the totality of ways through which the individual expresses gender identity; and secondly, they define the roles in relation to the type of activities that society determines as appropriate for a person with a specific gender identity. As these processes are socially constructed, these behaviours are not fixed, and greater equity within society through a systematic analysis of gender relations – understanding how a woman and a man deal in specific social contexts – can be achieved. The result of this long-standing gender discrimination has produced historical inequality and inequity. The struggle for gender security initially focused on raising awareness of the need for equity, and later on improving women’s opportunities. It is the systematic examination of the differences in ‘conditions, needs, rates of participation, access to resources and development, management of the patrimony, of the power, of decision and images among women and men relating to their roles assigned in function to their sex’ (lacitoyennete.com/magazine/mots/glossaireegaliteHF.php) which helps to overcome them. This structural inequity (Senghaas 1973) is taken into account in some progressive countries through quota systems, which can improve the participation of women, but it still remains a form of positive discrimination. This positive discrimination is a phase for achieving greater gender equity. It gives priority to women – for being women – in the selection process of candidates for jobs when both genders show similar profiles and competences. Female quotas of participation in public, electoral or directive charges are also promoted. It is a concession of patriarchy that alleviates symptoms without changing the structural conditions of root causes, and although it is a matter of positive discrimination, it is still discrimination. Clear political norms and roles that are supported by institutions conscious of existing differences and the reduction in social capital this implies can improve gender balance and simultaneously reduce gender violence. To understand the process it is important to look at the historical evolution of feminist thinking and at different evolving practices. Studies in different countries have shown that research on feminism has passed through several phases. Theoretical feminism as born by suffragists. During the nineteenth century some women gained limited rights to vote in Finland, Iceland, Sweden, some Australian

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Introduction

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colonies and the western U.S. states. The long struggle of the women suffragettes and the drive for greater equality and equity during the 1960s and 1970s were a response to evident gaps existing as a consequence of gender differences. Mitchel (1972) – and before her social movements, peasants, indigenous, trade unionist and independence struggles in the Third World – introduced also co-operation between social movements. Boulding (2000) and Reardon/Nordland (1994), Reardon (1996) initiated studies in peace research related to gender, and after 1980 they launched a third wave, also known as neo-feminism. Rich (1986), Mies (1982, 1998), Shiva/Mies (1997), Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen (1998) and Úrsula Oswald Spring (1991, 2006) linked social movements, environmental destruction and peace requirements with subsistence perspectives and survival strategies, offering an approach of diversification and an ‘epistemology of opposition’ to consolidated feminist studies (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 2001). As a result of these pressures, women deepened their assigned social roles promoting a science with a gender impact and analyses, where epistemological feminism offered a solid base for critical analyses such as feminist empiricism, post-modern feminisms and standpoint feminisms.

10.2

Gender and Science

This chapter also addresses the epistemic authority of men, acquired by excluding women, treating their theories as inferior and making them invisible. These processes of exclusion imply enormous scientific and social costs for humanity, generating questions such as: What do women know? How do they know? With which perspective do they know? What are their primary interests? Such questions were barred and disqualified for thousands of years because of patriarchal thinking and behaviour and male-dominated scientific research. Social change caused an ideological change, supplanting the social organisation of cooperation between genders with a patriarchal system, characterised by male-dominated extended households, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal housing for married women. Communally owned property was transformed to private property, and a system of norms was created, in which society legally adopted these changes in the context of a pax romana. Male kings or leaders strengthened their power through conquest of new territories. They developed better weapons and armies, made slaves out of the conquered persons, and exploited people, women and nature. The leading elite established monarchies of absolute power ruling their land, commodities, resources and subjects. They consolidated their economic and political power, legitimising it through hegemony (Gramsci/Antonio 1977) and religion. They acquired supernatural forces, and in some cases they directly became divinities (in Egypt, the Incas) or divine deputies of god on earth (Rome, Spain, France, Austria, Ottoman). Military control stabilised these empires externally and internally. After the Thirty Years War in Europe, in the peace treaty of Münster-Osnabrück in 1648, kingdoms agreed on non-aggression among formally

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established countries, and later the legal use of physical force was transferred by law to a constituted state or a system of rule (Weber 1987). This historical process of the rise of patriarchy was influenced and reinforced by the three monotheistic religions of Jews, Christians and Muslims. All of them accepted only one god-father. In most religions the only truth relied on male priests, they required female subordination and discrimination, and conquests to expand their religious beliefs. Without discussing the origins of patriarchy in detail or explaining its history, which has already been done by brilliant feminists (Muriel 1982; Evans 2010; Mies 1998), this chapter focuses on the relationship between dominance and oppression. Only one part (generally a few males) is dominant and exploits the other part (generally women, slaves and also poor men) for its own benefit. Normally, violent hierarchical orders and repression mechanisms are used to control the dominated. For this reason the elimination of patriarchy and other systemic factors of control which consolidate the system of domination could liberate everybody and overthrow the unjust system of the present global society. The myths of traditional societies reflect the complementary roles between women and men in all sectors of life, and show the equality existing in productive and ritual processes. Gods and goddesses protected or punished social deviations. Female temples in the form of the uterus brought security and stability to communities and villages (in Malta, Stonehenge, temazcal2). Most social systems were matrilocally organised, inheritance continued in the matrilineal line (Eliade 1965; Levy-Strauss 1962), and woman cared about the well-being of the entire extended family. This traditional organisation also related to collective property and ritual control of natural forces. Health and survival depended on good harvests, the control of plagues and the production of resistant seeds, but also on successful hunting and collection of food. As most of the land of the ‘fertile crescent’ and from China to Spain, including Mesoamerica, depends on abundant rainfall in a semi-arid ecosystem, several cultures soon developed systems of irrigation to reduce the risk of drought and failing harvests. With these new technologies an incipient social stratification started. During the Neolithic era a ruler male class emerged, and several leaders invested the surplus in developing weapons and armies, first to protect their villages and towns from invaders, but later also to conquer other cultures, appropriating their knowledge, goods and women. Several nomadic tribes organised as armed warriors around clan leaders threatened agricultural cultures, seizing their food reserves and other commodities. During the agricultural revolution patriarchy evolved. As a historical symbol, the invasion of Doric warriors into the oracle of Delphi could be defined as one of the starting points in western culture. The imprisoned priestesses were disempowered from their supernatural links to gods and goddesses and the divine origin of their

2

Temazcal refers to a pre-Hispanic ritual, using a dry hot space that symbolises the female uterus.

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Gender and Science

221

children. Taking them as their wives, the invaders destroyed the myths of mythical birth, imposing an ideology where only men were responsible for reproduction of children and not gods or women. This ideology permeated medicine until the nineteenth century, giving male sperm the active part in conception and reducing the female ovule to a passive process without any biological function. It is interesting to know today that with stem cells from ovule it is possible to reproduce human species without any sperm. However, this fact does not mean that the author proposes a female-dominated society justified by this biological attribute (bio-genetism), but rather a new relationship based on negotiation and cooperation between women and men. Simultaneously, an ideological fight among gods and goddesses started in Olympus, where the former secondary half-god Zeus emerged as the victor, subjugating terrestrial and heavenly beings with thunder and lightning. As an authoritarian father, he exercised his dictatorial will. For thousands of years these mythical origins of patriarchal power have changed the relationship between genders, subjugating women and giving them the symbolic space of the household away from public affairs (Eliade 1963, 1965). This religious-ideological change is historically understood as one of the roots of patriarchy and has also been used as a justification for violence, wars, conquest, intra-familiar discrimination, social inequality, slavery, social immobility and accumulation by small elites (Rehn/ Johnson 2002). Philosophers and theologians took up these Greek thoughts on polis and democracy, showing that human intelligence and its rationality could be complemented with beliefs, reason by which philosophy should serve religion and political organisations controlled by men. These ideological thoughts and beliefs represented a pillar of gender discrimination, and never questioned gender submission and the fixation of social roles and symbolic spaces. The results of this process are still very explicit. Worldwide, in industrialised countries the non-paid female labour represents around 33%. In an under- or low developed country, this unpaid female labour for food and water may increase up to 70%. According to the Mexican population census of 2000, female labour hours represented 118% of male ones; they accounted for 112% of work and received only 87% of the remuneration (INEGI 2003). Part of the debacle during the five decades of failed and misguided development is directly linked to an omission of gender security considerations. The exclusion of women and other minorities from science, technology, history and public life have implied and continue to cause enormous costs in economy, policy, environment, and culture for the whole world. During the evolution of the human species, women generated the first technological revolution: the agrarian one. Besides recollecting plants and animals for food and shelter, women observed the process of plant growing and began the selection of seeds and domestication, improving nutrition and health of their families when men were absent and hunting (FAO 2010).

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10.3

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Gender Security

Evolution of Feminist Thinking

10.3.1 Epistemological Feminism Kuhn (1962) argued that a paradigmatic shift occurs when scientific facts, relationships and results can no longer be explained by existing theories. The maintenance of domination and oppression of women, of southern countries and of the poor by global elites in a world of abundance requires a deeper analysis, and possibly a paradigmatic shift. In epistemological terms, both the world and science require ‘transradical’ knowledge (Table 10.1) to overcome the existing rationality of dualism: of men and women, good and bad, rational and irrational. Feminist epistemologies have analysed the ways in which metaphors of masculinity operate in the construction of ideals of rationality and objectivity (Bordo 1990; Lloyd/ Duveen 1992). Harding (1986, 1988, 1991), Harding/Hintikka (1991) argued that dualism such as nature-culture, subject-object, masculine-feminine supports modern epistemological analyses, and feminist epistemology should deconstruct this binary opposition (Stuart 1990).

Table 10.1 Widening and deepening of security. Source Oswald Spring (2008a, b): 16 (inspired by Møller 2003: 279; Oswald Spring 2001, 2004, 2007) Degree of expansion

Denomination (security of what?)

Reference object (security of whom?)

Value at risk (security of what?)

Sources of threat (security from whom and for what?)

No expansion

National security (political, military) Societal security

The state

Sovereignty, territorial integrity

Other states, terrorism, sub-state actors, crime

Nations, societal groups, marginal, discriminated people Individuals, humankind, social groups

National unity, identity, equality, social services Survival, quality of life, well-being

Nations, immigrants, alien cultures, refugees, privatisation

Sustainability, ecosystem services Equity, identity, solidarity, social representations

Incremental

Radical

Human security

Ultra-radical

Environmental security

Ecosystem, humankind

Trans-radical

Gender security

Gender relations, indigenous, minorities, children, elderly

State, globalisation, oligarchy, local elites, terrorism, churches, crime Nature, humankind. consumerism, waste Patriarchy, totalitarian institutions (governments, religions, elites, culture), intolerance

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Evolution of Feminist Thinking

223

Several studies have shown that scientific theories contain a gender bias, not only due to the under-representation of women but also in the construction of objectivity and underlying values. Different underlying moral opposites exist, based on a world view which operates on one good and one bad option. In this approach women are always put on the evil side or simply their work is not visible or not understood as productive. Feminists proposed the incorporation of explicit gender-related values in the selection and delimitation of the object of study, into empirical work, in the justification and in ‘objective’ theory building. Nevertheless, good science from men or feminists must critically evaluate the applied assumptions and outline the underlying values. Diversity and values can be included in a so-called rigorous or objective scientific analysis, especially in the discussion of security, by questioning, scrutinising and substituting the narrow concept of military security with an integrated and wider human, gender and environmental security or HUGE approach (see Table 10.1). Before starting their research and particularly empirical studies, scientists must make numerous choices, not only about the object of analysis, but also about the questions they will pose and try to answer, the terms and equipment they will use in their analyses and the methodology they will employ. All these required decisions orientate the research in a certain direction and focus on specific goals. These choices constrain in advance their hypotheses and their future research agenda. Other researchers develop other hypotheses and, for this reason, science always implies subjective elements generating clear constraints. Values and mindsets entered at this stage of the investigation also influence the choice of preferred theories. For this reason, an explicit value-orientated feminist approach may overcome some of these constraints, creating higher legitimacy and explaining the implicit values of inquiry. Barad (1999) tried to bridge the gap between a descriptive epistemology and a normative one, but also between naïve realism and a constructivist social approach, postulating that any science has its practical side, with descriptive but also analytical components. Focusing on the oppression of women from a Marxist perspective and using also the ‘dependencia’ theories from Latin America, Harding (1986, 1988, 1991) developed a standpoint feminism, whereby women’s knowledge, culture, political ability and peace-building challenged the neutral objectivity of globally dominant science (López Austin 2004). Everyday work, empirical studies and daily knowledge from a gender-centred perspective offer women and critical men (Foucault 1996; Gadamer 1988; Habermas 1998, 2000, 2001) a reconstruction of normative epistemic concepts, revising rationality, justification and knowledge. Epistemology and value theories are constructed from an interplay of power and gender relations. Harding suggested that science has to be ‘socially-situated’ and from a gender perspective. Women, especially marginal ones, dispose of an ‘epistemological privilege’ because they can better understand the process of marginality, having lived in an underprivileged situation for a long time, and therefore they know the complexity of the process (Oswald Spring 1991). This does not imply that other persons with critical empirical approaches could not

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understand and rigorously analyse their marginal situation when they have the opportunity to listen and patiently reflect on this empirical reality. Starting from these local empirical situations, novelty, and heterogeneity, complexity and interaction allow feminists a systematic analysis of their situation. Accuracy, perspective and normative consistency where political correctness is criticised, permits to include the perspective of moral and political values (Giddens 1994). To guarantee these critical interactions, an epistemic community must (a) establish public fora for criticism; (b) change theories and analytical approaches in response to this criticism; (c) take into account shared critical public standards of science; and (d) recognise a ‘tempered’ acceptance of intellectual authorities among the inquirers that permits an understanding of the existence of cognitive virtues or vices, but above all disallows a social position of power to interfere with serious discussions about ethics (Longino 1990: 76–81; Longino 1993: 128–135; Longino 2001). Including women and marginalised persons with situated knowledge in the research and discussion process makes it easier to identify what is missing from the context and the process of analysis, thus promoting an integral approach in which new cognitive styles of thinking and belief overcome the separation between object and subject. As exponents of situated knowledge, women have experienced thousands of years of oppression and understand from an affected standpoint the social roles, norms and identity processes imposed on them and on society. The privileged access to knowledge derived from personal experience can integrate new learning processes that can offer alternatives and create a collective construction of consciousness. This standpoint feminism has introduced feminist empiricism directly into the discussion of stereotypes, without justifying ‘feminine’ cognitive styles based on a consideration of care rather than on the justice model of men, thereby progressing to a common ideal of moral reasoning for men and women alike. Feminist thinking has not started recently. During the past two hundred years of critical analysis on discrimination several currents have emerged within feminism. However, during the past thirty-five years important theoretical developments have produced systematic advances (Evans 2010). Gender is now understood as a social construction, a personal identity, a status and a set of relationships among women and men. In contrast, sex is a complex set of relations of genes, hormones, physiology, environment and behaviour with deep loop-back effects, where sexuality is understood as socially constructed and simultaneously physiologically based and emotionally expressed (Lorber 1994). Within these two basic concepts of gender, inequality is anchored within marriage and families, job, economy, politics, religion, social roles, cultural production and language as well as in non-verbal expressions. In contemporary feminist theory-building, three main approaches can be seen: feminist empiricism, post-modern feminism and standpoint feminism. Lorber (1994) identified an alternative classification and distinguished between gender reform feminism, gender resistant feminism and feminism of gender revolution. Both approaches are helpful and complementary to the development of further analysis.

10.3

Evolution of Feminist Thinking

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10.3.2 Feminist Empiricism In feminist empiricism the focus is on the androcentric mainstreaming in science, where a categorisation of stereotypical masculine mental qualities, such as the emotional detachment, is criticised. Feminist empiricists showed how scientific knowledge in physics and biology (Harding 1986, 1988, 1991) is also permeated by gender biases, and that methodologies and the scientific method itself has androgenic limits (Harding/Hintikka 1991). This approach asked for cognitive ‘equality’ or ‘sameness’ with men, insisting that true feminist methodology sticks to qualitative descriptions from the subject’s own reports (Mies 1998). Systematising their experiences, methodological pluralism and pluralist theories and practices can be found in numerous books on feminist methodology (Harding 1986; Shiva/Mies 1997; Hartsock 1983). Recently, the extreme position of gyno-centrism and absolute opposition to male scientific analysis, stigmatised as ‘bad science’ (Longino 1990, 2001), is opening the path to collaboration and new ways to deal with present threats and challenges affecting and generated by both genders.

10.3.3 Postmodern Feminism From postmodern perspectives (Butler 1990; Alcoff 1996; Alcoff/Potter 1993; Giddens 1994; Nicholson 1990; Persram 1994) the most radical critiques are rejecting any gender category. They also oppose any possible coalition between women and other suppressed groups, because most of them would repeat the patriarchal conduct within these groups. They criticise theories justifying sexist practices, which are treating women in an essentialist sense and only as objects. Post-modernism is not monolithic, but diverse and extremely critical of other currents. Harding (1986, 1988, 1991) believes in objectivity and ‘accuracy’, while Haraway’s (1988, 1997) view of science identifies fallibility, minimalism, anti-realism and opportunism. Haraway’s (1988) techniques of literary analysis of scientific ‘narratives’ reveal the presence of choices in any scientific representation. They point to the contingency and constraints imposed by any scientific decision and any selection of narratives or metaphoric choices. Some of their critical outcomes analyse androcentric, super-generalisation of super-specialisation, insensibility to gender analyses and issues, elimination of sex and sexuality, double evaluation standards for man and women in scientific achievement, sexist dichotomies and a formalism limiting the unity of analysis (Bartra 1998). However, these approaches do not represent all critical thinking within feminism. Their main approach is influenced by occidental individualistic thinking, postulating that each woman is different, and concluding that there are now possibilities to generalise these differences and establish wider categories. For this reason it is difficult to establish at least some tactical or temporary alliances. There are also severe contradictions in these Western ideals of individualism.

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On the one hand, they promote the growth of girls and women for education and jobs; on the other hand, women are more frequently jobless and have lower salaries than men. Western ideals also fight against traditional harmful practices (genital mutilation), but undercut communal enterprises, traditional food production and collective child caring, taking responsibility for these services from the State and transferring it to private hands. Could this tendency mean a shift from state patriarchy to private patriarchy? The widest link with other currents of feminism is the argument that gender is constructing itself through language (Butler 1993), criticising de Beauvoir (1949), Foucault (1996) and Lacan (1985). In general terms, the individualist approach of postmodernism opens an infinite variation of individual circumstances; nevertheless, gender is socially constructed and completely inescapable, but always susceptible to new interpretations and social representation-building. From the perspective of the Global South, Bennett et al. (2005), Maier/Lebon (2010), Parvin/Bélanger (1996), Serrano (2004), Silverblatt (1987), Truong et al. (2013), Via Campesina (2005) criticised these feminist approaches and have suggested the inclusion of social classes, race and indigenous gender differentiations in the analysis. In synthesis, in postmodern feminism gender identity is conditioned, developed, without any innate masculinity or femininity, but understood as a process in permanent modification and adaptation, such as queer or cyborg.

10.3.4 Standpoint Feminism A third approach, named standpoint feminism, was initially developed within the social sciences, particularly in political science by Hartsock (1983, 1988, 1993), Harding (1988) and Chodorow (1978), as well as by Smith (1974) in sociology. They insisted that women and other oppressed groups are better trained and more sensitive to the nuances involved in deconstructing the mechanisms of domination, violence and submission. With these epistemic privileges, they deepened their analysis, gaining a better understanding of gender differences, proper actions of men and all kinds of responses from women. Their analysis does not glorify women in research nor does it introduce into international studies gender issues in a collateral way, but it promotes a transversal and gender-clear approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative methods should be used to deconstruct the deep processes of identity formation and consolidation, thus generating, reproducing and anchoring the present situation of inequity. Feminist critics have observed that there could be no single standpoint, since women are differently situated within diverse social positions, cultural backgrounds, socio-economic conditions, race, class, ethnic groups and sexual orientation, and that it is precisely this diversity which can enrich their analyses. The critical advance of the standpoint epistemology lies in its ‘logic of discovery’ (Harding 1991: 56) where ‘marginalised lives provide the scientific problems and the research agendas – not the solutions – for standpoint theories’

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(Harding 1991: 62). Furthermore, there is the potential to understand marginalisation from a bottom-up perspective, instead of inefficient top-down proposals. New paradigms would permit systemic disadvantages to be overcome, and anyone – men and women – with sensitivity could engage in the problem-systematising process. This approach permits the knowledge, often described in terms of local interest and values, to be situated socially, promoting the non-dominant perspective by learning from those with fewer advantages and conducting a less partial research. The criticism of this approach derives from the confusion of the context of discovery with the context of justification. Both processes must be clearly distinguished and, as Harding insists, modern science is ‘deeply and completely constituted’ by ‘local resources’ (Harding 1986: 157). These four approaches (epistemological, empiricism, post-modernism and standpoint feminism) are intensively influenced by history (Falco 1987) and the concept-building of traditional feminist currents, starting from the liberal one, where patriarchy was analysed, including the concerns of Marxists for class and reproduction; by the radical point of view where sexuality is in the centre of analyses; by the psycho-analytical current with a concern for personal development and sexual liberation (Braidotti 2004); by anarchists, where freedom is in the centre of concerns; by the phenomenologist, where body and sexuality are coloured by experiences; by the ethical philosophers insisting on values and ethics and by the epistemological ones studying knowledge and processes of construction of science; not forgetting the currents related to race (Afro-Americans), sexual identities, age, deep feminism concerned with religious and philosophical worries, but also by currents improving the physical and psychological conditions of women, training them to struggle on better terms in this unequal, long-lasting fight against patriarchy. As a result of a deeper understanding of these diverse feminist approaches, reinforced by the ongoing pressure of the social deterioration of an important number of countries of the world, and the growing poverty and armed conflicts above all in Africa (Basedau/Wegenast 2009), multilateral organisations are opening the discussion on empirical standpoint studies and possible alternatives. Within these processes of change, a wider security paradigm has been accepted and further developed in the debates within the United Nations, exploring first human security and later environmental, health, food and economic security. More recently, gender security has been included on the political agenda, overcoming the epistemological barrier of the patriarchal worldview (Table 10.1). A general agreement crystallised in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015) that were approved in the General Assembly of the United Nations by its member countries, establishing specific gender policies, first reverting the present situation of inequality through gender quota as a process of positive discrimination, specifically in rural and traditional societies, where the conventional roles are still very rigid and the process of gender differentiation are still taken for granted. But this is not enough. Differences and inequalities also exist in progressive and gender-sensitive societies as socially constructed phenomena, and must be

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overcome. This means not only reducing the explicit factors of oppression (time, money, preferences), but deepening awareness within the social and individual consciousness, where psychoanalysis and Marxism have tried to show the structural disadvantages facing women in any existing society (Basu 1995; Muñón 1999; Muriel 1982; Oswald Spring 1991; García 1999, 2004). Nonetheless, the contradictions created by the exclusive process of neo-liberal globalisation have opened a way for analytical processes and social mobilisations where new fields of plural processes of dignity are raising consciousness, and where women, men, indigenous, elders, unemployed, sexual minorities and others have the opportunity to collaborate from their own standpoint, promoting greater equity and equality, characterised by cultural, sexual, racial and ethnic diversity. These feminist methodologies offer higher complexity, more opportunities for alliances and the option to fully understand the themes of marginality. They give gender-sensitive analyses the opportunity to overcome the initial phases of opposition and individualisation (post-modernist approach), opening their scrutiny to new complex interactions. Female scientists propose working on equal terms with male scientists, offering their gender and intellectual capacities, and a qualitative approach of their methods of analysis. Linking logically and empirically (Pedrero et al. 1997; Bar Din 1991; García 1999, 2004; INEGI 2003) human (Montoya et al. 2002) and environmental (Mirella et al. 2014) security with gender security by deepening the HUGE (human, environmental and gender security) concept, and understanding the process of construction and visibilisation of the invisible, the reproduction (CLOC 2002, 2004) and production process, three phases of gender analyses pointing to the consolidation of gender security can be distinguished: first, the process of identity building and social representation; second, the evolution and consolidation of ecofeminism, and third, the emergence of social movements which could shake the bases of patriarchy, capitalism, neo-liberalism, and destruction and exploitation of nature by offering plural and diverse glocal (global and local) processes of sustainable development. This epistemology of gender security searching for links among ecofeminist, environmental and peace movements within an integral process of identity transformation and social representation suggests an integration of social movements, promoting different socially constructed models of globalisation where diversity, glocal integration, culture and life quality are among the axes for collective creativity and struggle against the monopolistic neo-liberal model.

10.4

Gender Security in Difficulties

Gender security is normally taken for granted, socially identified and represented within society. During millennia, society as a whole has forgotten that gender relations were socially constructed and reinforced through habits, ideology and political systems. The world has been organised for more than four thousand years

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based on patriarchal relations, where the male gender (the strong sex) dominates over the female (the weak sex), creating inequity, violence and submission. Similar to gender exploitation and discrimination, the hierarchical dominant occidental and Eurocentric mind-set has brought increasing threats not only to social processes but also to the environment, whereby soil and water degradation and scarcity, air pollution, as well as population growth, urbanisation, modern agriculture, loss of biodiversity, oil extraction and mining have depleted and contaminated natural resources. These manifold environmental aggression-induced security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks are linked to the liberal and neo-liberal economic behaviour of post-war late capitalism. Gender security as an analytical concept emerged only recently. Nevertheless, for thousands of years gender differences were taken as an immovable reality, based on biological differences and not as a social construction. During the past millennia, the world has been organised in this patriarchal context (Honegger/Heintza 1981). The symbolic distribution assigns the male the public space: production, res publica, homo sapiens; and the women the private space (homo donans). The distribution of power also acquires generic forms. Men exercise a hierarchical and vertical power of domination and superiority. Women have long been subordinated, lacked property rights (land, houses) and been treated without respect, obliging them to exercise their powers from the position of oppression in the form of maternal powers (mother, wife), erotic powers (wife, lover [prostitute]) and the altered [crazy, nuns] (Lagarde 1990). These powers are marginal (minimal compared to that of men) and merely delegated. They can only be exercised with the permission of the dominant group (father, husband, brother or boss) who have delegated part of their power to women. The main control on material goods has remained in male hands and they have decided on family expenses, property, productive activities, inheritances and gifts. To this day, in many parts of the world, the lack of the right to own property has reduced the negotiation capacity of woman and created their high degree of dependency. They are exposed to suffer interfamilial and social violence if they try to transgress the assigned social and family roles. Once a women is married, the margin for manoeuvre has been further reduced both by their own family and by the relatives of their husband, where she normally lives and for whom she works. Although these processes are not so apparent and linear, interdependence exists between patriarchy and female submission, constituted by personal identity processes (career) and social habits that were induced during millennia. As a result of this long-standing process, female identity is morally and socially obliged to be available to others and to care for them due to a process of socialised self-identification. ‘Subjectivity of women is constituted in pedagogy of gender to care about others, to maintain life from feeding on, from the intimate space through affective reproduction and the erotic one’ (Lagarde 1990). In this function of caring for others any woman may find the sense of her existence “as the mother when she is breast-feeding; as the lover when she does love. These facts permit the affirmation in the field of identity” (Lagarde 1990). At home, women are concerned with children, family, animals and their well-being,

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and are considered as homo domesticus. As the ‘weak’ sex, they are supposed to require protection from the men and their physical force (military capacity in the case of a state). Nevertheless, in moments of catastrophes, conflicts and wars, women become the most highly vulnerable group and are an appreciated commodity for the aggressors and an object of blackmail among the men in dispute.

10.5

Four Pillars of Gender Security

10.5.1 The First Pillar: Identity and Social Representation Gender security has gender relations as an object of reference and the values at risks are identity and social representations (see Table 10.1).3 The concept of ‘gender identity’ may be deepened in the social sciences. It provides proper criteria for the constitution of the ‘self’ that may be enriched with new empirical and theoretical research. To understand the evolution of identity in a longer period and in an integral manner, published history is neither determining (political, diplomatic and military history) nor describing the daily collaboration and efforts among men and women (social and gender history) for building humankind in a world with diverse cosmovisions. Only by actively constructing and deconstructing the ongoing processes can the deeply anchored prejudices be understood and overcome. There is a temptation in the social sciences to borrow theories and concepts from the natural sciences and apply them mechanically in social analyses (for instance, Lewin’s field theory in psychology and Darwin’s evolution theory in biology have been applied to psychology and Piaget’s theory of child development as well as to economy for sustainable growth and to sociology for development studies). To avoid this metaphoric approach, this subchapter starts with a constructivist approach. More than three decades ago, Tajfel argued that social identity means how ‘we live in a world in which processes of unification and diversification happen with gigantic steps and with a rapidity never ever seen before in history’ (1981: 31). ‘Persons have a basic need to simplify and to impose an order to their reality’ (Hogg and Abrams 1988: 78) – a reality that induces them to categorise their social environment through social comparisons. This process supports, affirms and maintains self-esteem in a positive way, but it also explains how individual self-esteem depends on belonging to a group, not necessarily within its own social system of reference. Thus, the vote of fear by the majority of Americans for President George W. Bush and his policy of war can only be understood in this sense, although in their personal life members of the electorate were against violence, war, terrorism

3

I thank S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald for her creative inputs and critical discussion in this part of the chapter.

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or actions of uncontrolled masses. An example is the fanaticism during sportive events which can end in violence in the stadium. The peripheral information is used to define and to be congruent with the proper group, understanding the differences with other groups of reference. Moscovici described social representation as ‘systems of value, ideas and practices’ that simultaneously ‘establish an order that permits an individual to get familiarised and to arrange its material and social world’ (Moscovici 1976: xiii). At the same time it enforces the communication among members of the community, providing them with a socially shared code of interchange where names are classified without any ambiguities, including worldviews, mindsets and personal and social histories. His ‘cognitive poliphasia’ is a characteristic of social representation in which different forms of understanding are able to coexist … indicating a persistent potential for instability within the representational systems (Moscovici 1976). At the same time, it enforces communication among members of the community, providing them with a socially shared code of interchange where names are classified without any ambiguities, including world views, mind-sets and personal and social histories (Moscovici 1976: xiii). According to the same author, social representations are systems of ideas, values and practices fulfilling a dual function: (a) establishing a framework of order in which the subjects are orientated in the material and social world in which they live; and (b) permitting the communication with a common code among the members of a collective, in which all objects are named and the processes precisely classified (Moscovici cited in: Herzlich/Graham 1993: xiii). The individualising dynamic that isolates people from the established social-class culture does not stop at the nuclear family doorstep. Regardless of inherent disparities and with an incomprehensible force, social members embody this profound transformation. They shake off the gender framework with its statutory attributes and presuppositions, just as they are being shaken to the core of their being. The law that ensues is: ‘I am myself, and then I am a woman. I am myself, and then I am a man’. Between ‘myself’ and the obligated woman role, ‘myself’ and the obligated man an abyss is sown. The process of individualisation implicates contradiction: on the one hand the men and women that seek to appropriate a life are liberated from traditional gender adjudications. On the other hand, people are subtly coerced into seeking love and happiness through partnerships within increasingly impoverished social relation networks (Serrano 2004: 9).

For this reason, social representations originate in daily life, where society is the thinking system. These social representations could be reinterpreted as an equivalent for contemporary myths, rites (Eliade 1965) and belief systems in primitive societies (Moscovici 1984: 181, 1990, 1998, 2000). Thus, the social theory of identity structures a continuum between personal and social identity; between inter-personal and inter-group behaviour. It includes social beliefs and social mobility, understood both as a result of personal efforts able to induce social changes (Tajfel 1981; Haslam et al. 1995). In this sense, the subjective dimension of identity is interrelated with the objective processes whereby identity is manifested and transformed. For this reason, identity is processual, since it is gestated and changes permanently; relational, given that it is transformed by exchanges and

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interactions; multidimensional, because it operates in intra-individual, inter-individual, intra-group, inter-group and ideological environments (Doise 1986); contextual, given that it is forged into specific contexts; and essentialist, because the diversity and the complexity of the social interactions are sustained and transformed though identity processes (Serrano 2009). Duveen explains how the two basic processes of historical production of social knowledge are linked to anchoring and objectification. Anchoring is a process permitting integration of the unknown situation within the existing representation (internalisation); and objectification permits these new representations to be projected into the world as concrete objects (Duveen 1997: 87). The implication of these active processes of gestation and articulation of knowledge is the increased visibility of the social subjects in their ‘agentic capacity’ (Serrano 2010). The development of social representations gives children bases in their efforts to construct a social identity within their world (socialisation), which is locally integrated (Gutman et al. 2003). The identity starts in early childhood and adapts with the participation of the subject in the world of representation through imperative obligations which build their integration into society. Later, the individuals select by themselves and establish contractual arrangements (jobs, marriage, assurance and others), being endangered to reproduce the socialised identity, defined by Maalouf (1999) as ‘assassinated identity’. The processes at the micro level of gender identity are ‘making the unfamiliar familiar’ by anchoring (associative function to other symbols and their denomination) and symbolic objectification of metaphors and analogies or by concrete objects and artefacts, getting used to the types of gender demands and acceptance through image-building in mass media (diffusion of gender role on TV and in films, novels, propaganda, magazines and notices). The functions are, with or without intention, symbolic, orientating and facilitating communication from the elaboration of attitudes; opinions; stereotypes; identity presentation of group relations; attributes of responsibility or control; narrative of original myths; ideological domination; and illusions. However, they are also pragmatic: motivation orientating the activities, planning, social describing, and norm-building. Even in independent situations, the acquisition of these control mechanisms (Maslow et al. 1987) fosters two basic psychological premises: (a) women should be: assigned identity (social facts); (b) women should be for other: self-identity (socialised) with interdependence to patriarchy. These processes are not only generated for women, anchoring their identity in the consciousness, but similar mechanisms of assignation of subaltern identities are used in the socialisation processes of children, the elderly, indigenous, invalids and other minorities who have in common a struggle for visibility. As in the case of women, the values at risk for these subaltern groups are equity and identity, and their sources of threats are linked to the mechanisms of authoritarian governments, multinational enterprises, the local bourgeoisie, churches and other dominant groups.

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Any process of classification and choice implies relations of identification, inclusion or refusal and exclusion that constitute the basis for the exercise of power. Because social organisation is based on sexual differences, humans rapidly acquire an identity as male or female. This implies specific identity conditions, as well as particular mechanisms of power exercise and processes of differential gender empowerment. Homosexuality, however, represents in the present world an exception, and in most cultures these persons are discriminated against and repressed socially because they are questioning from inside the dominant system of patriarchy. If this group grows within this dichotomised occidental world, their practices could become a direct threat to patriarchy (Foucault 1996), and for this reason they are socially punished and persecuted by majorities. When these groups ally with other movements of protest, they have been able to achieve in diverse countries some acceptance, such as same-sex marriage and in exceptional cases, the right to adopt children, subverting the traditional family pattern. However, there are also ethnic groups which have simultaneously developed female and male sexual characteristics, and others, such as the ‘mujes’ in the Zapotecan culture (Bennholdt-Thomsen 1998), who are given special roles and whose abilities are appreciated and utilised. Other societies confer different social representations, such as healer, witch or shaman. Therefore, identities show complex processes: they are developed (Moscovici 1990), confronted with realities, permanently resisted through existing representations within the group of referent and projected as objects to the exterior (Duveen/ Lloyd 1990; Richards 2000). The ‘theory of social identity’ sees the structure of the self in relation to three continua: first, the continuum of behaviours from interpersonal to inter-group; second, the continuum of identity from personal identity to social identity; and third, the continuum of beliefs from social mobility to social change (Tajfel/Turner 1979; Haslam et al. 1995). The process of identity and social representation becomes the value at risk when gender security is threatened by patriarchal instances and practices which act not as individuals or subjectively, but within the patriarchal system. Thousands of years of experience have permitted the consolidation of a system of social representations that may control all elements involved in the specific socio-historic context of a society. Symbolic elements of identity – class, ethnicity, age, religion, race, nationality, professional ascription, political ideology, education and others – have been developed which are in permanent change, relating to an extensive diversity and capacity for adaptation, conserving, however, the outstanding historic attributes (gender, sex and race) and the material conditions of late capitalism: poor and rich (Giménez 1999). There also exists the process of inverse identification, when social comparisons to the ‘proper’ groups are rejected and the person identifies with external groups, due to low self-esteem, which cannot be improved within its own group of reference. Diverse influences also intervene in social practices characterised by collective or individual history, linking up to cultural practices and gestating a proper process of victimisation or feeling of guilt.

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Identity should not be confused with subjectivity; it includes all elements which constitute a person, influenced by its socio-historical surrounding and the former process of establishing social representations, whereby class, ethnicity, race, nationality, professional adscription, ideology, policy, education, experiences, and culture (Arizpe 2004) influence the constitution of behaviour, also inducing permanent changes. These processes can also include a phenomenon of depersonalisation of the ‘self’, because the categorisation of the ‘other’ signifies simultaneously socio-cultural exclusion of the ‘proper’ personal or social history, tending to promote apolitical theory-building. ‘Our social history is full of familiar examples and horrors dehumanising other groups, and more subtle forms of discrimination and depersonalisation of them’ (Tajfel 1981: 241). “The accentuation of stereotypes reflexes the perceptive selectivity from which it results more appropriated to perceive persons in contexts of level of social identity categorisation instead of particularising their personal identity” (Haslam et al. 1995: 146). The theory of conflict categorisation of social representation explains how the inter-group differentiation can lead to favouritism within a group and to intra-group codes of acceptance, whereby prejudices, discrimination, rites of initiation and oaths of secrecy create cohesion within the group, frequently operating clandestinely. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, composed of unemployed youths, former child soldiers and survivors of the civil wars in Central America, without any family bonds and affection, integrates persons and groups of criminals; recognition and estimation are received within the group and social and individual frustration is expressed through violence, cruelty and crime. The acquisition of power is the base for a privileged access to socially valued resources, such as commodities, money, status, leadership, group membership, education and knowledge. Power implies the necessary control or change of mentalities of others to impose the ‘proper’ ones. All dominant groups tend to create homogeneous identities within their subjects, whereby the oppressed decide to support and maintain the oppressive situation in the name of their supposed own interests. Gramsci described this process as hegemony, giving the ruling class a stable process of power exercise and domination. Domination is defined as the (ab)-use of social power by elites, institutions and dominant groups, producing social inequities such as political, cultural, class, ethnic, race and gender discrimination. Multiple interactions of power exist: allied, confronted, aligned, subsumed or annulated; nevertheless the real power in the present neo-liberal world is concentrated in few men, the managers or CEO of multinational enterprises, supported by the Presidents and Prime Ministers of industrialised governments (OECD), who have created a global hegemony based on military, financial, political and cultural power (Beck 2001, 2007; Sen 1995; Arizpe 2004; Strahm/Oswald Spring 1990; Forrester 1999; Castells 2002; Nussbaum/Sen 1993). They discriminate not only against women, but are also subjugating men. To transform this reality, there are structural impediments such as central and peripheral imperialism (Galtung 1972; Senghaas 1973) with associated anchorages, such as names (progress, modernity,

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development); images (white occidental young men or WASP); myths (free-market); formal institutions (governments and the UN); formal organisations (foundations, NGO) and informal networks (professional associations, clubs).

10.5.2 The Second Pillar: Gift Economy or Economy of Solidarity Vaughan (1997, 2004) has deconstructed post-modern feminism, including women’s free labour at home as a gift economy. This free gift is related to maternal thinking (Ruddick 1995) or mothering (Chodorow 1978; Riviere and Cominges 2001), producing collective social changes going beyond capitalism and communism, both with clearly patriarchal roots (Nikolic 2004). Her agenda was to liberate ‘everyone – women, children and men – from patriarchy without destroying the human beings who are its carriers and the planet where they live’ (Vaughan 1997: 23). Her women-based practices started with a criticism of language, emphasising the need-orientated satisfaction, rather qualitatively based, which creates emotional bonds between givers and receivers. Especially when raising young children, mothering requires kindness and creativity, sometimes self-sacrifice, and for this reason, it is an important gift to the child and the society. The author particularly emphasises the gift of goods through ‘communication’, which challenges in depth the patriarchal economy of exchanges, profits and interests. ‘Giving and receiving word-gifts organised in sentences and discourses create a human relationship among people with regard to things in the world’ (Vaughan 1997: 38). By this intentionality of giving, the caretaking is more important than the objectivity of an account, satisfying the constant social communicative needs, where reality is represented and reinterpreted without competitiveness, transforming homo sapiens into homo donans. The gift-economy visualises the invisible passivity and receptivity of women not as a mechanical concatenation, but as a creative process, whereby equal exchanges are not only self-reflecting, but also self-validated by reciprocity. Coexisting with human gifts are the gifts from nature, used by humans without any consciousness, such as air, water, sunlight, food, biodiversity, biomass, permitting the human species, its adaptation, evolution and wellbeing to flourish (Diamond/Orenstein 1990). Present systems of trade and private appropriation are sacrificing and pulling these natural gifts into a new type of commerce which is invading the traditional, natural gift-giving areas. The extreme expression of this invasion is represented by the bio-genetic industries, named bio-piracy or bio-projection (Oswald Spring 2001; Heineke 2002), turning thousands of years of human gifts of food seeds into genetic modified organisms, privatised and protected by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for the profit of a few. Similar processes are occurring with the

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privatisation of water, health care and education (Illich 1971, 1975). All these processes have been reinforced by GATS agreements in the WTO (Anderson et al. 2003).

10.5.3 The Third Pillar: Ecofeminism Against Environmental Degradation The gift economy and ecofeminism are deeply interrelated and complementary. When feminists combined several social theories and cooperated with social movements and philosophers of ethics and morality, ecofeminism deepened the analysis of differences between gender and sexuality (Szasz/Lerner 1998). Relating to environmental destruction, food scarcity and discrimination and violence against women (Pickup 2001), they found an analogue process of exploitation between gender and nature. Inspired by proposals of the Club of Rome, and later the summit of Rio de Janeiro on sustainable development, and the Food Summit in Rome, ecofeminists found parallels among the depletion of nature through a pillage of natural resources and the exploitation and repression exercised against woman for thousands of years, generating both environmental and gender insecurity (Zimmerman 1987). Both are victims of the same system of patriarchal domination, appropriation, violence and destruction (Warren 1997; Mies 1998). The term was originally coined by Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 as a philosophy and a movement emerging from the union of feminists and environmentalists. It was related to eco-anarchism and bioregional democracy with a strong involvement of feminism and deep feminism. The results of the green revolution, genetically modified seeds and agribusiness, promoted by private and multilateral organisations (FAO) were increasing the pollution of air, land and water, but also destroying biodiversity and local food cultures. Critical points were the loss of communal land rights and the transfer of these property rights to male landlords. Simultaneously with the deepening of this privatisation process, hunger, rural-urban migration and survival strategies increased in all poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Dore 1997; Dore/Molyneux 2000) because the commons lost the plots of land used for self-sufficiency production. Ecofeminists understood that colonisation, plantation and monocultures also destroyed the mystical connection with Mother Earth (Shiva/Mies 1997; Plumwood 1991; Vaughan 1997); similar processes occurred when patriarchy evolved several thousand years ago (Warren 1997). As alternatives, they proposed self-reliance and cooperative systems in villages (ujamaa, ubunto, ejido), without alienating cultural goods, but with appropriate technology, sustainable field management, green agriculture, local markets, self-sufficiency, food sovereignty and renewable energy sources (wind, solar, biomass). They recognised that the most stable and long-lasting human organisations were small eco-villages with about 150 persons, based on communal land rights and

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some collective work. Comparing this knowledge with Lao Tse’s approach, ecofeminists saw that a similar system of livelihood was proposed 2,500 years ago by this great Chinese thinker. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher proposed her neo-liberal ‘TINA’ (There is No Alternative, Mies 1998) and reinforced the free-market as the unique and inevitable productive and trade system for the whole world. When ecofeminism recognised that the impacts of these neo-liberal initiatives were disastrous for well-being, social security and jobs in many parts in the North and South, they undertook deeper analyses. Due to global socio-economic crises (Stiglitz 2010), internal violence, environmental destruction and poverty, and in some cases even worldwide terrorism, ecofeminism related these global processes to the exploitation and discrimination of women, or poor men, children and elders, but also to the destruction of the environment and the irrational exploitation of natural resources (Mies 1998; Bennholdt-Thomsen 1998; Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies 1999). All of them resulted from an exclusive globalisation process, in which neo-liberal capitalism relied on financial (Wall Street and tax haven), commercial (WTO), political (White House), military (Pentagon, NATO) and ideological (Hollywood) tools, fostering a violent and hierarchical development, synthesised in the ‘trickle down approach’ of the World Bank. The conjunction of all these processes has been interpreted by some ecofeminists as an extreme expression of the existing patriarchal system. Confronted with globalisation, comparative studies from the North and South, undertaken by women, men, peasants (Via Campesina 2005; CLOC 2002, 2004) and intellectuals (Blazquez 2014) pointed to an alternative process of transgressive, multi-local and decentralised efforts. Several of them were related to political activism and social mobilisation (World Social Fora: WSF) as part of a dynamic process of scientific reflection and the search for other possible worlds, finding TAMA (there are many alternatives). These approaches could establish extensive alliances everywhere, consolidated during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001, 2002, 2003) and Mumbai (2004). From a trans-radical perspective, some proponents of gender security (Table 10.1) developed the theories of ecofeminism further, and related them to eco-indigenism and cultural resistance (Oswald Spring 2004). Plural, diverse, and decentralised policies focused on the vulnerable, arguing that exploitation in the North and South obeyed the same logic: the exploitation of women, workers and nature. This trans-local analysis facilitated a comparison of diverse geographical conditions, all of them subjugated to the same exclusive globalisation process dominated by multinational enterprises. This political activism, combined with rigorous analyses of the effects of the neo-liberal model on human beings and societies, challenged the paradigm of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘TINA’ towards ‘TAMA’. From the beginning, several ecofeminists claimed that new technologies such as genetically modified seeds, cloning, nanotechnology, modern communications and genetic medicine create relations of subordination for human beings (Schumacher 1973). A world network of female researchers, organised as Diverse Women for Diversity (DIWO), has studied locally, in different parts of the world, the effects of these technologies for women, poor countries, minorities and biodiversity. They

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concluded that these scientific advances are part of new mechanisms of exercising power that may include, in a more subtle and probably also a more efficient way, all non-hegemonic groups, nature and social relations. Health, education, water, biodiversity and the assumed welfare of all human beings are now under attack by mercantilist interests (World Bank 1993–2015), and human development is limited to specific social classes, reflected clearly in the Human Development Index (HDI), directly linked to Gender Empowerment Measures. As an alliance with other movements of women, peasants, indigenous groups and environmentalists, they launched a campaign against multinational corporations controlling genetically modified seeds, pointing to their potentially negative impacts on society, nature, health and the economy, risking contamination and genetic erosion of biodiversity, and above all being a central factor of the destruction of rural economies and the resulting migration of peasants to shanty towns within or outside their country (Oswald Spring 2001; CLOC 2004; García 2005). By promoting cultural and biological diversity, they overcame the Cartesian relationship between subject and object. Ecofeminists deepened this interrelationship, including a critical revision of traditional cultural postulates that contain patriarchal roots. They opposed the dichotomy between liberty and emancipation and showed that a globalisation process that excludes the local development is a fallacy. They argued that only by a glocal approach that is internationally linked and locally anchored and supported by the affected people will it be possible to counter the imposition and self-assignation of roles and identities promoted by multinationals, TV channels and information agencies. The universality of Western thought was deeply criticised. In their view, only a culturally diverse and environmentally sustainable self-reliance and self-sufficiency offered real alternatives (Via Campesina 2005; CLOC/ANAMURI 2002). They favoured diverse cosmovisions, of which several have survived for hundreds of years within their communities. Their deep understanding of their native culture flourished again and thus reinforced the cultural plurality and biodiversity, especially in towns and rural communities in the South. The claim that only modernisation and progress will enable attainment of a similar development as industrialised countries was portrayed as a fallacy, which was not only impossible to achieve, but also undesirable, since it would create new pressures on and domination of women and nature. The pollution caused by modern agriculture and industrialisation, as well as the increase of the number and intensity of human-induced natural hazards that often became societal disasters, are indicators of global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011). Chemical contamination, industrial toxic accidents, the exhaustion of aquifers, soil erosion, global environmental and climate change, loss of biodiversity and chemical changes in the atmosphere (IPCC 2013) have all reduced the survival possibilities of peasants and contributed to the migration of rural populations to shanty towns (Mexico City, Mumbai, Lagos, Manila, Sao Paulo, Accra, Cairo) where poverty has increased, generating unprecedented environmental degradation, resulting in increasing adverse life conditions which have forced women and children to develop their own survival strategies (Oswald Spring 1991).

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10.5.4 The Fourth Pillar: Social Movements The fourth phase of gender security refers to the processes of confluence of diverse social movements. Historically, after the explosion of the atomic bomb, feminist movements allied with pacifists, supported the establishment of peace institutes and promoted nonviolent social behaviour (López 2004). With regard to environmental deterioration, they have also cooperated with ecologists. When the neo-liberal model spread everywhere, workers, trade unionists, the displaced middle class in many countries in the South, the unemployed, young and elders were excluded. They lacked a worthy alternative for their life and job and were obliged to create an informal economy for survival. The anti-globalisation movement started in North America against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle. During massive and violent protests in Seattle in 1999, the agenda of the so called ‘free trade’ benefiting transnational enterprises was opposed in the streets. It continued during the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2001, which was conceived as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the representatives of new globalisation process met, promoting an exclusive world for a small minority. Using the internet, the critics proposed: ‘another world is possible’ and let’s ‘globalise the fight, and globalise the hope’, thus creating new spaces for existing social movements (Via Campesina, ATTAC, Jubilee 2000), with the goal of articulating and organising a worldwide opposition movement against neo-liberal policies. By 2006, the World Social Fora have become a seedbed of ideas for an economy of solidarity, eco-sustainable and technological alternatives, reforestation, restoration of soils and ecosystems, micro-credits and many other diverse practices. Marginalised groups, and especially indigenous people, insisted in their millenarian knowledge and they defended their interculturality with dignity. Critical social groups explored the field for ways to enhance gender security by overcoming patriarchal behaviour within the process of reinforcing social movements. Thus, this phase of gender security coincided with the rise of post-modern social movements all over the world (Melucci 1996). In Latin America it started with the opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), but it was a result of a long-standing struggle from social movements (Kaldor et al. 2003) and systematic processes of structural violence (Galeano 1980). During this phase gender security acquired greater visibility, especially when the Zapatistas, an indigenous movement in Mexico’s state of Chiapas, launched their violent protest on the first of January 1994, the same day when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force. The use of the internet by representatives of progressive church groups converted this armed movement into the first global cybernetic conflict. Responding to international pressure, the Mexican government had to negotiate a non-violent solution of the conflict and an armistice, although it has not yet fully implemented its commitments negotiated in San Andrés Larrainzer, and the indigenous law approved by the Congress does not represent the self-determination claims of indigenous groups. Although it was locally limited,

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this rebellion had global repercussions, obliging governments to respect their marginalised and poorest citizens, such as the indigenous population of Chiapas. These movements represent an ethno-feminist and ethno-ecologist alternative from bottom-up, promoting alternative local self-reliance governments and thus challenging the electoral campaigns through short spots in the mass media. This is a concrete example to show how to overcome the poverty trap with dignity and make the invisible visible, including the underlying economic links of the culture of consumerism promoted by multinational enterprises and their mass media. Sara Larraín (2005) reviewed how these new social movements – consisting of indigenous, women and ecological groups – named altermundism. This altermundism is the self-defined term of the networks of different social movements working for ‘another world is possible’. They were also named anti-globaliphobic, a negative term developed by politicians committed to neo-liberal elites (E. Zedillo). These social movements formally started their confluence within the protest against the WTO in Seattle and consolidated their alliance in the World Social Fora of Porto Alegre, Brazil (2001–2003), Mumbai, India (2004) and since then regionally in different parts of the world. They created extensive coalitions of networks of opposite groups and persons against the present neo-liberal model, including environmental destruction, cultural homogeneity, social exclusion, gender discrimination, social stigma, racism and others. They established a common agenda of a world struggle, in which the ideological differences of each social group were not discussed, but a common agenda of action was able to block or alter the programmes of the multilateral agencies promoting their model of an unjust world order (World Bank, IMF, WTO, and G-8). At the same time, these movements have reinforced the negotiation position of southern countries through rigorous analysis of potential effects and political mobilisation of certain proposals from these agencies. They contributed to the failure of the Ministerial Summits of the WTO in Seattle, 1999 and 2003 in Cancún. As diverse social movements, they have consolidated processes of democratisation (Ameglio Patella 2004; Calva 2012; Dos Santos 2005; Zibechi 2006; Oswald Spring 2008a, b; Gallo-Cruz 2016) and sustainability (Brundtland 1987). These movements have built their own common agenda and have democratically argued for a culture of social sustainability, granting synergies among feminists, ecologists, indigenous people, promoters of human rights (ethnic and women), activists against war, free trade agreements, the WTO, repressions, favouring debt reliefs for poor countries and the construction of an economy of solidarity (Cadena 2003, 2009; Colin 2005). They were able to mitigate locally some impacts of exclusive globalisation (Lopezllera 2003; Campos 1995), and to put the processes of liberalisation and growing poverty (Richards 2000) on the policy agenda in different parts of the world. These movements offered new energies and hope for alternative experiences for the poor. They proposed a gift economy or an economy of solidarity, food sovereignty, regional development, integrated basin management and forced multiple governments to promote a participative democracy that is able to improve the local and national governance.

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Although differences exist between these social movements, they agreed on specific themes such as the decentralisation of power; even though they still have not yet determined how social and territorial decentralisation should be implemented and which could be the institutional options (Kaldor 2003). Social imagination explored ways to transform these legitimate demands – human rights, welfare, food sovereignty, peace, and poverty relief – and questioned the hegemonic development agencies’ technological modernizing paradigms using political power to privatise public services at the cost of social conditions in developing countries and poor social sectors. They promote transparent public administrations with decentralised power exercises able to stimulate gender and regional equity within a framework of socio-environmental sustainability. Thanks to the active intervention of women, this associative approach did not become an alternative world superstructure (an anti-UN). It conserved its cultural diversity both in thinking and in practice. The key for success was respect for diverse ideologies and practices for any social movement or group. However, the socio-economic worldwide globalisation process did negatively affect most of the population in the world, as the rent and wealth were concentrated in a few hands of oligarchs, reducing the well-being of most of the people in poor countries. The convergence among paradigms and perspectives of gender, sustainability, equity, vulnerability and positive peace has promoted a ‘conception centred on human beings, questioning the patriarchal paradigm and searching for coherence among the public and the private; the coherence among equity and democracy between gender, generations, cultures and territories’ (Larrain 2005: 3). These social movements asked for social representation with greater harmony among human beings and nature, coherence between public and private policies, between political campaigns and public policies and a relationship based on reciprocity and cooperation, as well as on solidarity. These demands are based on social power without privileged access to socially valuated resources such as goods, status, leadership, education, knowledge and power, but in the process of sharing tasks and ‘mandating obeying’, capable of generating an extensive base of diverse, but not antagonistic interests that can challenge the homogenising neo-liberal rules of identity, social representations and social cognition. In particular, the improvement of gender security needs to overcome thousands of years of hegemony, where women have lost the notion of being dominated and submissive (objectification, anchoring). Habermas (2000) correctly mentioned that this phase aims at an ideological and discursive struggle, expressed clearly in the strategies of the Zapatistas. The conditions of control are increasingly exercised on the minds and the socio-cultural representation by mass media (Castells 2002; Chomsky 1998). This process also explains why dignity and critical thought of ecofeminism, social movements and social actors are crucial for establishing new equilibria of power. It aims to promote social agreements in which existing processes are deconstructed, re-interpreted, argued, criticised and confronted with proposed and tried alternatives. In the present social organisation, almost everybody is socially determined as a man or woman, based on sexual differences. The socialisation process implies

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specific conditions of identity and different mechanisms of empowerment and exercising power. The trans-radical level of expansion of gender security was related, throughout hundreds of years of conquest, to the resistance phenomena of indigenous and subaltern cultures whose cosmovisions can now be reflected in the slogan: ‘another world is possible’ (World Social Fora). In all these approaches the traditional patterns of identity are being questioned in a holistic way, linking them to social equality, sustainable environment, cultural diversity, social solidarity and gender equity (Mason/King 2001). Consolidating this diversity of interests, solidarity among movements was a priority, above all when events were globally coordinated. These social movements overcame narrow oppositions and alternatives from the grass-root level upward and were proposed in a frame of nonviolent conflict resolution (Boulding 2000). Finally, this last phase of gender security offers an understanding of the interrelationship and mediation processes of different social levels: of micro and macro; of individuals or groups: of relationships among discourses and power domination; and deconstruction where the raising of local consciousness for a global fight emerged. In strategic terms, the social representations shared socially could permit the establishment of extensive alliances, which might induce wider alliances with greater success of achievements, confronting worldwide the exclusive globalisation (CLOC 2004, 2005; Via Campesina 2005).

10.6

Gender Security: A Paradigm Shift

Confronted with some advances of selected social movements, especially Via Campesina in Brazil and Centro America, the hegemonic powers did not remain with crusading arms. However, their voracity within the neo-liberal model has reduced their legitimacy and their space of action. Whenever right-wing populist leaderships have governed, especially in occidental countries, the poorest people in the South have had to deal with harsher environmental and financial conditions, thus about half of the food worldwide is produced in orchards and small plots of land, basically by women (IPCC 2014a). In the least developed countries food sufficiency produced primarily by women may reach up to 90%, but is often not enough to meet the nutritional needs of children. Therefore, despite scientific progress, the traditional problems continue to confront people on low incomes, and undernourishment is still one of the key causes of child mortality in less developed countries. Further, the crisis of modernity has generated new threats in different parts of the world. Most of the cities are highly polluted, which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO 2014), accounts for seven million premature deaths, basically due to cardiovascular diseases. WHO (2016) also estimates 12.6 million deaths due to environmental risk factors, such as air, water and soil pollution – all considered non-communicable diseases. These difficult conditions in rural and urban poor

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countries bring people closer to a ‘survival dilemma’, especially when government help or remittances from foreign migrant families are lacking. They leave as possible answers Ujamaa in Tanzania, Ubunto in South Africa or the self-subsistence of village communities within an ecofeminist approach in rural communities in the South. For more than 10,000 years, women and peasants have selected the best seeds, improving the performances in the field, developing diverse culinary cultures and protecting harvests and animals from plagues and illnesses. This traditional knowledge is helping the poorest families in rural and increasingly also in urban areas to obtain the minimum basic food intake (IPCC 2014a). However, abandoning these traditional practices through government and multinational promotion of the green revolution, cloned animals and genetically modified seeds, has made hunger become an undeniable reality: a person dies every four seconds – 24,000 deaths per day due to lack of nutrition (Chávez et al. 1998). In Mexico as elsewhere, children are the major victims of this unjust system: 27.2% of children under five years of age suffer anaemia, and half aged between ten and twenty-two are anaemic; 18% of the children do not grow up due to chronic undernourishment, and there are three times more rural children with lower size.4 These facts do not reflect the productive reality of the world. Despite the population growth of the last two centuries, nowadays there is sufficient food to feed the whole human population – 4.2 lb per person–(Lappé et al. 1998). Nevertheless, only 64% of agricultural products are used for human food. The rest is transformed industrially or is utilised as feed for animals and livestock or biofuel (FAO 2000, 2010, FAO 2013a, 2016), and worldwide almost half of the food produced is wasted (FAO 2013b). Further, social organisations have struggled in developing countries to overcome the dependency on food imports of cereals that has emerged between 1970 and 1997. The food imports of southern countries has risen from 28 to 37%. In some of the poorest countries in Africa these imports amount to 50%. The causes of the decline of regional food self-sufficiency are complex and are linked to climate change and environmental deterioration, cultural, environmental, educational, and social aspects, besides the economic ones and the shortcomings of democracy. There have also been corrupt governments, who benefited from food imports or food aid from outside.

4

Ensanut (2012) indicates that more than half of those, before they enter school, show signs of iron deficiency. Industrialised sugar is the third food among children of 5–11 years, frequently provoking degenerative illnesses such as diabetes mellitus. This food pattern causes 5.4% of children to be overweight, increasing to 18.8% in kids aged over 5 (23.5% of urban children compared with 11.2% in rural areas). Mexico is one of the countries with the greatest incidence of child diabetes (INN 2001, 2003). Ensanut (2012) indicates that 85.4% of Mexicans live with food insecurity. Among the vulnerable group in particular, diabetes has increased due to obesity. Malnutrition has increased in the urban area up to 80.8% and in the rural area up to 67.0%. Undernourishment is also higher in the urban context (low: 45.2% vs. 40.6%; medium: 22.4% vs. 16.5%; and severe: 13.0% vs. 11.7%). The highest undernourishment is located in the south (76.2%) and the lowest in the north with 65.2%.

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Confronted with growing deprivation, rural movements have promoted systems of self-sufficiency and recuperation of indigenous seeds. They fight for food sovereignty as a basic right of any nation, community or family to disperse healthy, permanent, and sufficient food of good quality that is culturally accepted. Food sovereignty cannot be confused with food security, defined as the difference between the consumption of food and the needs of food intake. USFDA defined it at national level as domestic production combined with imported food but discounting non-food consumption. It is also known as ‘food deficiency’, meaning an insufficient intake of the necessary minimum of proteins and/or calories, according to age and activities, required to develop a healthy human being. Confronted with this dramatic reality, Via Campesina is the major world rural organisation formed of regional associations and organisations from more than a hundred countries. They have established regional organic food sovereignty, interchanges of native seeds and, for instance, in Brazil they established more than a million micro-enterprises and were able to grant the country five of the nine basic food items. Despite some contradictory interests (Europeans want more subsidies; peasants from developing countries ask for their reduction), they agreed on common action against the agricultural agreements emerging from WTO; on seeds as communities’ patrimony of humanity; democratic agrarian reform; government support for agriculture; and fair prices for their products. Their mobilisations worldwide and their slogan ‘life is not for sale’ did not meet with the approval of the WTO. However, these movements struggled with new proposals for improving the life quality of the poorest people. They are promoting a programme of food sovereignty, whose precondition is a democratic agrarian reform, including women. They had success in Brazil (within the movement without land (MST in Portuguese), South Africa (Meer 2013), Kenya (Kameri-Mbote 2013), Somaliland (Ismail 2013) and Ghana (Kelvin Kudiabor 2013).5 Half of the leadership of Via Campesina are women and a quarter are young females and men. They have campaigned to declare native seeds of communities as a patrimony of humanity, one of the strategies to guarantee biodiversity and the free exchange of seeds everywhere. Granting access to safe seeds allows the production of regionally adapted products, which are more resistant to drought, flood or climate variability (IPCC 2014b). In their agenda a basic policy is gender equity and the future of the youth, often directly opposed to neo-liberal governments in Asia and Africa. Both groups form part of a democratic and participative leadership within their organisation. Their agenda also includes the recognition of women in food production and struggles to reduce intra-familiar violence. The results during the decades of 1990– 2010 were positive, especially in Latin America. Their priorities for the creation of

5

Although women generate among 60–80% of the food in poor homes and half of the world’s requirements, they nevertheless have limited access to resources. In Mexico, only 18% of women own land property or have access to agrarian land rights.

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social capital, social support against indigence and the reduction of inequality allowed extreme poverty to be almost eradicated and reduced the poverty level down to 50% in Latin America, with the exception of Honduras and Mexico (CEPAL 2014). The struggle for gender security does not only raise the conscience for equity and improve woman’s opportunities, but it also systematises physical, structural and psychological violence. This violence against women includes each year 20 million abortions during which 78,000 women die; 80 million women get pregnant against their will; two million women are affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa; each third woman in the world is beaten; 120 million girls do not live due to gender abortion, female infanticide or negligence and two million girls are forced into sex trafficking. Further, 130 million girls suffer from genital mutilation and four million girls are sold each year as slaves, for marriage or prostitution (UNFPA 2015). The systematic examination of the differences in conditions, needs and rates of participation explains the physical violence. In summary, gender security is still a silent process, often forgotten even by more progressive governments where men dominate. However, social movements, feminists and environmentalists have insisted that without gender security the present society and the planet are under threat. They promote equal access for women and men to resources and development, to management of patrimony, to share of power and to decision-making. These social movements have understood that traditional images of women and men relating to roles assigned with regard to their sex may not address the visible long-term gender discrimination. They have also demonstrated how exploitation and discrimination are deeply meshed with these traditional images of male and female social representations (Serrano 2015). These ingrained social representations increase gender insecurity in physical, structural, cultural and psychological terms. This lack of gender security also coincides with other new threats, where patriarchal violence, destruction, accumulation and domination is destroying, depleting and polluting nature, and where extractivism of oil, mines and forests are the most dramatic polluters of all natural resources, but especially of air, soil and water. The multiple risks and threats are directly related to the present model of this so-called global neo-liberal economy, and are threatening not only humanity, but also nature. Post-war progress has not only been concentrated in a few hands, but for the first time humankind is not only the victim of the present modernisation process, but at the same time is its own victimiser, due to its development process, consumerism and excessive use of fossil energy sources. To achieve a drastic change in human behaviour, the dominant and hierarchical model of traditional occidental exercise of male power must first be changed. As was argued above, this model poses threats for everybody and increases all kinds of insecurity. There is probably not enough time to change the whole institutional system, which is based on the European legal understanding of private property, which has been unable to protect the commons (Ostrom 2009), where the resources represent a common pool with a collective system of resources and an institutional

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strategy to avoid individual or collective appropriation or appropriators. Less than three decades are left to reverse the global threats posed by the present system of production, consumption and pollution, in which the growth in human population poses an additional risk for the collapse of nature and humankind. If humankind does not understand the urgency of the need to change our production and consumption system by decarbonising and dematerialising, there is not enough time to save humanity. The planet Earth has its own time and was able to recover several times in the past. Therefore a widened and deepened understanding of a comprehensive concept of security, a human, societal, economic, environmental and gender security may offer a radically different approach to the present dominant military and political security, based on a patriarchal understanding of power and power exercise. A HUGE security, a Human, Gender and Environmental Security (Oswald Spring 2001, 2005, 2008a, b), may conceptually integrate equality, equity and sustainability as a starting point for this different model of living on Earth. Such a wider security concept may not only respond to the critical questions of an alternative masculinity and femininity and promote women and men who want to explore alternatives for the present exclusive globalisation model, but it may also promote a different behaviour towards other cultures, cosmovisions and especially towards nature. Humankind is not only a species on planet Earth, but as human beings it is also our responsibility to stop the present process of destruction and re-establish a sustainable equilibrium between human necessities and the survival of the planet. Time is now the highest pressure and the time frame is getting smaller every year because of toxic emissions that may survive thousands of years in the atmosphere, the water, the soil and the biota. There is also no certainty about tipping points among natural and negative social reinforcement, which could disrupt the fragile equilibrium of the Earth system. Thus, only this new widened and deepened alternative security understanding may offer a perspective for a sustainable future for the present and coming generations.

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Chapter 11

On HUGE Security: Human, Gender and Environmental Security

11.1

Addressing Global Human Security Challenges

Why do more than 24,000 people—basically children—die each day from hunger and why only in Sub-Saharan Africa has the number of undernourished children grown from 29 to 37 million during the last decade (UNICEF 2015a)?1 Why do three billion people lack access to basic sanitation? Why has the global situation created more than two billion extremely poor people? Why do 55 million Latin Americans not have enough to eat despite living in the most biodiverse region on the planet (Cepal 2015) that provides the world with three of the five basic foods (corn, beans and potatoes)? How did this situation develop and why is it getting worse in different countries of the south? Where are the processes of development, modernisation, efficiency and justice? On the other hand, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) is “responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA also ensures there is a framework within which each actor can contribute to the overall response effort”.2 In its Strategic Plan to 2017, it coordinates humanitarian actions in conjunction with national and international actors in order to reduce the human suffering in disaster zones and especially in regions with complex emergencies, where direct violence and disasters often destroy the community’s survival conditions. Thus OCHA advocates and promotes the human rights of people in need, develops emergency support and promotes disaster and conflict prevention. In regions highly exposed to natural and human disasters, OCHA supports governments and international actors to promote disaster risk reduction (DRR; IPCC 2012, 2014a, b) and in the longer terms sustainable solutions in crisis situations and disaster risks

1

This text builds on previous texts by the author and it was developed further for this book (Oswald Spring 2001, 2008, 2009a, 2010, 2012, 2013a). 2 See at: http://www.unocha.org/about-us/who-we-are (15 January 2015). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_11

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(UNISDR 2015). OCHA gives special attention to the ongoing urbanisation process, where “natural disasters and man-made emergencies can have more devastating effects in towns and cities. Of the 3.3 billion people who live in urban areas today, one third are housed in precarious informal settlements and slums (UN OCHA 2014). The year 2016 was especially dramatic in terms of 65.3 million forcibly displaced people, including an increasing number of children (21.3 million are under 18 years old) and women. UNHCR considered 21.3 million people refugees and 10 million people stateless, yet only 107,100 people were resettled in 2015. Most of these forcibly displaced people come from the Middle East and North Africa (39%); 29% from Africa; 14% from Asia and Pacific; 12% from America; and 6% from Europe. Just three countries – Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria – account for 53% of refugees (UNHCR 2016).3 The number of internally displaced people due to conflicts or disasters also has risen and IDMC GRID (2016) insists that this number has increased from 27.8 people in 2015 to 40.8 in 2016. These global, national and local challenges prevailing in a world of plenty together with absolute poverty cannot be addressed by the narrow concepts of national and international security that focus primarily on the state and on international organisations. A four-star general of NATO and multiple researchers (Brauch et al. 2008, 2011b) have insisted that the classical military security concept and the army are unable to address these new challenges, and therefore military officials are happy to address the new threats and risks with civil specialists trained in human security, humanitarian crisis and complex emergencies. However, the concept of human security as it was (1994) introduced by UNDP and developed further by the UN’s Commission on Human Security (CHS 2003), co-chaired by Sadago Ogata and Amartya Sen, has not specifically focused on its environmental dimension, while many early studies on environmental security focused on national security approaches. Therefore Brauch (2005, 2008; Dalby et al. 2008) suggested adding an environmental dimension to human security and Oswald Spring et al. (2009) proposed that the fourth phase of research on environmental security should take human security considerations into account. Oswald Spring (2001, 2008, 2009a, 2010, 2012, 2013a) and Oswald Spring et al. 2014) argued that to address, face and cope with these multiple new security challenges, a deeper and wider approach to human security is needed along with an epistemological shift from the dominant narrow, isolated or individualist perspective in social sciences, peace research and environmental studies to a transdisciplinary and transformative holistic security approach. Such a new human, gender and environmental (or HUGE) security concept has a dual function: • as a tool of scientific analysis, for the global problems referred to above. • as a guideline for action for humanitarian organisations active in poverty eradication, food relief, disaster management, forced migrants and refugees.

3

See at: http://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html (9 February 2017).

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Addressing Global Human Security Challenges

257

It is important to include the analysis of gender as a long-term social construction of masculinity and femininity, which have changed and are continuously changing and have produced worldwide processes of discrimination, exploitation, slavery and violence. Without question most extremely poor people have a female face, rape and feminicides are committed worldwide with extreme brutality, and still most of countries lack legal reinforcement for intrafamily violence, which is considered to be the internal problem of a family and not of the society.

11.2

Dual Goals of the HUGE Security Concept

Therefore, the combined concept of a Human, Gender and Environmental Security (HUGE) is based on a widened understanding of security, which combines a comprehensive gender concept, including children, elders, indigenous people and other minorities (see Chap. 10), with a human-centred focus on environmental security challenges, peacebuilding and gender equity. ‘Security’ itself has been portrayed as an “essentially contested concept” (Gallie 1956); the HUGE security concept has been even more contested or so far widely ignored in scientific literature as it challenges the basic assumption prevailing in social science literature on both security and human security. There is also a profound resistance from male scientists and especially security analysts to address gender violence and feminist analysis. In social science literature ‘gender security’ (see also Chap. 13) has addressed primarily gender relations, but also livelihood, food security, health care, public security, education and cultural diversity (Nussbaum/Sen 1993; Aldis 2008; Chen 2003a, b; Fischer/Musfequs 2009; Wilkinson/Pickett 2009; Reardon/Snauwaert 2015a, b; World Bank 2014). In contrast, the HUGE security concept scrutinises the patriarchal, violent and exclusive structures within the family and society, questioning the existing process of social representation-building and traditional role assignment between genders. HUGE studies the consolidated gender discrimination, widening the narrow male-female relationship of some feminist approaches. It also includes ‘human security’ that evaluates the processes to overcome discrimination through specific government policies, institution building and legal reinforcements by stimulating the political and social participation of women, young and elders. HUGE analyses ‘environmental security’ concerns, where a healthy environment and building the resilience of highly vulnerable groups (especially women, girls and disabled people) can reduce risk impacts. For hazard prone areas, HUGE is a tool to examine the potential of technical, financial and human support for reducing this vulnerability, enabling women and other exposed groups to reinforce their own adaptation and resilience. The analytical process reviews the policies and tools from bottom-up and top-down that need to be capable of guaranteeing effective early warning, evacuation, disaster (IPCC 2014a) help and reconstruction. This includes also scrutinising immediate and efficient support for isolated regions affected by

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social and natural disasters that could prevent long-term effects such as famine and violent conflicts. A HUGE security proposal starts with a study from glocal (global and local) level that is based on political and cultural diversity. A key concern is to explore non-violent conflict resolution processes that reinforce peace efforts in conflict-prone regions. At international level, a HUGE approach may critically review the free and equal access to world markets without trade distortions, where international agreements may be able to diminish regional and social inequities. The HUGE concept explores the horizontal interchange of experiences and the bottom-up efforts that strengthen the empowerment of the vulnerable. These approaches make it possible to review the efforts of the Social Fora undertaken worldwide and the diverse experiences promoted by social organisations, especially Via Campesina (1996, 2005) and their national and regional movements, which reinforce food sovereignty at local and national level. The concept may offer analytical tools to review the efforts of Jubilee 2000 and the failure of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to promote in the G7 a substantial reduction of debts for heavily indebted, extremely poor countries.4 Understanding that greed and neoliberal models have prevented world solidarity from supporting the poorest countries and social groups with financial aid and debt reductions, the author has also analysed, through the HUGE concept, bottom-up efforts in an increasingly insecure and risky world (Beck 2007), where self-reliance and solidarity have promoted elements for survival of the poorest people on earth (Oswald Spring 1991, 1992, 2007, 2009b, c, 2010). On behalf of these global and local approaches, this chapter analyses the component of socially and environmentally vulnerable people from a gender perspective. Gender is socially constructed, and the axis of classification is linked to genital difference (sexual dimorphism: female-male), facts that permit a biological explanation of social representations of gender, rooting still more the mechanisms of distinction and with them the process of discrimination (see Chap. 10). Lagarde (1990) correctly criticised this process of gender construction as biosocial-cultural, due to it being based purely on sexual differences. Each culture recognises sexual differences and specifies the characteristics that classify the sexual beings in diverse genders (Skjelsbaek 1997; Rosales 2002; Foucault 1996). The number of sexual characteristics varies inter- and intra-culturally, although the generic classification is manifested in all known societies and for this reason is considered a universal classification. This classification coincides with the discrimination of women and girls worldwide.5

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See at: http://advocacyinternational.co.uk/featured-project/jubilee-2000. For a deeper understanding of gender security, the text relies on the historical review in Chap. 10 and reflects the theoretical elements and evolution of the concepts in feminist literature.

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Dual Vulnerability

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Dual Vulnerability

Based on the gender security concept, which was developed in Chap. 10, the present chapter addresses the new threats related to global change and climate change, which cannot be mitigated through military force and hard security concerns, but include the components of human security, gender security and environmental security. The HUGE concept represents an integrated scientific concept of security, where values of equality, equity, sustainability and solidarity are addressed. Finally, in a conclusive approach, the text indicates the advantages of the new conceptual approach, bringing transdisciplinary tools of analysis that are able to address the coming risks and vulnerability. IPCC (2014a, b) synthesises that climate change and global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2001, 2008, 2009) are moving the risk from traditional security threats – such as loss of sovereignty and territory – towards new threats. Increasingly, humans are not only the cause of the new threats, but at the same time also the victims of their irrational consumerist behaviour, excessive use of fossil oil, waste production and ecosystem service destruction. Thus, victimisers and victims are the new challenges for the future of Planet Earth and for the survival of humankind. In February 2000 at an IGBP meeting in Cuernavaca (Mexico), Paul J. Crutzen suggested a new era of earth and human history for which he coined the term ‘Anthropocene’ due to direct human influences on the Earth’s system (Crutzen 2002). In August 2016 in Cape Town, a meeting of the ‘Anthropocene Working Group of the International Geological Association’ clarified elements of this new era in Earth history, taking lithostratigraphical, biostratigraphical and chemostratigraphical signatures into account. Based on indicators of anthropogenically-induced environmental change, this scientific group declared that the atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and cryosphere were influenced and drastically changed by human activities, which has resulted in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Nevertheless, the social and environmental or dual vulnerability proposed by Bohle (2003, 2009) and further developed by Oswald Spring (2013a) is not equally distributed worldwide (see Fig. 8.1), but generates an enormous insecurity for poor and environmentally exposed people, who themselves are responsible for hardly any changes on earth. Most of these exposed people live in southern countries with high marginality and are seriously affected by climate impacts and extreme events. This builds an ethical problem for humankind, only partially understood by the industrialised nations, which, through their historical emissions of greenhouse gases, have contributed most to the emergence of global environmental and anthropogenic climate change and continue to do so. Thus, for socially and environmentally vulnerable people, only the adaptation option is left, whereby the highly exposed must empower and create resilience to deal better with the multiple new threats, challenges and risks (Brauch 2005, 2011), but are also often obliged to migrate (Fig. 11.1).

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Fig. 11.1 Dual: environmental and social vulnerability. Source Adapted by Oswald Spring (2013a: 21) based on earlier work by Bohle (2003, 2009)

Social vulnerability is a concept related to unsatisfied human needs and limited access to resources. In particular, UNU-EHS (United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security) in Bonn has contributed to the development of first the concept and, subsequently, studies on human (Bohle 2002; Brauch 2005a, b; Barnett 2010), social (Bohle 2009), environmental (Dalby et al. 2008; Oswald Spring et al. 2009; Brauch et al. 2011a; Beck 2011; Berkes 2007), cultural (Oliver-Smith 2009a, b), gender (Oswald Spring 2010, 2013a), and dual vulnerability (Bohle 2007; Estrada 2014; Villagrán 2011). The current situation may result in hunger and malnutrition, but junk food is increasingly also producing overweight and chronic diseases (diabetes, hard attacks, cancer). Further discrimination, unemployment and low salaries have increased worldwide inequality and inequity, whereby a large group of people suffer from under-consumption and a smaller one from over-consumption. New distribution processes within families, regions and the world could secure the satisfaction of basic needs of everybody, independent of gender or social class. At the same time, it would reduce and limit conflicts over scarce or strategic resources, and thus reduce environmental vulnerability. Lack of and polluted water, loss of soil fertility, climate change impacts and the loss of

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ecosystem services are major processes contributing to environmental deterioration. Increasing population, changes in consumption patterns, greenhouse gas emissions and unsustainable urbanisation are key factors that reinforce both vulnerabilities, especially in developing countries. Therefore, a combined human, gender and environmental security (HUGE) concept makes it easier to scrutinise the complex interaction, where the weakest and most exposed human beings are the most numerous victims of global environmental change.

11.4

Deepening the HUGE Security Concept

Including social vulnerability considerations, the security dynamics could be orientated towards threats for individual identity and social representation, where not only physical survival is in danger, but also cultural survival, often reinforced by religious concerns and political control mechanisms. Linking Gramsci’s ‘ideological hegemonic apparatuses’ (1971) or Althusser’s ‘ideological state apparatus’ (1965) with identity and role theories, in the South the past decades of impoverishment, environmental destruction, migration and premature death due to disasters, wars and desertification have pushed survival strategies increasingly into the hands of women (Oswald Spring 1991). Expanding the focus to gender security, the author proposes a transradical level of expansion (see Chap. 10). The origins of threats are primarily coming from the patriarchal system, characterised by totalitarian institutions such as authoritarian or manipulating governments, churches and elites, basically multinational oligarchs. Secondly, threats are also related to the established and developed social relations within families, schools and social groups. They are penetrating the most intimate space of a couple and family, affecting labour relations, political and social contacts, and primarily also the exercise of power where a system of discrimination and stigma dominates, threatening equity and personal or group identities. In terms of human security, Brauch (2005a: 7) historically integrated four pillars, which has extended the positive understanding of peace with human security. He analysed them as ‘freedom from fear’, ‘freedom from threat’, ‘freedom from needs’, ‘freedom from hazard impacts’ and later UNESCO added ‘freedom from cultural discrimination’. With this deepening understanding of human security, Brauch (2005a: 10) insisted “that many authors (Buzan et al. 1998; Wæver 2000) have observed a recent widening and a deepening of the security concept in OECD countries, while in some countries a narrow military security concept has further prevailed. Within the UN and NATO, different security concepts coexist, namely a Hobbesian state-centred political and military security concept, and an extended Grotian concept that includes economic, societal and environmental security dimensions”. As discussed in the former chapters on security, human and gender security is understood in a deepened way, reaching from the individual to the community, regional and national level up to the global context. The values at risk to human and

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gender security are related to the hierarchical structures of institutions at any level from the family up to the international organisations such as United Nations. The threats arise from the dominant patriarchal unjust world order, where thousands of years of discrimination, exploitation and violence have produced an internalisation of dominant and engendered social representations worldwide with a wide range of victims. Generally, these social representations (Serrano 2010) are transmitted first by mothers to their children, with boys and girls being differently socialised. Later they are reinforced in the family dynamics, schools, workplaces, society, churches, and politics. Thus, human and gender identity is not only developed before a child is born, but also reinforced during the whole life and transmitted and consolidated all over the world through the globalisation process, which affects more women and girls (Lagarde 1990; Lama 1996, 2002; Lacan 1985; CEPAL 2016; WB 2001). As a result, gender discrimination is reinforcing the human insecurity through social stratification, classes and casts, but also by according less validation to non-whites and nations not in the select club of the G-7. The organisations of the United Nations which are responsible for data collection have confirmed that violence towards women and girls is very frequent worldwide (UNFPA 2016b). At least each third woman in the world is beaten, each fifth is raped, and almost all suffer from psychological aggression. Normally, this violent behaviour happens within the house. However, men responsible for these crimes have often claimed that men from other cultural backgrounds, regions, religions and social classes are guilty of feminicide, rape and sexual harassment. Such offences are normally not denounced by the affected women and they cannot be handled in the traditional system of military security. Further, intra-familiar violence is often taken as normal and not recognised as a legal issue because it is legally allowed from a male standpoint and thus the legal system does not punish it. Most countries in the South still lack laws against this type of violence and when they exist, there is no enforcement, due to a patriarchal practice of law and power exercises. For instance, in January 2017, the Russian Duma reduced the penalties for intra-familiar violence and, in the case of beating, decriminalised the offence, thus decreasing the protection for girls and women.6 Gender and general violence affect the well-being of families, people and the development of their countries. The World Bank (1998) documented empirically for Mexico that with each loss of one per cent in GDP, due to induced socio-economic crises, the rate of homicides increased by one per cent, robberies with violence by two per cent, and divorce by 28%. Something similar occurs globally with the global environmental change and the new threats of extreme hydro-meteorological events and the growing poverty in countries of the South, linked to soil erosion and chaotic urbanisation due to the loss of food production and the migration to urban slums. The World Bank (1998) also stated that in North On 25 January 2017, The Guardian reported that in Russia “according to the state statistics agency, in 2015 there were 49,579 crimes involving violence in the family, of those 35,899 involving violence against a woman” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/25/russianmps-bill-reducing-punishment-domestic-violence-rights.

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Africa, each year of education for girls improves the GDP by one per cent. Therefore, the education of girls is crucial for the future economic development of countries (UNFPA 2016b). A report for the World Economic Forum (2015) also analysed gender gaps and socio-economic processes. Chad had the lowest rank in human development and gender gaps, while in purchase power parity (PPP) Pakistan, India, Jordan and Iran have both of these low indicators, while Burundi has a high reduction in the gender gap, but still a low PPP due to colonialism, post-war conditions and government corruption. With regard to GDP and gender gaps, Iran and Chad were ranked lowest, while for global competiveness and gender gaps Chad, Guinea and Pakistan ranked lowest. Thus, empowerment of girls and women promotes social and economic development, while the involvement of women in the economy of their countries is crucial for their social improvement and economic stability.

11.5

Widening Human and Gender Towards Environmental Security

A new security approach was proposed by the Copenhagen School based on constructivism. Buzan et al. (1998) widened the traditional military and political understanding of security including new threats, e.g. due to the globalisation process. They proposed that economic security should take into account frequent financial and economic crises locally and globally. Increasing poverty and urbanisation with slum development in developing countries are posing serious threats to human and gender security. The lack of social protection in economic threshold countries has marginalised many families into survival conditions (Oswald Spring 1990). Therefore the Copenhagen School proposed a societal security approach addressing these new social risks. Finally, since 1990 climate change has been assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In its most recent reports the IPCC (2013, 2014a, b) claimed with 99% scientific certainty that climate change is produced by humankind and the result of anthropogenic GHG emissions. This new scientific evidence requires different approaches to security. When people are both the threat and the victims, they must change their production and consumption patterns in order to avoid catastrophic outcomes and tipping points in the Earth and human system (Lenton et al. 2008). The Report of the Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2 December 2004) stated that: environmental degradation has enhanced the destructive potential of natural disasters and in the same cases hastened their occurrence. The dramatic increase in major disasters witnessed in the last 50 years provides worrying evidence of this trend. More than two billion people were affected by such disasters in the last decade, and in the same period, the economic toll surpassed that of the previous four decades combined. If climate change produces more flooding, heat waves, droughts and storms, this pace may accelerate.

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A group of scientists from all five continents (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011b) analysed the impacts of global environmental change (GEC), addressing both the linkages and the impacts of humankind on the natural system. They reviewed population growth (UNFPA 2015); the accelerated urbanisation process (UNFPA 2016a); dramatic land use changes from natural ecosystem to agriculture, urbanisation and tourism and their impact of soil quality (FAO 2015, 2016a); and ecosystem services (MA 2005). The expansion of modern agriculture with its intensive use of agrochemicals and genetically modified organisms has further decreased soil fertility, produced monocultivation and accelerated desertification (FAO 2016b). The overuse and pollution of surface and groundwater has negative impacts on humans and nature (UNESCAP 2010). The intensive use of fossil energy and the changes in the global transportation system (IRENA 2016; IEA 2015) have dramatically increased the anthropogenic GHG concentration in the atmosphere. Further, the loss of natural ecosystems and their services (Rockström et al. 2009) has significantly diminished biodiversity. All these anthropogenic changes have triggered physical and social effects of GEC that have resulted in precipitation changes, a rise in temperature and sea levels, an increase in natural hazards and societal disasters (UNISDR 2005, 2015), and the loss of cultural diversity (UNESCO 2002a, b). These changes in the Earth’s system have contributed to the emergence of a new era on Earth called the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). Taking these multiple changes in the human and earth systems into account, this author (Oswald Spring 2001, 2008, 2009a, 2013a) proposed the HUGE security concept: Human, Gender and Environmental Security. This HUGE concept recommends a deepened understanding of gender, including other vulnerable groups, such as children, elders, indigenous and other minorities, with a human-centred focus on environmental security challenges, peace-building and gender equity. This HUGE concept has also addressed the patriarchal, violent, exploitative and exclusive structures within the family and society, by examining, through the existing process of social representation-building, the traditional role assignation between genders. HUGE focuses the analysis on processes and experiences that propose ways to overcome gender discrimination and widen the narrow male-female relationship of some feminist approaches. From a gender and human security perspective, discrimination mechanisms may be analysed in specific government policies, institutions and laws, in which women, the young and elders are systematically excluded from political and social participation. This combined concept includes the analysis of ‘environmental security’ concerns, where the lack of a healthy environment and resilience-building has increased the risks (Cardona 2007) for highly vulnerable groups. For hazard-prone areas, from an integrated risk analysis the potential of technical, financial and human support for reducing this vulnerability (UNISDR 2005, 2015) may be explored. Multiple studies have explored how women and other exposed groups may strengthen their resilience through both bottom-up initiatives and top-down policies and tools to guarantee effective early warning, evacuation, disaster help and reconstruction (Berkes 2007). These studies reviewed how it has become possible

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to provide immediate and efficient support for isolated regions affected by social and natural disasters, thus preventing long-term effects such as famine, migration and violent conflicts. Such considerations may also apply to a politically and culturally diverse world, where different non-violent conflict resolution processes exist that could reinforce peace-building in conflict-prone regions (Oswald Spring 2004). An integrated approach to security includes the international level, where practices of free and equal access to world markets without trade distortions may diminish regional and social inequities. Many studies have examined the impacts of structural adjustment policies (SAP; Stiglitz 2007, 2010) imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF 2004), but also the development policy (Amin 1973; Ruiz Moreno 2012; Young 1992) promoted by World Bank (1992–2006). The empowerment of vulnerable people, especially women in the South, requires an approach that promotes equality, equity and sustainability through horizontal interchanges of experience between genders, races and nations. Such analyses often propose supporting the poorest countries and social groups with financial aid and debt reduction (Galeano 1967). By integrating societal, environmental, human, cultural, and identity concerns, the root causes of the present concentration of wealth may be examined. Once the key processes are identified, policies and activities may be promoted that support solidarity, resilience, peace-building and equity in an increasingly insecure and risky world (UNEP 2000–2006). The development of the HUGE concept was influenced by many scholars and especially by the theory of structural imperialism developed by Galtung (1971, 1975) and Dieter Senghaas (1973) based on the dependence theory (Marini 1973; Quijano 1970; Dos Santos 1978; Cardoso/Faletto 1969). With these approaches, a different socio-economic model appears, in which the current relationship between the centre of the centre (global elites) and the centre of the periphery (local elites) is questioned. From a process of micro-genesis onward, it is feasible to consolidate a wider social identity, motivating the participants to plan, participate and develop creative alternatives, taking as social norms nonconformity to the established model and its methods of domination, exploitation and discrimination. Once social facts have been transformed into normative processes of alternatives, the structures of social representation can be changed and diverse processes of autonomy and alternation may arise simultaneously in different parts of the world (Haslam et al. 1995; Hartsock 1983; Harding 1988). By empowering the peripheries of the centre (workers in industrialised countries7) and the peripheries of the periphery (workers, peasants, women in developing countries), new social relationships can be established, thanks to an understanding of the structural relations of inequality and exploitation.

7

However, the outcome of the US Presidential election in 2016 indicates that this assumed alliance is far from addressing the structural links among the centres of powers.

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There is an interesting example among indigenous people in Chiapas. The Zapatista (since 1994) associated and anchored their critiques of the neoliberal model on images (Commander Ramona), names (General Zapata), histories (Durito) and myths (Mother Earth). They combined the traditional indigenous cosmovision with modern elements of communication and generated formal and informal organisations with a minimal format of institutionalisation to challenge the national and global system at local level. Other indigenous movements in Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile are promoting a critique of the system of exploiting nature and humankind. Linking these movements simultaneously across the world (through internet and web pages), the World Social Fora, and localities (through myths, symbolic acts, protests and alternative movements), the associative function of the anchorage of social representation is guaranteed and the processes of communication can be expanded. The HUGE security concept combines a wide understanding of gender and was inspired by the conceptual and political debates on environmental and human security (Suhrke 1999). Through a ‘trans-radical’ perspective, this approach deepens understanding of human and gender security (see Table 10.1 in Chap. 10) from the family level to the global one. From a HUGE security perspective, social relations may be analysed as referent objects that include human beings with no or limited access to power, such as women, indigenous and other minorities. From this vantage point, the values at risk are equity and identity (Serrano 2004, 2009, 2010), which are threatened by the elites. Thus, the source of threat comes first from the existing patriarchal order, characterised by totalitarian institutions, authoritarian governments, hierarchical churches and global and local elites. Human security understanding also integrates the four pillars: freedom from fear (physical threats), freedom from want (structural disadvantages and inequality), freedom from hazard impact (threats arising from global environmental change and climate change) and freedom to live in dignity and in a state of law (against impunity and corruption) (Brauch 2005), as well as cultural diversity. The environmental security component includes the three phases of environmental security evolution (Dalby et al. 2008): damage done by war and military actions (e.g. orange agent, nuclear pollution); conflicts and war arising from resources scarcity (water conflicts in the Middle East) and resource abundance (irrigation systems); threats and insecurity related to global environmental change and climate change. Thus, a HUGE security view offers an integrated approach of human, gender and environmental security, in which the deep root causes of insecurity are related to the patriarchal system. This system of violence, authoritarianism, inequality and destruction affects human beings and the Earth as a whole, and is pushing the physical-chemical processes of the planet towards irreversible tipping points. The values at risk are survival, sustainability, equity, equality and gender and minority identities, based on discriminative social representations. Tajfel (1981: 31) affirmed correctly that social identity is lived in a world where processes of unification and diversification are occurring with giant steps, faster than ever in history. Hogg and Abrams (1988: 78) added that people have a basic necessity to simplify and to put

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order into reality, where the categorisation of the social environment is done through social comparison which improves self-esteem positively, but not at the cost of other social groups (Turner 1983; González Casanova 1998). All these processes of identity and social representation are socially and dialogically constructed (Habermas 1998, 2000, 2001) and in permanent adjustment and transformation, thus forming part of an inalienable collective life, enriched by cultures, ideologies, rites, beliefs and daily practices (Eliade 1965). Taking this complexity of interactions into account, the HUGE security concept tries to integrate personal, social, gender and environmental elements that make visible the underlying discrimination and exploitation of both nature and gender. When the theory of social representations is questioning the lack of gender security, in which roles are charged with stereotypes – weak, incapable, dependent and vulnerable – greater visibility of historical gender discrimination in daily life is slowly changing the relationship between men and women. The commitment of governments after the UN conference on population issues in Beijing in 1995 to account the unpaid work especially of women in the household and as carers was a crucial step towards making visible this crucial work and gift to society. The HUGE security approach – suggested above – may stimulate researchers and especially peace and security researcher to undertake studies into the complex social categories which are included in the symbolic system, in which equity, reciprocity, and a gift-economy may represent alternatives to the dominant neoliberal system affected by global environmental change.

11.6

A HUGE Programme for Action

As introduced above, I understand HUGE in a double meaning, both as a scientific concept and as a guideline for action and the transformation of society. Action research is deeply rooted in the anthropological method and promotes a participatory and often practical approach to investigated situations. It often produces guidelines of best practice and proposals for the solution of a concrete problem. Lewin (1946) promoted action research as ‘a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action [that uses] a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action’ (see Chap. 7). Action research as methodological intervention is now implemented by many NGO and international development agencies. Paulo Freire (1970) is one of the most prominent scientists to innovate and create consciousness among people with poor access to education. He advocated a practice of dialogic pedagogy of reflection and action instead of the traditional model of teaching. Fals-Borda (1986) compared the official history of Colombia with the non-official story of the north coast of Colombia in a region threatened by a war. As an organic intellectual committed to insurgency, he wrote for those from below instead of those from above.

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In relation to this second point of participative, committed or action research, HUGE may also offer guidelines for action for humanitarian organisations active in poverty eradication, food relief, disaster management, forced migrants and refugees. In this second goal, HUGE was influenced by: (a) the liberation struggle of Gandhi (1997) in India, the struggle of King (1998) in the USA for human rights and race equality, the nonviolent liberation from the Apartheid regime by Mandela (1994), and different other peaceful movements which practised peaceful conflict resolution; (b) the nonviolent resistance of indigenous societies (Gaitán 2004; Gil 2004; Menchú 2004; Stavenhagen 2004); (c) the tradition of the fights for independence and guerrilla movements in Latin America and elsewhere against the dominant oligarchy (Che Guervara, EZLN, Shining Path, FLN, IRA, FARC). Some of them negotiated peace agreements, returned their arms and participated in electoral processes to change the structural inequality in their countries; (d) bottom-up organised mass organisations, which offered alternatives to the exclusion through an economy of solidarity, locally integrated enterprises, popular banks for local small savers, and others. The Movemento Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil promoted a sustainable mixed agriculture and offered more than one million landless peasants a regional articulated productive scheme (MST 2003; Santos de Morais 2002); (e) organised religious solidarity communities such as the Christian Grass-roots Movement (Movimiento Cristiano de Base), inspired by the Theology of Liberation (Samuel Ruíz, Sergio Mendes Arceo, Camilo Torres, Fray Betto), movements of solidarity and alternative economy (the other stock market, Lopezllera 2003), nonviolent peace movements in India related to Jaina monks, the Buddhist anti-war campaign with Emperor Ashoka in ancient India, the Quakers’ peace-building process (Boulding 2000) and many others. However, most of these movements lacked a gender security approach and very few challenged the deep-rooted patriarchal mindset of power, greed and violence. HUGE should guide the structural transformation of social organisations where differences are based on gender towards new identity conditions and where distinctive mechanisms of power are exercised. Nevertheless, these transformations towards a socially constructed gender understanding are not easy because they challenge the present dominant world view which even occurs in progressive groups. Most of the guerrillas in Latin America were unable to undertake this critical process. Either the male guerrilla killed the female leadership (El Salvador), or they eliminated women and critical male opposition from the political arena (Nicaragua). There is a different process of empowerment from bottom-up going on by the Zapatista, where women are empowering and also youth form part of the local government. Ecofeminism, eco-indigenism, cultural resistance and globalised hope that ‘another world is

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possible’ (Porto Alegre, World Social Fora), March of the Women,8 etc. are trans-radical efforts to overcome the deeply patriarchal roots. In all these approaches traditional patterns of social identity are challenged by participants in a holistic way, linking together social equality, environmental sustainability, cultural diversity, gender equity and nonviolent conflict resolution. HUGE security also understands that it is crucial to improve human security in all the four pillars. Because the extreme poor have limited access to the global market, the reinforcement of rural and urban self-sufficiency is not only a basic strategy of ecofeminism, but also a chance to transform survival strategies into life quality and food sovereignty. Through micro-credits, integration of small-scale business, local food production and transformation, traditional medicine, and job creation, the economy of solidarity is creating an alternative economic model, where dignity, solidarity, labour and livelihood prevail. As a result, dignified employment and conflict resolution may reduce informal and illegal labour market conditions. Together with confidence-building processes, social activities may promote organisations that are able to elect honest and socially concerned governments which fight against poverty, exploitation, organised crime and other illegal activities. Once societies are better integrated and less violent, governments can then reduce spending on public security, internal repression and defence, and transfer this budget to development programmes. Less violence also means that the military and police sectors can be trained to improve civil protection, enabling both to protect citizens from hazard impacts by reinforcing early warning and evacuation processes. New investments in education and culture may also help to consolidate an integral development process, thus reinforcing the positive cycle of well-being, state of law and social improvement. Costa Rica is not only the sole country in Latin America without military, but has also the highest human index (UNDP 2016). In relation to HUGE and specifically to environmental security, as environmental conditions are worsening due to global change and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, mitigation processes and resilience-building are influencing the creation of a pre-emptive awareness, where solidarity and the gift-economy (Vaughan 1997) are strengthening local, national and international solidarity. The interchange of scientific and technological improvements enables society to cope more effectively with future hazards and risks. Processes of environmental restoration in highly risky

8

The confluence and diversity of these different strategies, ideological and political struggles and activities have found an initial articulation and reflexive output within the World Social Forum (WSF) and its Assembly of Social Movements, where mass organisations have carefully avoided the co-optation by international NGO’s. Their basic principles are plurality, diversity, equity, justice, sustainability and social equality, promoting globalisation with a human face, social integration, gender equity, peace-building, nonviolent conflict resolution and environmental care. They have resisted – not without pressure – being formally organised within a minimal structure of alternative government. They have maintained a flexible structure and alliance, avoiding the imposition of homogenising ideas, hegemonic strategies of struggle, such as co-optation processes, and, especially by the Women’s March, vertical male leadership.

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areas (islands, coral reef, mangroves, forests, savannas, coastal areas, mountain regions threatened by landslides, active volcanoes) can reduce risks and consolidate the security of people exposed to hazard impacts. Confronted with unknown threats generated by global and climate change, nanotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), new risks emerge against which communities and social groups have no resilience. Greater consciousness in society and organic support by academics may enable organised social groups and committed governments to learn to deal with hazards and new threats in a preventive manner. The participatory solidarity and the interchange of experiences among other exposed groups create not only new ways to improve prevention, but also solid links after disasters for bottom-up support. Finally, through the strict application and reinforcement of environment laws, destroyed, damaged and polluted ecosystems can be recovered and new destruction can be avoided (Brauch et al. 2008, 2011b). A human, gender and environmental security also includes the promotion of environmental security through alternative renewable energy and sustainable productive processes, services and industries in rural or urban areas for increasing the sustainable management of natural resources. This facilitates the recovery of damaged and endangered environments, where women are crucial for food sovereignty of their families. The positive links between clean productive processes, healthy public finances, stable social solidarity and a collective model of development, as a result of negotiations among the divergent social groups and interests (society, business and government), may help to induce social changes that can be supported by whole societies and reinforce HUGE security. These processes of consensual policies require formerly antagonistic groups to negotiate a new model of pacific cohabitation. In the political arena, integrated programmes and sustainable planning may create an integral development project, able to manage increasingly scarce resources with social justice, where the livelihood of the most vulnerable is secured. Women, in particular, are highly exposed to firewood cooking, and clean energy will improve their health and prevent obstructive respiratory diseases in them and their small children. Bringing together political programmes for human, gender and environmental security with peace-building and risk reduction makes the interconnection of human and ecological matters a priority. In the educational field it helps people understand the emergence of globalisation and global environmental change. This in turn raises awareness that we form part of an ecosystem that we are changing drastically (Dalby 2009; Dalby et al. 2008). The positive outcomes of bottom-up peace education, food self-sufficiency, gift economy, nonviolent negotiation of conflicts, gender equity and social equity may create greater justice among the most vulnerable, with freedom from fear, want and hazard impacts. These processes may also consolidate peaceful behaviours that reinforce the state of law and governmental transparency. They can be supported creatively by active and equal access to resources for women, men, elders and youth. In this sense, the conceptualisation of HUGE may bring new ideas into decentralised developing models, which may improve nonviolent interactions in daily life. Through negotiation and conciliation, the emerging conflicts can be resolved, and the vulnerable get an opportunity to

11.6

A HUGE Programme for Action

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express their concerns and propose solutions from bottom-up, which may increase justice, offering the conflicting parts win-win opportunities and giving women greater visibility.

11.7

Conclusions

In conclusion, the new human, gender and environmental (or HUGE) security concept in its dual function offers a tool for scientific analysis, where the security concept is widened towards environmental, societal and economic security (Buzan et al. 1998), and deepened towards human (UNEP 1994) and gender security (see Chap. 10). This approach also allows an integrated analysis of the world problems related to global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011b) and climate change (IPCC 2013, 2014a, b). The HUGE concept also explores the potential of peace research within complex and increasingly negative environmental conditions, where the physical-chemical composition of air (IPCC 2013), the depletion of natural soil fertility (FAO 2016a), the pollution and increasing scarcity of water – more than 70% of ground and surface water is still extracted for agriculture (2nd World Irrigation Forum 2016) – biodiversity and most of the ecosystem services are at tipping points (Marten 2005). Triggered by population growth (UNFPA 2016a), urbanisation (UN DESA 2011), land use change (FAO 2016a), extractivism (Salazar/Rodríguez 2015), unsustainable industrial (Redvers 2009), energy (EIA 2013) and food production (FAO 2016b), and natural hazards (UNISDR 2015), the HUGE security concept orientates towards transdisciplinary studies with a transformative security approach (Brauch et al. 2015). Within this dual approach, HUGE links human, gender and environmental security into one concept. Thus, it addresses social inequity as a key process for producing poverty, disease, lack of dignified employments and loss of cultural diversity. Inequity is related to gender discrimination, violence, exploitation and lack of visibility of work inside the house and the family. Loss of sustainability is threatening the four basic ecosystem services, such as nurturing, regulating, supporting and loss of cultural and immaterial goods. Thus, an ethical management of scarce and fragile natural, cultural and social goods (Oliphant 1993) with equity may open the ways for policies and bottom-up action for improving equality, equity and sustainability. Confronted with the severity of natural and social breakdowns, the HUGE concept also proposes guidelines for policies and bottom-up actions to eradicate poverty; relieve hunger, obesity and disease; prevent and manage disasters; and avoid forced migrants and refugees. It includes the analysis of gender as a historical global social construction of masculinity and femininity, which has changed and is continuously changing, but has produced worldwide processes of discrimination, exploitation, slavery and violence. Without doubt, most extremely poor people have a female face. Rape and feminicide are committed worldwide with extreme brutality, yet most countries still lack legal redress for intrafamiliar violence, which is

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considered an internal problem of families and not an outcome of a violent and unequal society. Lack of gender security as a root cause of inequity and inequality has limited human development and the dominant exploitive behaviour of the neoliberal model also threatens globally environmental security. Thus the combined HUGE security analysis is deeply embedded in socio-environmental outcomes, where social movements and feminist analysis are leading to better understanding and helping to design new strategies for overcoming the present unsustainable social and natural development. The HUGE security approach may help humanity to understand the dynamics of Planet Earth, and the mechanisms of social and gender discrimination and its interaction. It also puts forward visible existing alternatives at local and global level. A different approach to humankind, gender and nature may offer the possibility of living in a sustainable and peaceful environment, where resilience, solidarity and cooperation develop ways to reduce the impacts of natural hazards in a world threatened by global environmental change. Different ethical behaviours by women and men based on the principles of equity, equality and sustainability may also help to overcome the existing social gaps. Solidarity is a key factor for supporting vulnerable people and including highly exposed persons, especially girls and women in the South, in the quest to confront the unknown threats of the Anthropocene more effectively. An integrated socio-environmental policy is also able to reduce risk and threats and care for the life and livelihood of the most vulnerable. These complex emergencies require both a scientific and an action-orientated concept, whereby HUGE may help to understand and overcome the deep-rooted causes of the current destruction of nature and humankind.

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Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (2004). “Conciliación de conflictos y derechos humanos en comunidades indígenas”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed). Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías, México, D.F., Coltlax, Böll, CLAIP, pp. 63–70. Stiglitz, Joseph (2007). Globalisation and its Discontent, New York, W.W. Norton. Stiglitz, Joseph (2010). Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, New York, W.W. Norton. Strahm Rudolf, Úrsula Oswald Spring (1990). Por esto somos tan pobres, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Suhrke, Astrid (1999). “Human Security and the Interests of States”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 30, pp. 265–276. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Turner, Victor (1983). “Body, brain and culture Zygon”, Journal of Religion and Science, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 221–245. Tzun Tzu [6th century BCE] (2000). El Arte de la Guerra, Barcelona, Ed. Gestión. UN DESA (2011). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision, United Nations, New York, at: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/WUP2011_ Report.pdf. UN OCHA [United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] (2014). OCHA Strategic Plan 2014–2017, New York, UN OCHA. UNDP (2000–2006). Report on Human Development, Geneva, UNDP. UNDP [United Nations Program for Development] (1994). Human Development Report 1994, New York, UNDP. UNDP [United Nations Program for Development] (2016). Human Development Report 2016, New York, UNDP. UNEP (2000–2006). Global Environmental Outlook, Nairobi, UNEP. UNESCAP [United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific] (2010). “Water Security – Good Governance and Sustainable Solutions”, Speech presented at the Asia-Pacific Water Ministers’ Forum, Singapore, 28 Jun 2010, at: http://www.unescap.org/ speeches/water-security-good-governance-and-sustainable-solutions. UNESCO (2002a). Best practices of nonviolent conflict resolution in and out-of-school, Paris, UNESCO. UNESCO (2002b). Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Paris, UNESCO. UNFPA (2015). The State of World Population. Shelter from the Storm, New York, UNFPA. UNFPA (2016a). “News on World Population Trends”, http://www.unfpa.org/world-populationtrends. UNFPA (2016b). State of World Population. 10: How our future depends of a girl at this decisive age, New York, UNFPA. UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund] (2015a). The State of the World’s Children 2015: Reimagine the Future: Innovation for Every Child, New York, UNICEF. UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund] (2015b). Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Geneva, UNICEF. UNISDR (2005). Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters, Geneva, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. UNISDR (2015). Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, Geneva, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. United Nations [UN] (2010). The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, New York, United Nations. Vaughan, Genevieve (1997) For-Giving: A Feminist Criticisms of Exchange, Austin, Plain View Press. Vaughan, Genevieve (2004). The Gift; Il Dono, Meltemi/University of Bari, Rome, New Serie 8. Vía Campesina (1996). Food Sovereignty. A Future without Hunger, Rome, FAO. Vía Campesina (2005). Agreement on Gender in Via Campesina, Sao Paulo, Via Campesina.

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Villagrán de León, Juan Carlos (2011). “Vulnerability Assessment in the Context of Tsunami Early Warning”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.) Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1147–1158. Wæver, Ole (2000). “The EU as a security actor“, in Kelstrup Morten, Michael C. Williams (Eds.): International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration. Power, Security and Community, London, Routledge. Waltz, Kenneth N. (1979). Theory of International Politics, New York, McGraw-Hill, Inc. Warren, Karen J. (1997) (Ed.). Ecofeminism. Women, Culture Nature, Bloomington, Indiana University. Waters, C.N., J.A. Zalasiewicz, M. Williams, M.A. Ellis and A.M. Snelling (2014) (Eds.). Stratigraphic Basis for the Anthropocene, London, Geological Societé, GSL Special Publications 395. Wilkinson, Richard, Pickett, Kate (2009). The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, London, Allen Lane. Wolfers, Arnold (1962). “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol”, in Wolfers, Arnold (Ed.), Discord and Collaboration. Essays on International Politics, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, pp. 147–165. World Bank (1992–2006). Informe sobre el Desarrollo Mundial. Invertir en Salud, Washington, D.C., Oxford University Press. World Bank (2001). Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice, New York, Washington, Oxford University Press. World Bank (2014). Risk and Opportunity, World Development Report, Washington, D.C., World Bank. World Economic Forum (2016). The Human Capital Report 2016, Davos, WEF. World Economic Forum [WEF] (2015). The Global Gender Gap Index 2015, Davos, WEF. Young, Iris Marion (1992). “Five Faces of Oppression” in: Thomas Wartenberg (Ed.): Rethinking Power, Albany, SUNY Press. Zapatista (since 1994). Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), https://www.ezln.org. mx/.

Chapter 12

On Engendered-Sustainable Peace from a Feminist and Bottom-Up Perspective

12.1

Introduction

This chapter carries the arguments of the previous and subsequent chapters on ecology and global environmental change (Chap. 5), on peace and security (Chap. 8), on gender security (Chap. 10) and on the author’s proposed HUGE security concept (Chap. 11), further linking her scientific and action-orientated interests in questions, concepts and theories dealing with peace, ecology and gender. This chapter introduces an emerging scientific concept of an ‘engenderedsustainable peace’ that rests on three research programmes of peace research, environmental studies – both were discussed earlier as ‘peace ecology’ (Oswald Spring et al. 2014) – with gender studies from an action-orientated ‘bottom-up’ perspective. This introduction (12.1) first outlines the conceptual approach of patriarchy (12.1.1) and the theoretical framework (12.1.2), as well as the historical and political context of the world in the early 21st century (12.1.3). In the second part multiple impacts of patriarchy (12.2) are discussed: its impact in the private sphere (12.2.1), on the environment (12.2.2) and on the conceptual efforts and suggestions for ‘engendering’ peace (12.2.3), the dual focus on science and policy for an ‘engendered-sustainable’ peace (12.2.4) that has resulted in two related conceptual and action-oriented research questions (12.2.5), and a working definition of the concept of an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’. Based on these long-term processes of violence, this chapter examines in the subsequent parts the historical evolution of patriarchy and its regional adaptation (12.3). Based on this historical understanding, the next subchapter scrutinises the potential of peace and its relationship to sustainability and gender (12.4). The following part explores the culture of peace and power (12.5) and analyses the pitfalls of peace, sustainability and gender security (12.6). Given these negative outcomes, the chapter concludes with a proposal for a transformation of society, the economy and the political arena towards an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ (12.7).

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_12

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From an ecofeminist perspective, this chapter proposes that only a systematic and global peace-building process may be able to address these root causes of social and physical conflict and discrimination and challenge the present system of violence and concentration of wealth and power.

12.1.1 Conceptual Approach: Patriarchy The concept of an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ refers to the structural factors related to long-term violence, deeply embedded in the patriarchal system and characterised by authoritarianism, exclusion, discrimination, exploitation, and violence.1 Patriarchy is understood as a historically constructed social system with a supremacy of the father in the clan or the family. It is patrilocally organised and the inheritance is patrilinear, generally to the firstborn male. Power is shared disproportionately among men, and women and children live in a legal dependency of men. It is clearly expressed in the social organisation of the Fertile Crescent (Diamond 1997), where men dominated first within families and later within a city state where a king assumed the role of god or was god’s representative on earth. It is clearly documented in the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BC), where an important part addresses issues related to household and family (inheritance, paternity, virginity, divorce, and sexual behaviour). Patriarchy was also prevalent in China, India, Mesoamerica and Egypt, all of them agrarian societies with irrigation, surplus production, social stratification and professional warriors (Oswald Spring 2016a). Today, patriarchy has consolidated into a complex system of power, exploitation and control, where first wars and repression, then original accumulation of capital with economic improvement brought social stratification inside societies with a male leadership. Reinforcing socio-economic stability with local policies, religious beliefs and alleged direct contact with supernatural beings (gods and goddesses) allowed the leader to assume power and control over the rest of the society. Improvements in food, protection from foreign invaders, some luxury goods and collective beliefs strengthened the social representation and forged a local identity, often accompanied by a feeling of cultural superiority. Whenever social, economic and psychosocial roots were adapted to historical and regional differences, male dominance and women’s inferiority historically developed in the Fertile Crescent,

1

This chapter emerged from ideas developed in two essays, one partly published in Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2016). “Development with Sustainable-Engendered Peace: A Challenge During the Anthropocene”, in Brauch/Oswald Spring/Grin/Scheffran (Eds.), Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 161–186, and a presentation at a workshop organised by ISA at the University of Georgia in Atlanta in March 2016 on “Peace research from a feminist and bottom-up approach.” Hans Günter Brauch has commented on several drafts of this chapter and has contributed to the refinement of conceptual ideas and the integration of the chapter. However, the author is solely responsible for this final version of this chapter that refers to work in progress to be developed further in the years to come.

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China, India, Mesoamerica, etc. In all these irrigated agricultural societies with surplus production, trade of excess food, military conquest and internal political control, kings as gods exercised a despotic power and facilitated the emergence of larger kingdoms. Violence was used as a means of internal control and, in conjunction with soldiers and war, to aid expansion of kingdoms into empires. Conquered territories were integrated, and men and women were exploited as slaves (Bennett 2006, 2008). Kingdoms and empires consolidated whenever their human and territorial expansion was also a threat to their survival. Fragile environment conditions (drylands), plagues and diseases together with climate variability produced their decline. Lack of food and loss of well-being in fortified cities produced uprisings, and most of these empires were destroyed by internal revolts. However, the dominance of men over women and their seclusion within the home expressed the political and economic control in male hands, which continues to this day. Differences in the salaries of men and women for the same work, discrimination against women, the political positions held by men, and violence against women (feminicide, rape, human trade, beating) are the outcomes of this subordination (Abeda 2011). Pickup (2001) contends that ending violence against women is necessary for a genuine development process and for humanised social relations. However, patriarchal behaviour controls not only women, but also most men. This dominant system of violence dominates almost everybody who has limited access to power at global and local level, such as women, indigenous peoples, the youth, the elderly, the unemployed, the poor, and the handicapped. As seen in the former explanation, the omnipresence and extensiveness of patriarchal dominance is embedded in religious, cultural, economic and family traditions. Patriarchy is also sustained globally and locally by social institutions, which have evolved within this system and are reproducing – often very subtly – the cultural, structural, economic, physical and psychological violence. The depth of these multiple functions of patriarchy has created complexities and pervasiveness for thousands of years. The lack of its visibility and the subsumption in habits (Bourdieu 1972), traditions and cosmovisions affect human wealth, gender relations, human security and peace, but also the sustainability of the planet. Betty Reardon has also noted the symbiotic links between patriarchy and the war system. “Patriarchy is a social, political, and economic system of control and domination structured in terms of a hierarchy of human relationships and also includes values that are based on socially constructed gender differentiation, which produce a masculinity and a femininity with regional differences, but structural similar traits. As such it bestows unequal power and value on males who exhibit its most important values and traits, excluding and oppressing those who do not. It is a social system that has been almost universally in place throughout the history of human societies, and it constitutes the paradigmatic case of inequality and injustice, and thus structural violence” (cited in Reardon/Snauwaert 2015a: xii, taken from Reardon/Jenkins 2007). Thus, patriarchy is understood in this chapter as a social system characterised by violence, domination, discrimination, exploitation, and the subordination of women

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and other men. This violent imposition of a social system has created discrimination among women, who work for free within the household (Lagarde 1990), earn less than men for the same work (Pedrero et al. 1997), are politically discriminated against (WB 2014, 2016) and therefore women rarely achieve the highest level of political, economic and social power. Burin/Meler (2000) speak of a ‘glass ceiling’ or a ‘sticky floor’ that prevents women with the same or better education and capacity achieving management positions occupied by men. As a dominant social structure, patriarchy affects values such as equity, equality and justice, and often even threatens the survival of individuals and social groups. The historical evolution of patriarchy was regionally and culturally reinforced for thousands of years by slavery, colonisation, mercantilism, capitalism, communism and neoliberalism. The present form of globalisation and neoliberalism started after World War II and was able to take advantage of the dominant system of thousands of years of patriarchy and 500 years of capitalism. Mies (1986: 74) argued: “The historical development of the division of labour in general, and the sexual division of labour in particular, was/is not an evolutionary and peaceful process, based on the ever-progressing development of production forces…but a violent one by which first certain categories of men, later certain people, were able mainly by virtue of arms and warfare to establish an exploitive relationship between themselves and women, and other people and classes”. During thousands of years of patriarchal authoritarian rule (see Chap. 10) hierarchical institutions have created the social conditions first for slavery and colonialism, and later the rise of capitalism. The sources of global threats to women, the people, and also to nature have been consolidated over a long time period by patriarchal institutions (the productive and financial system, religious bodies, authoritarian and capitalist (neoliberal) governments) today through exploitation, discrimination, privatisation of public services, corporate outsourcing, sweatshops, human trafficking, etc. Since the 1980s neoliberalism has been accompanied by a technological revolution, especially in the IT sector, which has facilitated a globalisation process with a lack of social justice, equality and equity (Stiglitz 2010). Technical household equipment has also alleviated labour within the house. However, new ideas about hygiene and cleanliness have not only provided by chemical industries with new markets and consumers, but also generated new unpaid tasks for women. The long-awaited justice and equality through the struggles of feminists did not bring the expected emancipation in Europe and the USA, as female labour was devalued within the household, but also outside, where wages for women were/are always less than those for men for the same work with the justification that the man is the breadwinner.2 Women in industrialised countries were therefore working for the

2

These arguments forget totally that more than 20% of women are head of households and maintain the family alone.

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accumulation of capital through a process of ‘housewifisation’ (Mies 1986), where female labour was considered to be a natural resource, similar to air, soil, ecosystem services and water and without payment. In the Global South colonialism allowed European countries a first phase of primitive accumulation by the use of brutal force, looting, genocide and religious imposition. After the independence of countries in the Global South, trade agreements, debt services, payments of intellectual property rights for technology and knowledge have maintained the neo-colonial structures in Asia, Latin America and Africa. The communist model in the Soviet Union was totally integrated into the capitalist system after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1981. China opened its economy globally during the 1980s. However, in all these different social systems, women were always discriminated against and subjugated to the power of capital, of the communist Government, or the male breadwinner at home.

12.1.2 Theoretical Framework Globally, when the capitalist system was also adopted by the People’s Republic of China through Deng’s reforms in the late 1980s, the last important communist bloc joined the present system of neoliberalism. This allowed the world’s wealth to become concentrated due to the liberalisation of the global financial system. A small elite exercises a vertical, violent, discriminative and exploitative exercise of power on poor people, especially women, children and the elderly worldwide. Today, the global productive, commercial and financial system is being controlled by eight ‘oligarchs’ (WEF 2017; Oxfam 2017), who belong to the international business elite. They own or manage multinational enterprises, control the global financial flows in the stock market and thus influence governments to promote and reinforce their corporate interests, often based on wars, unequal terms of trade, debt services, extraction of natural resources, etc. To maintain the functioning of the whole neoliberal capitalist system and the necessary growth of the economy, the media propagated global consumerism with fashion, trademarks, film stars, football idols, etc., where housewives play the role of global consumers. In sum, patriarchy must be understood historically as being imposed on women through violence, via conquest, spoliation, rape, feminicide, and war (Reardon 1996), and through social representations that are able to impose self-discipline and the internalisation of androgenic social roles and norms, which are reproduced by women in the socialisation process of their boys. Patriarchal behaviour used discrimination and imposed laws, rules and habits (Agarwal 1997) to achieve subordination through economic dispossession and sexual control (Lagarde 1990). Traditionally, the hierarchy was established by the notion of pater familias (Coulter 2012). Further, patriarchy is consolidated through exclusion, especially patrilineal and patrilocal inheritance (Breitkreuz 2005). When political and economic systems were consolidated in cities, kingdoms and empires, this patriarchal system was also imposed through socialisation processes on men (Kaufman 1999).

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At global level, five hundred years ago, the patriarchal organisation allowed the emergence of capitalism and, since the 1980s, the additional neoliberal policies have brought about a rapid global increase in the concentration of economic wealth and political power (WEF 2017; Stiglitz 2007). In the early 21st century, many control mechanisms are in the hands of a single superpower3 and a global power elite (Wright Mills 1956; WEF 2017; Oxfam 2016, 2017). This global concentration of economic and political power has increased inequality in the access to education, income, leisure, and political power (UNDP 1994–2016). However, through a global system of consumerism, films and trademarks, social representations are constructed, and self-discipline and an internalisation of often self-assumed gender roles are consolidated, which perpetuate the subordination of women (Serrano 2008) and take it for normal. Within these gender roles, women globally continue to care for others and to work for free within the household, and often also for charities and environmental groups.

12.1.3 The Historical and Political Context: The World in the Early 21st Century Since the 1980s, the neoliberal phase of capitalism has gone a step further in exclusion and discrimination. In the early 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan used basic principles of neoclassical economics to replace the social welfare state promoted by Keynes (1936), the Social Democrats and some socialists. They drastically reduced subsidies, limited protectionism and opened the markets for the so-called ‘invisible hand’. With the consolidation of global multinational enterprises, their policies fostered the emergence of monopolies and monopsonies, and the present financial system with limited government controls. Politicians in the UK and US were later imitated by many other neoliberal governments. This ‘invisible hand of the market’ should regulate the economy and society. Most governments eliminated many State regulations, privatised public services and reduced social support for vulnerable people. This laissez-faire approach of the political economy supported a global market system based on trademarks and brands, where wealth was concentrated in rapidly expanding global enterprises. Their expansion is based on new technological systems of transportation and communication, which instantaneously interlink the world and the business community. The outcomes are cyclical economic and financial crises (Stiglitz 2010). The present system of unequal access to natural and social resources has also aggravated the structural imbalance (Stiglitz 2007). The last global crisis of 2008 3

After the US presidential election of 2016 that brought Donald Trump to power, the global dominance of the only remaining superpower may be severely weakened, due to its populist leadership, nationalist rhetoric, protectionist trade, and isolationist and militarist defence policies. The sole superpower may soon have to share its influence with China, resulting in competitive relations between the US and China.

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allowed only this small multinational elite to profit and get richer (Oxfam 2016), with their oligopolistic control over production, trade, financial resources, communication and consumption. The World Bank (2014) has indicated that the richest became wealthier during and after the financial crisis of 2008, while the majority of the world’s population lost their well-being, jobs4 and maintained or increased poverty. ILO (2016: 3) “estimated that nearly 2 billion people live on less than $3.10 per day (adjusted for cost-of-living differences across countries). This represents around 36% of the emerging and developing world’s population, which is nearly half the rate that was observed in 1990, when the initial international commitments to reduce poverty were undertaken”. On behalf of this negative arena, China, India, some other Asian countries (OECD 2014), and Latin America with the exception of Honduras and Mexico (CEPAL 2015) were able to reduce poverty between 2000 and 2015, when they challenged part of the neoliberal model. However, the global financial system in socially more progressive countries was also affected by the cyclical financial crisis, which has reduced their former growth rates. During the last financial crisis in 2008 everybody lost income with the exception of the oligarchs who controlled the stock markets. As a consequence of the existing economic crisis, in several countries less progressive representatives were elected. This ‘destructive globalisation’ (Woodward 2000) is increasing the chasm between the poor and the rich in the North and the South (Stiglitz 2010) and has led to increased violence in the Global South (SIPRI 2016). Globalisation includes an international integration of raw materials (Howell 2007), products, services, finances, and knowledge through a free-market system, trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPs), protection by patents, and commercial or non-commercial barriers (Serrano 2013). All these mechanisms brought disadvantages for poorer countries and the concentration of wealth (WEF 2016). Militarised borders (Schomerus/de Vries 2014), brain drain (Tigau 2015), and a business-as-usual policy within the neo-liberal system have widened the gap not only between industrialised and developing countries, but also between social classes. This globalisation has increased violence and a type of ‘fake modernity’ (Newell 2012), in which cultural diversity is subsumed into the monopolised market system of fashion with a single goal: to create a unique system of dominance or a hegemony controlled by transnational financial enterprises and supported by the remaining superpower. However, the present process of exclusive and often

4

The International Labour Organisation (ILO 2012) argued that the crisis of 2008–2010 destroyed 27 million jobs and produced 205 million unemployed worldwide. Among the employed, 1530 million people have vulnerable or temporary jobs, only 10% are unionised in developing countries, and 630 million workers (20.7% of the total) and their families live in extreme poverty with an income of less than or equal to 1.25 US/day. The unemployment rate of youth is increasing with 12.6% in 2010: 8.5% in developed countries. North Africa has 23.6%; Latin America 7.2%; East Asia (with China) 4.1%; South East Asia 4.7%; South Asia (with India) 3.8%; the Middle East 10.2%; Sub-Saharan Africa 8.8%; regionally in Europe, Spain 22.8%; Greece 18.3%; and Portugal 12.9% of unemployed young people.

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violent globalisation has also created opposition and discontent in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East (Stiglitz 2007), though such opposition tends to be violently repressed by the military and the police in most developing countries of the Global South, and also in China and Russia.

12.2

Multiple Impacts of Patriarchy

These global impacts of the economic and consumerist system, based on the patriarchal principles of domination, exploitation, violence, discrimination and submission, has also affected the private sphere of the family and the couple. The same model of extraction, destruction and violence also occurs with the extraction of natural resources and has destroyed almost half of the existing biodiversity (Ceballos et al. 2015), polluted water (Oswald 2011), soil and air and produced global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2011) and climate change (IPCC 2013). Therefore, this chapter explores, besides the impacts in the private sphere, also those on the environment. As both were related to violence, warfare and exploitation, later the concept of engendered peace is proposed.

12.2.1 The Impact of Patriarchy in the Private Sphere These historic global processes have also influenced the private sphere through socialisation processes, laws (Hammurabi), social control of women, slavery, colonialism, unemployment and poverty. Thousands of years of systematic exclusion of women, discrimination and exploitation, reinforced more recently, through structural and physical violence, by neoliberalism, have increased gender inequality (ILO 2014) and also affected the personal relations between couples, where the most extreme outcomes are feminicides, but also rape by known family members. Thus, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015) created as goal 5 “gender equality”, while “women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world”. Patriarchy has globally produced women whose productive processes in their homes are not visible and not taken into account by the global economy and the national GDP. Most women accept this loss of visibility as normal, due to social representations, imposed by socialisation and through self-identified beliefs, which often make women and girls feel powerless and without visibility. Women and girls are therefore highly vulnerable and exposed to all types of violence due to the hierarchical exercises of power, often highly sophisticated, but increasingly homogenised by advertising. Globally, boys are socialised differently from girls and often forbidden to cry. Multiple cultures have rites of initiation to achieve a violent manhood, where fear, pain and debility are rejected. Therefore, there is a prevalent acceptance of violence by society as the sole tool to solve differences and to achieve power and control.

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The history of heroes, films, TV and a military mindset have reduced the capacity of boys and men to understand the feelings of others, and it is common for boys to grow up fighting and exhibiting other violent behaviour.5 This type of brutalisation in the socialisation process is creating a type of masculinity, which reproduces in the family violence, due to limited job opportunities, rage and frustration. Worldwide this has produced feminicides with extreme violence, and still every third women is beaten and sexually abused, while every fifth is raped. Gender-based violence undermines the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims, yet it remains shrouded in a culture of silence. Victims of violence can suffer sexual and reproductive health consequences, including forced and unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, traumatic fistula, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, and even death.6 The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA 2016: 2) launched a campaign to make this violence visible, starting with young girls. In some parts of the world, a 10-year-old girl, on the verge of adolescence, sees limitless possibilities ahead and begins making choices that will influence her education and, later, her work and her life. But in other parts of the world, a 10-year-old girl’s horizons are limited. As she reaches puberty, a formidable combination of relatives, figures in her community, social and cultural norms, institutions and discriminatory laws block her path forward. By age 10, she may be forced to marry. She may be pulled out of school to begin a lifetime of childbearing and servitude to her husband. At 10, she may become property, a commodity that can be bought and sold. These global socialisation processes, with regionally and culturally diverse differences, have internalised from early childhood violence by boys as the way of achieving their goals and privileges. Later, competition within the capitalist system as a type of de facto ideal for society naturalises by socialisation processes human relations in school and work, but also within the household. Violent behaviour produces a set of pernicious cultural customs, often reinforced by permissive laws against intrafamiliar violence or rape and the lack of law reinforcement. Religious practices in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and others, have historically been a fertile soil for ideological expansion of patriarchy. Surplus production and the original accumulation of capital thanks to irrigation created conditions which consolidated the dominance of men over women (patriarchy), often associated with violent behaviours. In synthesis, complex socialisation processes in schools and workplaces, political propaganda, TV and films globally reproduce the stereotype that violence is the 5

Girls who want to achieve power must imitate this violent behaviour and the few women who have achieved power often act in the same violent way (Golden Meir, Indira Gandhi). Generally, grown-up girls and women are not socialised to be violent, but to care about others. Their aspiration is to get married, have children, care for the family and work for free inside the house and the community. 6 See more at: http://www.unfpa.org/gender-based-violence#sthash.PU75kHYX.dpuf.

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key tool to resolve disputes and differences and get access to power. However, this process also creates psychological problems in boys and men. As Kaufmann argued: Men’s contradictory experiences of power, the very ways that men have constructed our social and individual power is, paradoxically, the source of enormous fear, isolation, and pain for men ourselves. If power is constructed as a capacity to dominate and control, the capacity to act in ‘powerful’ ways requires the construction of a personal suit of armour and a fearful distance from others. (Kaufmann 1999: 1)

Thus the paradox of patriarchy represents the fear that at least half the world population cannot achieve the socialised standards of manhood. The other half, women, are socialised differently and their self-identity is motherhood (Serrano 2010) and caring for others (see Chap. 10). Women frequently accept the existing violence and take it as normal at family level and within their society and cultural habits. Thus, the patriarchal powers inside the family spread to the community thanks to the existing cultural norms, and later to businessmen, politicians and religious leaders, who use this violence to consolidate the existing system of exploitation, domination and discrimination. They use economic, social, ideological and political tools to control first women and girls, but also men with less power and money. In sum, the patriarchal system, improved by capitalism and neoliberalism, offers the basic elements to understand the global evolution of attitudes which are detrimental to most of humankind, and also to nature.

12.2.2 The Impact of Patriarchy on the Environment D’Eaubonne (1974) proposed an ecofeminist approach for analysing the present world order and added to the exploitation of women and girls the destruction of the environment and overuse of natural resources, which have globally affected our climate (IPCC 2013), soils (FAO 2016a), biodiversity (Cardinale et al. 2012) and ecosystem services (MA 2005). D’Eaubonne linked the current patriarchal structures, which are deeply embedded in capitalism and neoliberalism, with gender discrimination and global environmental change. She insisted that both are part of the same patriarchal system and that only a joint feminist and environmental approach can address the dangerous links between environmental destruction and gender violence. This environmental destruction, characterised by deforestation, pollution of water, contamination of air and depletion of soil has produced dangerous outcomes for nature and also humankind. Chaotic urbanisation, mining and extraction of oil and gas from the subsoil and the deep sea, erosion of millions of hectares due to industrial agriculture with intensive use of agrochemicals, pollution and overuse of water from rivers and aquifers (Bennett et al. 2005), and a food culture which brings products from thousands of kilometres away have produced global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2011), climate change (IPCC 2013), water scarcity with

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water-borne diseases (Avelar et al. 2011), loss of ecosystem services (MA 2005), desertification (FAO 2016a), poverty (UNFPA 2016), diseases (Fischer/Salehin 2009), disasters (WB 2014), lack of governance (Rosenberg/Krafft 2009) and more violence (Homer-Dixon 1999, 2000). Crutzen (2002) analysed these mechanisms of environmental destruction and argued that humankind is responsible for the dramatic destruction of the quality of air, water, soil, subsoil and biodiversity. Crutzen has argued since 2000 that humankind has directly interfered with the earth system and triggered a silent transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene. According to the global conference of the International Geological Association in August 2016 in Cape Town, this change has taken off since 1945, when the global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has significantly increased due to a dramatic increase in the use of cheap fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas). Crutzen pointed to the powerful destruction undertaken by humans in this new era of earth history. While he understood the pervasiveness of this ongoing process, he did not relate the socio-environmental destruction to the patriarchal mindset. Ecofeminists have argued that humankind has been exploiting nature and human beings without any reference to human suffering or the irreversible loss of ecosystem services. Historically, the ruling elites used war and warfare to maintain their power and privileges, and violently destroyed any opposition, but also controlled science, culture, politics, and ideology to counter a deeper understanding of the patriarchal system (Silverblatt 1987). Feminist peace researchers faced these complexities. They had first to overcome not only the male dominance in the Hobbesian understanding of negative peace paradigms, but also to create their own perspective that allowed them to address the key issues of an ‘engendered’ and sustainable peace that will be developed next.

12.2.3 Engendering Peace The term ‘engender’7 is commonly used to produce, to cause or to give rise to. The term engender is used in Middle English as ‘engendren’ and is related to the Old French world ‘engendrer’, which was used in Latin as ingenerare or to beget or to generate (yourdictionary.com). Some feminists questioned the traditional understanding of economic and political development, where the oppression in multiple respects is invisible. Feminists insisted on a different approach and developed terms

There exists an anti-sexist organisation in Scotland which is called ‘Engender’ “to make Scotland a fairer, safer place where women can flourish and contribute to both the social and market economies with dignity, freedom and justice”. Their goals promote public awareness of sexism, discrimination and violence and its negative effect on society. Engender promotes equal representation of women in the government at all levels for which they train female activists at local level https://www.engender.org.uk. 7

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such as empowerment, equity and equality in the scientific discussion, which require promoting alternative practices and a redefinition of the goals for achieving political arenas that are able to change. However, there is no single feminist understanding, but multiple approaches coexist. As Bartlett (1990) has suggested, critical feminism can be self-consciously, while we women are different as women, but have similar conditions of life and access to resources and power is generally denied. However, the term engender is not yet common in International Relations (IR). Different feminist currents in International Relations and peace efforts started with de Gouges (1789) who fought for gender equality and was beheaded by Robespierre during the French Revolution. Her British follower Wollstonecraft (1792, 1997) struggled for womens’ rights and suffrage in terms of ‘liberal feminism’ (Griffiths 2009). ‘Critical feminism’ started about two centuries later by 1980 (Longino 1993; Bordo 1990) with its development as the dominant paradigm. This approach focused with a structural Marxist-oriented perspective on the changes of the present capitalist and neoliberal society through different socialisation processes. A third approach is related to the Cultural or Essentialist Feminism (Zimmerman 1987), which postulated that if the socialisation process of women would be extended to men, because women are less aggressive than men, then the world would change. This new socialisation process would bring more peace to the world, as the violent socialisation process of men would then be eradicated. But none of these currents used the term engender. A review of the scientific literature produced an interesting discovery. Pioneers in the use of engendering their science were archaeologists (Claassen 1991), who insisted on gender equity in their profession (Yentsch 1991) and a gender perspective in the archaeological interpretation of historical discoveries (Wylie 2009; Hastorf 1991). They provided evidence that women in the distant past were equal, and that the workload was shared among men and women, and fertility goddesses were at the centre of the cosmovision to grant the survival of small communities. Inequality and discrimination emerged when patriarchy was consolidated in various agricultural societies (Gero/Conkey 1991) in different parts of the world (Sumerian, China, India, Mesoamerica, Inca, etc.). A gender perspective emerged in International Relations, when Tickner (2001) focused on the ontological and epistemological differences between feminists and mainstream approaches in this discipline. True (2001) proposed a nascent second generation of feminist IR, which improved their theoretical understanding with empirical studies. Inspired by the constructivist approach, True analysed the structural inequality between men and women, and, based on the dependency theory (Marini 1973; Dos Santos 1970, 1978), she analysed the complexity of global power relations, which creates similar inequality between rich and poor countries. True (2001: 6) also explored the specific cultural, ethnic, race, nationality and class relations, which create a “multiple and interlocking nature of oppression, and of women agency even in situations of physical coercion and other, more structural, forms of violence”.

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In most developing countries and also in the United States, illegal immigrants and indigenous labour often allowed women from the middle and upper-classes to study and build a career, thanks of cheap support at home. However, while this support facilitates economic progress for some women, the underprivileged women doing the domestic work often remain without any education or proper life plan. Prügl (1999) insisted that an overgeneralisation of the experiences of women which ignores different social circumstances and cultural diversity is unable to understand the resistance and changes that women are often able to produce in the most violent situations of life, especially during war. Even more, daily practices that socio-economically and culturally construct gender by local socialisation have been altered by the globalisation process. Migration is one of the key factors for transnational relations, which offers new opportunity, but also new forms of dependency for women and men. Therefore, Verma (2004) used engendering development to question the mainstream of conventional economic development theories and proposed that a redefinition of development must overcome the economic growth paradigm and ensure resource redistribution. Her concept is very similar to that of Wilkinson/Pickett (2009), who offered global evidence that a more equal society is happier and lives longer, with less violence. With a legal approach, Schneider (2000) as a pioneer on gender-based violence understood that the whole legal system must be engendered, because domestic violence is not a private problem, but a public one. Serrano (2009: 1143–1556) suggested alternative lessons raised from the feminist development agenda. She proposed including issues of social identity, the formation of representations and societal changes, to understand how social knowledge is developed and then implemented by social subject. Serrano proposed overcoming the essentialist dualist position of men and women and unravelling the complex web of androcentric relations of domination and control combined with subordination (Abeda 2011) in patriarchy, capitalism and neoliberalism. Feminists have fought to overcome the crippling inequality, first for basic rights, later for equal opportunities and then for a change from a subordinated coexistence to a deep change towards diversity and peaceful resolution of conflicts with win-win potentials. In this position, Serrano insisted that feminism was not only able to transform society and women, but also increased their agency in society. Supported by the reflections of engendering democracy from Phillips (1991), Serrano concluded proposing ‘engendering security’ from a human security understanding. Thus, from an engendered and structural analysis of the root causes of violence and destruction related to androcentric behaviour, the mechanisms of exploitation of humans and nature, subordination and the lack of visibility of the patriarchal agency, a different peace paradigm may arise. This alternative approach to both gender and environment may offer an engendered-sustainable peace understanding. This new paradigm includes a bottom-up understanding of the different forms of violence, embedded in power structures, in charity and also in international and national aid programmes (Gramsci 1971, 1977). Generally, this androcentric approach increases dependency within families and personal relations. Religion and educational systems have reinforced the present global power structures and limited

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the potential of empowerment of women and girls in a variety of culturally contrasting settings. An engendered-sustainable peace approach also includes the analysis of potential and existing risks for women, where the values of equity, equality and empowerment are threatened. An engendered-sustainable peace approach includes the analysis of gender relations (Lagarde 1990; Lamas 1996), deeply rooted in the dominant social representations of gender ‘to care for others’ (Jodelet 1991; Serrano 2010), which were socialised during thousands of years and also self-assumed by women. The affected values of equity, equality, solidarity and justice (Truong et al. 2014) undermine the critical potential to build the identity of being an empowered women (Serrano 2014), and often even destroys the survival of women and girls (Oswald Spring 1991). The dominant patriarchal institutions (Folbre 2006) have produced complex cultural networks of control, with the support of religion (Jasper 2013), the economy and markets (Stiglitz 2007), warfare (Stiglitz 2010), and consumerism (Emerald 2004). Further, the existing global system of law, based on occidental principles, has ensured individual property rights with the loss of communal property. Therefore, the loss of women’s productive resources increased not only their poverty and dependency, but also that of the whole family and often community (Agarwal 1997). In the family, patriarchy reinforced male dominance, often paired with sexual violence. Globally, patriarchy favoured a concentration of wealth in a small elite, which continues to accumulate wealth through financial speculation (Oxfam 2016, 2017). This ‘oligarchy’ has also invested in mining and fossil energies, thus overexploited natural resources pollute water and create conflicts among traditional landowners, frequently indigenous. Further, smaller industries, service systems, farmers, pastoralists and governments also contribute to the destruction of the environment. Nevertheless, consumerism globally, the billions of private car drivers, the users of water and the producers of food waste and others create, alongside these global and local elites, the global environmental change, the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services and the increasing pollution. In synthesis, it is us, humankind, which has brought Planet Earth to the brink of its survival, on behalf of good intentions, the Paris Agreement (2015) and the so-called ‘green economy’ (Lander 2011).

12.2.4 Science and Policy for an Engendered-Sustainable Peace These long-time consolidated structures of domination in society have created conflicts, which have mostly been resolved through violence, eradication and war. Reardon (1980) explained the deeply anchored and symbiotic links between patriarchy and the dominant war system, which constitutes the systemic structure of

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violence in society. These structural links locate gender as a basic element for peace studies, in which conflicts are not always predetermined by negative outcomes and therefore may also be drivers for positive change (Oswald Spring 2001). They may offer opportunities for negotiation and peace-building (see Chap. 2), especially in relation to structural, cultural, environmental and gender violence. However, without eliminating the economic, political and physical violence, the outcome is negative. Thus, the question emerges how to link the research with concrete policies to overcome androcentric violent behaviours with solid knowledge. How to propose a future with less natural and social violence, in other words how to link gender studies with peace research? The existing engendering efforts in different scientific disciplines have not explored an engendered peace. The theoretical mainstream of peace research was, until recently, mostly developed by men (Galtung, Senghaas, Martínez, etc.). Feminist approaches in peace research came from Reardon (1996) and Boulding (2000).8 Both argued that theory is not something ‘out there’, but develops from daily life experiences, in which personal understanding leads to policy and the private domain is embedded in the public world. Consciousness-raising, as feminist method, is an example of this dialectical and dynamic process. Consciousness-raising begins with personal experience, experience which is usually conceived of as ‘private’. Through the sharing of personal experience, individuals realise that their own experience is common to other women [Bartlett 1990: 1226] … By gendering the process, we can engender a greater understanding of, respect for, and deeper critique of process. The challenge is to continue the exploration. (Bartlett 1990: 1235)

Feminist approaches (Agarwal 1997; Serrano 2008; Tickner 2001; True 2012; Verma 2004), but also peace researchers (Boulding 2000; Reardon/Snauwaert 2015) stated that the root causes of the problematique are based on the social, economic and cultural construction of patriarchy by the father in the family and especially by the dominant elites which controlled power for thousands of years. In the early 21st century, these elites represent both powerful and influential leadership groups in politics, business, society, the arts and science. Some authors claimed that they have produced a gender war (Goldstein 2001) with global repercussions. Other researchers pointed to the privileged access of men over women and argued that this ‘patriarchal privilege’9 (Kaufman 1999) avoids gender justice and equality worldwide. However, some well-known feminists – Hartsock (1988), Smith (1974), Harding (1991), Longino (1990) and Butler (1990, 1993) – claimed that the world is represented by a socially articulated perspective which offers women an epistemic privilege to first understand and later deconstruct the ‘patriarchal privilege’. These authors analysed the socially created roles, identities 8

See also the anthologies with texts by Reardon (Reardon/Snauwaert 2014, 2014a) and Boulding (Boulding 2016, 2016a, b, 2017). 9 Kaufman believes that ‘patriarchal privilege’ arises when “individual acts of violence by men occur within what I have described as ‘the triad of men’s violence.’ Men’s violence against women does not occur in isolation but is linked to men’s violence against other men and to the internalisation of violence, that is, a man’s violence against himself.”

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and subjectivities and deconstructed the privileged position of men in relation to women, but also the privileges of multinational enterprises and of the global elite. Together with other feminists, these authors insisted that patriarchy promotes authoritarianism, hierarchy, inequality, violence, and exclusion.

12.2.5 Research Question This conceptual, theoretical and political context has led, in the early 21st century, to two key research questions of relevance to this chapter on the deeply-rooted global risk of patriarchy that has increasingly threatened the survival of humans and earth in the new emerging epoch of earth and human history, the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002, 2016): • How do we reach a deeper understanding of the concept of an ‘engenderedsustainable peace’ – which comprises its three pillars of economic, societal and environmental security (Buzan et al. 1998), the new challenges for a sustainable peace with nature (Brauch et al. 2016) and gender approaches (see Chap. 13) addressing the impacts of patriarchy – and develop new conceptual and theoretical approaches for creating new knowledge and practices on peace and security? • How may this new knowledge and awareness of an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ support education and societal activities that enable us to address the present economic, societal and political power structure and the newly emerging global threats and challenges to the survival of humankind and Planet Earth which have been produced by global environmental change and climate change? From an ecofeminist perspective, this chapter proposes that only a systematic and global peace-building process may be able to address these root causes of social and physical conflict and discrimination and challenge the present system of violence and concentration of wealth and power. Arendt (1970) argued that it is also crucial to understand on a daily basis the existing resistance to the experienced violence, which may produce alternative images and actions for a peaceful and sustainable world. The text is based on a systematic review of theories of feminists and peace researchers and data provided by international organisations.

12.2.6 The Concept of an Engendered-Sustainable Peace The concept of an engendered-sustainable peace attempts to explore the deeply anchored links between patriarchy and the war system (Reardon 1980) that are related to the physical, social and cultural threats of the dominant socio-economic

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and cultural system. For thousands of years, patriarchy has consolidated a social and identity system that has influenced all levels of society, from the family to the world. The dominant factors of this system are – at all levels – authoritarianism, control, violence, exclusion, discrimination, exploitation, and thus concentration of power and wealth by a small elite. This global system has different cultural outcomes when the dominant pattern is the exercise of power over wives, children, workers, citizens, and domination and subordination of children, women, unemployed and underemployed.

12.3

Historical Evolution of Patriarchy and Regional Adaptation

During thousands of years of evolution, patriarchy adapted to regional and social differences, even though its basic roots continue to be violence, discrimination, domination, exploitation and oppression within the household and society; in short, a system of societal discrimination to maintain the dominant power relationships that has remained unchanged to this day. Inequality has seriously affected society and economic growth (IMF 2015). It led to a lack of investment in human and physical capital (Galor/Zeira 1993), and has prevented social mobility across gender, generations and countries (UNDP 2016). Ostry et al. (2014) also stated that unequal income distribution hurts growth and produces violence, especially when economic growth occurs primarily among the top 20% of population. By contrast, when an increase of income is shared among the bottom 20%, a higher growth in GDP is produced (Dabla-Norris et al. 2015). Wilkinson/Pickett (2009) emphasise that more equal societies always do better, while inequality produces more violence, suicides, depression, shorter lives and lack of livelihood, especially when women are drastically discriminated against. However, there are big differences globally and still, officially, 120 million girls who are less than 20 years old suffer from sexual violence. However, this violence is often silenced and, due to lack of reinforcement by male authorities, impunity is widespread. Thus, the UN decided on 8 March 2017 to launch a campaign for improving the data collection for women called Data2X. The UN discovered that even in their own data collection an important group of women are still excluded, due to lack of education, IT facilities and other technology, but also poverty. This structural violence is also reflected in the UN’s first global analysis, in which, both regionally and globally, these 3500 billion women get the lowest scores in all the analysed categories. Thus, the UN General Assembly and its Department of Statistics has made a commitment to be more vigilant about inequality and to promote a more equal data survey as a first step towards improving gender equality. Until now, the UN Gender Inequality Index (GII) focused only on three clusters: reproductive health, including adolescent fertility and maternal mortality;

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Fig. 12.1 Unequal access to financial institutions. Source Gonzales et al. (2015: 19)

empowerment with educational attainment and parliament representation; and economic opportunities including labour force participation (UNDP 2016). Especially limiting are the differences in access to financial institutions (Fig. 12.1). There is no equal access to these institutions among men and women in any region of the world, but there are widespread differences in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The McKinsey Gender Parity Score (2015) analyses in 95 countries, grouped in 10 regions, the differences among men and women (Fig. 12.2). The lowest level of gender equity was found in India, followed by South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The highest level of gender equity existed in the US and Australia with a score of 0.74, followed by Western Europe with 0.71. These global differences indicate the long way it takes to achieve a gender equity of 1.0 in any part of the world. The same McKinsey Report argues that in a medium scenario of gender equity, 12 trillion or 11% could be added to the GDP by the year 2025. In the case of a total gender equity of 1.0, where women play an identical role in labour markets to men, 28 trillion or 26% could be added to the GDP in 2025 (Woetzel et al. 2015). The World Economic Forum (2016: 8) has launched the Global Gender Gap Index (Fig. 12.3). During the last two decades, educational and health gaps have declined, while the economic and political participation of women has stagnated. Only 59% of women have access to a bank account and only 23% of women participate in politics, mostly at low level. Iceland has the narrowest disparity

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between men and women, followed by the Nordic countries, while Pakistan and Yemen have the largest gender gap. However, there are also big differences within the countries among different variables. While India achieved a high level of political empowerment for women, in terms of education, health and economic participation the same country ranges among the lowest levels in this world index (WEF 2016). In early 2017, the public image of men perceived as being more capable than women still prevailed with 56% in China, followed by Russia (54%), India (48%), and Turkey (30%), while this perception was much weaker in Mexico (15%), Sweden (12%), and Spain (9%). In five industrialised countries – the USA (22%), Italy (21%), Germany (20%), Great Britain (16%) and France (15%) – this perception was less prominent and the public has been sensitised during the past decades on issues of gender equality. However, these changing perceptions do not yet reflect the many persistent structural inequalities that prevail in many countries and that are regularly documented by international organisations (WB, UNIFEM, OECD, EU) and research teams (WEF 2016; McKinsey Global Institute 2015; Gonzales et al. 2015). Unpaid household work is a key indicator for gender inequity and for the lack of female empowerment. In Fig. 12.4 paid work and unpaid household and caring work are compared among countries. In Turkey, Mexico, India, Portugal, South Africa and Japan, men do very little household work, which is compensated by unpaid female work. There is globally no country with similar unpaid workloads, as

Fig. 12.2 Gender parity score. Source McKinsey Global Institute (2015)

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Fig. 12.3 Gender gap index. Source WEF (2016: 8)

women work more in the household. In Norway, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia and Germany men help a little bit more within the house, but in these countries women’s unpaid work is also more than double of that of men. This is one of the crucial reasons why Japanese women who work are postponing marriage. In most industrialised countries where women have paid jobs, the number of their children has declined drastically. In developing countries, middle-class women can still count on cheap service in the household and thus advance in their studies and careers together with motherhood. This privilege indicates existing differences among indigenous women and social classes in poor countries. To overcome these inequalities, governments must promote concrete policies, where women are protected for motherhood and where men are stimulated to help more in the household. However, thousands of years of women’s discrimination cannot be changed in a decade, and good data and public awareness are ways to improve women’s empowerment. As was documented in Chap. 10 above, the vertical structure of gender inequality integrated cultural and ritual elements into its system of rule in all early high civilisations in Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, in the Roman Empire, and later in the European conquest of America, Asia, and Africa. This patriarchal mindset has also prevailed until the present time in all major world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and other religions, where power is exercised by men and women are systematically subordinated. Within these patriarchal social representations and exercises of power, empires, feudalism, conquest, monarchies, mercantilism, capitalism, and socialism have emerged as a global basis for the current dominant worldview of a neoliberal globalisation which is to a large extent influenced and partly also controlled by a few powerful top managers of corporate enterprises. This system has also penetrated the largest remaining socialist country, the People’s Republic of China, where in early 2017 the largest number of billionaires lived.10 Nevertheless, among the richest billionaires the most influential still live in the US and Europe.

10

Broadcast by German TV channel ARD, 8 March 2017: The largest numbers of US$ billionaires lived in China (609), followed by the USA, Germany and India, according to the Global Rich List

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Fig. 12.4 Paid and unpaid work by men and women. Source WEF (2016: 32)

As the most powerful country emerging after World War II, the United States of America, initially significantly designed a new global political (with the UN system and a network of military alliances, such as NATO, ANZUS, etc.), economic and financial order (through the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and IMF) and, since 1995, also the WTO. Both the US and Western Europe jointly justified and stimulated an electoral democracy and global free trade system (‘open compiled by the Shanghai Media Group Hurun http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/chinamilliardaere-101.html. For other compilations see Forbes Magazine in the US https://www.forbes. com/billionaires/list/9/#version:static and Oxfam in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/globaldevelopment/2017/jan/16/worlds-eight-richest-people-have-same-wealth-as-poorest-50.

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door’) which promoted the American way of life and Western values and norms (Held 2004). This Western system was contested by the Socialist countries led by the Soviet Union and increasingly also by China until the socialist countries collapsed in late 1989 and the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. When Deng Xiaoping introduced major economic reforms, they gradually resulted in the coexistence of a continuing one-party socialist system with an increasingly capitalist economy. The US perspective of an ‘open door policy’ was first applied towards imperial China in the late 19th century and later inspired its global economic strategy in the context of its Bretton Woods policies. However, the World Bank, IMF and also the WTO have been fundamentally challenged with the election in 2016 of Donald Trump, who promoted a nationalist, protectionist, partly xenophobic and military national agenda by returning to isolationist notions of putting ‘America first’. The specific impacts of these fundamental global, political and economic changes since 1945 on the system of patriarchy produced tensions between economic growth at any cost and damage to the global environment. This has also affected the perspectives for global, regional and local peace and security. Between 1945 and 1989, the global order of peace and security was dominated by a political, military, economic and ideological bipolarity where strategies of nuclear-based notions of mutual assured destruction (MAD) may have prevented a major military confrontation between both competing camps and both superpowers, while many proxy wars have occurred in different countries of the Third World that were militarily supported by the two superpowers and former colonial countries. With the end of the Cold War, old unresolved ethnic-religious and nationalist conflicts erupted in Eastern Europe (especially in former Yugoslavia) and also in Africa and Asia, while asymmetric ‘new wars’ (Kaldor 2013) are increasingly being fought by non-state criminals (drug gangs in Columbia and Mexico) and radicalised religious groups (ISIS in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere). The increasing neoliberal globalisation policies and the uncontrolled global financial transactions, partly driven by speculation, have threatened the economic survival of many countries and peoples, especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis triggered in 2008 by several US banks (WEF 2017). But also the ideologically driven Western interventions and wars that were legitimised in the aftermath of the attacks of 11 September 2001 on the US in the so-called ‘war on terror’ have totally destabilised several Muslim countries, especially Afghanistan (since 2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and later also Syria (since 2012). These interventions provided the pretext for several radical Muslim jihadist groups (Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram etc.) to attack citizens within their countries and promote terrorism abroad. All these changes – according to the main thesis of this author – have left the structural system of patriarchy virtually unchanged – while the impacts of global environmental change have, since the late 1980s, become socially constructed as major environmental challenges and risks and are also perceived as new threats to international peace and security, posing both a ‘security dilemma’ (Herz 1959) and a new ‘survival dilemma’ (Brauch 2009) for the most affected and highly

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vulnerable people in both the global South and major industrialised OECD countries (e.g. the USA since Hurricane Katrina in 2005). The impact of the fundamental global political and economic changes since 1945, since the end of the Cold War (1990 onwards), and the rise of populist movements and xenophobic politicians in the aftermath of the economic, financial and currency crisis since 2008 and of the increasing migration pressure since 2015 calling for nationalist, xenophobic and protectionist policies require a rethinking of the linkages between the unchanged patriarchal system, the global environmental challenges and the new risks and threats to peace and security. However, in several populist parties in France (Front Nationale e.g. Marine le Pen) and Germany (Action for Germany, AFD Frauke Petry), women who want to get to power use the same patriarchal methods, and have played a key leadership role to challenge global climate change. Therefore, both men need a new masculinity and women a femininity with empowerment. The concept of an engendered-sustainable peace tries to address this conceptual triad of patriarchy – global environmental change, global peace and security – both as a tool of transformative analysis but also as guidelines and proposals for societal and political action. It builds on previous efforts for a ‘political geoecology for the Anthropocene’ (Brauch et al. 2011) and for a ‘peace ecology’ (Oswald Spring et al. 2014) by adding a gender perspective (Oswald Spring 2016a) and building on a feminist definition of patriarchy (Reardon 1980, 1996). With this historical construction of gender differentiation of male-ness and women-ness (Mies 1986), together with the glass ceiling or sticky floor for women (Burin/Meler 2000), patriarchy has spread from within the family structure upwards to the level of the kingdom, e.g. in the Sumerian Code of Hammurabi, the Greek democracy, the Roman Empire, feudalism, mercantilism and capitalism. Whenever patriarchy has changed and became regionally differentiated, dominant common features have remained: the ideological control mechanisms around the world have both socio-biological (Gowaty 1997; Short et al. 2013) and social constructivist explanations (Harding/Hintikka 1991; Hartsock 1993). While the first uses genetics and biology to explain male control, the second focuses on socially constructed gender roles which have changed over time, could change further, and must be abolished in order to allow the creation of an engendered security and peace. Anthropologists have suggested that most hunters and gatherers and early agricultural societies were egalitarian and cooperative between genders (Hughes/ Hughes 2001). Due to social and technological innovations (irrigation, cities, and technology; Gero/Conkey 1991; Yentsch 1991; Claassen 1991), social stratification, fatherhood, and sexual control over women and girls, men became dominant (Kraemer 1991). In economic terms, Hartmann (1976) located the interrelationship between patriarchy and female subordination at the material level, where the control of women’s labour, in both the private and public spheres, is controlled by men. Usually, job segregation by gender means that “economic class differences and patriarchal social control are maintained. Job segregation and the wage differentials tend to keep women connected to and partially dependent on men, so that even

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though we have a high divorce rate, the practice of marriage is perpetuated” (Hartmann 1976: 147) and therefore also the concept of reproduction. Edhom et al. (1977) distinguish three forms of the concept of reproduction: 1. social reproduction that includes the reproduction of the total conditions of production; 2. reproduction of the labour force, and 3. biological reproduction. This distinction helps to combat the Marxist emphasis on the importance of the economy for reproduction, and also makes it easier to understand that patriarchy goes far beyond the rise of capitalism. Various feminists have defined the evolution of this dominant social system, which can be found globally in different temporal and spatial frameworks, as patriarchy. It is the power of the fathers: a familial-social, ideological, political system in which men – by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labour – determine what part women shall or shall not play, and in which the female is subsumed under the male. (Benett 2006: 55)

12.4

Peace Efforts, Sustainability and Gender

The power relations within the family, countries and regions are not based on ‘power toward’, but on ‘power over’ (see Chap. 10) through violence and subordination. The unequal economic, political, social, and power relations among men and women, and also among men, has created multiple conflicts globally. Above all, feminists (Enloe 2000; Agarwal 1997) have insisted on the systemic interrelationships that make forms of violence highly integral. Practically, the abatement of war and other violence is still related to military or police activities. The UN Security Council relies on the ‘Blue Helmets’ to stabilise post-war conditions and reinforce sanctions. Pope Francis stressed in 2017 that there is no ‘just war’ but only a ‘just peace’. Like feminists, the Pope has referred to the systemic relationship between the oppression of women and girls and war (Reardon 1996). Thus, true peace efforts should first address this androgenic violence against and oppression of women in order to deconstruct the historical roots of patriarchy as the key cause of violence and war. However, most of the very valid peace theories have been developed by men without a gender perspective and an integral analysis of its patriarchal root causes. Galtung (1971), a pioneer in peace research, introduced the concept of ‘structural peace’, which means equity in economic terms, well-being in social interactions, and equality and lack of discrimination at personal, family, social, regional and international levels. Social justice and global equity, e.g. by combating the unequal access to natural, socio-economic, political, and cultural resources, is a crucial way towards structural peace. Sen (1995) as well as de Ferranti et al. (2015) and many other studies argued that inequality is a crucial constraint for development and for improving the well-being of all people. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (UN 2005: iii) emphasised its “particular importance: addressing worldwide asymmetries resulting from globalisation; incorporating explicitly the goal of reducing inequality

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in policies and programmes designed to achieve poverty reduction; expanding opportunities for employment, with particular attention to improving conditions in the informal economy; and promoting social integration and cohesion as key to development, peace and security”. Inequality is one of the crucial causes why several countries did not achieve the Millennium Development Goals (2000–2015) and now start from negative balances for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (2015–2030). The concentration of wealth in the present neoliberal model is basically related to financial activities, capital flight from developing countries, illegal activities related to organised crime, money laundering, corruption, tax evasion by multinational enterprises and wealthy citizens (Standing 2016). Oxfam (2016) claimed that social inequality has increased and created a world in which one per cent of the top rich control 48% of global wealth, while 99% must share the remaining 52%. Of this 52% of the global wealth, the richest 20% own 94.5%, while only 5.5% remains for 80% of the world’s population. Just 62 people own as much wealth as half of the world’s population (Fig. 12.5). These 62 people are dominant financial oligarchs, who own and control major shares in multinational enterprises of production, trade, entertainment (casinos) and global financial systems (tax havens, banks, stock exchanges, etc.), where speculation and the resulting financial and economic crises have benefited the super-rich, who have become even richer since 2008. According to an updated study by Oxfam (2017), the wealth of half of the poor in the world equals the wealth owned by the eight

Fig. 12.5 Share of the top 1% and the global 99%. Source Oxfam (2016: 3)

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richest billionaires, primarily men. These trends of a growing global income inequality and a high concentration of wealth have been referred to by Sen (1995), Stiglitz (2007, 2010), and other critical social scientists (e.g. Piketty 2014). Inequality was addressed by multiples male researchers but never related to patriarchal injustice and oppression. Based on the dependency theory, which emerged first in Latin America (Dos Santos 1970, 1978; Marini 1973), Galtung’s (2007) positive, structural and cultural peace approach refers to economic limits for a wider understanding, which also includes cultural discrimination and violence based on race, cast, colour or nationality. Senghaas (1997) proposed five conditions for nations to achieve a lasting peace: positive interdependence, symmetry of interdependence, homology, and entropy, together with common softly-regulating institutions that are able to promote a ‘civilisatory hexagon’. However, neither male author addressed the origin of violence related to gender discrimination that is crucial for the concept of an ‘engendered peace’ (Serrano 2009, 2015) or peace and security from a gender perspective. Senghaas also did not include an environmental perspective in his analysis, although most conflicts are related to scarce (Homer-Dixon 1999, 2000; Barnett 2003) or abundant resources (Bächler 1999; Collier 2007), and the root causes of violence are linked to exploitation of nature and gender discrimination (Evans 2010; Pickup 2001). A third approach to peace and security is reflected in the term ‘sustainable peace’, in which the problem of the territorial ownership of natural resources, which are often located in the global South, and the necessity of negotiating just prices are key patterns for overcoming violence (IPCC 2014; Oswald Spring et al. 2015; Oswald/Serrano 2017). These conflictive approaches not only limit the conservation of existing resources, but also hinder an integrated development for everyone. As the deterioration and fluctuation of commodity prices is linked to speculation and variable demand, the paradigm of sustainable development is above all a benchmark, but not a reality in the present system of production (Lelé 1991; The Great Debate Schools Programme 2011). When ongoing development processes are compared for the years 1980–2005, there are still few sustainability goals implemented in many development projects. The Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI 2016) in Vienna analysed the resource intensity used in existing development projects. They discovered that resource efficiency has increased by 25% during the last twenty-five years. Nevertheless, the global population has also increased by 311.2% (from 1990 to 2015), while the extraction of raw material rose by 50%, and global gross domestic product (GDP) augmented by as much as 125% during the same time (SERI 2016). In 2014 the global ecological footprint was equivalent to the depletion of 1.5 planets (WWF 2014), even though only one Earth exists with favourable conditions for human life. In the distant past – one to ten thousand years ago – the fossil record showed that for every thousand mammals, only one became extinct. The current extinction rate is a thousand times greater than the fossil record, and the future is expected to be still ten times more destructive than the present one (MA 2005), bringing us to the sixth extinction phase (Jordan 2015).

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During the past six decades (1950–2010) of global capitalist development, global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011, 2016) and climate change (IPCC 2013, 2014; FAO 2016b) have resulted from the intensive use of fossil fuels (IPCC 2013), which has been accompanied by a silent transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). About nine million km2 of soil (an area roughly the size of China) were moderately degraded and three million km2 were severely ruined, losing their original biological function. However, healthy soil is a basic precondition for living organisms (FAO 2016a). Many global and local conflicts worldwide are related to natural resources, their deterioration and extraction (oil, water, soil, property of land, food, etc.). Gilman (1983: 1) argued that (a) “ignorance of, and a lack of mechanisms for nonviolent conflict resolution; (b) ignorance about the ‘other’, leading to distortion and mistrust; and (c) emotional insecurity on the part of both leaders and populace” are the causes of mistrust and war. He proposed three basic elements: nurturing, empowerment, and communication as concrete ways to achieve a sustainable peace, and he suggests that we need to build a ‘global village’ community to deal with environmental destruction, resource scarcity and potential conflicts. However, a systematic analysis of the concept of sustainable peace (Oswald Spring et al. 2014; Oswald Spring 2016a; Brauch et al. 2016) indicates that in all these approaches a ‘gender security’ analysis was lacking. Women are heavily affected by resource scarcity and pollution, as they often have, for instance in Africa, to walk for hours to obtain water or firewood for cooking. Therefore, an analysis which incorporates gender sensibility is crucial to understand the present violent conflicts on Earth. Feminist studies have evolved through different phases (see Chap. 10). In all these phases, male and female researchers have insisted on a patriarchal and androcentric construction of social representations of manhood, where from childhood onwards boys are trained to develop authoritarian and violent attributes. Arendt (1970) claimed that intellectual engagement is a first step against this violent behaviour. Freire (1968, 1992, 2005) and Reardon (1996) have promoted peace education as another step in conflict negotiation and finding win-win situations for the parties involved, especially poor women. However, peace research has always been a marginal science and the theoretical background has slowly evolved from negative peace or absence of war to more integrative approaches such as positive structural, cultural and sustainable peace. This chapter adds an ‘engendered-sustainable’ peace perspective to the global scientific discourse. In the context of feminist analyses different attempts were undertaken to understand the rise of violence and possible ways to overcome it. Chesler (2005:1) coined the term ‘gender apartheid’ to describe economic and social discrimination against persons due to their sex, especially women in Muslim societies, where “practices condemn girls and women to a separate and subordinate sub-existence and which turn boys and men into the permanent guardians of their female relatives’ chastity”. Later the term also refers to a system in which persons were relegated to subordinated positions. ‘Gender apartheid’ was also used to analyse the

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behaviour of global corporate enterprises, in which women were exploited, discriminated against and paid less by multinational businesses. This violence against women also includes human trafficking,11 an obligation to submit to unwanted sex with male bosses, sweatshops and smuggling. The money obtained from these illegal activities by organised crime, such as tax evasion, unequal terms of trade, capital flight, speculation and so on, is sometimes laundered in the global financial system and by multinational enterprises, especially in tax havens in the US that are so far beyond international control.12 Thus, most feminist theories try to explain women’s subordination by analysing the intersections between sexism, racism, heterosexism, ethnic and class oppression, while Marxist feminists have included economic domination and perverse globalisation. Ecofeminists have argued that similar power relationships exist between dominance, greed, exploitation, and violence (D’Eaubonne 1974; Mies 1986; Warren 1997), which cause environmental destruction. Other approaches envision the possibility of overcoming such subordination through both individual and collective resistance, and through empowerment from bottom-up. Allen (1998, 1999, 2008, 2011), Hartsock (1983, 1990, 1996), and Young (1990, 1992) claimed that the concept of power is a central element in understanding this subordination and the resulting violence. Therefore, the analysis of subordination and the potential of collective resistance are deeply embedded in our cultural understanding of life, people and the environment. For this reason, a cultural peace includes a deep understanding of our material and immaterial cosmovision.

12.5

Cultures of Peace and Power

The concept of a ‘culture of peace’ includes a diverse set of values, traditions, behaviours, attitudes and ways of life with respect to life on earth and for human beings (UNESCO 2013). Conflicts among human beings, communities and states should be managed through conflict resolution, in which discriminative social representations and violence are ended through negotiation that can lead to win-win conditions for all those involved. In this positive sense, a ‘culture of peace’ should promote peace-building education (Reardon/Snauwaert 2015a, b) in order to deepen the dialogue and increase the cooperation among races, genders and ages. Boulding (2000) recognised the diversity of cultural manifestations in the world and proposed

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In February 2015, the Mexican Government rescued 129 women, six of them minor, from a Korean multinational enterprise, due to labour and sexual exploitation in Guadalajara. See, e.g. http://www.milenio.com/policia/explotacion_laboral-empresa-coreana-zapopan_0_458954342. html. 12 See Jesse Drucker: “The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States. Moving money out of the usual offshore secrecy havens and into the U.S. is a brisk new business”, 27 January 2016, from Bloomberg Business Week https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-27/theworld-s-favorite-new-tax-haven-is-the-united-states.

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instead ‘cultures of peace’ that might be able to find culturally diverse ways out of violence and domination. The existence of the two concepts, peace and culture, has also created tensions. Groff/Smoker (1995) argued that the wider understanding of culture must include symbols, rituals, heroes and values, but the crucial issue of an integrated culture of peace is related to shared values, including relationships with others, nature, and God or other supreme beings. A culture of peace has a visible and a hidden dimension, both of which influence the peace-building process. However, in the negotiation process of the final text on a culture of peace, the gender dimension as a key cause of discrimination, violence and exploitation was ignored in order to achieve an agreement among all countries to promote first a Year and then a Decade of a Culture of Peace. UNESCO was also unable and unaware of the deeper gender implications of this approach. When UNESCO became the “Focal Point for the International Year for the Culture of Peace” (UN Resolution E/1997/47) and “lead agency for the Decade” (UN Resolution A/55/47), all critical approaches to gender inequity and inequality were ignored. The UN Charter lays claim to a commitment to equality between men and women, but the basic document on the Conference of Parties (COP) Declaration lacks specific gender awareness. The term “respect for” instead of “acting towards” permitted a continued resistance to specific policies for achieving equality on the basis of culture. While a culture of peace has been embraced by some civil society organisations, it is poorly understood in terms of acknowledging the deep psychosocial roots in patriarchy of the culture of violence and the war system. Despite all these efforts, after a decade the outcome was very poor. No peace dividend was realised at the end of the Cold War. Instead, exclusive globalisation, extraction of natural resources, exploitation of the labour force (ILO 2014), violence (Mies 1986) and injustice (Fraser 1994; Truong et al. 2014) have prevented such a ‘culture of peace’ from promoting negotiation processes, controlling environmental exploitation and reducing gender violence. A crucial shortcoming of the Decade of Culture of Peace has been the understanding of power by the member states of the United Nations, most of which were represented by male diplomats. Feminist analyses distinguished four different approaches to analysing power relations (Allen 1998, 1999; Fraser 1989, 1994; Hartsock 1990). The first relates to the exercise of ‘power-to’ in the traditional way of Thomas Hobbes, who understood the concept as power-to “obtain some future apparent good” (Hobbes 1952 [1668]: 150). Max Weber added ‘power-over’: “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance…” (Weber 1978: 53). In his analysis of institutions of control, Michel Foucault developed this approach further. He affirmed that “if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others” (Foucault 1983: 217).

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It was Hannah Arendt who understood power as “the human ability not just to act but to act in concert” (Arendt 1970: 44). In her view, power is the capacity to act, although she stated that “power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse” (Arendt 1958: 200). Lukes defined power as a possibility when he affirmed that power “is a potentiality, not an actuality – indeed a potentiality that may never be actualised” (Lukes 2005: 69). The fourth way of understanding power is as a systemic conception, in which power is seen as “the ways in which given social systems confer differentials of dispositional power on agents, thus structuring their possibilities for action” (Haugaard 2010: 425). This systemic conception highlights the ways in which “historical, political, economic, cultural, and social forces enable some individuals to exercise power over others, or inculcate certain abilities and dispositions in some actors but not in others” (Allen 2011: 3). The systemic approach goes back to Weber’s understanding as ‘power-over’. Conversely, when used to act in common, precisely this type of power is able to promote an engendered-sustainable peace. Feminists are interested in understanding the gender-based relationships of domination and subordination, and how women could empower, and then how such relations could be generalised within society. From a liberal feminist approach, power is understood as a resource orientated towards a positive social good (‘power-to’). Okin found that in the distribution “between husbands and wives of such critical social goods as work (paid and unpaid), power, prestige, self-esteem, opportunities for self-development, and both physical and economic security, we find socially constructed inequalities between them, right down the list” (Okin 1989: 136). This approach is based on a broader social, cultural, institutional and structural context, in which power relations are organised. Feminists have criticised the theory of historical materialism of critical Marxists due to its lack of understanding of gender and its implicit and explicit power relations. Young (1990) went a step further and critiqued the dual systems theory in which women’s oppression arises from two distinct and relatively autonomous systems. “The system of male domination, most often called ‘patriarchy’, produces the specific gender oppression of women; the system of the mode of production and class relations produces the class oppression and work alienation of most women” (Young 1990: 21). She proposed an authentic feminist historical materialism in which she identified five types of oppression: economic exploitation, socio-economic marginalisation, lack of power or autonomy over one’s work, cultural imperialism, and systematic violence (Young 1992: 183–193). These five types of oppression and exploitation justify ideologically and socio-economically the violence against women and their discrimination. From a post-modern feminist approach, Judith Butler noted that subjection is a paradoxical form of power with an element of domination and subordination. She wrote: “if, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well as providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire, then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbour and preserve in the beings that we are” (Butler 1997: 2). Fraser (1989) stated that the normative notions (autonomy,

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legitimacy, sovereignty) are themselves effects of modern power, and Hartsock (1990) claimed that the deeper analysis of power can be performed only from the standpoint of the dominated, exploited and subordinated. From these different feminist approaches towards power and the understanding of dominant processes of control in the socio-economic and the cultural sphere, the culture of peace approach and the following decade did not bring the expected peace dividends. On the one hand this was because diverse cultures of peace (Boulding 2000; European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation/ European Centre for Conflict Prevention 2000) were eliminated, thus limiting the integration of global efforts of civil society during the second half of the 20th century into this crucial effort of peace-building. Limiting the connection of violence among families, communities and governments prevented the formulation of attitudes in the early socialisation processes of gender that could promote an integrated process of peace within a new masculinity and femininity. On the other hand, gender oppression among all levels was also removed from the political agenda of the UN and national, state and local governments. This ‘washing down’ of gender violence in order to achieve a global consensus and an agreed Charter, globally prevented action towards gender equity. In consequence, an opportunity in the debate on cultures of peace was missed, as an important way to promote greater equity among women and men is through empowerment from bottom-up together with legal reinforcement through government policies within all ministries and at all levels. Obviously, such cultures of peace would have challenged the dominant patriarchal system, its socio-economic interests, the present power structure and the existing system of socio-environmental exploitation. Thus, UNESCO decided to manage the year and the decade of culture of peace at a very low level and detached from any reference to gender issues.

12.6

Pitfalls of Peace, Sustainability and Gender Security

After this ‘Decade of Peace’, rather a ‘culture of war’ has prevailed globally, a culture that was intensified by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and as a consequence the terrorist attacks in the Middle East, the US, several European Union countries, and especially in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and North Africa, where more than 80% of all terrorist attacks have occurred. Instead of a safer and more peaceful world, the threats relate not only to terrorism, but also to financial crises, concentration of wealth, poverty and natural hazards. In addition to a narrow military approach to security, UNDP (1994) deepened the security understanding towards human security (Brauch 2005), the Copenhagen School (Buzan et al. 1998) widened it to include economic, societal and environmental security, and different international organisations and researchers sectorialised it as water (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2015), food (FAO 2013, 2016b), energy (Ciută 2010; Umbach 2010; Kowalski/Sead 2008) and other securities. However, in almost all of these approaches a critical gender analysis was absent.

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Feminists (Reardon/Snauwaert 2015a, b; Hartsock 1983, 1996; Young 1992) have analysed patriarchal structures, arguing that the global social structure is male-dominated. For example, the most powerful roles in all sectors of society are held by men and the least valued by women (Lagarde 1990). A second fact is that powerful men control the social structure because they consider that they are the only ones able to exert functions of control. This androgenic understanding postulated that women ‘need’ male control, supervision and protection. The control functions are often reinforced by violence, discrimination and exclusion. This division of labour and power has produced social values and male and female roles and social norms that were later internalised by social representation and sexual behaviour. Males generally work outside the home, they are the providers, and perform economic and political activities. They are the Homo sapiens, while the work of women is devalued and ‘made invisible’. Women are traditionally confined to the interior of their houses caring for the family, and they take on the role of being-for-others as Homo domesticus. Benett (2008: 54) argued that “patriarchy might be everywhere, but it is not everywhere the same, and therefore patriarchy, in all its immense variety, is something we need to understand, analyse, and explain”. It is precisely this variety and diversity which allows the present androgenic world to form different cultural contexts, in which power is exercised through control, oppression and the exploitation of nature and human beings. To broaden the understanding of the concept of an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’, a paradigm without violence, control and destruction of humankind and nature, it is crucial to understand the origin and process of integrating patriarchy, as well as the inherent power structure within which patriarchy developed and was and continues to be fortified by the present neoliberal and militarily controlled global system. From an analytical feminist viewpoint, Cudd (2006: 21–23) understood oppression to be “an objective social phenomenon”. She mentioned four conditions: (1) the group condition, which states that individuals are subjected to unjust treatment because of their (ascribed) membership; (2) the harm condition, in which individuals are systematically and unfairly harmed due to such membership; (3) the unjustified coercion condition of the harms; and (4) the privilege condition, which states that such coercive, group-based harms count as oppression only when other social groups exist who derive a reciprocal privilege or benefit from that unjust harm. These feminists understand power not as ‘power-over’ but as ‘power-to’. On the other hand, Wartenberg (1990) argued that this transformative power is a type of ‘power-over’, but one distinct from domination because it permits the empowerment of those over whom power is exercised. However, this approach remains within the negative peace theories, because empowerment alone does not change the systemic relationship associated with violence, subordination and exploitation. Miller insisted that women’s perspectives on power take a different approach: “there is enormous validity in women’s not wanting to use power as it is presently conceived and used. Rather, women may want to be powerful in ways that simultaneously enhance, rather than diminish, the power of others” (Miller 1992: 247–248).

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Therefore, for Hoagland, “power-from-within” is “the power of ability, of choice and engagement. It is creative; and hence it is an affecting and transforming power but not a controlling power” (Hoagland 1988: 118). Hartsock (1983: 226) argued that male power relations established over thousands of years “should allow us to understand why the masculine community constructed … power, as domination, repression, and death, and why women’s accounts of power differ in specific and systematic ways from those put forward by men … such a standpoint might allow us to put forward an understanding of power that points in more liberatory directions”. A few years earlier Arendt (1970) had rejected the command-obedience model of power. Her understanding of power brings together individual empowerment with a focus on community or collective empowerment, which is also the key to the understanding of resistance by all oppressed groups, including indigenous peoples, racial groups, and minorities. The question that remains for the creation of an engendered-sustainable peace is then, how can this transforming power be used to overcome patriarchy, the war system, and human and environmental destruction?

12.7

Transformation Towards an EngenderedSustainable Peace Theory and Action

To achieve a sustainable peace with gender sensibility, Reardon (2015: 74) listed four basic transformations needed to overcome patriarchy, militarism and injustice: 1. The general adoption of a feminist, holistic, gender-equal perspective. 2. A fundamental change in world view, which includes the widespread inclusion of feminist values at all levels of society, including the public domain and government. 3. Shifting the concept of security from national security to human security, and towards a cosmopolitan ethic. 4. A widespread increase in self-awareness among the people. Combining this with Young’s proposal, we may include in the concept of an engendered-sustainable peace the reduction of economic exploitation, global policies to overcome socio-economic marginalisation, training for increased power or autonomy over one’s own work, and the eradication of cultural imperialism and systematic violence. Ecofeminists also draw attention to the relationship between patriarchy and the plundering of natural resources: “there are important connections between how one treats women, people of colour, and the underclass on one hand and how one treats the nonhuman natural environment on the other” (Warren 1997: XI). An engendered-sustainable peace requires, therefore, first a healing from the present global society and then a new world view without gender violence and at the same time the reverse of the destruction of the environment. This last part implies a massive reduction in fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, a full recycling of all materials, and a systematic restoration of all ecosystems and renewable natural resources (water, soil, air, and biodiversity).

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It is difficult to promote a concept of an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ when in recent history in any conflict – but also during the so-called times of peace – women and girls have been the victims of sexual violence and torture carried out to express domination along gender lines, as well as to humiliate the male enemy. Arendt (1979) distinguished between the space of appearance, as a space of political freedom and equality, constructed by citizens through the medium of speech and persuasion, and the space of the common world. The second is a shared and public human world with institutions, agendas, and actors which provide a relatively stable environment for activities. Both spaces are crucial for the consolidation of citizenship, and hence essential for a change in the dominant power relationships. Arendt asserted that the recovery of a common and shared world will reactivate a mode of citizenship where individuals and groups can establish relationships of support, reciprocity and solidarity. It is precisely in the common spaces where collective ideas can emerge and group preferences are strengthened (Ostrom 2009). In this space gender-sensitive practices and peace-building may arise and can be developed. This is also the sole space in which local and global policies aimed at an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ may flourish, reflecting local diversity, but always in spaces of non-violent conflict resolution and care for human beings and nature. Concerns about environmental and social deterioration are growing globally due to the current process of neoliberal globalisation. Most of these efforts occur in isolation, sometimes through leadership struggles, sometimes through local empowerment of societal, women’s, indigenous groups and un- or underemployed men and women. A systemic process of gender perspective is still lacking, in which first a collective thinking emerges, then a readiness to act, and later a process of judgement, which is necessary, as Hannah Arendt argued, for efficiency in the common space and for achieving goals through peaceful means. This means that first of all it is necessary to design an agenda for combating patriarchy from a clearly gender-equal perspective with a sustainability agenda. This means equal salaries for equal work and making visible unpaid household work and caring activities, which are mostly carried out by women. The re-evaluation of household and caring activities is needed to produce a more just distribution of the unpaid workload at domestic level (Parvin/Bélanger 1996). It also introduces the recovery of damaged ecosystem services, the decontamination of air, soil and water, and the restoration of biodiversity. At local level, all types of discrimination and oppression in jobs, public spaces, and the media must be made known and prosecuted by law. There is also the opportunity to improve the reduction of waste, to covert organic garbage into compost for natural soil fertility recovery, the promotion of public transport to reduce air pollution and the saving and recycling technologies of water. At regional, national and international levels, there is the need for a rigorous assessment together with an adjustment of all legal frameworks towards gender equality, with clear guidelines for a policy of equity and equality (Schneider 2000). This includes, in the long term, the abolition of the military and warfare, as in Costa Rica, where the military budget goes towards human development. In the second phase, young people and the alternative social media can promote a world view in

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which feminist values are anchored at all levels of society, including in the public domain and government. In the third phase, there should be the reinforcement of a shift at national and international level from the narrow military security to human security (UNDP 1994) and a “widespread increase in self-awareness among the population” (Snauwaert 2015: XVI). This gender-sensitive approach may create the socio-cultural base for a change towards the present model of environmental devastation and destruction by mining, fossil energy use, land use changes, chemical pollution of natural resources and waste disposal on the ground. This new gender-sensitive attitude may also reduce the existing inequality of socio-economic resources. Global treaties and agreements, but also considerable improvement in well-being thanks to a clean environment and socially greater equity may contribute to awareness-building, in which the environment, sustainability, and gender security (Oswald Spring 2013) are key goals which challenge the dominant model of globalisation. However, thousands of years of written and institutional woman-hating activities have limited the understanding of how harmonious relations between nature, humankind, and gender might be achieved. Violence, authoritarianism, discrimination, and exclusion have not only affected the environment, but also limited democracy and gender equity, and increased risks for both men and women (Beck 2009, 2011), and also for the environment. “The patriarchal culture of control and domination is the root of all social and ecological violence. It corrupted the original unity of man and woman and is now corrupting the unity between humanity and the human habitat” (Burton 2013). Peace and security were conceived within a male-dominated system and its conceptual evolution is imbued with these patriarchal biases. For this reason, Serrano (2009) noted that security and peace must be engendered in conceptual terms to overcome the underlying prejudices. The transition to an engendered-sustainable peace requires, therefore, an ethical framework and an urgent clear strategy for change (Grin et al. 2010) in order to maintain and restore the existing ecosystem services and overcome the present gender oppression. The current method of achieving holistic peace-building is seen as a step-by-step procedure through international organisations, governments, social movements, and some ethical non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but also through peace education and actions (Freire 2005). Women have powerful ways of enhancing rather than diminishing the power of others. This means that an engendered-sustainable peace is a ‘power-from-within’, which leads first to a preference for change and later to a commitment to action. An engendered-sustainable peace starts from a positive understanding of power, which will lead to new actions to overcome all types of oppression, including self-subjugation. The concept of an engendered-sustainable peace focuses on a process of empowerment, primarily to overcome systemic violence, economic oppression, socio-economic marginalisation, a lack of autonomy in decision-making, cultural imperialism and environmental destruction. Peace had a complex evolution and changed from negative, to positive, sustainable, cultural, structural and engendered peace, which forms part of an engendered-sustainable peace. A gender-based world view may be able to push

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negative peace and armistice further towards a positive-structural peace. A sustainable peace implies policies of socio-economic equality and sustainable development (Oswald Spring 2009). A cultural peace promotes bottom-up and regional diversity of peace-building, together with peace education and actions that may reinforce at local and national level the state of law, transparency and citizens’ participation (Yiamouyiannis 2013). The interaction of these different peace efforts may reduce corruption within the government and the business community and its positive feedbacks should produce solid bases for a process of empowerment of the vulnerable, including women and girls. These different peace approaches, together with a gender-sensible policy, may reinforce an engendered-sustainable peace both locally and globally. Action-based bottom-up initiatives supported by policies of equity and mechanisms of redistribution of wealth from the top down may offer the most vulnerable people resources for their own empowerment and thus increase their self-awareness. This opens the potential for creative alternatives at local and regional level. A sustainable food sovereignty promoted by Via Campesina (2005) is a way to recover health thanks to better nutrition and safe food. This sustainable agriculture also improves the natural fertility of soils, thanks to the composting of organic waste and mixed agriculture (FAO 2006). Subsistence agriculture still produces more than half of the food globally, mostly by women in orchards and small plots of land (IPCC 2014), and grants local food sovereignty to the poorest people. When the goal of food sovereignty is combined with water basin management, people can also reduce the risks of natural hazards at regional level. In the case of a disaster, solidarity with the people affected creates regional bonds (Oswald Spring 2016b). The United Nations, the World Bank and other international organisations, together with social movements and NGOs, have seen that local gender-empowerment and microcredits for women have restored damaged ecosystems and improved livelihoods at local and regional level (FAO 2010; Hopkins 1998). Thus, this ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ paradigm may promote awareness for moving towards an integrated or holistic approach towards peace-building that will, at local level, reinforce interlinks and positive outcomes supported by gender-sensitive policy and action. In the medium term, peace education from childhood onward with a different approach to manhood and femininity would be able to reduce violence, first in the kindergarten and later bullying in schools. It may later also convince citizens to understand discrimination and its root causes. Children who lived in the most precarious urban slums in Mexico City have shown that they can adopt different ways towards gender violence, oppression and discrimination when socialised toward solidarity and sharing (van Dijk 2009). Since early childhood their training to share the scarce resources they have has produced citizens who understand that life on earth and among human beings is interrelated and interdependent. They have understood from early childhood on that cooperation and solidarity aid survival in highly precarious conditions. The sharing among their mothers gave them the security to participate in strategies to change their unequal conditions and create, alongside their mothers, more dignified live-styles.

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From an engendered-sustainable point of view more just and equal power structures within the family and local government, in national policies and by international organisations are needed. This also requires processes which allow women to get into key leadership positions. An improved global system of equality may enable civil society, men and women alike, to restructure local, regional, national and global societal arenas to the benefit of both women and men. A society of respect, genuine caring for others and fairly sharing all available resources within the family and the community also empowers girls and women. Cooperation and personal and social solidarity helps children to be socialised to care for others. New relationships between boys and girls and later between women and men are formed. Solidarity arises and may become the dominant behaviour of cooperation. Peace education and training agents to promote societal values are the keys to a non-violent future. Feminism may contribute to profoundly transformational behaviour at family, local, national and global level. Thus, an integrated engendered-sustainable peace education is helping group members to achieve fulfilment, cooperation and maturity in their personal and social values. This action approach is inspired by the values and goals of an ‘engenderedsustainable peace’ concept that may help suggest and promote fundamental changes in personal values and human relationships. It may promote modifications in the structures and systems of power (Reardon 1980: 14) towards a greater solidarity among human beings (men and women) and a greater responsibility for scarce natural resources. The timeframe for these needed changes is rather short before society and environment collapse. Thus, only different policies and activities able to modify and overcome the dominant patriarchal system through an engenderedsustainable peace may save Planet Earth and humankind from massive natural hazards and the extinction of the human race on Earth, triggered by enormous suffering, diseases and brutal violence due to the survival of a few.

12.8

Conclusion and Outlook

Peace research has always been a marginal discipline with a relatively recent theoretical background (Immanuel Kant 1795). After the First and Second World War, peace actors (Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin) first orientated their thinking towards how to stop the killing, but at the same time how to preserve their geopolitical interests. Later, basically male researchers, (Johan Galtung, Kenneth Boulding, Ted Herman, Ian Harris, Raimo Väyrynen, etc.) combined positive and structural peace. Elise Boulding questioned the approach of UNESCO of a single culture of peace and proposed additional cultures of peace. Betty Reardon established the theoretical link between war and patriarchy, and Úrsula Oswald Spring discussed environmental security from a peace research perspective. Different female peace researchers and educators started to question the male-orientated theoretical

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background and proposed alternative concepts, often more orientated towards peace actions. However, as most peace researchers are still men, they rarely address the key causes of violence and the origin of a hierarchical, exclusive and exploitive system which was developed by patriarchy. This dominant system of rules also created a positive arena for the development of capitalism, which used conquest, piracy, looting and genocide to achieve its goals. Finally, since the 1980s neoliberalism took advantage of the ongoing globalisation process and the capitalist market system to tighten the control on merchandise, human labour, unpaid female work and culture. Thanks to massive global communications, global neoliberalism was able to promote a transnational financial system, which concentrated wealth in a very small oligarchy. Simultaneously, global communications and the monopolised market system were able to consolidate a consumerist society worldwide, which does not care about the concentration of wealth and the extreme extraction and exploitation of natural resources by multinational enterprises, but is happy to shop and consume. Depending on their economic income, these consumers buy mass-produced products or exclusive ones. However, the whole of society is continuing to drive cars, emit GHG and produce waste. Thus, for the first time in human history, we are responsible for global environmental change, but at the same time we are also the victims of disasters, new diseases and greater psychological pressure. Confronted with this complexity, this chapter has linked the natural resources with the economic, social, psychological and cultural goods and values which are necessary to maintain this consumerist society. To deconstruct the underlying root causes of the present affectation and destruction of nature, it has been necessary to develop the concept of engendered peace together with the one on sustainable peace. This engendered-sustainable peace might give a new theoretical stimulus to think and act differently in peace research and activities. The engendered-sustainable peace may further stimulate the discussion on a widened and deepened understanding of security with a deep gender perspective that addresses the global threats and challenges for the survival of humankind and Mother Earth: the ‘Pacha Mama’. As a confirmed ecofeminist, this author is convinced that only an analysis that penetrates the root causes of social, physical, cultural and psychological violence can challenge the present system of concentration of power and wealth on a daily basis and develop a shared co-responsibility for the destruction of human relations and natural resources. Without a clear understanding of the historical process of the evolution of patriarchy and its consequences, neither international organisations nor governments nor people will be able to change their personal habits and reverse the ongoing destruction. We are approaching the limits and some dangerous tipping points in the natural system (Lenton et al. 2008). The growing inequality and submission to global consumerism by billions of people are also indicators of potential tipping pints in the socio-political system, where the data on global depression points toward a general malaise. However, there are also multiple actions from bottom-up and alternative studies that have proved that when societies care about greater social equality and equity, people live longer and enjoy improved life quality (Wilkinson/Pickett 2009). There

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Conclusion and Outlook

319

are multiple different positive social processes going on in different parts of the world, though they do not always go to the root causes of violence. Nevertheless, as gender is a social construction of masculinity and femininity, it is possible to change the present dominant social representations and promote alternative masculinities and femininities, which care better not only about humans, but also about nature. Thousands of small-scale efforts and technologies exist which may improve the air, soils, water, biodiversity, food and livelihood, and global communication enables this knowledge to spread rapidly. Further, the present globalisation process need not necessarily exclude people and concentrate wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs, thus this process is also socially constructed and can be changed by organised society. There exist other possible globalisation processes, such as the ones promoted by the World Social Forum, where solidarity, the gift economy, recovery of soils, biodiversity and air, are able to create a different globalisation: “another world is possible”. It is precisely the understanding of an engendered-sustainable peace approach which allows us to design a better future for nature and all human beings. In this new project women are key players together with men, both with an empowered understanding of the problems that are at stake. This is not only a utopia, but has been the profound motivation for writing this chapter. All readers are warmly invited to continue to think on the concept of engendered-sustainable peace as a conceptual tool for promoting actions in favour of a sustainable transition (Brauch et al. 2016) during the 21st century to cope better with the complexity and the threats of the Anthropocene.

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Ostry, Jonathan D., Andrew Berg, Charalambos G. Tsangarides (2014). Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth, Washington, D.C., IMF. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (1991). Estrategias de supervivencia en la Ciudad de México, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2001). “Sustainable Development with Peace Building and Human Security”, in Tolba, Mohammed K. (Ed.), Our Fragile World. Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development, Forerunnner to the Encyclopedia of Life Support System, Oxford, Oxford-EOLSS Publisher, vol. 1: 873–916. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009). “A HUGE Gender Security Approach: Towards Human, Gender, and Environmental Security”, in Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navitna Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Heinz Krummenacher (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1165– 1190. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2013). “Seguridad de género”, in Fátima Flores (Ed.), Representaciones Social y contexto de investigación con perspectiva de género, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM, pp. 225–256. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2016a). “Development of Sustainable-Engendered Peace: A Challenge in the Anthropocene”, in Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Jürgen Scheffran (Eds.), Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer, pp. 161–186. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2016b). “Sustainable Transition in a Vulnerable Basin in Mexico”, in Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Jürgen Scheffran (Eds.), Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer, pp. 675–704. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch, Keith G. Tidball (2014) (Eds.). Expanding Peace Ecology: Peace, Security, Sustainability, Equity and Gender, Cham, Springer. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald, de la Rúa Eugenio, Diana (2015). América Latina en el camino hacia una paz sustentable: herramientas y aportes, Guatemala, FLACSO Guatemala-CLAIP. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald (2017). Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin America. 40 Years of the Latin American Council of Peace Research (CLAIP), Cham, Springer (in press). Oxfam (2016). An economy for the 1%. How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped, https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/ file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf. Oxfam (2017). “Una economía para el 99% Es hora de construir una economía más humana y justa al servicio de las personas”, London, Oxfam. Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Anik Bhaduri, Gupta Joyeeta (2015) (Eds.). Handbook on Water Security, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing. Parvin, Ghorayshi, Claire Bélanger (1996) (Eds.). Women, Work, and Gender Relations in Developing Countries: A Global Perspective, Westport, Greenwood Press. Pedrero, Mercedes, Teresa Rendón, A. Barrón (1997). Segregación ocupacional por género en México, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Phillips, Anne (1991). Engendering Democracy, Maldon, Polity Press. Pickup, Francine (2001). Ending Violence Against Women: A Challenge for Development and Humanitarian Work, Oxford, Oxfam Publication. Piketty, Thomas (2014). El capital en el siglo XXI, Mexico, D.F., FCE. Prügl, Elisabeth (1999). The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century, New York, Columbia University Press. Reardon, Betty A. (1980). “Moving to the Future”, Network, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 14–21. Reardon, Betty A. (1996). Sexism and the War System, New York, Syracuse University Press. Reardon, Betty A., Tony Jenkins (2007). “Gender and Peace: Toward a Gender Inclusive, Holistic Perspective”, in Charles Webel, Johan Galtung (Eds.), Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies, New York, Routledge, pp. 209–231.

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Chapter 13

A Gender Perspective on Climate Change

13.1

Gender and Climate Change

Within a consolidated system of patriarchy, the roles of woman and their social position and behaviour were created for and by men. Today men still dominate and exclude women, so the parity score of women in the Global Performance Index (GPI) is only 68% compared with that of men (WEF 2017: 7).1 Over the last three decades women have reached between 95 and 96% parity in educational and health attainments, but only 59% in economic participation and job opportunities. The sticky floor or the glass ceiling is especially dramatic in their political participation, where women attain only 23% parity (WEF 2017: 7). This economic and political discrimination allows greater exploitation of woman. To create a more sustainable and just world it is crucial to understand how destructive this type of androgenic system is for humankind and nature. Patriarchy has dominated for thousands of years and has developed different regional patterns of male domination, violence and the destruction of nature. Without any doubt, woman today have more freedom in most countries; however the system remains, and global environmental (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011) and climate change (IPCC 2013, 2014, 2019) are clear expressions of the progressive destruction of natural and human resources. To change this long-standing androgenic system, we must understand how these discriminative layers of society were created, in order to be able to deconstruct them systematically. Only when this violent system is overthrown can we propose and develop alternatives. The key question is how to overcome the present fossil-based economy and start with a new world-view that is able to care for humankind and nature in a sustainable and equal way. Thus, to change the dominant world-view, we must be aware of this androgenic background that limits men and women’s potential to work together without any

1

Text evolved from several conferences given by the author in Spanish in México and in English in Thailand, Australia and Vietnam from 2010 to 2019.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_13

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competition; cooperation is the only way to achieve sustainable change. A huge barrier is that very few global companies give woman leadership positions, especially when approximately 35 multinational companies own at least half the wealth on earth (Oxfam 2018). These enterprises, mostly high pollutant and biodiversity destructive (oil, mining, petrochemicals, fracking, biofuels), are so powerful that they control most of the governments, congresses, finances, people and mass media, but they are also directly involved in the speculative process of the financial capital (Aklin/Urpelainen 2014). To reduce this concentration of wealth and deal with the challenges of climate change, men and woman must work together to overcome these global androgenic barriers and controls (Imaz et al. 2014). The crucial question is how to find ways out of this patriarchal dominance? One possible approach is to look through eco-lenses with a gender perspective. China and the US, the two countries with the highest emissions of greenhouse gases, were also the most affected by disasters in 2017, due to increasingly destructive storms, floods and bushfires. Globally in 2017, 335 disasters caused 9697 deaths, affected 95.6 million people and produced 334 billion dollars of economic damage, with floods and storms representing 44% of all disasters, causing 58% of deaths and 70% of adverse effects. The US paid 88% of all the costs of 98 disasters, but China and India were also among the hardest hit (UCL/CRED/USAID 2018). “Losses from natural and man-made disasters are estimated to total $155 billion (€136 billion) this year, down sharply from a hurricane-plagued 2017”, informed the reinsurance giant SwissRe in its press conference on the 18th of December 2018. People affected in the US and elsewhere are suffering, but they cannot see the direct links between waste production, greenhouse gases emissions, heatwaves, disasters and loss of quality of life. Thus, all humans are victimisers with our destructive behaviours via greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), water deterioration, soil pollution and waste, but at the same time we are also the victims of this irrational behaviour, producing disasters, diseases, premature deaths and loss of livelihood. Nevertheless, there are also great differences between emitters and affected people. The wealthiest one billion of humans in industrialised countries produce 60% of GHG, while the poorest three billion generate only 5% (IPCC 2014). This creates an ethical dilemma (Van den Hove et al. 2002) and a profound co-responsibility among the responsible emitters and the affected poor regions, where dominant power correlations must change to save the planet, reduce the impacts of climate change and support the vulnerable in the Global South (GFDRR 2018). As the official data of UNFCCC (2016) indicates, the US, China, the European Union and India are the greatest emitters of GHG. Beside the ethical dilemma of building their economic power at the cost of the rest of the world, there is additionally a security dilemma (Booth/Wheeler 2008). To resolve military threats in the past, powerful countries have used their armies and destroyed their neighbours. Reardon/Jenkins (2007: 211) identified the symbiotic links between patriarchy and the war system:

13.1

Gender and Climate Change

331

Patriarchy is a social, political, and economic system of control and domination structured in terms of a hierarchy of human relationships and also includes values that are based on socially constructed gender differentiation, which produce a masculinity and a femininity with regional differences, but structural similar traits. As such it bestows unequal power and value on males who exhibit its most important values and traits, excluding and oppressing those who do not. It is a social system that has been almost universally in place throughout the history of human societies, and it constitutes the paradigmatic case of inequality and injustice, and thus structural violence.

Confronted with this deeply embedded patriarchal cultural violence, a different security paradigm may help to deal better with climate change and global violence challenges. When all citizens are perpetrators and at the same time victims, we cannot rely on the traditional national security paradigm, where army and military actions may resolve the threat (Van Evera 1999; Brauch et al. 2011). Further, climate change impacts do not respect borders. Storms and drought impact regionally and there is no question of national sovereignty when these natural forces with dramatic effects produce disasters in entire subcontinents. Thus, the solutions must come from within society and be based on a different approach that includes human, gender and environmental security: a HUGE security (Oswald Spring 2009). In the present phase of Planet Earth’s history, the new values at risk are the survival of humankind and the sustainability of environment and ecosystem services. The sources of threats are linked to the present globalisation process, the irrational consumerism of global citizens, the massive destruction of ecosystems, pollution, and the gigantic amount of waste creation, which generate this anthropogenic global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011). However, the traditional solutions to the growing new risks continue to be based on the androgenic violent and hierarchical system of multinational corporations, where elites allied with governments and religious leaders are promoting this culture of exploitation, submission, discrimination, waste, irrational consumption, intolerance and violence. To survive as a human species, we must understand the underlying long-standing patriarchal culture which has produced the present fossil-addicted world-view and consumerism. Only then may we change the behaviours of our society. This includes a transformation of the present growth obsession, our consumerism and the androgenic competition between people and enterprises. Only with this different world-view will it be possible to renovate ourselves and to overcome the androgenic violence, enormous suffering and global destruction, and perhaps prevent the disappearance of humankind.

13.2

Climate Change Impacts from a Gender Perspective

Climate change is generally focused on physical-chemical changes in the atmosphere, industrial and human emissions of GHG, destruction of biological diversity, captures of CO2, adaptation to sea level rise and recently also to disaster impacts

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(IPCC 2012). The IPCC (2013) asserted that the increase of GHG, especially CO2, which surpassed 410 ppm in 2018, has produced the warming of the oceans, the acidification of seas, temperature and sea level rise, the reduction of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the loss of sea ice in the Artic, glacier melt and extreme natural events, which have affected oceans, biodiversity, forests and wetlands (IPCC 2019). A direct outcome is an increasing loss of food and water security, especially in the drylands in the South. These are some of the most prominent impacts which will confront humankind during the 21st century. Especially exposed to climate change impacts and extreme weather events are the tropics, which have generally participated only marginally in the increase of GHG and global environmental change, but, due to their geographical position, are more exposed to extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods and droughts. Economically, these countries also have fewer resources to reduce their natural and social vulnerability by empowering their societies with better methods of adaptation and resilience. The IPCC (2012) also stated that changes in the physical-chemical composition of the air are producing unexpected, unpredictable and sometimes cascading effects. Crutzen (2002) claimed that humankind has transmuted the Earth’s history from the Holocene to the Anthropocene because anthropogenic processes – rather than the traditional natural cycles of the previous millions of years – are now guiding the global dynamics of the Earth. These anthropogenically induced changes may alter most of the known processes and may produce tipping points with catastrophic outcomes and interconnections. Steffen et al. (2018) explored self-reinforcing feedbacks (Fig. 13.1) that could bring the Earth to a global threshold with changes not seen during the last 1.2 million years. The scenario in their prediction may make the planet mostly inhabitable. Therefore, this group of scientists call for collective urgent human action to stabilise the present Earth, whereby a drastic decarbonisation of the actual economy may save the biosphere and climate. Earth will probably require further carbon sinks to avoid catastrophic increases in temperature and unpredictable feedbacks. Without any doubt, these behavioural changes and technological innovations require a transdisciplinary approach which includes physical, chemical, climate, social and humanistic sciences. This transition process entails different management of the dominant power structures and the prevailing androgenic thinking. Without deep changes to the existing gender relations, power monopolies and selfish behaviour a transformation towards social and ethical values may not be able to promote the required change. Only with greater solidarity and drastic new and sustainable consumption patterns may we avoid the predicted tipping points. Within this upcoming new value system, the human security concept has only recently been used in the process of adaptation to climate change (IPCC 2014). Different understandings of economic activities, food production, water management, access to resources and ecosystem services prompted the present power positions among men and women to be questioned, together with inequality among rural and urban sectors, social classes and ethnic groups (Imaz et al. 2014). This alternative thinking requires a still deeper analysis of the origin of the intrinsic violence within the present model of neoliberalism, even though ecofeminists have

13.2

Climate Change Impacts from a Gender Perspective

333

Fig. 13.1 Cascading effect with potential interactions (arrows). Source Steffen et al. (2018: 4)

long understood the structural androgenic links between female violence and the destruction of nature (Mies 1985; Warren 1997; D’Eaubonne 1974). The socially constructed gender roles and norms are influenced and biased by habits, education, institutions and policies, thus changes in policies in planning, development and monitoring must take into account these differentiated social impacts. To overcome the present inequality and environmental destruction, it is necessary to understand the diverse necessities of both genders. Without doubt, health is influenced by biological factors, which are not only confined to the reproductive characteristics of women. Specifically, with an approach that starts from different points of view, the capacity of women and men to improve global policies may also have positive repercussions for their social and personal behaviour. Therefore, people may be able to improve consumption, health and social interactions by changing their mindset from a destructive behaviour towards a caring one.

13.3

From National Security Towards a Global HUGE Security

As seen in the introduction, most climate security literature continues to focus on the traditional national security approach (Malone 2013), in which the realist attitude prevails and humankind and the origin of violence and destruction of the

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planet are not understood and still less taken into account. While the environmental security approach (Dalby et al. 2009) made it possible to comprehend the three previous phases of changes in environmental security (see Chap. 5 in this volume), the authors pointed in their article to a new phase in which peace and conflict resolution with a gender perspective is emerging. Specifically centring on human society’s need to overcome the patriarchal mindset of greed and destruction, the process is providing a forum for conflict resolution and cooperation with greater equality (Oswald Spring et al. 2009). This also means that all the activities of human society must be holistically adjusted to the Earth’s complex and interacting ecological system to grant long-term sustainability and the survival of humankind. While today most of the global efforts are centred only on the reduction of GHG, the forgotten negative feedbacks may increase the risks to the stability of the Earth’s entire ecosystem. This may also explain some of the poor outcomes of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the climate conference in Madrid in 2019; humankind is running towards a catastrophe of global dimensions with a hothouse Earth projection (Steffen et al. 2018) of 3 °C or more under the present policy of mitigation (IPCC 2018). Thus, an integrated security approach first requires a change to the reference object or the question: threats from whom? It must refocus the process away from the State towards organised society, sustainable natural, rural and urban ecosystems, and water and food systems within a framework of egalitarian gender relations. These equal gender relations should also include indigenous people, who have succeeded in caring for their complex and fragile ecosystems for thousands of years. These alternative gender relations should also eradicate the exploitation of people and natural resources by focusing on the care of minorities, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and fragile natural resources. This alternative security approach may also lead to greater understanding of new values at risk when asking: security of what? The emphasis will no longer be on territorial integrity, but on the survival of the people, their life quality, the recovery and maintenance of ecosystem services and the processes of a more egalitarian society. Reducing the power of corporate enterprises and redistributing global wealth with greater equity could lead to many beneficial changes. Not only would it stop wealth being concentrated in the hands of people who are already very rich, and curb their exploitative monopolies and interests, but it might also prompt organised society to engage less in the exploitation of natural resources via oil-drilling, opencast mining, deforestation of tropical forests and many other destructive activities. Indeed, the restoration of ecosystems and their services might be more readily promoted by a greater range of organisations. According to Oxfam (2018), the income of the top billionaires has risen 13% since 2010 – six times faster than that of ordinary workers, whose income increased only 2% per year. Internal differences make this inequality worse; a CEO from the top five fashion brands receives as much in one day as an ordinary worker earns in one year. Oxfam (2018) calculated that increasing the salary of 2.5 million garment workers in Vietnam to a decent living wage would cost a third of the amount paid to the wealthy

13.3

From National Security Towards a Global HUGE Security

335

shareholders of the five garment multinationals in 2016. These extraordinary incomes are often paid without any fiscal discount, while the workers still have to pay taxes from their miserable incomes. Changing the paradigm from national security towards a HUGE security, the sources of threats also change, due to the fact that security from whom or what varies radically. While in the Hobbesian approach other states, guerrillas, terrorism or organised crime are the threats, in the human security approach it is the globalisation process and the alliance of corporate capital with governments and churches that allows people and nature to be exploited. In terms of environmental security (see Chap. 5), the threats are directly linked to extreme natural events, which often get transformed into disasters due to inadequate human management of early warning, the lack of disaster risk reduction strategies and the failure of exposed people to adapt to increasingly complex and adverse natural conditions. In the case of gender security (see Chap. 10), the threats are authoritarian institutions, represented by global corporate capital, neoliberal governments, fundamental religious organisations, insensible elites, dominant global cultures of consumerism, gender discrimination and physical or structural violence. In the case of the HUGE security (see Chap. 11) the understanding of human, gender and environmental security as a holistic process may allow people to increase their resilience and also consolidate human survival in increasingly adverse conditions. This integrated HUGE security approach also explores sectorial securities (Brauch et al. 2009), such as water (Chap. 14), health (Chap. 15), food (Chap. 16) and energy security (Chap. 17), all necessary for a secure livelihood, integrated human development and a healthy environment. Climate change is not only changing the traditional military understanding of security, but also opens the analytical potential for the HUGE and the sectorial securities, in which women and girls are often characterised as vulnerable and weak. Yet during disasters, in refugee camps and during reconstruction processes, women have actively taken the initiative in restoring normal life conditions as soon as possible. These processes of empowerment have also allowed communities and social groups to increase their resilience and fortify their families and the whole society to deal better with the increasingly negative outcomes of climate change. These new epistemic transdisciplinary integration may develop an epistemic domain in which feminist understanding gets integrated with climate change and disaster risk reduction management theories (Aklin 2014).

13.4

Impacts of Climate Change on Women and Girls

After World War II, the images of women across the globe in destroyed cities, cleaning the bricks and getting trained empirically as masons, allowed them to get a new home as soon as possible. During the tsunami in Asia, women were in the forefront of caring for vulnerable children, elders and people with disabilities in refugee camps. During the earthquakes in September 2018 in Mexico, it was mostly

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women and girls managing the food and clothing collection in conjunction with the health centres. Similarly, with more than 3000 people dead in the post-hurricane phase in Puerto Rico, women were active in restoring the basic livelihood of their families and the well-being of their communities. Nevertheless, multiple studies (Aryabundu/Fonseka 2009; Oswald Spring 2008; Ímaz et al. 2014) have also shown that women and girls are differently affected during a disaster and generally get less and often inadequate official support from male-organised rescue centres (Red Cross; Civil Protection; military). During disaster situations, women and girls are also highly exposed to gender violence, especially when the toilets are put at the end of a refugee camp, often with no or almost no light at night. Therefore, gender security often fails during and after a disaster due to the lack of understanding of the existing violence in any androgenic society. Moreover, this traditional violence gets exacerbated during a disaster.

13.4.1 Disaster Impacts with a Gender Perspective The dramatic data of gender differences in the deaths of boy and girl babies in the Philippines after a violent hurricane challenged Anttila-Hughes/Hsiang (2013) to discover why 15 times more baby girls than baby boys died a year later. After an extreme event, often converted into a disaster, it is not only infants who are at risk; most of the durable assets have been destroyed and there is a disinvestment in health, education and the other human capitals which might have made it easier to cope with the losses. In this study, the authors found that the general income was reduced by about 6.6%, but that medicine and education were more highly impacted at 25% and high-nutrient foods at 30%. The poverty-worsening effect of a storm indubitably has grave implications for livelihood and well-being, and the excess mortality of baby girls in the Philippines was the result of household decisions made by the family. Baby girls were seriously neglected and therefore died more frequently during the first year of post-disaster impact (Fig. 13.2). This also reflected the subconscious understanding of gender gaps: in many cultures a baby boy is more highly valued than a baby girl, who is therefore likelier to be neglected. Amartya Sen (2001) found similar patriarchal patterns in China and India and reported that about 100 million women were missing, due to selective abortion during pregnancy, neglect during the first year of life of baby girls and the feminicide of girls and women. Oswald Spring (2008) also documented a greater number of dead women after the tsunami in Asia, directly related to social representations whereby women were trained to care for others, often at the cost of their own life. Structural conditions of lack of education, incomprehension of early warning signs, not knowing how to swim and being discouraged from running often erode the precious minutes during which a life can be saved when disaster strikes. Similar gender differences were found by Ariyabandu/Fonseka (2009: 1223) not only during but also after a

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Fig. 13.2 Baby deaths a year after a powerful typhoon. Source Anttila-Hughes/Hsiang (2013: 71)

disaster: “Disaster management capacity of women and men differ due to their gendered social construction. Women perform multiple roles in daily life: reproductive, productive and social. These roles and functions are extended to risk management as well as to emergencies and recovery situations.” The general stereotype of women is weak, incapacitated victims who wait for external help; however, their subordinated social status and economic positions became an additional impediment to action. Nevertheless, empirical studies with a gender perspective have found that breaking the vicious cycle of vulnerability and securing livelihood and lives offers women better conditions to establish refugee camps with greater internal security, integrated recovery planning and opportunities to change their existing vulnerability and empower women and girls for a brighter future. While hazards themselves do not distinguish between genders, socio-economic, educational, training, race and cast differences trigger less favourable outcomes for women and girls during a disaster. Socially constructed Habitus (Bourdieu 2000) and consolidated social representations (Moscovici 2000) of gender (Serrano 2009, 2010) entail gender violence, disadvantages and discrimination. Self-identity as carers and homo donans (Vaughan 1997, 2004) have socialised women to save children, the elderly, and animals in times of danger (Yonder et al. 2005). Further, in normal times, humans live within social networks; during disasters these networks often break down, leaving individuals, small social groups or communities alone. Governmental agencies and international aid organisations have not always understood that the reestablishment of these lost networks is one of the most

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efficient ways to reinforce post-disaster recovery. Without doubt, budgets after a disaster are generally tight, thus preventative disaster management and resilience-building are generally not on the agenda. However, UNESCO has established that a resilient community can save between nine and fifteen times the costs of post-disaster. This effective preparedness and training includes bottom-up resilience-building, whereby gender and social vulnerability are reduced, and women, girls and men are empowered to deal with greater threats related to hothouse Earth and climate change impacts.

13.4.2 Health Impacts Climate change has affected human health in physiological, social and behavioural ways. Its impacts are related to environmental deterioration, pollution, temperature rise, variability in precipitations, extreme hydrometeorological events, coastal erosion, loss of soil fertility and sea level rise, often with intrusion of saline water into coasts and aquifers. Roles, responsibilities, division of labour and access to resources pose different epidemiological threats and health risks to women and men. Often these gender gaps (WEF 2016) are not taken into account in public health policies, and mental health is also less treated (Perú 2008). Further poverty and marginalisation increase the health threats and reduce the capacity to deal with unexpected health impacts (Oswald Spring et al. 2014a). Among the most frequent health consequences of climate change are frequency, intensity, geographical extent, duration and additional social and environmental vulnerabilities caused by extreme hydrometeorological events. Displacements, refugee camps or permanent migration affect both the mental and physical condition of the human body (Li et al. 2016). In these conditions women may be doubly affected, firstly because of their genuine insecurity and lack of financial resources and secondly because of the lack of reinforcement of human and gender rights, which may propitiate gender violence, exploitation, sexual slavery, human trafficking, social disorganisation and general physical insecurity. Additionally, the direct impacts of climate change on women and men often oblige entire communities to leave their homes and migrate with great uncertainty (Oswald Spring et al. 2014b). Reviewing different national communications on climate change, there is a general lack of prevention of the health impacts and even less of health-gender factors. These facts are related to the global patriarchal mindset in society, whereby an authoritarian model of roles and a lack of gender-specific governmental policies aggravate the lack of preventative health behaviour. Thus, health security (see Chap. 15 in this book) is an integrated part of human, environmental, gender, economic and political security. A feminist approach to health should incorporate different perceptions and various forms of health improvement (traditional and modern; preventative and curative treatments) to reduce mental and physical discomfort and increase subjective well-being (Río/Takayanagui 2018; Punset 2014).

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A stable personality and a respectful surrounding environment stabilise the immune system and create personal and social resilience for women and men who are now periodically exposed to climate disasters. Climate change affects reproductive health in multiple ways. Pregnant women are more vulnerable to malaria, zika, dengue etc., due to the fact that they are more ‘attractive’ to mosquitos (Lindsay et al. 2000). Hormones and physiological changes produce more exhaled air and these different compounds are detected by the mosquitos. Pregnant women must also go to the toilet more frequently, and since such facilities are often outside in risk areas, this also increases the possibility of them being infected by a vector. This process could produce a spontaneous abortion, a premature birth, foetal mortality, low birthweight, microcephaly and other severe foetal brain defects (Oswald Spring et al. 2014a). In relation to climate factors that affect human health and well-being, the lack of safe water produces dehydration, loss of weight, physical exhaustion, an increase in UV-B and, especially among children and the elderly, mortality, respiratory and kidney problems, depression and anxiety. The geographical reach of new vectors (dengue, chikungunya, zika, etc.) is widening, enabling them to affect people who have no immunity to such illnesses. Hurricanes in coastal areas also increase mortality due to storm surges, an increase in river flows, landslides, trees and wall collapses, but also due to the loss of livelihood, homes and belongings. Often after these extreme events there is an increase in human trafficking and sexual abuse. Hospitals are overloaded and, when destroyed by disasters, the public and private health facilities are missing and injured or ill people lack any medical support. After floods and storms gastro-intestinal diseases, and lack offood and clean water produce undernourishment and diarrhoea, which aggravate the conditions of abandonment and depression. Infectious agents, water-borne vectors and pollutants change their distribution, reproduction and time of survival with temperature rise (Perú 2008), especially the pathogenic microorganisms inside the existing vectors, and new diseases may appear where people have less defence against them (chigungunya, zika). Often the change in environmental conditions and the lack of clean soils and water reduce the local production of food. Roads are destroyed by extreme events, thus people, especially small children, suffer severe undernourishment and often die due to dehydration because of lack of access to clean water and gastro-intestinal diseases. Therefore, health impacts are directly related to lack of food and water, vectors and unhealthy environmental conditions.

13.4.3 Food Impacts Like health factors, food security requires an analysis of social and gender inequality. From cooking to serving food on the table, there are factors of abundance or scarcity of food, due to the lack of financial power of most women to offer safe and diverse food items to their families. The ethic of caring inculcated in women during their childhood is also reflected in the sexual division of labour.

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Family organisation is determined by the prevalent socio-economic and political conditions, whereby the sex-gender system creates identity and subjectivity, which reinforce the unequal access to power and food for women (Serrano 2010). In these unequal conditions, climate change is an additional stress for both women and men. Increases in temperature and heatwaves reduce the soil humidity, erode the fertile layer and induce the loss of glaciers and snow in the high mountains. Drought aggravates the lack of water for agricultural production, human consumption, cleaning and washing. As a consequence, salinisation of soils and water ponds increases the process of desertification, leading to the reduction or loss of harvests and the deterioration of ecosystems and fishing. Forest fires, which are now occurring more frequently (for instance, bushfires in California, Australia and Portugal in 2019/2020), further destroy the livelihood of affected people. All these natural factors reduce the conditions of soil and water for agriculture, fishing, aquaculture and livestock with severe impacts on food security. Hurricanes and extreme rainfall destroy natural vegetation, crops and houses. High storm surges on the coast salinise soils, aquifers, water ponds and crops (Greene et al. 2016). Forests affected by strong winds are later prone to bushfires (Urbieta et al. 2015; Urrutia-Jalabert et al. 2018; Lehmann et al. 2014). Nevertheless, extreme rains not only destroy livelihoods, properties and crops, but also recharge aquifers, wash salinised soils and improve harvests during the following cycles. Landslides are deadly for humans and take away the fertile layer of the soil, thereby generating severe erosion, and often the affected soils lose their capacity for production. Finally, sea level rise erodes coastal areas and destroys the most fertile regions in the deltas. It also affects tourist infrastructure, mangroves, coral reefs, aquaculture and coastal aquifers (IPCC 2019). Often coastal lagoons and wetlands get flooded, and coral reef bleaching limits the most productive ecosystems, which also absorb significant amounts of greenhouse gases. All these impacts affect the food supply globally, nationally and regionally, and countries exposed to frequent extreme events are often obliged to import basic food items. Most developing countries still depend on the exportation of primary products for global trade; but the terms of trade are usually disadvantageous to the poor country, producing a spiral of increasing debts which limit the development and industrialisation of these countries (Strahm/Oswald Spring 1990), and imported food also tends to be low quality (GMO grains; Buiatti et al. 2013). Therefore, malnutrition, overweight and diabetes are part of the new emerging diseases, which affect both the food and health security of most countries. Beyond doubt, the global discussion about food sovereignty and security, together with rural development and sustainable agriculture, is influenced by national and international policies (see Chap. 16). However, small rural organisations, increasingly in the hands of women and elders, are defending the traditional production of food. Specifically, women are becoming more involved in the present socio-economic conditions in rural activities, often because their partners have migrated and, in addition to their normal activities, the women left behind are obliged to produce food for their families and raise money for their survival.

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The FAO (2013a) is promoting climate-smart agriculture and ecosystem-based production globally (FAO 2018) to maintain biodiversity and increase climate change mitigation. In all these activities women are key leaders and in different parts of the world have restored soils and recovered the means of subsistence for their families (IPCC 2014; see this chapter). Additionally, soils across the globe have been destroyed, and the FAO (2016a, 2017) directly links food security (FAO 2016b) to the recuperation of eroded and polluted soils. Organic composted waste is an effective way to recover soils and promote greater biodiversity. Finally, reducing food waste is fundamental to improving food security (FAO 2013b). In all these activities women play a crucial role, not only putting healthy food on the table and providing clean water, but also producing and harvesting organic food in their orchards. The IPCC (2014) stated that half of the food for human consumption is produced by women in orchards or on small plots of land, while industrial agriculture is expending land, water and soil on biofuel and animal feed.

13.4.4 Water Security Impacts Water is vital for life and the health of people and ecosystems, but 15 out of 24 ecosystem services are degraded or unsustainably managed (MEA 2005). Soil nutrient depletion, erosion, desertification (FAO 2016a), depletion of freshwater reserves and pollution of groundwater (Jakeman et al. 2016), overfishing and overgrazing of fragile soils (FAO 2017) are pressuring and destroying the crucial vital resource. Loss of tropical forest and of biodiversity reduces water and food availability (Borrelli 2017). Urbanisation (UN DESA 2011) is diminishing the availability of land for water capture and food production while simultaneously concentrating domestic water use, GHG emissions and sewage (Feledyn-Szewczyk et al. 2016). Water is a basic input for almost all activities. Sufficient water of adequate quality is especially essential during the productive process of primary activities, such as agriculture, livestock, fishing, aquaculture and tourism. Safe water is also essential for the success of commercial activities and services. Health and food security are directly related to water quality, and here too the gender perspective is crucial (WHO 2018). Climate change is having a widespread impact on the hydrological cycle, with very uncertain outcomes (IPCC 2019). Higher temperatures have amplified the evaporation and evapotranspiration in the atmosphere. This vapour is increasing the number of extreme events in the form of cold spells, heatwaves, droughts, bushfires and hurricanes (IPCC 2013). The melting of glaciers and snow packs in the high mountains is causing glacial outbreaks, and in the long term may limit the water supply of almost half the world’s population, especially in Asia and South America (IPCC 2018). Further, agriculture, especially industrial food production, is using around 70% of the sweet water available on earth (UN Water 2006). An increasing number of

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aquifers are overexploited and in coastal areas suffer the intrusion of saline water (IPCC 2019). The inadequate management of solid and liquid sewage has polluted most of the rivers in the developing world, and chemical toxic effluents have increased chronic health problems (WHO 2018). Temperature rise is not only causing evaporation, but also promotes the reproduction of multiple microorganisms and the dissolution of toxic soil particles in the water (WHO 2019). In relation to mortality due to extreme climatic events (WB 2016), diverse studies mention that women and girls are more likely to lose their lives than men due to their social representation of caring for others and the social role assigned by society (Oswald Spring 2008; Ariyabandu/Fonseka 2009; Anttila-Hughes/Hsiang 2013; Ímaz et al. 2014). Thus, the availability of water, the supply of safe water, the lack of quality in drinking water and extreme hydrometeorological events related to climate change have and will continue to have further differences in their impact on women and men (IPCC 2012, 2014). There is still a gender division of labour in agriculture, where men are mainly engaged in industrialised production and women often raise subsistence crops. Both activities produce fundamental differences in the (ab)use of water for irrigation (UNCCD 2016). While in the first type of production water – including that in aquifers – is depleted without any heed for future generations, in subsistence production women care for and optimise water resources, often recycling grey water and harvesting rainwater for their crops. Poor rural women in developing countries are critical to the survival of their families. Fertile land is their lifeline. But the number of people negatively affected by land degradation is growing rapidly. Crop failures, water scarcity and the migration of traditional crops are damaging rural livelihoods. Action to halt the loss of more fertile land must focus on households. At this level, land use is based on the roles assigned to men and women. This is where the tide can begin to turn. In the last five years, 52 countries have improved women’s access to decision-making, local governance and resources. They have: strengthened the control and ownership of land, boosted access to financial, extension and market services and the use of new technologies. Women still lag well behind men in each of these areas but where these efforts have been taken seriously, for example, in India, Morocco, Senegal and Uganda, the results are phenomenal (UNCCD 2016: 3).

The same report also indicates changes in agricultural labour and women make up 43% of the agricultural labour force worldwide: 21% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 43% in Asia (excluding Japan) and 49% in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 95% of all economically active women in Burundi, Rwanda, Niger and Nepal work in agriculture. However, globally, female farmers receive only 5% of all agricultural extension services, only 15% of agricultural extension officers are women and in developing countries women use only half the amount of chemical fertilizers used by men (UNCCD 2016: 5). These differences are also related to the fact that women are the main providers of water in their households. They are responsible for drinking water, cleaning and washing, and suffer more from restrictions in the public water system. In rural areas women and girls often walk for several hours to fetch water for household consumption. Most countries have verified statistics which show that, globally, women

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dedicate more hours daily to unpaid work inside the house than men (WEF 2018), thus the lack or bad quality of water is obstructing their labour. The inequality in unpaid household work has obliged some progressive governments to stimulate the participation of men in these activities and to promote women in productive paid activities. However, globally, the salaries of women are lower than those of men for the same work (UNCCD 2016), even though in agricultural activities women often get better results because they take more care when, for instance, harvesting berries or transplanting rice or onions. Also, in maps of risks, governments are increasingly taking into account gender vulnerability in order to reduce the fatalities (Fordham 2001). A gender-sensible approach allows governments to take advantage of the skills of women and men in preventative behaviour, during an extreme event and afterwards in the reconstruction process. However, the existing differences and vulnerabilities still indicate insufficient incorporation of the gender perspective in the legal and political framework, where human rights could overcome some of the existing discrimination and better protect both women and men confronted with increasingly extreme hydrometeorological events related to climate change (IPCC 2012, 2014).

13.5

Some Outcomes

Woman have traditionally been trained and socialised to care for others, so they also care about a better climate and the conservation of Earth, thus they may become directly involved and integrated into the restoration process both globally and at home. This starts within each family, which should be able to reduce its environmental footprint, increase efficiency in resource management and also support the restoration of destroyed natural resources, especially in regions where survival is threatened (IPCC 2019). The 4Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle and re-educate – help us to change our own lives and mindsets by starting the process at home and later implementing such strategies more generally (see Chap. 16). In China, where human-made pollution has affected the health of millions of people, clear links have been established between human behaviour and health impacts. Recognising that human-induced damage is serious, China has realised that it would have been cheaper and easier to prevent pollution (Qian et al. 2018). Following the climate conference in Madrid (2019), this thinking is increasing the motivation to reverse climate change by working scientifically with other countries. Oswald Spring (2019: 193–194) synthesised the study of the McKinsey Global Institute 2015: globally women receive 59 per cent of a man’s salary for the same work and only 23 per cent of women hold lower political positions, usually in the ministries of Education, Health and Social Welfare. Even in Northern countries women spend 272 min on unpaid housework but men only 138. In Germany, women work an average of 269 min in the household, or three times more than men, and in Sweden, with a higher degree of gender equality, women still spend twice as much time on the household and on caring services as men. In

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the Global South the situation is even worse. In Turkey and Mexico women spend five times more than men doing unpaid work (WEF 2016). Greater justice and a more equal distribution of unpaid work in the household between men and women would increase the global GDP by 11% in 2025. If society could overcome the present system of inequality and promote total equity, with as many women as men in government, management, companies, schools, research and universities, the global GDP would rise by 26 per cent.

Therefore, training more women in engineering activities, establishing maps of risk for floods, landslides and droughts at local level, promoting gender equality in governments and enterprises and establishing legal frameworks will improve not only equity between women and men, but also equality among socially vulnerable groups. To promote greater equity, we must reinforce existing networks. If women are alone, they feel threats from all sides; if they are supported by social networks, they feel stronger and supported (Ímaz et al. 2014). Looking for existing networks or creating new ones allows different companies to be promoted at local, national and global level. Women must decide which networks are supportive to them and, in the case of academics, they must decide what and where they want to publish their achievements. The IPCC has to address a big challenge and has serious limitations. It is still an old-male-dominated system controlled by the Global North with a clear androgenic dominance. Woman and young researchers from the Global South should be more involved and be key players in the future, due to their greater vulnerability and exposure to extreme events (IPCC 2012). Woman and younger generations have a lot of creativity and imagination and, with their training in engineering and science, the capacity to change things for the better. UNEP (2016) stated that gender inequality is one of the most pervasive threats to sustainable development. UNEP found negative impacts on access to, use of and control over a wide range of resources, including water and food. This environmental organisation of the UN maintained that gender gaps limit the ability to meet human rights obligations, and must be bridged to enable both women and men to receive respect and gain access to a clean, safe, healthy and sustainable environment. UNEP (2016) explored several social forces that may be able to produce changes in the present androgenic global policy scenario. Thus, environment studies with a gender perspective must focus on human security (IPCC 2014). UNEP (2016) proposed, therefore, to explore a sustainable future with equal agents among women and men in socio-economic and socio-political terms, in order to overcome the present limits and attain sustainable development and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015). Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) proved that more equal societies do better, are happier, less violent and live longer (see Japan). Thus, it is very important for woman and men to link North and South with greater equality as well. The South can contribute practical experience because of the increasing number of disasters, violence and wars. Woman in the South often have a wider perspective and approach to such extreme events, and greater resilience. Young people and students think very differently. Today, they show less interest in getting things and accumulating money and wealth. They have different priorities and aim to create

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different opportunities; however, they also suffer from new difficulties in the present globalisation process, aggravated by climate change threats. Linking global activities with local people from your own community (Yiamouyiannis 2013) or workplace creates dialogues and co-operation between women and men. Often women require some support to overcome the existing barriers, but once they have stepped into the network of opportunities they are creative and very collaborative. Without doubt, to survive climate change and the upcoming threats, we need to work together to grant the necessary natural resources, food and health for women and men, youth and elders. Climate change is a serious global threat and so far governments and enterprises have not done enough to mitigate greenhouse gases, reduce pollution, stop the destruction of ecosystems, or prevent water contamination. The most affected are the vulnerable women and men in the tropics, while most of the GHG still continue to be emitted in the Global North. Time is getting short and the potential tipping-point may affect the entire planet, thus only an urgent engendered collaboration may be able to stop the destructive process of the ongoing Anthropocene by developing solidarity with the most affected people and restoring the destroyed environment and its ecosystem services.

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Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch, Simon Dably (2009). “Linking Anthropocene, HUGE and HESP: Fourth Phase of Environmental Security Research”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1,277–1,294. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Ana Rosa Morena, Olivia Tena (2014a). “Cambio climático, salud y género”, In Mirella Ímaz, Norma Blazquez, Veana Chao, Itzel Castañeda, Ana Beristain (2014) (Eds.). Cambio climático. Miradas de género, Mexico, D.F., PUMA, CEIICH, PINCC-UNAM, pp. 85–136. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald, Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Fátima Flores Palacios, Maribel Ríos Everardo, Hans Günter Brauch, Teresita Ruiz Pantoja, Carlos Lemus Ramírez, Ariana Estrada Villanueva, M. Mónica Cruz Rivera (2014b). Vulnerabilidad Social y Género entre Migrantes Ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-DGAPA-UNAM. Oxfam (2018). Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year – poorest half of humanity got nothing, https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year. Perú (2008). “El cambio climático y sus efectos en la salud pública”, Boletín Epidemiológico. Lima, Ministerio de Salud, Dirección de Epidemiología. Reardon, Betty, Tony Jenkins (2007). “Gender and Peace: Toward a Gender Inclusive, Holistic Perspective”, in Charles Webel, Johan Galtung (Eds.), Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies, New York, Routledge, pp. 209–231. Sen Amartya (2001). 100 million missing women, Oxford Development Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3, October, pp. 225–244. Serrano Oswald, S. Eréndira (2009). “The Impossibility of Securitizing Gender vis-à-vis ‘Engendering’ Security”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1,143–1,156. Serrano Oswald, S. Eréndira (2010). La Construcción Social y Cultural de la Maternidad en San Martín Tilcajete, Oax., Doctoral Thesis, Mexico, D.F., UNAM-Instituto de Antropología. SDG (2015). Sustainable Development Goals, New York, UN. Steffen, Will, Johan Rockström, Katherine Richardson, Timothy M. Lenton, Carl Folke, Diana Liverman, Colin P. Summerhayes, Anthony D. Barnosky, Sarah E. Cornell, Michel Crucifix, Jonathan F. Donges, Ingo Fetzer, Steven J. Lade, Marten Scheffer, Ricarda Winkelmann, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber et al. (2018). Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aug 2018, Vol. 115, No. 33: 8,252–8,259. Strahm, Rudolf H., Úrsula Oswald Spring (1990). Por Esto Somos Tan Pobres (For this Reason we are so Poor), Cuernavaca, UNAM/CRIM. UCL, CRED, USAID (2018). Natural Disasters 2017, Brussels, EM-DAT. UNEP (2016). Global Gender and Environment Outlook. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya. UNCCD (2016). Turning the tide. The gender factor in achieving land degradation neutrality, Paris, UNCCD. UNCCD (2016). “Towards a gender responsive implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Bonn, UNCCD and Women. Van den Hove, Sybille, Marc Le Menestrel, Henri-Claude de Bettignies (2002). “The oil industry and climate change: strategies and ethical dilemmas”, Climate Policy, Vol. 2, pp. 3–18. Van Evera, Stephen (1999). Causes of War, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press. Vaughan, Genevieve (1997) For-Giving: A Feminist Criticisms of Exchange, Austin, Plain View Press. Vaughan, Genevieve (2004). The Gift; Il Dono, Rome, Meltemi, University of Bari, New Series 8. Warren, Karren J. (Ed.) (1997). Ecofeminism. Women, Culture, Nature, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. WB [World Bank] (2016). Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters, Washington, World Bank. WEF [World Economic Forum] (2017). World Gender Gap Report, Davos, WEF.

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WEF [World Economic Forum] (2016). World Gender Gap Report, Davos, WEF. WEF [World Economic Forum] (2018). World Gender Gap Report, Davos, WEF. Wilkinson, Richard, Kate Pickett (2009). The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, London, Allen Lane. Yiamouyiannis, Zeus (2013). Transforming Economy: From Corrupted Capitalism to Connected Communities, Kindle-Amazon. Yonder, Ayse, Sengul Akcar, Prema Gopalan (2005). Women’s Participation in Disaster Relief and Recovery, New York, Oxford University Press.

Part III

Texts on Water, Health, Food and Energy Security

Chapter 14

On Water Security

14.1

Introduction

Water is crucial for environment and ecosystem services, human survival, productive activities and cultural services.1 About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, although hydrologic resources represent only 0.07% of its mass and 0.4% of its volume. Likewise, 2.5% of this natural reserve is fresh water (35 million cubic kilometres, but 67.9% is trapped in glaciers and permanent ice; 0.8% in permafrost; 30.1% in aquifers; 0.05% is soil humidity; 0.03% wetlands; 0.26% lakes; 0.006% rivers; 0.0003% refers to biological water; and 0.04% is found in the atmosphere (Shiklomanov et al. 2007). Water exists in three different states: liquid, solid and gas. At the Earth’s surface, it can travel at different velocities laterally and vertically. The hydrological cycle affects seasons and is the determinant factor of weather and rainfall, where the Niña/ Niño cycle (ENSO) has important consequences. The complex relationships between water, ecosystems, weather, productive activities, human needs, cultural elements in relation to scarcity and pollution, have affected the security agenda of water. This chapter first analyses the concept of water security, a latecomer to the security discussion. Later, the impact of water security globally and in Mexico is reviewed, including the growing conflictivity of water related to extractive and other productive activities. Finally, the chapter draws some conclusions about the relationship between water security and conflicts.

1

This text is transformed from a text coauthored with Hans Günter Brauch. Previous versions were published by Úrsula Oswald Spring and Hans Günter Brauch (2009). “Securitizing water”, in Brauch et al. (eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change, Springer, Berlin, pp. 175–202 and Oswald Spring (2011). “Water Security, Conflicts and Hydrodiplomacy”, in: Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.), Water Resources in Mexico, Berlin, Springer, pp. 319–338. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_14

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14.2

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On Water Security

Water Security Has Been a Relative Latecomer to the Conceptualisation Discourse

While food, energy, and health security have been used by international organisations (FAO, IEA, WHO) since the 1970s (Brauch 2009), the ‘water security’ concept has been discussed by the water community since 2000. With the reconceptualisation of security since the end of the Cold War (Buzan et al. 1998; Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011), water security has been considered in the context of national, international and human security. This chapter analyses the origins and evolution of the water security concept in the framework of different social science theories on security, including the securitisation discourse. Water security is also being examined as a human security and sustainability issue with different operational linkages. However, the securitisation of water remains ambiguous if no ‘extraordinary measures’ are taken by policymakers. Whether water security may serve as a guiding principle for water governance and management remains uncertain. This chapter answers the following questions: Is the ‘water security concept’ useful for water management? Is the concept of water security, as a ‘speech act’ of policy-makers, accepted by the audience (the affected people) and could use of the water security concept improve water governance, reduce conflicts and grant permanent and safe access to water among different stakeholders (people, agriculture, urban areas and business communities)? Why is water security a latecomer in the scientific discussion, compared with other sectorial security concepts, e.g. food security (Oswald Spring 2009) introduced by FAO (2013a) since the 1960s, energy security (since 1974 by IEA; Jacoby 2009), health security (since the 1970s by WHO, Rodier/Kindhauser 2009)? Due to the different postmodern understandings of security by many governments, the use of the term ‘security’ has remained controversial and been heavily criticised, e.g. by the Group of 77 and China and by the BRIC countries. From a modern perspective of the Westphalian order of sovereign states, their understanding of security is influenced by a narrow conceptualisation, in which the political and military dimension remains dominant and the state is the ‘reference object’. This postmodern-deterritorialised notion of security is essential to the debate on human security and also to the sectorialised concepts of food, energy, health, water, and soil security (Brauch et al. 2009). Water is a crucial element for understanding ‘environmental security’ (Dalby et al. 2009; Oswald Spring et al. 2009), because water maintains ecosystem services, protects biological and hydrological cycles and grants a multitude of human and productive activities along with leisure. Thus water security is also related to economic, societal and health security. Around 70% of water is still used in agriculture worldwide and around 77% in Mexico. Therefore, food security depends on sufficient access to water for agriculture and livestock. Water-borne diseases (diarrhoea, dysentery, etc.) and vector-borne illnesses (malaria, dengue, zika, etc.) are still the origin of most illnesses in poor countries and responsible for high infant

14.2

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Fig. 14.1 Water security and its links to other sources of security. Source The Author

mortality (UNICEF 2015), thus water security relates to health security. Figure 14.1 explains graphically the links between water security and other sources of security to demonstrate that water is crucial for life, survival and productive and cultural activities. The concept of ‘water security’ was introduced in the Ministerial Declarations of the Second World Water Forum (WWF) in The Hague (2000, see box 14.1). It was further developed at the third WWF in Kyoto (2003), the fourth WWF in Mexico City (2006), the fifth in Istanbul (2009), the sixth in Marseille (2012), and the seventh in (2015) in Gyeongju, South Korea. Box 14.1 Ministerial Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the 21st Century, 22 March 2000. Water is vital for the life and health of people and ecosystems and a basic requirement for the development of countries, but around the world women, men and children lack access to adequate and safe water to meet their most basic needs. Water resources, and the related ecosystems that provide and sustain them, are under threat from pollution, unsustainable use, land-use changes, climate change and many other forces. The link between these threats and poverty is clear, for it is the poor who are hit first and hardest.

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This leads to one simple conclusion: business as usual is not an option. There is, of course, a huge diversity of needs and situations around the globe, but together we have one common goal: to provide water security in the 21st Century. This means ensuring that freshwater, coastal and related ecosystems are protected and improved; that sustainable development and political stability are promoted, that every person has access to enough safe water at an affordable cost to lead a healthy and productive life and that the vulnerable are protected from the risks of water-related hazards….

At the fourth WWF in Mexico (2006), the key objective was ‘securing water for people and the environment’. The water security concept was used as a scientific process that recognises the trade-offs between dams or other water abstractions for development, their preventive capacity to mitigate floods and drought, as well as their harmful effects on biodiversity, ecosystem services and upstream and downstream riparian livelihoods. These reflections highlighted the necessity of including water needs in national laws and policies while allowing equitable water to people and the environment, and have created consciousness among decision-makers. In the WWF in Istanbul a ‘World Water Guide’ was adopted: “at the national level, [to] integrate an assessment of climate change impacts into National Water Plans and create adaptation measures in line with those impacts for sustainable water security in social, environmental and economic needs”; to “include rainwater management in national water management plans, where possible, that support social and economic development outcomes and referencing its utility to increase supply in agriculture and water security in the context of changing rainfall patterns associated with climate change”. During the sixth WWF in Marseille (2012), water security was linked to sustainability, and reference was made to urban households in the Asia-Pacific and to the impacts of water scarcity to the “detriment of water security of poor populations and threatened ecosystems”. During the seventh WWF in Korea (2015), ‘Water security for all’ was put in the centre and cited 85 times. It was related to natural, social and productive activities, and to disasters, and the WWF adopted the UN-Water (2013) definition. Water stress and water scarcity are global challenges with far-reaching economic and social implications … Security won’t achieve itself. The status quo of single digit incremental efficiency falls well short of the mark. And the imperatives of climate change add urgency to current water crises. Yet, right now we possess the tools and experience to design and implement a new paradigm of efficient water use, and can scale it up quickly to sustain urban, agricultural, industrial and energy systems everywhere (WWF 2015: 100) … the UN-Water defines it as, “The capacity of population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and stability” (WWF 2015: 81).

14.2

Water Security Has Been a Relative Latecomer …

355

These different understandings of the water security concept since The Hague in 2000 are also linked to other multilateral efforts of development and sustainability, especially the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 and the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Further, irrigation systems made it possible to achieve agricultural surplus thousands of years ago, which enabled the consolidation of god-cities, kingdoms, and empires. Water scarcity and pollution are often mentioned in the decay of high civilisations (Sumerian, China, Maya, Aztec, Egypt, etc.). Thus, from the first civilisation on, water has been politicised (Buzan et al. 1998) and sometimes securitised (Wæver 1995, 1997). The first securitizing move by the ministers in Hague in 2000 linked water to societal security (meeting basic needs), to food security (food supply), to environmental security (protecting ecosystems), to human and gender security (managing risks), to economic security (valuing water) and to political security (governing water). Nevertheless, from 1972 onwards, the Club of Rome insisted on the limited availability of water resources and its crucial role in the ecosystem services and the deterioration of environment. “Between 2011 and 2050, the world population is expected to increase by 33%, growing from seven billion to 11.3 billion (UN DESA 2011), and food demand will rise by 60% in the same period” (WWAP 2016: 21). UN DESA (2011) projects that populations living in urban areas will almost double, from 3.6 billion in 2011 to 6.3 billion in 2050. OECD (2012) points to increasing constraints on freshwater availability by 2050, with an additional 2.3 billion people (over 40% of the global population) expected to be living in areas with severe water stress (North and South Africa, South and Central Asia). “Over 1.7 billion people in Asia and the Pacific continue to live without access to improved sanitation and over 85% of untreated wastewater creates the risk of a ‘silent disaster’ from the pollution of surface and ground water resources and coastal ecosystems (UNESCAP 2010)”. “More than 50% of the world’s recent natural disasters occurred in Asia-Pacific affecting water supply infrastructure. Since 1970, more than 4000 water-related disasters have been reported costing more than US$678 billion in economic losses (WWAP 2016: 77). Agriculture is still accounting for 70% of water withdrawals and up to 95% in least developed countries (LDCs). Water scarcity, degradation, and stress2 have always been crucial for human well-being. Water security also raises fears of government officials due to their narrow military understanding of security, the valuing of water in economic terms, the sharing of water resources in transboundary contexts, and the need for risk management in regions under threat from the impacts of global environmental change. Gleick (2004) insists that water is used by the military, as a weapon or as part of a strategy to win a battle. In the UN context, water was generally framed as a sustainability concern, but it was always related to ideological and policy disputes. Within their attitude towards

“Regular water stress [is] when renewable water supplies drop below 1700 m3 per capita per year. Populations face chronic water scarcity when water supplies drop below 1000 m3 per capita per year and absolute scarcity below 500 m3 per capita per year” (WWAP 2016: 16).

2

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state-centred and territorialised security, different countries blocked the acceptance of the water security concept from a postmodern and de-territorialised human security perspective. The ecological dimension of water refers to atmospheric water, precipitation, biological and soil water, surface (rivers, lakes, wetlands) and groundwater as well as technological (dams, water reservoirs, waste, desalinated and virtual) water. The ecological dimension poses physical constraints and stresses that have become more severe due to population growth, rapid increase of water demand and the impact of climate variability and change. There are four essential ecosystem services water fulfils: provisioning, regulating, support and the cultural heritage (MA 2005). The economic dimension of water refers to two key processes, the value of use (water as a social good: domestic use, survival of the people, small-scale irrigation for subsistence crops etc.) and the value of change (water as an economic good or commodity: tariffs, prices, administration, privatisation). In the first context water is treated as a common social good, where every human being has a human right to safe water for drinking and food. In a market economy the costs of the infrastructure for safe water and sewage, of administration and profits are included. Here, supply and demand are regulated by market forces and water is used for cash crops, industrial goods or services (Oswald Spring 2005). The privatisation of water services in poor countries has not always improved the availability and quality of water, and frequent conflicts related to expensive prices and lack of services have increased. None of them includes ecosystem services. In LDCs small-scale subsistence production is done by women, indigenous and poor peasants, often in rain-fed small orchards. They use normally traditional technology, which often results in low crop yields. But as traditional agriculture relies on integral management of natural resources, with water conservation, policultivation, and mixed agriculture, the soils have maintained for centuries the fertility and humidity. Therefore it represents a typical case of sustainable management, including environmental services. Nevertheless, changing climate conditions are affecting this traditional farming too. Further, in developing countries women have been key food producers in all stages of food production in agriculture, livestock, fishery and aquaculture (IPCC 2014). The differences by regions and women’s roles and activities make it difficult to estimate a precise involvement (Ímaz et al. 2014). They are not only key persons for food production and market activities, but also for food storage and transformation. Food security in poor countries depends primarily on the ability of women to conserve their surplus production. Women are also crucial actors in water management for drinking water, and they take care of people who contract water-borne diseases. The social and legal dimension of water security refers to supplying enough safe water, water laws and norms, including a gender perspective, and also to reducing disasters and avoidable diseases. With population growth globally, the demand for water, food and energy will grow. As the UN’s World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP 2016) indicates, lack of safe water and sewage opens opportunities for sustainable job creation, while climate-sustainable agriculture may improve food production and enhance ecosystem services. Without any doubt, water security refers to water

14.2

Water Security Has Been a Relative Latecomer …

357

as a basic human right also for the most vulnerable. From a gender perspective and from an understanding of cultural services, the concept of water security is often linked to beliefs, identity, social representations and behaviours of caring. In political terms, water security examines at local, regional and national level water governance, conflicts about competing water uses and pollution. On the international level, this concept is linked to conflicts and hydro-diplomacy (Oswald Spring 2011). Historically, water governance is influenced by failures of markets and services, institutional incapacity, and governmental mistakes, thus directly human security. Malin Falkenmark (2001: 11), defined water security from the vantage point of human security: as freedom from fear related to water supply and society’s dependence on water for a whole set of different functions… The topic water and security has arisen as a by-product of the growing interest in environment and security. This reflects arguing for a more holistic conception of security that goes beyond protecting the state from external aggression to addressing environmental problems that threaten the health and well-being of individuals or economic security of countries. It could be that the developed countries are more likely to think of environment and security in terms of global environmental changes, and developing countries more with the human security implications of local and regional problems. Water is in fact forcing us to rethink the notions of security, dependency and interdependency. While increased interdependence is often viewed as increasing vulnerability and reducing security, there is an alternative way to look at interdependence. These notions can be seen as networks that increase our flexibility and capacity to respond to exigencies of nature and reduce our vulnerability to events such as droughts and floods and thereby increase security.

Falkenmark (2001) summarised the results of a Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) seminar on “how hydro solidarity between up streamers and down streamers may be approached in a realistic way”. Water was discussed as a human security perspective “in terms of safe household water” for human health (health security), food security linked to local production, and environmental security that “depends on [the] ability to minimise environmental threats in terms of i.a. ecosystem degradation”. Later Falkenmark and Rockström (2005: 21–22) in their approach to ecohydrology, argued that three policy perspectives should be included: human security, environmental damage security, and human and environmental security. These two authors asked what should be secured, what avoided and what anticipated to reduce the risks of climate change related impacts. These questions were further analysed by the IPCC (2012, 2014). From a narrow state-centred security perspective, issues of sovereignty are crucial, while from a wider conceptualisation many non-state actors intervene (multinational water enterprises) for a local, national and global water governance. In this highly politicised context the key question emerged: how has water been securitised by policy-makers from a modern national or international and by scientists from a postmodern human security perspective? From a human-centred approach to water security, diplomatic policy debates (UNSG 2010, 2012) reoriented the discussion to how to grant this basic human right to everybody by simultaneously maintaining and restoring crucial ecosystem services.

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Without doubt, the ‘reference object’ of water security is no longer solely the state. Within a deepening understanding of the security concept, the conceptual and analytical focus has widened to human beings (human security) with a transversal gender focus (gender security), to society (societal security) and beyond the nation state to regional and global international organisations and non-state societal and business actors (economic security). In this sense, water security goes beyond the availability of water and includes the individual and collective right of access to water. “…every person has access to enough safe water at affordable cost to lead a clean, healthy and productive life, while ensuring that the natural environment is protected and enhanced” (GWP Framework of Action 2000). Thus, water security includes the five pillars of human security (freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom to live in human dignity (Annan 2005) and freedom from hazard impacts (Bogardi/Brauch 2005 and cultural diversity). UN Women (2015) has supported the enhancement of the economic security of women by engendering their access to water, the recollection of data, enhancing market access for selling subsistence production, and empowering women, especially in vulnerable conditions and in armed conflicts (Bennett et al. 2005). The US Departments for Homeland Security and Defense (DoD), together with the US intelligence community (NIC 2008, 2012) recognised that in many countries achieving and maintaining water security has become a major national prerogative that requires the utmost effort, especially in democratic societies, to satisfy the basic human needs of citizens for drinking water and food (value of use). Water-scarce countries are importing basic food, thus using ‘virtual water’ in terms of cereals and meat (Allen 1997, 2003, 2009). Satisfying food needs at affordable prices for all societal groups has become a political objective, especially after the hunger riots in 2008 with the sudden increase in the price of basic grains (wheat, rice and corn). From a geopolitical approach, international water security is related to hydropolitics (Ohlsson 1995) or is within the framework of bi- and multilateral hydrodiplomacy (Oswald Spring 2005). There are serious concerns among powerful upstream users (Río Bravo dispute between USA and Mexico) and dominant downstream users (Ethiopia and Egypt in the Nile river basin). International and national strategies such as integrated water basin management, diplomatic agreements and treaties, together with conflict resolution initiatives (Oswald Spring 2011), have helped prevent emerging water conflicts escalating into wars.

14.3

Impacts of Water Security on the Sustainability Discourse

By securitising water in human security terms, the extreme of withdrawal of water from natural sources can be mitigated and prevented when an ecological flow is included in land planning. A critical approach to development questions the fact that water is withdrawn from nature and used in different socio-economic sectors

14.3

Impacts of Water Security on the Sustainability Discourse

359

without control and treatment. Agriculture is still the most important user and polluter of water worldwide, and the diffuse pollution makes it difficult to return quality water to rivers, lakes, aquifers and oceans. Water treatment polices are undergoing a substantial change through preventive water management to limit pollution and reduce the cost of sewage treatments. Green or climate-smart agriculture (FAO 2013b) may be one of the most important changes to promote a healthy life with enough food by fixing nitrogen from the air to the soil, by using drought-resistant crops, by composting organic waste, and by water-saving technologies. Agriculture is globally the sector with the biggest potential for water-saving processes. In a widened, deepened and sectorialised understanding of water security, health, food, soil, urban, tourist, human, gender, and environmental security are included. New models of development and modernisation are emerging, without big hydroelectric dams, drying out everglades and destroying mangroves. Water security refers to a complex process where scarce resources, economic stress, lack of food and deteriorating ecosystems are interacting, which often may increase the water insecurity regionally and produce development or environmental-induced migration (Oswald Spring et al. 2014).

14.4

Conclusion

A human and environmentally-centred approach, where the uncertainties relate to global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011) and climate change (IPCC 2012, 2013, 2014), focuses on the human-nature interrelationships. The increasing risk in the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002) related to the changing Earth system makes it difficult to forecast water security, and its complex links are chaotic und highly uncertain. Thus, the narrow approach of military and political security within a traditional water management system cannot resolve scarcity, pollution, inequality, floods and climate change impacts. The paradigm shift towards a human and gender security approach to water integrates basin management, ecosystem support, mitigation and adaption to the changing conditions, together with water management at household level, water-borne diseases and water fetching. Therefore water security focuses basically on human use and ecosystem protection with the underpinned water service improvement, whenever river basin management, flood protection, drought prevention, energy production, agriculture, tourism and recreation give added value to water supply and sanitation at the household level (WWAP 2015). Wastewater collection, sewage treatment and reuse or disposal are ways that water use can be optimised in environmental, social and economic terms, thus reducing tensions and conflicts. A human-centred understanding of water security focuses on social needs, with institutional arrangements to avoid upcoming water crises and reduce existing water scarcity, pollution and conflicts (Fig. 14.2). Management under increasing scarcity requires strong institutions, but also transparent legal frameworks that enable

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Fig. 14.2 Integrated water management. Source The Author

mounting rivalry between competing interests of society to be handled effectively. The institutions must also be capable of balancing socio-economic demands and environmental sustainability to grant in long-term vision water resources for future generations. Upcoming conflicts among stakeholders, neighbouring towns, nations or people must be handled with a hydrodiplomatic approach, where negotiations result in ‘win-win’ situations for all involved as the key tools for a durable agreement. Multi-hazard risks, extreme poverty and political instability create the need for integrated water security management, especially where drought has led to significant human and financial losses. As risk and uncertainty increase with global environmental and climate change, integrated practices of mitigation, adaptation and growing resilience offer transformative solutions to unknown situations. Disaster risk management and development may provide pathways to increased water security (see Fig. 14.3) and provoke transformative solutions at local and national level. Ethical, social and economic concerns, and environmental management are prerequisites for sustainability in the context of greater uncertainty, where the underlying causes of dual vulnerability, including the structural gender inequalities constrain the potential for effective adaptation and resilience building. Co-benefits between social, economic, political and environmental adaptation may reduce the dual vulnerability, limit systemic risks and empower the most vulnerable. The Hyogo (UNISDR 2005) and Sendai frameworks (UNISDR 2015) for disaster risk reduction (DRR), together with long-term investments in water security, offer anticipatory adaptations, which are more effective and less expensive than

14.4

Conclusion

361

Fig. 14.3 Actions and functions for managing risks of extreme events. Source IPCC 2012: 346

disaster management, where local knowledge, strong institutions, and social capital may reduce the loss of and damage to human lives, houses, wellbeing and public infrastructure. In synthesis, water security is the result of a transdisciplinary analysis by experts representing many scientific disciplines, such as hydrology, engineering, biology, medicine, construction including the social sciences and humanities, such as economics, political, legal, administrative, sociological, ethics, anthropology and psychology. These outcomes go beyond mitigation in terms of technical tools, where uncertainty, political and cultural processes of human behaviour are overlooked. As part of an integrated approach, new knowledge and activities emerge that may support adapted political decision-making processes. From a human security agenda negotiated solutions for water conflicts may improve the livelihood of marginal people, and support climate-smart agriculture, aquaculture, fishing, food, health and justice, which are key issues for a sustainable, ethical and humanised water security. Without doubt, urban planning, rural development, coastal management, prevention of extreme events, disaster risk management and gender equity are the core elements for achieving a sustainable future with peace and water security.

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References Allen, J. Anthony (1997). “Virtual Water: A long-term Solution for Water Short Middle Eastern Economies”, Paper for the British Association Festival of Science, University of Leeds, 9th of September. Bennett Vivianne, Sonia Davila-Poblete, María Nieves Rico (2005) (Eds.). Opposing Currents: The Politics of Water and Gender in Latin America, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press. Brauch Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Béchir Chourou, Paul Dunay, Jörn Birkmann (2011) (Eds.). Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Allen, J. Anthony (1997). “Virtual Water: A long-term Solution for Water Short Middle Eastern Economies”, Paper for the British Association Festival of Science, University of Leeds, 9th of September. Brauch, Hans Günter (2005). ‘Environment and Human Security. Freedom from Hazard Impact’, InterSecTions, 2/2005, Bonn, UNU- EHS. Brauch Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Béchir Chourou, Paul Dunay, Jörn Birkmann (2011) (Eds.). Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navitna Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou Heinz Krummenacher (2009) (Eds.). Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Paul Dunay, Navitna Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou B, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Peter H. Liotta (2008) (Eds.). Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæ ver, Jaap de Wilde (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, Lynne Rienner. Crutzen, Paul J. (2002), ‘Geology of Mankind’, Nature, Vol. 415, No.3, p. 23. Dalby, Simon, Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring (2009). “Environmental Security Concept Revisited during the First Three Phases (1983–2006), in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 781-790. Falkenmark, M. (2001), ‘Analytical Summary’, in Proceedings SIWI Seminar: Water Security for Cities, Food and Environment – Towards Catchment Hydrosolidarity, Stockholm, August 18, 2001, SIWI Report 13, Stockholm, Stockholm International Water Institute, pp. 8–16. Falkenmark, Malin, Johan Rockström (2005). Balancing Water for Humans and Nature: The New Approach in Ecohydrology, London – Sterling, Earthscan. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] (2013a). The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013. The Multiple Dimensions of Food Security, Rome, FAO. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] (2013b). Climate smart agriculture. Sourcebook http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3325e.pdf. Gleick, Peter (2004). Water conflict chronology, Pacific Institute for Studies in Development Environment, and Security, http://worldwater.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ww8-red-waterconflict-chronology-2014.pdf. GWP [Global Water Partnership] (2000). Towards Water Security: A Framework for Action, Stockholm, GWP. Ímaz Mirella, Norma Blazquez, Verania Chao, Itza Castañeda, Ana Berinstain (Eds.) (2014). Cambio climático. Miradas de género, Mexico, D.F., PUMA, CEIICH, PINCC-UNAM. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014). Climate Change 2014. Working Group 2: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Jacoby, Klaus-Dietmar (2009). ‘Energy Security: Conceptualization of International Energy Agency (IEA)’, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, BerlinHeidelberg, Springer, pp. 345–354. MA (2005). Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Nairobi, UNEP. NIC [National Intelligence Council] (2008), Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, NIC 2008-003, Washington DC, US Government Printing Office, November. NIC [National Intelligence Council] (2012). Global Water Security. OECD (2012). OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: The Consequences of Inaction, Paris, OECD http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264122246-en. Ohlsson, Leif (1995). Water and Security in Southern Africa, Stockholm, Department for Natural Resources and the Environment, SIDA. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2005). El valor del agua. Una visión socioeconómica de un conflicto ambiental, Tlaxcala, El Colegio de Tlaxcala, CONACYT- FOMIX, SEFOA. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009). ‘Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Issue’, in H.G. Brauch et al. (eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 471–500. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch (2009). “Securitizing Water”, in: Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 175–202. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.) (2011). Water Resources in Mexico, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano Oswald, Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Fátima Flores Palacios, Maribel Ríos Everardo, Hans Günter Brauch, Teresita E. Ruiz Pantoja, Carlos Lemus Ramírez, Ariana Estrada Villanueva, Mónica T.M. Cruz Rivera (2014). Vulnerabilidad social y género entre migrantes ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch, Simon Dalby (2009). “Linking Anthropocene, HUGE and HESP: Fourth Phase of Environmental Security Research“, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1277–1294. Rodier, Guénaël, Mary K. Kindhauser (2009). “Health and Human Security in the 21st Century’, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 531–542. Shiklomanov Igor A., Rachel B. Lammers, Michael A. Rawlins, Laurence C. Smith, Tamlin M. Pavelsky (2007). “Temporal and spatial variations in maximum river discharge from a new Russian data set”, J. Geophys. Res., p. 112. UN DESA [UN Department of Economic and Social Survey] (2011). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision, New York, United Nations http://www.un.org/en/development/ desa/population/publications/pdf/urbanization/WUP2011_Report.pdf. UNESCAP [United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific] (2010). “Water Security – Good Governance and Sustainable Solutions”, Singapore, Speech presented at the Asia-Pacific Water Ministers’ Forum, 28 Jun 2010 http://www.unescap.org/speeches/ water-security-good-governance-and-sustainable-solutions. UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund] (2015). Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) http:// www.unicef.org/media/media_45481.htm.

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UN Women (2015). Progress of the World’s Women 2015–2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, New York, UN Women http://progress.unwomen.org/en/2015/pdf/UNW_ progressreport.pdf. UNISDR [UN Strategy for Disaster Reduction] (2005). Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters, Geneva, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. UNISDR [UN Strategy for Disaster Reduction] (2015). Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, Geneva, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. UNSG [UN Secretary General] (2010). Human Security, Report of the Secretary- General, A/64/ 701 of 8 May 2010, New York, United Nations. UNSG [UN Secretary General] (2012). Follow- Up to General Assembly Resolution 64/291 on Human Security, Report of the Secretary-General, A/66/763 of 5 April 2012, New York, United Nations. Wæver, Ole (1995). ‘Securitization and Desecuritization’, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (Ed.), On Security, New York, Columbia University Press, pp. 46–86. Wæver, Ole (1997). Concepts of Security, Copenhagen, Department of Political Science. WWAP [United Nations World Water Assessment Programme] (2016). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2016: Water and Jobs, Paris, UNESCO http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0024/002439/243938e.pdf. WWF [World Water Forum in Korea] (2015). Final Report. 7th World Water Forum 2015, http:// www.worldwaterforum7.org/outcome/file/Final_Report_7th_World_Water_Forum.Fin.pdf. WWF [World Water Forum in Marseille] (2012), Global Water Framework: Forum Synthesis: Time for Solutions, Marseille, WWF. WWF [World Water Forum in Istanbul] (2009). Istanbul Water Guide, Istanbul, WWF. WWF [World Water Forum in Mexico] (2006). World Water Forum, Mexico City, WWF. WWF [World Water Forum in The Hague] (2000). Ministerial Declaration of The Hague on Water Security in the 21st Century, 22 March 2000 http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/ fileadmin/wwc/Library/Official_Declarations/The_Hague_Declaration.pdf.

Chapter 15

On Health and Water Security

15.1

Introduction

Climate change is severely affecting the availability of water and its quality.1 Therefore it represents a direct challenge to health. Not only the water-born, but also the vector and temperature-related diseases are challenging the existing health system and safe water supply. Thus, water and health security have progressively been challenged primarily by pollution, waste, toxins and climate-change-related hazards and disasters. This chapter links the changing understanding on socio-environmental deterioration with water and health security. Using a case study of Mexico, it reviews the effects on the environment and the human well-being of the dominant economic model based on wasteful fossil energy, social inequality, consumerism, fashion, and growth concentrated in small elites. This model has brought both the planet and society as a whole to its limits of survival, but it has also affected regions, cultures and social classes differently. Poor countries and vulnerable groups have become the main victims suffering from socio-economic and climate-induced changes. In Mexico, the epidemiology has been changing, and traditional illnesses (diarrhoea, pulmonary conditions, under-nourishment) coexist with modern ones linked to the transformation of the diet (diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer) and the pollution of water, air and soil (intoxication, respiratory, kidney and skin problems). At the conceptual level, in the framework of the PEISOR model this chapter explores the complex interaction between anthropogenic drivers, impacts of and policy responses to climate change, their interrelationship with the dominant This text was adapted from two former published chapters by Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2012). “Climate Change and its Impacts on Water and Health Security in Mexico”, in Grover, Velma I. (Ed.). Impact of Climate Change on Water and Health, CRC PRESS, Washington, pp. 323–353 and Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009). “Towards a Sustainable Health Policy in the Anthropocene”, IHDP Update Issue 3: 18–24. 1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_15

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productive system of globalisation and the effects on human health in Mexico. It also investigates the effects of deteriorated environmental services, safe water supply, permanent and culturally accepted food, and how all these processes influence a sustainable health system at affordable costs. In the longer term, the restoration of environmental services and the integration of traditional and modern knowledge are crucial for granting water, food and health security. In a scenario of severe future climate change impacts, humankind, international society and the business community, as well as the community of states and international organisations, will have to face many challenges to their well-being and survival, which may be more severe than any security threat that states have so far experienced. This chapter also explores a vertical deepening of security, where the referent objects shift from the state to human and gender security as well as from national to regional and global but also to societal and local security. Since the 1970s, but especially after UNEP introduced the human security concept in 1994, sectorialisation of security could also be observed with regard to energy, food, health, water and livelihood security. Governments, as well as international and societal organisations, brought up these conceptual terms.

15.2

Objectives of the Chapter

Southern countries, vulnerable people and poor social groups in industrialised countries have been the main victims of climate change. They are suffering most from both climate-induced physical impacts (temperature and sea-level rise, precipitation change, increase in the number and intensity of hazards: drought, heat waves, storms, floods, bushfires and landslides) (Schellnhuber et al. 2006; IPCC 2007b, 2012) and from societal effects (famine, food protests, diseases, migration; IPCC 2007a; WHO/FAO 2003; Oswald Spring 2010a; Arreola et al. 2011). They are also affected by the coexistence of traditional and modern diseases linked to the pollution of water, air and soil and the transformation of the diet (Ensanut 2012). Water, water-related and other health impacts are crucial for the analysis of future non-traditional security impacts for the survival of humankind and the recovery of ecosystems and associated services (MA 2005). This chapter is organised in six sections. The first is a conceptual review of the securitisation of health and water within the framework of a triple reconceptualisation of security due to the end of the Cold War, globalisation and global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011), taking projected future severe climate change impacts into account. It introduces the evolution of the health and water security concept and both will be discussed in the context of the widening, deepening, and sectorialisation of security concepts. Part three deals with climate change and its impacts on health and water security in Mexico, which are explored with the PEISOR model. Part 4 discusses climate impacts on highly marginal groups and their social vulnerability. The next subchapter explores the restoring of ecosystem services and its effects on health and water security. The concluding part

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suggests a dual scientific and policy-orientated complex analysis of water and health security with greater equity that combines bottom-up initiatives of water conservation and health practices (often traditional ones) with top-down strategies of water management and health policies (WASH), where the research questions are discussed in a conceptual security framework. The research questions of this chapter address the impact of climate change on water and health security for the case of Mexico. How do the decline of water resources and the stronger and more frequent hydro-meteorological events impact on food (FAO 2010; Oswald Spring 2007a, 2009b; Vía Campesina 2005), and livelihood security (Bohle 2007) of poor urban and rural people in a region highly exposed to climate change phenomena? What are the health and societal outcomes of the changing water security in Mexico and how are highly socially vulnerable people being affected by these unknown security threats? What are the policy responses at national and international level to the changing water security challenges due to massive and partly environmentally forced migration (Oliver-Smith 2009a, b; Renaud et al. 2007) and to the new health security threats, such as pandemics (Rodier/Kindhauser 2009; Rosenberg/Krafft 2009)? How may integrated bottom-up and top-down policies improve the situation of human, gender and environmental security, thus creating a HUGE security (Oswald Spring 2007b, 2009b)?

15.3

Water and Health Security: Widening of Security

15.3.1 Conceptual Considerations and Clarifications The water and health security concepts refer to a complex interaction among anthropogenic drivers, the impacts of and the policy responses to climate change, their interrelationship with the dominant productive system of globalisation and the effects on human health. It also points to a preventive concept of sustainable water management from the basin to the household and reviews health services at affordable costs, based on the restoration of environmental services and the integration of traditional and modern knowledge. Given the severe climate change impacts projected in several scenarios for the future, humankind, international society, the business community, the community of states, and international organisations will have to face many challenges to their well-being and survival, which may be more severe than any security threat states have experienced in the past (Brauch et al. 2009, 2011). These new and non-military security dangers have already resulted in a new soft security agenda that fundamentally differs from the hard security policies of the past century (Wæver 1995, 1997, 2000, 2008). To deal with these new security risks and threats, an innovative global water and health policy should complement the prevailing state-centred approach to water and health security based on a widened understanding of security that is also people-centred (Annan 2005).

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15.3.2 Water Security Water security is directly linked to other security concepts such as economic, health, environmental and political security (Oswald Spring 2011; Oswald Spring/ Brauch 2009; see Chaps. 11 and 14 in this volume). In environmental terms, water security refers to maintaining the ecosystem services and protecting the biological and hydrological cycles and the ecosphere (Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009; Steffen et al. 2004). Water is also a key element of societal security that permits livelihood, recreation, and joy of life. In policy terms, adaptation, mitigation, preventive learning, and early warning processes may avoid hydrological deterioration at basin level and disastrous outcomes from extreme hydro-meteorological events (Seung-Ki et al. 2011). At the Second World Water Forum in The Hague (2000) The Ministerial Declaration adopted a definition of water security. This human and environmental-centred understanding (Chen et al. 2003a, b; Chen/Narasimhan 2003a, b) of water security relates directly to health issues and also to food, livelihood, and political security. When taken into account, it may offer freedom from fear (Human Security Report 2005), freedom from want (Ogata/ Sen 2003), freedom from hazard impacts (Bogardi/Brauch 2005; Brauch 2005b; Oswald Spring 2011), and freedom to live in dignity, with justice and equity for all social groups everywhere on earth (Annan 2005; Sen 1995). Therefore, health security (Oswald Spring 2010b) is intimately related to human, environmental and especially to water security (Oswald Spring/Brauch 2009), including sustainable management of the environment (Bookchin 1988). As a holistic policy, it combines four key concepts for a desirable future: sustainability, development, security and health. Such an integrated strategy may offer both a conceptual framework and guidelines for translating anticipatory learning into proactive policies and measures: a strategy of sustainable development combined with a vision of sustainable health. In synthesis, this represents the vision or policy perspective of a combined human, gender and environmental security concept or of a HUGE2 policy approach to security.

15.3.3 Health Security The health security concept refers to strategies, policies and measures of sustainable development and to preventive health behaviour that may contribute to a healthy,

2

The HUGE concept (Oswald 2007a, 2009a; see Chap. 11) is based on a sustainable culture of peace, but goes a step further by including wider and deeper security concerns. This concept complements the formal policy approach on human security by UNDP (1994) by extending the traditional scope of security (horizontal widening) from political and military to economic, social and environmental security. Regarding the actors, it combines a top-down and a bottom-up self-reliant perspective.

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participative society with plenty of environmental services. It also relates to the environment where water management and its impact on health are crucial. Environmental strategies, policies and measures may also influence values, change behaviour, and pave new avenues for an integrated water and health policy within a sustainable environment paradigm. Health security has no widely accepted definition among scientists. Leaning (2009) has proposed a widening and people-centred understanding of health security where underlying globalisation, demographic and environmental changes and particularly climate change effects, the growing disparity between rich and poor nations and people, as well as migration, are integrated. On the other hand, the World Health Organisation (WHO 2002b, 2003; WHO and FAO 2003a) has promoted a narrow and state-centred health security concept that was also influenced by the events of 11 September 2001 and by the potential threats of biological weapons and terrorism (Rodier/Kindhauser 2009). Later, with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the AH1N1 or in 2020 Coronavirus influenza strain, the outbreaks of pandemics were integrated into its health security agenda and goals. The declaration by WHO of a global pandemic emergency has had severe effects on the economy and on jobs in some affected countries.3 This state-centred understanding of health security included recommendations to combat the pandemic with a global vaccination and strict hygienic practices to prevent global spread of the pandemic, along with developing specific drugs to combat the concrete illness. Related to a military and political security approach, policy-makers in industrialised countries emphasised the protection of their population against external threats, unknown epidemics (WHO 2002b, c, d) and terrorism. This narrow understanding of health security was globally promoted by WHO (2003) at the request of and in close consultation with many industrialised countries. Poor countries were confronted with new political pressures to buy drugs and vaccines to fight against these pandemics (most of them are protected by patents under WTO rules and therefore expensive), while other more urgent health issues could not be funded due to limited financial resources, such as safe water and basic sewage water sanitation. In several developing countries the dominant state-centred understanding of health security by WHO, coupled with fears of the hidden national security agendas of powerful countries and their political and economic interests, have contributed to a breakdown of mechanisms for global cooperation such as the International Health Regulations (Aldis 2008). Nevertheless, globally shared epidemiological data have been interchanged, often supplied reluctantly by numerous southern countries. According to the WHO definition of health security both community-based primary healthcare but also environmental factors have only marginally been integrated. Thus, health workers and policy-makers in poor countries have promoted a broader approach to the health security concept. They are simultaneously 3

The Mexican government estimated that the country lost about 1% of its GDP due to the outbreak of AH1N1 in April 2009, and in March 2010 the tourist industry reported that the jobs in this sector had dropped below the level prior to the crisis. More than two years on, this sector was still seriously affected, additionally because of public insecurity.

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threatened by traditional and modern illnesses (Flores/Wagner 2010; Rosenberg/ Krafft 2009; Chen et al. 2003a), but they are also increasingly affected by climate change-related health problems. For North Vietnam and Bangladesh, Fischer and Salehin (2009) proposed an integration of human and health security that includes infectious diseases, impoverishment, economic crises, and megacity slum development. In addition, post-conflict and public violence and post-war pollution effects have created syndromes of illness, injury, disability and death, where the unsafe environment and the lack of access to healthcare pose crucial health security problems. Thus, two approaches to health security may be distinguished: while the World Health Organisation (WHO 2002b) uses a state-centred understanding of health security (Rodier/Kinkhauser 2009) that defines the global health agenda, the position of southern countries (Fischer/Salehin 2009) and also health specialists in the North (Leaning 2009) is more community-centred and also integrates bottom-up efforts. This second approach focuses on the interrelationship between human health and environmental services as important health providers (MA 2005) and expresses the crucial relationship between water and health security (Cortés/ Calderón 2011; Avelar et al. 2011). Critics observe that in the dominant approach to health security and health policy, the state-centred position does not attribute sufficient attention and resources to the other six billion primarily poor people, who still lack access to affordable health care. Their approach concentrates on the limited financial health resources in poor countries, where the sole state-centred effort lacks an integral health care system. Further, the environment and water and vector-borne diseases in particular play a crucial role in maintaining and recovering human health (Hansen/Corzo 2011).

15.3.4 Context of Globalisation Finally, the present global economic system with trade, investment, debts and its services, travel, and communication is to a large extent controlled by multinational companies that have contributed to an uneven or regressive globalisation (Held/Mc Grew 2007; Stiglitz 2002) in which countries depending on export commodities are highly vulnerable to price shocks and speculation.4 Economic globalisation is 4

The speculation in basic food items from 2008 (and again in 2011) has increased the number of starving people to over one billion, and the support and food aid in 2009 could not substantially reduce the number of these hungry people. The IMF and World Bank (2010) prepared for the UN Summit and explained that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), signed by 191 countries belonging to the UN, cannot be achieved in terms of halving the number of poor and hungry people in developing countries. In Latin America, only Venezuela and Cuba have fully achieved their MDGs on paper (UN 2015). Elsewhere, the interrelations of the food, energy and financial crises have increased the number of the extreme poor in 2009 by 40 million and in 2010 by 64 million inhabitants. Consequently, in 2010 it was estimated that by 2015, 1.2 million children under five years would die due to hunger and, additionally, 100 million people would be without

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Water and Health Security: Widening of Security

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driven by corporate capitalism and international organisations (WTO, IMF, WB) that have pressured national governments to privatise public services and to initiate deregulation processes. The economic outcomes have been a drastic reduction in the income of the nation state and a smaller public budget for social support and public work on health and water issues. On the other hand, they are increasing the costs of basic services for poor customers (Barkin 2011), and in precarious economies the higher costs compete directly with the food intake and thus have negative impacts on the immune system and personal and collective health. Consequently, weaker states that often lack transparency, but are highly indebted and poor, are unable to provide for their citizens’ minimal or adequate health and water services. As socially accepted rules and norms are lacking, globalisation often turns into a type of rape capitalism, where democratic structures and the state of law are further undermined, and wealth is concentrated on a small global elite.5 Popular mobilisations are often repressed and most countries in the South are increasingly unable to cope with these new threats (see the protests in the Arab world from 2011 onwards). While economic and financial flows are globally occurring and beyond the control of most countries, the world lacks a global governance system with globally accepted rules to maintain financial, social and environmental stability. Nevertheless, another factor is shattering stability worldwide. After the Cold War, as a logical consequence, a reduction in the arms trade was expected, with the potential to reallocate the resources from weapons to social improvements. However, the contrary occurred, and in 2011 more than US$ 1.3 trillion were spent on arms and the military (SIPRI 2010). The political instability of post-colonial countries has pushed these unstable regimes to increase their defence budget by further shrinking the limited social investments to mitigate extreme poverty and hazard-affected regions. Additionally, the illegal international arms trade and the proliferation of small arms worldwide have created even more complex social conditions. All these factors reduce the amount of public expenditure, but also the personal spending for improving public and personal water and health security. In addition, due to the effects of climate change, its impacts on the people and the environment are complex, and concrete outcomes may differ in each geographical region. Therefore, the impact on water and health is explored in more detail for Mexico.

access to water (IMF 2010). “The vast majority of hungry people live in developing regions, which saw a 42% reduction in the prevalence of undernourished people between 1990–92 and 2012–14. Despite this progress, about one in eight people, or 13.5% of the overall population, remain chronically undernourished in these regions, down from 23.4% in 1990–92. As the most populous region in the world, Asia is home to two out of three of the world’s undernourished people” FAO (2015: 8). In absolute terms there are still 794.6 million people worldwide with hunger: 7711.9 in developing countries basically in Asia (511.7), Africa (232.5) and Latina America 34.5 million people (idem). 5 The Economist reported on 20 January 2011 that one per cent of the world elite possesses 43% of global wealth, while 57% of the poorest get only one per cent. The social inequity is especially rising in the threshold countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Egypt, but also in China and India.

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Climate Change and Its Impacts on Health and Water Security in Mexico

Mexico is an example of a complex emergency with its ongoing low-level war against drug-trafficking.6 Public security, with more than 35,000 dead people (2007–2010), refers to environmental degradation, social inequality, a rampant globalisation process, high climate change risks and threats, and a state with a weak and corrupt legal system (CIDE 2000, 2005, 2009; Negrete/Hernández 2011).7 Especially affected are the young unemployed people, who are often pushed into informal and illegal activities, which has increased public insecurity in urban megalopolises but also in rural areas. After a long drought from 1994 to 2009, many rural villages in the drylands were forced to abandon their traditional agriculture. The deterioration of soils was reinforced by the lack of governmental support for mitigation, but also by the high prices for inputs and low prices for their agricultural products, due to subsidised imports and unpredictable precipitation patterns that are often linked with flash floods and longer midsummer droughts (Arreguín et al. 2011), which often destroyed the entire harvest.

15.4.1 The PEISOR Model To deal with these complex interrelations at different levels – international, national and local – the PEISOR model (Fig. 15.1) facilitates the documentation of a multidisciplinary scientific diagnosis of the linkages between the natural and human

The official definition of a complex emergency is “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society, where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing United Nations country program” (IASC, December 1994). “Complex emergencies are situations of disrupted livelihoods and threats to life produced by warfare, civil disturbance and large-scale movements of people, in which any emergency response has to be conducted in a difficult political and security environment.” Environmental health in emergencies and disasters: a practical guide (WHO 2002a: 1). Such complex emergencies are characterised by the extension of violence and the loss of livelihood and life. It may produce massive displacements of people (see Darfur); widespread damage to societies and economies; and the need for large-scale, multi-faceted humanitarian assistance by international organisations and private and social associations. Authoritarian regimes with a lack of governability and governance hinder processes of prevention, and thus require humanitarian assistance and political or military imposed constraints, which may create significant security risks for people and humanitarian relief workers (OCHA 1999; Duffield 1994; Sharp 1997; Hopkins 1998; Young et al. 2004; USAID 2009, 2010). 7 Mexico only uses testimony and therefore the verdict in about 80% of all trials is guilty. In Mexico City the number of impunity is 95%. In three surveys done by the Center of Development and Economy (CIDE) in 2000, 2005, 2009, 41% of the prisoners were tortured and 93% have never seen their arrest warrant. 6

15.4

Climate Change and Its Impacts on Health and Water Security in Mexico

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Fig. 15.1 The PEISOR model. Source Brauch/Oswald Spring (2009: 9)

systems and their often contradictory feedbacks (Brauch 2009a; Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009: 9). The analysis relies on five stages of: • Environmental and human pressures (P) that discuss the complex linkages between climate change, water, biodiversity and soil issues that form a dynamic and interrelated environmental quartet which is interacting with the often antagonist societal quartet, consisting of rural and urban development, socio-economic and productive processes and population growth; • Environmental effect (E): environmental scarcity, degradation and stress that are the drivers of complex socio-environmental processes; • Environmental impact (I) of environmental stress and climate change, whereby natural and technological hazards are threatening the livelihood of the most marginal people; • Societal outcomes (SO), such as famine, societal crises and conflicts, may be the consequences of the lack of proactive policies and resilience building; and finally the • Policy response (R) that combines a quartet of three actors (state, society, economy) and the innovative potential of knowledge. A key factor of this political quartet is the combination of traditional and modern scientific and technological knowledge to be used by the state, society and the business community to cope proactively with climate change and global environmental change through an integrated gender policy.

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With this PEISOR model the potential threats for water and health security, but also the social and especially gender vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2008), will be analysed for the case of Mexico.

15.4.2 The Pressure in the Case of Mexico The pressure is a result of anthropogenic factors on the natural environment involving the complex interrelationship among the environmental (Earth system) and the social quartets (human system). The territory of Mexico accounts for 1,964,375 km2 and has two long coastal lines extending to 11,122 km on the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. In 2010, the population reached 112.3 million inhabitants with a fertility rate of 0.85 in 2009, compared with 1.92 in 1990 (INEGI 2011; CONAPO 2010). About 62.8% of the population lives in urban areas, and 30.2% thereof in five urban megalopolises: (a) in the Central Valley of Mexico City (CVMC) (13.2 million inhabitants live in Mexico City, in municipalities in the state of Mexico and some in Hidalgo; INEGI 2020); (b) in the suburban area of Guadalajara with 4.1 million; (c) in the urban area of Monterrey with 3.7 million; (d) in Puebla-Tlaxcala with 2.5 million; and (e) in Toluca with 1.6 million inhabitants. However, the poorest states have the greatest number of dispersed rural and often indigenous locations (Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Yucatan and Veracruz). Mexico accounts for a total of 2,438 municipalities, of which the state of Oaxaca alone has 570 (23.4%) and Chiapas 118 municipalities (4.8%). The growing population and the expansion of the agricultural and urban area are reducing the natural zones, which affects the semi-dry and mountain forest ecosystems and especially the arid regions along the border with the USA. On average, Mexico receives 1,522 km3 of rainfall each year, which is equivalent to a swimming pool the size of Mexico City with a depth of one kilometre. The average annual precipitation is 711 mm for the whole country, but the northern region receives only one fourth of this rainfall, while only 25.7% of the territory in the South and South East get 411.6% of the rainfall in the poor states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, Veracruz and Tabasco. A further 72% or 1,084 km3 of this precipitation evaporates and the rest runs sometimes torrentially from the mountains to the sea. This creates serious threats due to flash floods and landslides during the rainy season in almost all parts of the country, but especially in the drylands, while hurricanes, and floods, often due to the inadequate management of the dams, threaten Tabasco, Veracruz and Oaxaca. Most of the country from the central high plateau to the northern states suffers from drought during the rest of the year, with often very limited rainfall in the hyper-arid regions of Sonora, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosi and Baja California. Both droughts and floods, heat waves and cold spills are affecting Mexican health security.

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15.4.3 The Effects for Mexico The effects of these natural changes have been water scarcity and degradation due to pollution, which is deteriorating soils, rivers, lakes and oceans. It also affects aquifers, different ecosystems and biodiversity, thus creating socio-environmental stress. The population density in Mexico is 54 inhabitants/km2 (INEGI 2010), but the major part of the population is concentrated in the high plateau of the central valleys and in the semi-arid and arid drylands. The monsoon is normally from June to October, and during the dry season precipitation is scarce, creating a large demand for water, which is satisfied with water pumped from the aquifers. Mexico has 837 river basins; most of them discharge into the Atlantic, some into the Pacific and a few into lakes and dams in the interior of the country. The formal administration is under control by the National Commission of Water (Conagua), which has divided the country into 13 hydro-administrative regions which often embrace several states and are therefore responsible for permanent conflicts between neighbouring states and their local water management and legal autonomy. Sixty-eight per cent of the rainfall occurs between June and September. For the rest of the year, the aquifers are crucial for the domestic water supply and for satisfying industrial and agricultural needs. The irrational water management, primarily in the agricultural sector, which uses 77% of all hydric resources, polluted river water and often not very transparent local irrigation authorities threaten Mexico’s water security and its future water resources. Of the existing 653 aquifers, 108 are over-exploited and the CVMC is among the seven most over-exploited, as the authorities extract 67% of the water for the capital from these aquifers. According to a UN study (2008), Texcoco was the most over-exploited aquifer in the world, with an extraction rate 850% above the annual recharge. On average, the seven aquifers in the CVMC region experience an overexploitation of 200%, which is jeopardising the supply of drinking water in the medium term.8 Besides these natural conditions of monsoon and drylands, water security is also reduced by societal and political problems. Of the existing 6,800 wells in the CVMC region, only 3,300 are legally authorised, and often metering of the extracted groundwater is altered. Only the shutdown of these illegal wells, transparent metering and adequate pricing of the groundwater extraction may reduce the overexploitation of these aquifers. Such measures would additionally reduce the

8

The recuperation of these seven aquifers is feasible if the valley treats all its sewage water then permits it to re-infiltrate the ground. Harvesting the rainfall, shutting down illegal wells, repairing leaks, tariffs to cover the extraction and treatment costs, and transparent measurement of the real water use may enable the depleted aquifers to recover. From 1925 onwards in Mexico City and the CVMC there has been subsidence in the subsoil, which is affecting the metro, the drainage system and the drinking water pipes, and regions such as Xochimilco and the historical center have lost more than 40 cm. At the international airport, the situation is worse, given a yearly subsidence of 5–30 cm, affecting the landing strips for planes. The reduction in the extraction of 15 m3/s would also reduce the content of salts in the water (for instance in Ixtapalapa) and avoid the building of galleries in the ground (Rodríguez 2011), which have extreme negative effects during earthquakes.

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subsidence which currently has a severe effect on the public infrastructure of water pipes, drainage lines, roads and houses. A policy of integral water management from the upper basin in the central valley (Ajusco, Sierra Santa Catarina) includes infiltrating aquifers with rainwater, repairing leaks in the water pipe system (40%), and recovering the natural river flows within the CVMC and the Sierra Nevada. These actions would enable the overexploited aquifers to recover, as the hydrological balance of the region generates a self-sufficient water supply and climate change has increased precipitation. Rational management implies the reinforcement of existing water laws and norms, and the elimination of corruption within and by federal and local authorities in charge of water management and issuing permission for extraction. The case of the CVMC is also the most extreme case for the lack of treatment of sewage water for more than 13.2 million inhabitants, and open drainage channels represent a permanent threat for the slum regions in the east of the CVMC (Chalco, Netzahualcoyotl). In general, the management of water in Mexico is underdeveloped: 77% of its water resources are still used in the agricultural sector (Conagua 2009), with an efficiency rate of the irrigation system of less than 40% for the 6.3 million ha (Palacios/Mejía 2011). Industry consumes 10%, discharging often highly polluted sewage water when the legal oversight is insufficient. The domestic sector uses 13% of the available water, and most of the cities, including Mexico City, lack sewage treatment facilities. The impact on the health security9 of the population in this megacity is complex. On the one hand, there are still high levels of diarrheic patterns, chronic infestations of amoeba, and often salmonella epidemics, and during the periodic floods, people also suffer from skin illnesses. On the other hand, subtle political conflicts have prevailed at the highest level among the three major national parties in 2012. The interests of the conservative Party of National Action (PAN) focused on the federal government, the Party of Institutionalised Revolution (PRI) rules in the region that supplied the water from outside to the basin and the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD) run the government of Mexico City. In 2009 these rival interests contributed to the aggravation of the AH1N1 pandemic. During Easter 2009, the federal government shut down the water supply for Mexico City, which was officially justified by the low water level in the dams and lakes that were supplying the water, and a week after the water supply was partially re-established, the capital was severely affected by the pandemic. Water security is also threatening the north of Mexico. This region receives about a quarter of the monsoon water. From 1994 to 2009, the north suffered a

9

There is also a serious health threat related to the quality of air in the central part of Mexico and all five megalopolises mentioned above. About 18% of the children of Mexico City have asthma because of the high air pollution in the endorheic valley. The National Institute of Ecology (INE 2008) estimates the economic costs of the health impact from air pollution each year at US$11.1 million, from chronic bronchitis at US$2.8 million, from hospitalisation costs due to respiratory and cardiovascular affectation at US$0.74 million and the loss of working days due to these health issues at US$0.47 million.

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severe and extended drought. In 2010, 2014 and 2015, several flash floods occurred because of hurricanes, e.g. Alex flooding the northern state of Monterrey and Karl the states of Veracruz, Puebla and some other coastal areas of the Atlantic, as well as Patricia – a very dangerous one – Norbert, Paine and, in 2016, Newton, which impacted in Baja California Sur.

15.4.4 The Environmental Impacts The environmental impact is related to the alteration of the natural conditions. Mexico is one of the countries seriously affected by climate change, especially its coastal regions on the Atlantic and the Pacific, its high mountains (Sierra Madre and the neo-volcanic transversal chain) and its flood plains. With regard to the high physical threats due to climate change, Mexico contributes 1.5% to the increase of global greenhouse gases, while the domestic energy production and consumption have increased during 2009 by 2.2% (INE 2010). Therefore, Mexico is also contributing to the increasing threats posed by hydro-meteorological extreme events due to climate change. Figure 15.2 shows the trends in annual and seasonal mean temperature for 1970 to 1999 and the projected future in Mexico (Semarnat 2007). The black curves indicate the means observed from 1960 to 2006, the brown the median and ranges (shading) of the results of the simulations conducted in 15 climate models. The coloured lines show the projections from 2006 onwards with a median (solid line) and ranges (shading) under three selected emissions scenarios of the IPCC (2007a) for 2090–2100. During the rainy season both coasts are exposed to hurricanes (see Fig. 15.3). A modification of precipitation patterns can also be found not only in the global trends, but with a clear monsoon and a dry climate pattern the monthly variations (Fig. 15.3) are crucial for saving lives and infrastructure, especially when both coasts are threatened by hurricanes several times a year (Arreguín et al. 2011; Conagua 2009). Without doubt, the precipitation anomalies have increased during the last decade, which has had serious repercussions. Since the year 2000 the costs of the so-called disasters have increased, and in 2005 alone, the material damages were estimated at almost the same amount as the previous 25 years put together.

Fig. 15.2 Annual abnormality of the mean temperature in Mexico (1960–2005) and projections until the year 2100. Source SEMARNAT-INE (2010)

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Fig. 15.3 Annual abnormality of the monthly precipitation in Mexico (1960–2005) and projections until the year 2100. Source SEMARNAT-INE (2010)

Since 1990, 75 natural hazards have caused about 10,000 deaths and affected millions of other people, with a direct damage of US$ 11.5 billion (around US$ 500 million/year until 2005, with US$ 200 million of indirect costs; Cenapred 2015).

15.4.5 The Societal Outcomes The Societal Outcomes are complex and affect the most vulnerable groups more seriously. Besides the southern and south-eastern part (states of Puebla, Veracruz, Tabasco, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo) being the poorest region in terms of GDP, it is the richest in biodiversity, environmental services and natural resources (Fig. 15.4). The average temperature is 22 °C and less than 10% are mountain areas with lower temperatures (between 10 and 18 °C). The subsoil is rich in oil, carbon, sulphur, fluorite and gas, and Mexico’s most biodiverse fauna and flora are located there because the region gets half of the country’s precipitation in only one quarter of its surface area (Tamayo 2002: 17– 23). Nevertheless, the temporary abundance of water in this region is also creating security challenges due to floods, storms and flash-floods, which seriously affect water, health and livelihood security. The desperate situation is further triggered by the lack of regional development, limited early warning policy and a historical institutional discrimination of this mostly indigenous population. Eighty-four per cent of extreme poor people live in this region. The Index on Human Development (IHD) in Oaxcaca is 0.698, and in Chiapas and Yucatán of 0.762 because one third of the population are without a stable income (Presidencia de la República 2010). These societal outcomes are further analysed in relation to the existing social vulnerability (Coneval 2010) and the new climate change impacts.

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Social Vulnerability and Climate Change Impacts

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Fig. 15.4 Map of Mexico with the division of States. Source INEGI (2016)

15.5

Social Vulnerability and Climate Change Impacts

There are several key processes creating greater social inequity and conflicts related to gender, colour (Afro-American immigrants during the colonial period), ethnicity (original indigenous population), social status (poor and rich, small peasants vs. landlords) and age (small children, young and old people). The impact of poverty is very different in Mexico between women and men; there are eight million women working without any social security or pension and therefore they depend on somebody (family, husband) when they are getting old. Fifteen per cent of women have no access to medical services during childbirth. In Mexico City 10% of women are victims of physical violence, while in rural areas the number of women affected increases substantially up to 66.1% (30.7 million women; INEGI 2016). There are few employment opportunities, and increasing numbers of small farmers get involved in the production of drugs. The lack of education limits further innovative production processes, because 7.6% of women aged over 15 still don’t receive any school training (compared with 4.8% of men) and 32.5% of the indigenous population is without any education. At national level, 51% of the women of working age are getting a job outside their home compared with 81% of the men. In 2008, the largest number of poor young people lived in Chiapas, where 78.8% of young people were classified as poor; 67.4% of young people in Guerrero (which also has the highest criminal rate together with Colima); 64% of young people in Puebla and 61.2% of young people in Oaxaca were also classified as poor. Especially critical is the situation for 5.2 million women, who

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live in extreme poverty (Coneval 2015). The neoliberal policies of presidents Fox (PAN) and Calderon (PAN) increased poverty between 2006 and 2008 from 42.6 to 47.4%, which is equivalent to 6 million more poor people in Mexico. Due to the recent financial crisis and the lack of a proactive policy, the GDP dropped by 6.5% in 2009 (Banco de Mexico 2010), increasing poverty and unemployment even further. In 2014, around half the population (55.3 million) lived in poverty (Coneval 2015) and 84.6% was malnourished, mostly through obesity resulting from the limited availability of nutritious fresh food and consequent reliance on calorific processed products (Ensanut 2012). This social misery is also aggravated by physical violence and the drug war. For the young generation the situation is even more dramatic. About 14.9 million of young people live in poverty and 12.1 million are vulnerable due to the lack of social support. In Mexico, 7.5 million young people are without employment and without an opportunity to study (the so-called nini – neither study, nor work). Of this number, 6 million are young women, whose future is uncertain, perpetuating gender and structural violence and dependency on the traditional patriarchal system (Coneval 2010). Given the regional, age and gender discrimination, Mexico also has numerous explicit and implicit conflicts related to land and resource access, power structure, social inequity and gender discrimination, all of which further deteriorate water and health security. Women own only 18% of the land. The General Assembly of Ejido,10 the decision-making body at local level after the change of the constitution in 1992, very rarely allocates land rights to a woman despite the fact that she has cultivated this land for years after her husband has migrated to the US. This refers to the traditional land tenure system and the prevailing patriarchal mindset among peasants. Tensions also exist in relation to the structure of land distribution and specifically to the availability of water during the dry season. In 2007, a total of 343,021 land conflicts occurred and almost the same number of local water conflicts (Procuraduría Agraria 2008). Of these conflicts, 72.1% were related to issues surrounding the possession or succession of ejidal or communal rights or to the possession of urban plots; 10.6% to problems with the boundaries between ejidos and private property or communal land; and 5.8% the restitution of land, forests and water. In addition 11.48% were conflicts related to issues of ejido membership whereby new members, who have never worked on the land, can be accepted by the Assembly, while small peasants (mostly women) who have tended the land for years can be expelled against their consent. The remaining conflicts belong to the extraction and use of natural resources (mines, resorts, dams). Between 1995 and 2000, the legal advice by the General Agricultural Attorney increased from 31,051 to 78,845 cases after 2008. Further, the involvement of his office in legal disputes rose from 7,886 to 34,283 cases. The number of conflicts is

10

Ejido is the term used for the land that was assigned to peasants after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. In 1992, President Salinas declared the final point of the land reform and stated that no more land would be distributed.

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especially high among the marginal population in Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero, where injustice prevailed, as landlords and corrupt government authorities have taken away the land of the mostly illiterate peasants and indigenous. Further, ecotourism and biopiracy (legally called bio-prospection) are extracting the natural biodiversity for business interests and patents. This has affected the legal rights of the physical and natural patrimony of the indigenous communities. Most homicides in poor states are related to conflicts over land and natural resources, and later to vengeance by affected families when the government fails to put a criminal in jail. The second group of conflicts is related to the extension of and to the quality of the available land. In Mexico, about a quarter of the population (24.3 million inhabitants) lives in rural areas, and in 2008 the active population in the primary sector represented 15.8% of the people that contributed, in conjunction with the agricultural sector, 4.1% to the GDP. Since 1950, both the rural population (1950: 57.4%; 1960: 411.3%; 1970: 41.3%; 1980: 33.7%; 1990: 28.7%; 2000: 25.4%; 2005: 23.5%) and the percentage of the primary sector to the GDP (1942: 20.8%; 1950: 111.2%; 1960: 15.9%; 1970: 11.6%; 1980: 9%; 1990: 7.7%) have been continuously shrinking (INEGI 2010). Soil quality is another aggravating factor. Thirty-six per cent of small farmers produce on 12% of the land and they contribute 10% to the national agricultural production. On the other hand, 8% of agribusiness with high quality irrigated land control 26% of the land and produce 35% of the agricultural output. This group has also benefited from most of the subsidies and government support regarding technological innovation, irrigation efficiency and market support. USDA (2003) claimed that 29% of the Mexican farmers cultivate less than 2 ha and 24% between 2 and 5 ha. The Mexican Ministry of Agriculture (Sagarpa) stated that in the 1970s each person in the rural area accounted for 0.75 ha, while in the year 2000 this average had shrunk to 0.34 ha and it was estimated that this average had further dropped to 0.25 ha by the year 2010. Finally, 92% of the irrigated lands are located in the northern dryland, where 70% of the Gross Domestic Product in the agricultural sector is produced, with an overall efficiency of water use of below 40%. Therefore, agriculture consumes 77% of Mexico’s water reserves. Nevertheless, small-holders, poor peasants, female heads of households and the indigenous – especially those living in marginal mountain regions – have key responsibility for the production and conservation of water and other environmental services, and also for most of the subsistence food production. Particularly difficult for Mexico was the year 2009 during the US and global financial crisis, with a decline of GDP by 7%, the AH1N1 influenza, drought, floods, hurricanes, a reduction in remittances by 15% and a drastic drop in the income from tourism due to the pandemic.

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Restoring Ecosystem Services Improves Water and Health Security

Ecosystem services are supporting all other ecosystem services with the nutrient cycles (MA 2005). They support waste management, detoxify and process harmful products and manage nutrients for food production and ecosystem conservation and restoration. These ecosystem services are also required for provisioning humans and nature with products, such as food, freshwater, rain and the precipitation cycle, clean air, soil, wood, fibre, medicine and atmospheric humidity, among other services. With the increase in the impacts of climate change, the regulation function of environmental services is getting more attention in relation to climate regulation, flood protection, coastal erosion and reefs, together with storm control and mitigation of winds and waves. The regulatory procedures also maintain the purification processes of water, air and soil, mitigate extreme weather conditions and help to restore environmental damage after an extreme hydro-meteorological event. Finally, environmental services are related to cultural material and immaterial values, maintaining the landscape, the holy sites and places for recreation and pleasure, maintaining the psychological stability among persons and fostering more peaceful cohabitation. The supporting, regulating, providing and cultural dimension of ecosystem services are basic factors for health security by supporting a material minimum, offering safe food intake, freedom and choice and social relations that may improve life quality and the creation of social networks. Nevertheless, environmental changes and ecosystem impairment, due to anthropogenic over-exploitation of these ecosystem services, create dramatic effects on water and health security. Greater impacts of climate change are also related to forest clearance and land cover change, land degradation, desertification and the loss of natural soil fertility, the drying out of lakes and wetlands, and a chaotic urbanisation process (see Mexico City; González Reynoso/Zamora Saenz 2011; Domínguez 2011). Biodiversity loss (for instance, during the 1980s the state of Tabasco destroyed about 92% of its tropical rain forest) and the bleaching of coral reefs due to greenhouse gas emissions, acidification of the oceans, and pollution of rivers, lakes and the sea are increasing risks during an extreme event. But landfills and open dumps of garbage also cause direct health impacts though vectors, toxic lixiviation and the development of insects, mice, rats and other dangerous fauna. Floods, heat waves, cold spills, water shortages, landslides, increasing exposure to ultraviolet radiation and intoxication of ecosystems and humans related to pollutants (POPs, organic toxics and emerging organic compound; Cortés/Calderón 2011) are directly affecting health and water security. There also exist ecosystem-mediated impacts, such as the alteration or emergence of risks of infectious diseases. Reduced crop yields associated with poverty, soil depletion, and ignorance have increased malnutrition and the debilitation of the immune system. People get infections and diseases more easily and recover slower. The loss of traditional medicines and the elimination of long-established medical practices,

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together with a reduction in health personnel as a result of privatisation processes, are creating new vulnerabilities, especially in rural areas and among poor people. All these factors influence the cultural impoverishment and affect the community networking, as an increasing number of health specialists are migrating to the USA. In environmental terms, the greater necessity for food, firewood and construction inputs is not only destroying the landscape, but also challenging the equilibrium of biodiversity and its natural capacity for recovery. Among the indirect health and water security aspects, the loss of livelihood related to disasters is important. Temporary and permanent displacements and forced migration often diminish the mental stability of individuals and families, and, confronted with survival threats, community relations often deteriorate. Thus, environmental threats can induce maladaptation and inadequate mitigation processes, increasing the social and environmental risk and sometimes threatening inclusive life quality (slum development in highly risky areas, etc.; Oliver-Smith 2009a, b). Conversely, a critical survival situation may reinforce solidarity at family and community level, thanks to the creation of adaptive practices and local resilience-building.

15.7

A Global Challenge for Equity and Collaboration

In relation to the research questions, the reduction of water resources and stronger and more frequent hydro-meteorological events are affecting health, water and therefore food and the livelihood security of the poor urban and rural people in Mexico. In particular, the highly vulnerable people in rural areas, struggling for survival due to historical poverty and institutional discrimination (Oswald Spring 2011), are most exposed to climate change phenomena and to hunger due to bad harvests and food price hikes. Due to lack of preventive behaviour and limited early warning, they often lose their family members and all their belongings. The societal outcomes and health impacts of the changing water security in Mexico have varied, but the lack of water and its pollution have been crucial factors that have undermined the livelihood and health of entire communities and cities (for instance, the cholera outbreak in Cuautla in the state of Morelos in 1991, when a sewage pipe got broken and drinking water was polluted with vibrio cholerae). The policy responses at national level to the changing water and health conditions have also differed regionally. The pandemic of AH1N1 in 2009 forced the Mexican government to take emergency actions – closing schools, public services, economic activities – which seriously affected the tourist sector and the GDP. Due to international pressure, the country bought millions of doses of vaccines with great difficulty to vaccinate the population. However, the underlying structural factors of the transnational food chain production (pork and chickens) and unsafe sewage management were not addressed. With regard to other health threats related to extreme events such as flash floods, hurricanes and droughts, the health sector mostly responds reactively after dengue or chikungunya fever, diarrheic and skin diseases have emerged.

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With regard to water security, the prevailing Mexican policy has been business-as-usual orientated and still prioritises large public works instead of restoring ecosystem services at local level through reforestation, protection of water bodies, infiltration of aquifers, sewage facilities in situ, taxing excessive water use (forcing people to save water) and controlling the illegal extraction of wells and water. Agriculture wastes water, yet lack of taxation for green water (i.e. rainwater) used in food production means there is no incentive to conserve it. Energy subsidies for pumping blue water (i.e. ground water) from the aquifers benefit northern agribusiness, but have accelerated the intrusion of seawater into the coastal aquifers of Sonora and Baja California. The lack of a transparent budget assignation and expenses at the three levels of government, weak legal reinforcement and massive corruption are key reasons for reactive instead of preventive actions. The lack of trust in the executive and the judicial sectors of government also constrain an integrated bottom-up and top-down resilience policy. The situation of three decades of economic stagnation is triggered by increasing and more severe hydro-meteorological events (Arreguín et al. 2011) in which vulnerable people have often lost all their belongings, due to lack of early warning and institutional discrimination in poor rural and indigenous areas (see disaster after hurricane Stan in 2005 in Chiapas). In Mexico, a crucial factor is the deep mistrust of all social sectors in governmental actions (Latinobarómetro 2010).11 Nevertheless, there are multiple local processes trying to resolve the complex public and human security problems. Even so, an integrative process of participative governance is lacking that may support the creation of resilience, whereby genuine top-down governmental mitigation and bottom-up adaptation efforts may improve health, water and food security. At international level, the two Conventions tabled at the Earth Summit in 1992 (UN Convention on Biodiversity, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), the shortcoming of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and human, health and water security concerns represent complementary tasks for action. However, these activities must be integrated into development goals (eradication of poverty and chronic malnutrition, lack of education and missing reproductive health; Álvarez/Oswald Spring 1993). When these policies are further orientated towards children, young people, and women, especially the illiterate ones, greater resilience at local level could be achieved.

11

In Mexico only 8% of the population believe that Mexican economic policy is good or very good, compared with 38% in Brazil, and 49% consider the situation to be very bad or getting worse. Thirty-three per cent consider crime and public insecurity to be the key concerns. Sixty-five per cent think that the government gives privileges to small groups and only 21% believe that they are governing for everybody. Only 17% are satisfied with the democracy in the country. While 54% want more security, only 11% believe that security policy is good, and 73% feel more insecure in the country and only 14% more secure, due to drug war and its militarisation. Forty-two per cent consider it crucial to combat corruption in the police in order to control crime (Latinobarómetro 2010).

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15.7.1 Widened Understanding of Health and Water Security The Mexican case shows that a widened understanding of health and water security may contribute to strengthen coping strategies with positive effects on human development. Member states of the WHO should reconsider their narrow and state-centred heath security concept and shift to a human-centred focus, including basic preventive and curative health care, especially the delivery of basic health services and reproductive health at local level. Practical education on nutrition, control on advertising of junk food, and taxes on soft drinks with high levels of sugar may drastically reduce the overweight, diabetes, cancer and degenerative illnesses related to the global model of consumerism. The combination of traditional and modern medical and environmental knowledge and the training of local people may support such an integral preventive health strategy in favour of the wellbeing of the people and the restoration of their ecosystems, through which water security is also improved. The proposal of an integrated human, gender and environmental security – a HUGE security with equality, equity and sustainability – requires an intersectorial collaboration among different ministries (finance, environment, social, urban, agriculture and health) for developing a congruent sustainable policy that is linked to social improvement and health security. On the top of the policy agenda is water security in terms of a safe water supply for everybody as a basic human right. This signifies that a rational management must take into account the increasing scarcity of the resource, due to population growth, different hygienic conditions, new development processes and climate change. Agriculture is not only wasting water in irrigation, but also creating diffuse pollution and seawater intrusion into aquifers. In Mexico, the primary sector represents an important potential for saving water, and green agriculture not only helps to restore polluted resources, but would also improve ecosystem services with positive effects on health and water security. Monitoring climate change impacts by national and local governments, and the establishment of an international survey system, could reduce the threats and challenges for water, climate and health. The reduction of environmental destruction and the reestablishment of local epidemic reports can detect the outbreaks of new epidemics (WHO 2002c) and reduce the propagation of preventive diseases (WHO 2002d). Efficient land planning may be able to re-establish the equilibrium among ecosystem services, development processes, recreation, population growth, environmental fragility, urbanisation and the recovery of ecosystems. Mexico is highly exposed to climate change-related risks, which will increase substantially, and health and water security can get lost without preventive policies.

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15.7.2 Health and Water Security: A Complex Policy Challenge From the perspective of health, water and human security, the conjunction of the mentioned natural and socio-economic factors and phenomena from Mexico indicate the complexity of climate change impacts and its societal outcomes. The severity of extreme events related to anthropogenic behaviour can often not be resolved at local or national level. In ethical terms, this requires the cooperation of society as a whole, where not only the values of international equity and solidarity are improved, but also genuine self-protection is trained. There is only one Earth, and health security threats due to climate change, especially pandemics, spread fast across the globe, due to modern communicative means. Simultaneously, the lack of water security, extreme drought periods, and the loss of the rain-fed subsistence agriculture due to higher temperature and irregular rainfall may create massive forced migration into neighbouring countries, where better living conditions or food availability represent an additional push factor. Therefore, resilience-building, preventive learning, early warning and sustainable adaptation processes with health and water security represent key areas for action. For translating this knowledge into actions, three actors are required: a. An organised society from the family to the local community, from the town to the region, from national level to organisations at international level (UN, WHO, FAO, WWF, UNEP, UNDP). Many societal actors, social movements, clubs, NGOs, and leaders have key functions to perform new policy goals for both sustainable development and peaceful solidarity. b. The three economic sectors: agriculture, industry and services, and the business community can play both an impeding as well as an innovative role towards sustainable development goals. Whether the business sector is only guided by greed and the profit motive or becomes a socially and ethically responsible innovative agent depends both on society and the political framework established by the state and the world community. c. The state and inter-state actors, such as international organisations, regimes, and networks, will remain crucial actors for creating policy guidelines, frameworks for innovative policies and measures aimed at and implementing the dual goal of sustainable development and sustainable peace. In synthesis, an integrated widened and deepened security approach, where equality, equity and sustainability is achieved and resource conflicts are negotiated peacefully, may offer humankind, nature, and their complex interactions a sustainable future. This requires a paradigm shift or a sustainability revolution (Oswald Spring/Brauch 2011), where the cornucopian world view of business-as-usual is substituted by a strategy of sustainable development with a HUGE security perspective, both linked to long-term peace negotiations. Only with a change in the mindset towards collaboration – independent of gender, colour and religion – can health and water security be improved. This

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requires a broader framework of a mutually beneficial interrelationship between humans and nature, where ecosystem services are crucial. In a policy setting, the timescale is crucial, and non-action (Stern 2006, 2010) is creating new risks (Beck 2011) for the present and coming generation and for the ecosystem. Technological and financial resources are required in the South and the North to improve simultaneously sustainable management of natural resources and alternative energy resources. Participative governance and solidarity with those who have less may grant water, health and food security to the growing world population. Collective actions can stabilise greenhouse gas emissions below an increase of 1.5–2 °C, a goal adopted by the G8, approved at COP 16 in the Cancun Agreement and adopted globally during COP 21 in the legally nonbinding Paris Agreement of December 2015.

References Aldis, William (2008). “Health security as a public health concept: a critical analysis”, Health Policy and Planning, Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 369–375. Álvarez, Enrique, Úrsula Oswald Spring (1993). “Desnutrición crónica o aguda materno-infantil y retardos en el desarrollo”, Aportes de Investigación 59, CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca. Annan, Kofi (2005). In Larger freedom: development, security and human rights: The Millennium Report, New York, UN. Arreguín Cortés, Felipe, Mario López Pérez, Humberto Marengo Mogollón (2011). “Mexico’s Water Challenges for the 21st Century”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.) Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 21–38. Arreola Mendoza, Laura, Luz María del Razo, Olivier Barsbier, Ma. Consolación Martínez Saldaña, Francisco J.A. González; Fernando Jaramillo Juárez, José Luis Reyes Sánchez (2010). “Potable Water Pollution with Heavy Metals, Arsenic and Fluorides and its Relation to the Development of Kidney Chronic Illness in the Infant Population of Aguascalientes”, in Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.) Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 231–238. Avelar González, Francisco Javier, Elsa Marcela Ramírez López, Ma. Consolación Martínez Saldaña, Alma Lilián Guerrero Barrera, Fernando Jaramillo Juárez (2011). “Water quality in the State of Aguascalientes and its effects in the population’s health, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.) Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 217–230. Banco de Mexico (2010). “Statistical data” https://www.banxico.org.mx/. Barkin, David (2011). “Lack of governance in urban water processes in Mexico”, in Oswald Spring, Úrsula (Ed.) Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 379–394. Beck, Ulrich (2011). “Living in and Coping with World Risk Society”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.) Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security - Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 11–16.

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IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Latinobarómetro (2010). Informe 2010. Latinobarómetro, Santiago de Chile www. latinobarómetro.org. Leaning, Jennifer (2009). “Health Security for the 21st century: Conceptualisation in Medicine and Health Sciences”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 541–552. MA [Millenium Ecosystem Assessment] (2005). Ecosystems and the Human Well-Being, Washington, D.C., Island Press. Negrete, Layda, Negrete Hernández (2011). Presunto Culpable, Film, Mexico, D.F., CIDE. OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] (1999). Guidance for Evaluating Human Assistance in Complex Emergencies, Paris, OCDE. OCHA [United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] (1999). OCHA Orientation Handbook on Complex Emergencies E:\Conflictos ambientales\Complex emergencies\OCHAORIENTATION HANDBOOKON COMPLEX EMERGENCIES.mht. Ogata, Sadako, Amartya Sen (2003). Human Security Now, New York, Commission on Human Security, UN. Oliver-Smith, Anthony (2009a). “Nature, Society, and Population Displacement. Toward an Understanding of Environmental Migration and Social Vulnerability”, Intersections Vol. 8, Bonn, UNU-EHS. Oliver-Smith, Anthony (2009b). “Sea Level Rise and the Vulnerability of Coastal Peoples Responding to the Local Challenges of Global Climate Change in the 21st Century”, Intersections, Vol. 7, Bonn, UNU-EHS. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2007a). “Políticas Alimentarias”, in José Luís Calva (Ed.) Derechos y Políticas Sociales, Mexico, D.F., Ed. Cámara Diputados, Miguel Ángel Porrúa-UNAM, pp. 231–254. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2007b). “Human, Gender and Environmental Security: A HUGE Challenge”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.) International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Encyclopedia on Life Support System/UNESCO, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2008). Gender and Disasters. Human, Gender and Environmental Security: A HUGE Challenge, Bonn, Source, No. 8, UNU-EHS. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009a). “A HUGE Gender Security Approach: Towards Human, Gender and Environmental Security”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.) Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1165–1190. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2009b). “Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Challenge”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 473–502. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2010a). “Cambio climático, conflictos sobre recursos y vulnerabilidad social”, in Gian Carlo Delgado et al. (Eds.) México frente al Cambio Climático. Retos y Oportunidades, Mexico, D.F., CCA-CEIICH-PINCC-PUMA, UNAM, pp. 51–82. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2010b). “Towards a Sustainable Health Policy in the Anthropocene”, IHDP Update Issue 3, 2009, pp. 18–24. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2011). “Social Vulnerability, Discrimination, and Resilience-building in Disaster Risk Reduction”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.) Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1169–1188. Oswald Spring, Úrsula, Hans Günter Brauch (2009). “Securitizing Water”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.) Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 177–205.

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Chapter 16

Agroecology for Food Sovereignty and Security

16.1

Introduction

Between now and 2050 the world population will grow by one third from 7.8 to 9.8 million people, which will require 70% more food with the present conditions of consumption.1 In addition, the improvement of the income in Asia has increased in a single decade the demand of beef in 40%. Nonetheless, one kilo of beef requires 15,000 litres of water, while one kilogram of corn or wheat uses 10 times less. The 20 billion of chickens, 1.5 billion of cows and 1 billion of sheep consume 30% of the world’s food, basically grains. In addition, livestock generated 14.5% of the greenhouse gases in 2016 (FAO 2017). Overexploitation of fishing by 90% has increased the pressure on the production on land and only developing countries eat insects, rich in proteins. These expectations are aggravated by the growing inequality in the world. Every day 24,000 people, mostly young children, die from hunger (FAO 2018). Around 80% of the estimated hunger is concentrated in rural areas, where it is more frequent and severe, especially among children and women. Further, malnutrition affects the health and well-being of more than one third of the world’s population. Complex malnutrition cases are recurrent within adolescent mothers, whose conditions negatively affect their health and that of the foetus. Similar adverse malnutrition befalls fertile mothers who become pregnant while still breast-feeding. The present neoliberal model of concentration of wealth has limited the efficient fight against hunger and poverty, but has also generated a severe malnutrition, due to industrialised and fast food. The presence of hunger and famine, but also of obesity and malnutrition have become a central demand for human security, since inadequate nutrition directly affects the health of people and the survival of entire

1

Text translated from a conference given by the author at the Institute of Economic Research, UNAM in Mexico City during October 2016 and was updated for this volume.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_16

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communities. It also establishes a bridge with environmental security, where the productivist models2 have depredated natural resources with the abuse of agrochemicals, monocultures, transgenic seeds and land use changes, with the consequent deforestation, loss of biodiversity, deterioration of ecosystem services and water. Confronted with old and new threats, this chapter analyses critically the new food paradigm, linking the food production-commercialisation-cooking and eating with environment, human wellbeing, nutrition and national sovereignty concerns. Especially, child health is a great concern. “Globally, anaemia affects 1.62 billion people, which corresponds to 24.8% of the population. The highest prevalence is in preschool-age children with 47.4%, and the lowest prevalence is in men (12.7%)” (WHO 2009). The population group with the greatest number of individuals affected are 468.4 million non-pregnant women. There are 293 million children of four years of age and 305 million of five years or more, which suffer from anaemia and more than 164 million of elderly are affected by this iron deficiency (WHO 2009). This lack of iron is a key nutritional element that produces lack of energy, as happens with children who arrive at school without breakfast. But these children also have deficiencies in their learning process and concentration, because they require sources of carbohydrates and proteins, which are two of the elements that are included in a healthy diet.

16.1.1 Structure of the Chapter After this short introduction, the chapter starts with some research questions (16.1.2). Later it explores conceptually the importance of food and nutrition for a healthy human life (16.2). An analysis of the differences between food security and food sovereignty offers theoretically alternative ways to overcome the present crisis of under and malnutrition (16.3) also in poor and climate-threatened countries. Hunger is not only a lack of access to food (16.4.1), but often also the result of an inadequate intake of industrialised food, which produces also enormous amount of waste. This organic garbage pollutes further other recyclable products, while organic waste could be composted towards natural fertilizers (16.4.2). To combat

2

Nestlé has proposed in 2001 a new productivist model, which is overcoming the green revolution that has stagnated, due to the high prices of hydrocarbons, the contamination of water, soil and air by agrochemicals and their negative effects on human health and ecosystems. The new paradigm, also called life sciences or precision farming is promoted by transnational enterprises, who control GMO-seeds, agrochemicals, storage, supermarket chains and the finances. These enterprises are generating a productivist-commercial monopoly, in which genetic modified organisms, health and food transformation technologies are integrated in clusters for the production and transformation of food. In the view of this author, only green-organic agriculture or agroecology offers an alternative model, where environmental services are combined with food production and where peasants, women and indigenous people are finding alternatives for their survival in rural areas.

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Introduction

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hunger, malnutrition, overweight, chronic health problems and environmental deterioration, the chapter studies both models of agriculture (16.5): the dominant industrialised agribusiness in the hands of multinational corporations (16.5.1) and reviews shortly the environmental destruction produced by this productivist model (16.5.2). The alternative model of agroecology or green agriculture (16.5.3) is able to adapt better to worsening climate change condition. The chapter concludes (16.6) that only a transversal gender perspective with green agriculture may be capable to offer the world and especially vulnerable social groups enough nutritional and healthy food, when confronted with uncertain climate change conditions. Agroecology allows further countries to consolidate its food sovereignty and restore at the same time natural resources such as water, soil, biodiversity and air. Thus green agriculture that involves women and men can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and represents a socially and environmentally accepted alternative to produce food and to care about the health of humankind and nature.

16.1.2 Research Question How could an agroecological green agriculture that prioritise women, indigenous, peasants, fishers and small-scale herders offers a decentralised food culture to overcome the present malnutrition and the food waste? Which are the necessary political and social tools that enable governments, social organisations and urban dweller to overcome the present food crisis, produce nutritious food items and recycle and reuse the organic waste for recovering deteriorated soils? A key question is how could an organised society committed to sustainability, together with its government resist the pressures from the productivist agriculture, which is manipulating governments and consumers to achieve their so-called scientifically industrialised food? Further, especially in the poor tropical countries, climate change is threatening agriculture and fishery. Erratic rainfalls, extreme events (cold spill, heat waves, hurricanes and bushfires), salinization of coastal areas due to sea level rise, drying out of surface water and overexploited groundwater are reducing yields and harvests, which are limiting the available food for fast growing population. Thus, which are the necessary agricultural changes required that are able to overcome famine, undernutrition and malnutrition globally and especially in these climate-sensible regions?

16.2

Conceptual Considerations on Food and Nutrition

Food is a generic term for edible vegetal and animal organisms, whether complete or partial – for instance, flowers, fruits, leaves, shoots, roots, sheaths, milk, eggs, muscles, and inner organs, such as the liver or kidneys. When eating food, the nutrients found in these products require a process of assimilation, called nutrition.

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Nutrition refers to the process through which food is absorbed by living organisms. Commencing with the act of feeding, the process continues with digestion, where proteins are broken down into amino acids. Subsequently, intestines are able to absorb nutrients, which, once integrated, are then distributed throughout the bloodstream for assimilation and metabolic transformation into each cell. The last stage is excretion of urine, faecal material and toxins. Food and nutrition are constitutive processes of organic functioning. They are often confused, since they are intertwined. It is the nourishment found in food that, after consumption, is assimilated through the process of nutrition in order to sustain life. Food serves three basic functions for most living beings. Firstly, food creates energy required in the absorption and translocation of nutrients necessary for growth, sustenance, and biological and physical activities of the organism. Secondly, food supplies indispensable agents in the synthetic processes inside the cells. Thirdly, food purveys the materials – structural and catalytic chemical components of living cells – that are built through anabolism. When one of these functions is absent, living organisms substitute the deficiency with the other functions. For this reason, eating is a biological need that determines a person’s quality of life, their growth and their level of health. In physiological terms, in order to function optimally for a living organism, cells require about one hundred different substances, located in the natural environment. The key function of nutrition is to maintain the structure and the control of the metabolism. In general, there are chemical components with high molecular weight (proteins, sugar, fibres, salts, starches) that disintegrate in nutrients in the intestinal tract. Once released they are absorbed through the bloodstream by the cells. The essential chemical elements required in the human body, according to age and body weight are: 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen, 2% calcium, 1.1% phosphorus, 0.25% sulphur, 0.20% potassium, 0.15% sodium and chloride, 0.05% magnesium, 0.004% iron and traces of copper, manganese, zinc, cobalt, silicon, molybdenum and some others (Oswald 2008). However, food cannot be reduced only to physiological processes. It is a holistic experience where pleasure, senses (smell, taste, touch, and sight), aesthetics, communication, norms and social taboos intervene. Food culture has generated rituals, ceremonies and is capable of reinforcing cultural identity of a population, which may be consolidated within a determined territory (Oswald 2008). Thus food security goes beyond the physiological-natural processes of nutrition and involves social, cultural, economic and identity factors that make up a holistic process of life and define the food culture of a nation or a region. Enough food was a key process for migration from the early homo sapiens from Africa to Europe, West Asia and elsewhere. Food was also a key element for conflicts and war and a tool to submit the enemy (Buckingham 1827; see India and Mesopotamia), but was also used during WW II and is still present in the policy to North Korea. Food was also an item for interchange and market, often to avoid conflicts (Meillasoux 1999). Today exist stock markets for future prices of food commodities, which have speculated on the prices of basic foods, increased costs and, therefore, produced malnutrition and hunger. The political repercussions of the

16.2

Conceptual Considerations on Food and Nutrition

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price hike of wheat and bred pushed people during the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia to the streets and the protests spread over to multiple other Arab countries and elsewhere. Therefore, food is a very sensitive issue from the beginning of human species until today. International organisations such as FAO have tried to avoid conflicts, famines and unrests about food by promoting food aid for hungry country, in order to improve their food security. This food trade, also called ‘virtual water’ by Allen (2003), obliges importing countries to pay back its foreign debts. In 1972 Henry Kissinger also announced the ‘food power’ as a new North American policy to control food-scarce country and submit them to their hegemonic interests.

16.3

Food Security Versus Food Sovereignty

16.3.1 Food Security Food security is the technical and political term to explain “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 1996). However, this food security definition precisely has not allowed an important number of people to improve their nutrition during the past six decades, when this UN organisation promoted from 1960 on the eradication of hunger and malnutrition. On the contrary, fast food, genetically modified organisms (GMO; Oswald 2011), polluted environments with toxic agrochemicals (Ávelar et al. 2011), meat with hormones (Jeong et al. 2010) and industrialised food (WHO 2002) with trans-feds are increasing obesity and causing degenerative diseases such as heart and brain strokes, diabetes, cancer and other diseases related to a weak immune system (WHO 2015).

16.3.2 Food Sovereignty Confronted with this cruel reality of longstanding hunger, La Via Campesina (LVC 2005) developed an alternative concept of food sovereignty, which understood that women are key food producers worldwide, but are without official and private support. To overcome hunger and malnutrition, improve livelihood and overcome the discrimination of women, some additional policies are necessary, such as: • the basic right to consume safe, sufficient, and culturally accepted food produced with native seeds locally; • access to land, credits and basic production means, especially also for women, girls, indigenous and peasants with an access to land, water, native seeds, credits, technical support and financial facilities for all participants; • local production and trade of agricultural products in local markets;

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• inclusion of small land holders (indigenous, women, and peasants) in regional and national rural policy and public decision-making processes, which focus on local sustainability for healthy food and safe livelihood; • cheap and healthy basic food in urban poor neighbourhoods and promotion of urban orchards, green roofs, composting of organic waste and rain water harvesting; • clean water and sewage facilities in villages and towns with recycling of treated sewage water in agriculture; • promotion and interchange of locally produced seeds, which are adapted to the present environmental conditions; • the rights of regions and nations to establish compensations and subsidies to protect farmers from international dumping and genetically modified food through importation; • policies that link environmental services, agriculture, territorial planning, carbon sequestration with a nutritious and safe food for everybody; • the obligation of national and local governments to improve food reserves in the case of drought or crop failure, what has now become more frequent due to climate change; • governments should guarantee adequate nutrition for babies, infants, and pregnant women to overcome chronic undernourishment and permanent early-life brain damages in children (Álvarez/Oswald 1993); • insurance for reduction or loss of harvests due to climate change impacts with early warning system, technical support and adapted seeds for higher temperature y more intensive droughts; As a consequence of these food sovereignty policies each citizen should be granted his or her basic rights to life and livelihood, which includes also the right to stay in the rural area with local productive opportunities (Oswald 2009) and not be obliged to migrate (Passel 2008). However, this understanding of food sovereignty is continuously threatened by multinational food companies and their productivist model. Some international organisations are also promoting or producing new food products based on biotechnology, toxic agrochemicals and veterinarian pharmaceutical inputs, without long-term studies on their potential health impacts, the environmental deterioration and the increase of greenhouse gases. FAO (2013a) proposed a climate-smart agriculture approach to deal with growing climate change impacts. Based on IPCC (2014), practices of adaptation, mitigation and resilience could produce co-benefits, so agriculture may change their agrochemical abuse and the overuse of water in order to maintain natural soil fertility and reduce water use. The same report noted further that women produce more than half of the world’s food for human consumption, thus their approach explained the existing practices of women in orchards, where domestic organic waste was recycled and grey water reused or rain harvested. Peasant movements rejected the FAO approach on climate-smart agriculture (2013a), insisting that their primordial technological fix (LCV 2010) without an integrated and gender specific understanding of the prevalent land tenure, the

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Food Security Versus Food Sovereignty

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gender violence and the androgenic governmental conditions, is unable to promote food sovereignty for the most needed people. Social, indigenous, rural women and peasant movements have increasingly used this agroecological approach (LVC 2011) to fight and defence their rural territories against the interests of the corporate capital for mining, dams, tourism and urbanisation (Oswald/Serrano 2019). This reterritorialising of spaces with abundant natural resources through mega-projects is destroying the cultural identity of the small-scale producers and is another way how the corporate capital takes away fertile land from poor people for monoculture plantations, land grabbing and development projects (Rosset 2011). Therefore, to eradicate hunger and avoid future famines within the present climate uncertainty and changing natural conditions, the food sovereignty approach of La Via Campesina, ETC, Grain (LVC et al. 2016), based on agroecological green agriculture is the safest way for granting healthy and culturally accepted food also to the poorest people in the world.

16.4

Hunger in a World of Abundance and Waste

Famine, undernourishment, malnutrition and obesity are part of the present complex conditions, where globally almost half of the produced food finish as garbage. Further, uncertainty of prevalent climate conditions, water and soil deterioration and a growing population are pressuring the food availability globally and also in highly affected regions.

16.4.1 Food Crisis and Hunger FAO (2008, 2018) together with other UN organisations established a diagnosis on the state of food security and nutrition globally in 2018 and the evolution during the last decade. They found that 821 million (one out of every nine people in the world) are undernourished and nearly 151 million children under five (22%) are affected by stunting, thus exposed to morbidity and mortality. Further, an increasing number of adults estimated in 672 million is obese and also 38 million children start to have overweight. “Food insecurity contributes to overweight and obesity, as well as undernutrition, and high rates of these forms of malnutrition coexist in many countries. The higher cost of nutritious foods, the stress of living with food insecurity and physiological adaptations to food restriction help explain why food insecure families may have a higher risk of overweight and obesity” (FAO 2018: XII). Nutrition is highly susceptible to climate change impacts, which are stronger in the tropics, where also undernourishment is higher and public resources more limited to support starving or affected people. This unstable food conditions often also led to local conflicts, which could spread with lack of water or floods to

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neighbour countries, affecting the food security of a whole region (see the Sahel region and especially Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan and Mali). Most of African countries indicate an increasing level of undernourishment and the food situation is also worsening in South America, while Asia has improved the nutritional conditions of their people. The official data from FAO (2018) insisted also that with this tendency of deterioration of food conditions, a key goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2015) cannot be achieved. FAO (2018: XIV) insisted: Climate variability and extremes are a key driver behind the recent rises in global hunger and one of the leading causes of severe food crises. The changing nature of climate variability and extremes is negatively affecting all dimensions of food security (food availability, access, utilization and stability), as well as reinforcing other underlying causes of malnutrition related to child care and feeding, health services and environmental health. The risk of food insecurity and malnutrition is greater nowadays because livelihoods and livelihood assets – especially of the poor – are more exposed and vulnerable to changing climate variability and extremes. What can be done to prevent this threat from eroding the gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition in recent years? Without increased efforts, there is a risk of falling far short of achieving the SDG target of hunger eradication by 2030.

To achieve the SDG also by the least developed countries UN General Assembly has declared 2016–2025 as the ‘Nutrition Decade’, where all governments, economic and social sectors should strengthen their efforts to achieve a more healthier and safer food culture. Undernourishment and overweight—malnutrition in all its form—should be eradicated by joint efforts. Confronted further with climate change threats only a sustainable resilience for food security and nutritional sovereignty may allow everybody to participate in a brighter and safer future. Without any doubt safe and nutritional food is also a basic human right, thus government and society should be obliged to collaborate together for the aims of this ‘Nutrition Decade’. Often the neo-Malthusian pessimist insist that the present population growth impedes to allow to achieve the SDG and that the planet has not enough resources to feed 9 of 10 billion people in 2050. However, food insecurity is a complex process, where access to food inside the household is one of the problem, where especially children, pregnant and breast-feeding women get often not enough quantity to nourish their baby. Within the present patriarchal family structures, still men are the first to serve the high quality of food, letting children and women stunting. A second factor is related to the quality of food, where soft drinks contain clean water, but with a high amount of sugar. The increase of this bottled water limits the intake of protein, vitamins and minerals, while sugar give enough calories for a moment, but produce metabolic adaptation and in children soon diabetes mellitus (WHO/UNEP 2015). The lack of continuity of enough and adequate nutritious food is a third factor that aggravates food insecurity. Beside physical effects, insufficient intake and disordered patterns of eating generate also anxiety, stress and depression. Women are generally responsible to grant enough and adequate quality of permanent food on the table. However, the propaganda and publicity of industrialised food in TV, shops and informal media often disorient women with low level of education.

16.4

Hunger in a World of Abundance and Waste

401

They buy this industrialised high-caloric and low-nutrition food, thinking that their family would get healthy food, when in reality they buy expensive low-nutrition foods, which produce micronutrient deficiency, child stunting and wasting and overweight and obesity. It is crucial that governments and schools explain everybody this fake propaganda. Simultaneously, responsible institution should promote locally healthy and available food, which can be bought with the existing limited economic resources or which can be produced in the orchards to grant the family a nutritious food with all the required microelements.

16.4.2 Waste of Food There is still enough food on earth. Between a quarter and a third of the food produced in the world is lost or wasted (WB 2011), half of the waste are cereals. Latin America is the most biodiverse region in the world and has a great future. However, the food losses represent 6% of the world. Especially serious are fresh products, which get lost in 28% in consumption, 28% in production, 22% in handling and storage, 17% in distribution and 6% during processing. Nevertheless, in Latin America still 47 million people (7.9%) suffer from hunger (GHI 2014). All this waste could feed 30 million people (FAO 2013b) and overcome their undernourishment. There are several governmental efforts on the way to reduce these losses in post-harvest, storage, transportation, marketing and distribution. To control this food waste, for instance Mexico has developed an Index of National Food Waste, which is the “weighted sum of the waste for each food item and the weighted factor is the share of each of this food in the diet of the people” (FAO 2015b: 26). Several additional studies indicated that food waste could be drastically reduced, but need to overcome: low standards in the quality of the product; inefficient administration of inputs and products; bad practices in the handling of inputs and products; inadequate transport, distribution and storage systems; lack of adequate infrastructure; use of inconvenient packing and packaging; staff without training; over-ripe products; excessive purchases; improper handling of merchandise; product mistreated or in poor condition during the sale and the mixture of products in good condition with lower quality products. Additionally, monopolistic trade and transportation, lack of infrastructure, local or regional markets, and inadequate storage systems have increased food waste. By the weak controls of governments in the regulation of the market, intermediaries have appropriated the process of coupling, storage and distribution. They own warehouses, cooling facilities, transportation, credits and supply the product to distribution chains throughout the year. They take advantage of the variability in international prices to increase the price of merchandise, thanks to their access to international and national databanks, while at the same time they are manipulating wholesale prices (Torres et al. 2012). This process of monopolies generates a contradiction: on the one hand there is a huge waste in food and on the other, there exist hunger. Faced with this situation,

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social groups and local governments have recovered 190,000 tons of food in Latin America, which were distributed to 12,700 organizations in 15 countries (FAO 2015a). Sixty per cent of this possible waste was recovered in Mexico, through creative actions such as the Food Bank. Perishable and non-perishable products from the food industry, commercial chains, markets and supply centres, agricultural producers and hotels have collaborated and these NGOs have distributed this food to the poorest urban areas. Additionally, in the Global South corporate business and civil society have participated with donations of infrastructure to reduce the food loss. They collaborated in training, nutritional support for children, food donation, general support and volunteering, which has made possible to reduce the extreme poverty in urban areas and the child malnutrition in schools through school breakfasts and lunches. In addition, this voluntary work allowed to shorten the life cycle of perishable products and thus reduced substantially the losses. However, the structural problem of the persistent undernourishment and malnutrition were not addressed with these actions nor the food sovereignty for a country.

16.5

Corporate Agriculture Versus Green Agriculture

Two basic agricultural systems dominate globally today. One is related to the corporate agriculture in the hands of multinational enterprises and the other is the agroecological green agriculture. The industrialised agriculture has produced during the last six decade serious environmental impacts (Cosgrove/Rijsberman 2002) such as soil erosion (FAO 2013a), water pollution by agrochemical effluents (Avelar et al. 2011), accelerated depletion of aquifers (Rangel et al. 2011), destruction of the existing genetic diversity (IPBES 2018), pollution of food (Cortés/ Calderón 2011), which has created serious challenge to public health (WHO 2009). On the other hand, organic food production was maintained by small scale farmers, livestock grower and fishers, where women have played a key role in producing healthy organic food for their families. This subchapter compares both models of food production and its impact on human health and nutrition (FAO 2018).

16.5.1 Industrialised Corporate Agriculture Mexico is the cradle of the ‘green revolution’, which globally created the productivist model (Land/Heaseman 2004). It uses improved or genetic modified seeds, massively agrochemicals, mechanization and irrigation, which caused pollution and depletion of aquifers (Oswald 2011) and 15 of the 24 Mexican ecosystem services are seriously deteriorated. Political-economic processes in the Global South, free trade agreements and abandonment of peasant production have eliminated peasants from the productive process (Cord/Rodríguez 2015), and have

16.5

Corporate Agriculture Versus Green Agriculture

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consolidated transnational monopolies with speculation and agricultural land grabbing (IPCC 2014). Free Trade Agreements have reduced tariff barriers (Ackerman/Gallagher 2008), but they have not allowed in these southern countries equitable access in terms of trade to the developed markets. In addition, subsidies in industrialised countries have distorted international grain prices and financial capital has speculated with basic foods (Wright 2014). Likewise, biofuels have sharpened competition for land, water, investments and food and as of 2011, half of the corn was used in the US for bioethanol (REN21 2015).

16.5.2 Environmental Deterioration FAO (2015a) reports that tropical deforestation is 8.5% higher during the present decade than during the 1990s and 50,000 living beings are gone annually in the world due to the loss of their natural habitat. In addition, the ability of animals and plants to adapt to climate change is very diverse and not all species will be able to live in conditions of greater heat and water scarcity (IPCC 2014). Global warming affects the growth of plants and animals and the velocity and reach of movements is very different among plants and animals. IPCC (2014) estimates the maximum speed per decade in trees around 17 km, in rodents 30 km, in primates 22 km, among plant feeding insects between some to several thousand kilometres e.g. the case of monarch butterflies. Fresh water mollusc can move from 10 to 100 km and the range of carnivorous mammals shifts between 10 and thousands of kilometres. Natural forests, mangroves, wetlands, coastal lagoons and agricultural crops assimilate greenhouse gases from the air and mitigate the impact of climate change. The conservation of protected natural areas, payments for environmental services and ecosystem restoration is not only helping to protect the biodiversity (Durán et al. 2007), but assimilate CO2 from the air to the soil. Healthy natural areas and coastal marine zones should be protected to maintain their capacity of mitigation of greenhouse gases. An area covered with original vegetation increases further the infiltration of rainwater, reduces torrential avenues and limits landslides, as well as purifies air and traps CO2. In cultural terms, these conserved and protected natural areas promote local exchange of environmental goods, generate natural reserves of oxygen, serve for rest, promote ecotourism and culture, improve the infiltration of water to aquifers and limits flash floods. However, as the five regional assessment reports from IPBES (2018) indicate, the world has lost 130 million hectares of rainforest from 1990 on and the Americas must care about the remaining 40% of biodiversity. However, Brazil had changed between 2003 and 2013 the natural land use toward agriculture in 3.5 million hectares, destroying the crucial habitat for the most biodiverse country in the world. The projections in Asia Pacific indicate the eradication of the fish population in 2045 and America has lost 95% of the high grass prairies, 72% of the dry forest and 85% of the Atlantic forests since 1970.

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Confronted with the global threats of climate change and the anthropogenic destruction of the natural resources, which could mitigate the negative outcomes, new priorities among the most vulnerable people, generally rural women and head of families, were promoted by La Via Campesina (LVC 2010, 2011). This social organisation is worldwide supporting small farmers, fishers and has from the beginning on endorsed a strict gender equity in their governmental body, where also a quarter are represented by young women and men. Their key concern is food sovereignty for the most vulnerable people and therefore they have promoted an agroecological production, called also green agriculture.

16.5.3 Green or Agroecological Agriculture The sustainability and resilience of this agroecological production are achieved through the diversity and the complexity of agricultural systems. Most orchards and small plots of land cultivate different crops and rotate the various products after each cycle. Agroforestry allows simultaneously incomes from forest and food production, often complemented with the use of native seeds and the local breeds of livestock. The produced organic waste in the field, animal manure and effluents of biodigesters are the natural ingredients for a nutritious composting of this waste. This compost increases the organic nutrients in the soil, stimulates the biological activity of the soil and intensifies the water retention capacity, which reduce the water requirements. Healthy plants are also able to combat naturally different diseases and the policultivation in this small plots limits most of the spreads of plagues. Laughton (2017) has analysed systematically small farms production in less than 20 ha in Great Britain. She insisted: “Until now, little research has been conducted into the productivity and viability of small-scale, agroecological farms in the UK. This study shows that they deserve closer attention by both policy makers and academics as they simultaneously address many of the challenges facing twenty-first century food production, including UK provision of vegetables and fruit, fulfilling employment opportunities, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and food waste, and the re-building of rural communities.” However, most male public functionaries in governments and international organisations (e.g. FAO) still promote the industrialised agribusiness model. They often depend also on the foreign currency from export of prime material, such is the case of soya in Argentina and Brazil or cacao in Ghana. In the past, they were also convinced by the theory of international beneficial terms of trade called theoretically ‘comparative advantages’. Governments assumed that it was cheaper to import from the Global North the inexpensive basic grains and export globally higher valuated agricultural products such as meat, tropical fruits, berries etc. Nevertheless, a drastic price rise in 2006 of basic grains, due to droughts and the massive use of corn for biofuel, created artificial scarcity (FAO 2008). The myths of ‘comparative advantages’ was destroyed and worldwide protests against price hikes of basic food

16.5

Corporate Agriculture Versus Green Agriculture

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products emerged, creating political instability, speculation and food insecurity (Oswald 2007). In all these top-down policy local small farmers and women in the Global South were not consulted and mostly abandoned in their productive activities. During decades of this agricultural crisis based on the ‘comparative advantages’ they tried to survive on their small plots of land, reducing the costs of production and trying to recover their loss of natural soil fertility in order to produce their subsistence crops. Frequently, men migrated into cities or neighbouring countries (Passel 2008) with better economic conditions and women had to resolve simultaneously the income, the food by the subsistence agriculture, the education of their children and the support of the extended families, especially the elderly (Oswald et al. 2014). In the Global South, women and most small peasant did not get any financial or technical support from their governments and technical advice for their subsistence production. Confronted with increasing hunger and malnutrition, La Via Campesina deepened in their food sovereignty approach and promoted together with researchers in Latin America the agroecological approach for small-scale agriculture also called green agriculture. Most small producers learnt through peasant organisations and women’s groups their agroecological technologies. Generally for male producers complemented this subsistence approach with additional jobs as day labourer in agricultural farms or in urban settlements. For women, the consolidation of orchards gave them the possibility to account for safe and fresh vegetables and fruits in their garden, beside all their other tasks in household, education and caring. These small scale green agricultural production is adding further value to their local production by marketing directly or barter for other products. Women often process their products into cheese, juices, yoghurt, conserves, etc. In suburban contexts, these small-scale producers sell vegetable and fruit boxes for regular delivery with their seasonal products. Their income has allowed some of them to establish in a greenhouse a sustainable agriculture and offer permanently healthy food to urban dwellers. Additionally, farmers’ markets and local governments supported organic food marketing improved the incomes of these peasant women, while customers get high quality sustainable food. La Via Campesina is promoting among their associates diversified courses on local campsites to train small producers. “For the social movements that make up La Via Campesina, the concept of agroecology goes much farther that just ecological-productive principles. In addition to these, LVC incorporates social, cultural and political principles and goals into its concept of agroecology” (Machín Sosa et al. 2010: 16), where gender equity is a crucial policy. Altieri/Toledo (2010: 163) insisted in their study that: An assessment of various grassroots initiatives in Latin America reveals that the application of the agroecological paradigm can bring significant environmental, economic and political benefits to small farmers and rural communities as well as urban populations in the region. The trajectory of the agroecological movements in Brazil, the Andean region, Mexico, Central America and Cuba and their potential to promote broad-based and sustainable agrarian and social change is briefly presented and examined. We argue that an emerging threefold ‘agroecological revolution’, namely, epistemological, technical and social,

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is creating new and unexpected changes directed at restoring local self-reliance, conserving and regenerating natural resource agrobiodiversity, producing healthy foods with low inputs, and empowering peasant organizations. These changes directly challenge neoliberal modernization policies based on agribusiness and agroexports while opening new political roads for Latin American agrarian societies.

16.6

Some Conclusive Comments

Going back to the former research questions, without any doubt agroecology or green agriculture, that prioritise women, indigenous, peasants, fishers and small-scale herders offers a decentralised food culture, a healthy food intake with positive nutritional repercussion in children and an empowerment of women in rural and suburban areas. Retaken not only by social organisations, but also by governments, agroecology would allow most southern countries, which depend still from agricultural production, to overcome the present malnutrition and the food waste. Nevertheless, most governments still think in industrialised productive strategies and most have neglected the potential to support women in their orchards to grant safe and healthy food to their families. Also in urban contexts, agriculture on roofs, in balcony and vertically would allow multiples poor urban dwellers to eliminate the present malnutrition and the dependency of imported, often genetic modified food products. La Via Campesina (2010, 2011, 2016) has shown globally the necessary political and social tools that enable governments, social organisations and urban dwellers to overcome the present food crisis, produce nutritious food items and recycle and reuse the organic waste for recovering deteriorated soils. As IPCC (2014) insisted, co-benefits not only reduce greenhouse gases, but reduce the costs for healthy food, allow to compost organic waste and reduce the recollection of waste, which could be then easier recycled. It increase the health of the family, establishes emotional links among children and parents with the nature and reduce the free time of children in front of electronic tools. Nonetheless, there is the pressure on governments and through propaganda on parents to buy the industrialised and processed food. Most country have established studies and understood that malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart and brain strokes are related to this productivist food intake. Soft drinks could be easy eliminated with an effort in the Global South to provide safe drinking water to every household, drainage and sewage facilities for liquid waste water and recycling the treated water in agricultural fields. The scientific myth of artificially enriched milk, bread, tortillas and specially developed food items have increased malnutrition and not produced the offered healthy body. As the subchapter of nutrition has explained in the agroecological food are enough proteins, carbohydrates, natural feds, minerals and essential amino acid for a healthy development of children and a safe life for adults.

16.6

Some Conclusive Comments

407

La Via Campesina and their regional organisation have also given an example how an organised society could get committed to sustainability. This peasant and environmental organisation may support also their governments to resist the pressures from the productivist agriculture, by eliminating the manipulation of their so-called scientific industrialised food. The propaganda in mass media, but especially the industrialised food items should get a very simple label. In Chile and Ecuador each industrialised product has colours from red (very high), yellow (medium) and green (low or not existent) of sugar, fed and carbohydrates. The red products should be taken with care and the yellow only in special occasion, while the green ones in the three analysed categories represent a healthy food product. This very simple advice will explain also illiterate persons how to avoid food with negative impacts on health, which is especially crucial for children. In higher developed country additional nutritious information could be given, so people also know if the product is organic, contain genetic modified organisms, dangerous agrochemicals, trans-fed or artificial flavours, etc. Further, especially in the poor tropical countries, climate change is threatening agriculture and fishery. Erratic rainfalls, extreme events (cold spill, heat waves, hurricanes and bushfires), salinization of coastal areas due to sea level rise, drying out of surface water and overexploited groundwater are reducing yields and harvests, which are limiting the available food for their fast growing population. Thus, which are the necessary agricultural changes required that enable these countries to overcome famine, undernutrition and malnutrition globally and especially in these climate-sensible regions? The analysis of the agroecology or green agriculture has also shown the complex interrelationship between agriculture and food intake. The fact that few countries such as China, India, Mesopotamia, Mexico and Peru among some others have developed and adapted multiple basic food items such as rice, corn, wheat and potatoes to the world over the last 8,000 years, has also created great civilisations and scientific knowledge in these regions. Only during the last five decades the industrialised productivist agriculture has emerged.3 The neoliberal model and the alarming data on malnutrition, pollution, destruction of ecosystems and their services have not brought development to the emerging countries and have produced serious health impacts and malnutrition also in the industrialised countries. For this reason, women, men, children and elders must get healthy and safe food, which is linked to the care of a biodiverse natural environment, productive processes with soil protection (rotation, mixed agriculture, contribution of organic products to regenerate fertility), conservation of biodiversity, water and air. Finally, by limiting food waste there will not only be enough food to overcome chronic malnutrition, but with a nutritional education, control of junk food advertising, special taxes and an awareness of the harmful use of soft drinks, sugar,

3

Both models of agriculture could coexist and in limited spaces, the industrialised production could produce some export products for getting the necessary foreign devises to pay back the debts and its service.

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carbohydrates and fats, the nutrition could be improved globally, the costs related to chronic and degenerative diseases reduced and, at the same time, greenhouse gas emissions mitigated. By recovering eroded soils, healthy food could be available for everybody. When most of the present eroded soils are restored into productive areas with organic crops, water could be better conserved in soil, rivers and aquifers, and carbon would be stored in the soil and plants. Finally, restored soils will reduce the pressure for land use changes from natural areas and forests (Vermuelen et al. 2014) toward agricultural production. By declaring new natural areas and restoring the existing ones, greenhouse gas emissions will sink. Greater biodiversity and conservation of natural area allows to infiltrate more pluvial water into aquifers, promote ecological tourism and the government could register the recovered areas in REDD+ to get additional fresh financial resources to promote renewable energies, restoration and other climate mitigation and adaptation mechanisms. The big cities offer another potential to reduce greenhouse gases, through green roofs, efficiency in private transport, consolidation of public transport and use of bicycles. At the same time, internal financial management and support from the Green Fund will allow a better consolidation of adaptation and resilience in areas highly exposed to disasters. In short, agroecology will help to mitigate greenhouse gases emissions, improve rural employment, recover soils, aquifers and deteriorated ecosystems, overcome malnutrition and achieve food security and sovereignty also in countries highly exposed to climate change. This change in the rural policy will also affect socio-environmental and development processes, especially in rural and indigenous areas of high marginality. Likewise, the integral management of the landscape will create ecological, social, economic, political and cultural synergies. It will allow the integration of human development, consolidate human security (Brauch et al. 2009), improve health care, agriculture and alternative energy (REN 2015) and stimulate socioeconomic development in lagging regions.4 In addition, agroecology promotes local social interchanges and sustainable investments, through economy of scale, national savings and private investments, which can be supplemented with international funds. This transition to sustainability (Brauch et al. 2016) with comprehensive social and environmental management will gradually reduce the dual vulnerability and will insert the country into a virtuous circle of sustainable growth with quality of life, where the pitfalls of poverty and malnutrition can be eradicated. The rational and integral management of natural resources allows energy savings, reduction of pollutants, clean energies, improvement of products and a socio-cultural, economic and political dynamic of transformation, where all involved people (women, men, Sachs (2004) proposed a development model for Africa called ‘the big five’, which includes: 1. improvement of food products and nutrition locally produced with agroecology, fruit trees and domestic animals; 2. community health centers to treat common diseases, reproductive health and HIV-AIDS; 3. basic education and technological training; 4. renewable energies from sun and wind; 5. clean water, letrinisation, rainfall harvest, pond to store rainwater, water wells into aquifers and its protection to avoid diseases and vectors.

4

16.6

Some Conclusive Comments

409

children, elders and handicapped) will participate, within a framework of institutional negotiation that helps to protect the most vulnerable. Educating all inhabitants to consume a healthy and nutritious diet with a policy that limits junk foods, reduce health costs, improves the school performance of children and the work capacity of adults; in synthesis increases the well-being and joy of living. It finally allows to confront better the upcoming climate threats and avoid that extreme events get transformed into disasters. The timeframe is short, but knowledge and political support may allow also the most vulnerable people and regions to step into a dignified livelihood with their own resources.

References Ackerman, Frank, Kevin Gallagher (2008). “The Shrinking Gains from Global Trade Liberalization in Computable General Equilibrium Models”, International Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring, pp. 50–77. Allen, Anthony J. (2003). “Virtual water eliminates water wars? A case study from the Middle East”, In A. Y. Hoekstra (Ed.), Virtual water trade Proceedings of the International Expert Meeting on Virtual Water Trade, Delft, IHE. Altieri Miguel A., Víctor Manuel Toledo (2010). La revolución agroecológica de América Latina: Rescatar la naturaleza, asegurar la soberanía alimentaria y empoderar al campesino, Bogota, El Otro Derecho/ILSA. Álvarez Enrique, Úrsula Oswald Spring (1993). Desnutrición Crónica o Aguda Materno Infantil y Retardos en el Desarrollo, Aporte de Investigación No. 59, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Avelar González, Francisco Javier, Elsa Marcela Ramírez López, Ma. Consolación Martínez Saldaña, Alma Lilián Guerrero Barrera, Fernando Jaramillo Juárez (2011). “Water quality in the State of Aguascalientes and its effects in the population’s health, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.) Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin, Springer, pp. 217–230. Brauch, H.G. et al. (Eds.) (2009). Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin, Springer, pp. 965–999. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Sring, John Grin, Jürgen Scheffran (2016). Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer. Buckingham, J.S. (1827). The Sphinx, London, Journal of Politics, Literature, and News. Cord, Louise, Maria Eugenia Genoni, Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán (2015). Prosperidad compartida y fin de la pobreza en América Latina y el Caribe, Washington, World Bank. Cortés Muñoz, Juana Enriqueta, César Guillermo Calderón Mólgora (2011). “Potable water use from aquifers connected to irrigation of residual water”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.) Water Research in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 189–200. Cosgrove, William J., Frank R. Rijsberman (2002). World Water Vision (WWV), London, Earthscan Publications Ltd. Durán-Medina, Elvira, Jean-François Mas, Alejandro Velásquez (2007). “Cambios en las coberturas de vegetación y usos del suelo en regiones con manejo forestal comunitario y Áreas Naturales Protegidas de México”, In Bray/Merino/Barry (Eds.), Los bosques comunitarios de México, Mexico, SEMARNAT-INE, pp. 267–300. FAO (1996). “Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Food Summit Plan of Action”, World Food Summit 13–17 November, Rome, FAO. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] (2008). El Estado de la Inseguridad Alimentaria en el Mundo, Rome, FAO.

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FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN] (2013a). Climate smart agriculture. Sourcebook, http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3325e.pdf. FAO (2013b). Food wastage footprint. Impacts on natural resources, Rome, FAO. FAO (2015a). Global guidelines for the restoration of degraded forests and landscapes in drylands: building resilience and benefiting livelihoods, Forestry Paper No. 175, Rome, FAO. FAO (2015b). Pérdidas y desperdicios de alimentos en América Latina y el Caribe, Los países de la región avanzan hacia un futuro con menos pérdidas y desperdicios de alimentos, Rome, FAO. FAO (2016). Status of World’s Soil Resources, Rome, FAO. FAO (2017). Livestock solutions for climate change, Rome, FAO. FAO (2018). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018. Building climate resilience for food security and nutrition, Rome, FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. Galeano, Eduardo (1980). La venas abiertas de América Latina, Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI eds. GHI (2014). Global Hunger Index. The Challenge of Hidden Hunger, http://cdm15738.contentdm. oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/128360/filename/128571.pdf. IPBES (2018). Summary for Policymakers of the Regional Assessment Reports on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Africa, for the Americas, for Europe and Central Asia, for Asia and Pacific, Bonn, IPBES. IPCC (2014). Fifth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Geneva, WMO/IPCC. Jeong, Sang-Hee, Daejin Kang, Myung-Woon Lim, Chang Soo Kang, Ha Jung Sung (2010). “Risk Assessment of Growth Hormones and Antimicrobial Residues in Meat”, Toxical Res. Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 301–313. Land, Tim, Michael Heaseman (2004). Food Wars. The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets, London, Earthscan. Laughton, Rebecca (2017) A Matter of Scale: A study of the productivity, financial viability and multifunctional benefits of small farms (20 ha and less). Landworkers’ Alliance and Centre for Agroecology, Coventry University. LVC [La Via Campesina] (2005). “Agreement on Gender in Via Campesina”, Sao Paolo, LVC. LVC (2010). La Via Campesina: La agricultura campesina sostenible puede alimentar al mundo. Via Campesina Views, No. 6, https://viacampesina.org/es/. LVC (2011). La Via Campesina: Primer Encuentro de Formadores@s en Agroecología en la Región 1 de África de la Vía Campesina, 12–20 de Junio de 2011, Declaración de Shashe, https://viacampesina.org/es/. LVC, ETC, Grain (2016). Visión corporativa del futuro de la alimentación promovida en la ONU. Más de 100 organizaciones de la sociedad civil alertan sobre la reunión de biotecnología de la FAO, http://www.etcgroup.org/es/content/vision-corporativa-del-futuro-de-la-alimentacionpromovida-en-la-onu-mas-de-100. Machin-Sosa, B., A.M. Roque-Jaime, D.R. Avila-Lozano and P. Rosset (2010). Revolución Agroecológica: el Movimiento de Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba, Habana, ANAP. Meillassoux, Claude (1999). Mujeres, graneros y capitales, México, D.F., Sigo XXI Eds. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2007). “Políticas Alimentarias”, in José Luís Calva (Ed.) Derechos y Políticas Sociales, Mexico, Ed. Cámara Diputados, Miguel Ángel Porrúa-UNAM, pp. 231–254. Oswald-Spring, Úrsula (2008). “Food and nutrition”, en: Leonard (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Developing World, Vol. 2: 663–666 y “Causes of Food Insecurity in Developing Countries”, pp. 664–666. Oswald-Spring, Úrsula (2009). “Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Challenge”, en: Brauch et al. (Eds.). Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 471–500. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2011). “Genetically Modified Organisms: A Threat for Food Security and Risk for Food Sovereignty and Survival”, in Brauch, Hans Günter et al. (eds.) Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1019–1042.

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Oswald-Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano-Oswald, Adriana Estrada-Álvarez et al. (2014). Vulnerabilidad Social y Género entre Migrantes Ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-DGAPAUNAM. Oswald-Spring, Úrsula, S. Eréndira Serrano-Oswald (2019) (Eds.). Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin America, Cham, Springer International. Passel, Jeffrey Taylor (2008). Unauthorized Immigrants and their U.S.-Born Children, Washington, D.C., Pew Hispanic Center. Rangel Medina, Miguel, Rogelio Monreal Saveedra, Christopher Watts (2011). “Coastal Aquifers of Sonora: Hydrogeological Analysis Maintaining a Sustainable Equilibrium”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.), Water Resources in Mexico. Scarcity, Degradation, Stress, Conflicts, Management, and Policy, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 73–86. REN21 (2015). Renewables 2015. Global Status Report, Paris, REN21. Rosset, P. M. 2011. “Food sovereignty and alternative paradigms to confront land grabbing and the food and climate crises”, Development, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 21–30. Sachs, Jeffrey (2004). The end of poverty: How we can make it happen in our lifetime, London, Penguin. SDG (2015). Sustainable Development Goals, New York, UNGA. Torres, Felipe, Yolanda Trápaga, José Gasca, Sergio Martínez (2012). Abasto de alimentos en economía abierta. Situación en México, Mexico, IIEC-UNAM. Vermuelen SJ, PK Aggarwal, A Ainslie, C Angelone, BM Campbell, AJ Challinor, J Hansen, JSI Ingram, A Jarvis, P Kristjanson, C Lau, K Thornton, E Wollenberg (2014). Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change: Outlook for Knowledge, Tools and Action, CCAFS Report no. 3, Copenhagen. WB (2011). Climate-Smart Agriculture: A Call to Action, World Bank, Washington. WHO [World Health Organization] (2002). Understanding the BSE threat, WHO/CDS/ CSR/ EPH/ 2002.6, Geneva, WHO. WHO (2009). Worldwide prevalence of anemia 1993–2005, Geneva, World Health Organization. WHO, UNEP (2015). Connecting global priorities: biodiversity and human health: a state of knowledge review, Geneva, World Health Organization, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Wright, Brian D. (2014) Global Biofuels: Key to the Puzzle of Grain Market Behavior”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 73–98.

Chapter 17

Energy Security: Policies and Potentials in Mexico

17.1

Introduction, Hypothesis and Contents

Since 2015, the drop in global oil prices has affected government spending in Mexico. During the years of high international oil prices the Government did not take any preventive measures to reduce the national debt, invest in infrastructure or keep reserves for critical years.1 The public expenditure of Mexico’s federal government still depends significantly on oil revenues and, once the oil prices declined, it had to adopt austerity measures and seek alternative sources of income. The financial crisis in the oil industry is not temporary; it rather represents a structural crisis of an exhausted model, based on the depletion of a non-renewable resource. The financial situation also shows the fragility of Mexico’s present energy security. In the past, the energy situation was very different. After the nationalisation of oil in 1938, the state company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) was formed and became responsible for energy policy. In 1994 the Ministry of Energy (Secretaría de of Energía: Sener) was created and Pemex became a section of this ministry. For nearly eight decades Pemex has played a key role in developing Mexico’s infrastructure. It became Mexico’s largest company and the thirteenth largest in the Americas. However, the close symbiosis with the federal government, corruption, an undemocratic trade union leadership and links between employees and organised crime, but especially its role as a major provider of the public budget, have fostered economic inefficiency and financial loss which has affected the whole country. During the past two decades, Pemex could not reinvest its profits in technology, infrastructure or training human resources because the Finance Ministry (SHCP) used its income for the federal budget. This has limited its development as a modern

1

This text is result from lectures at the Institute of Renewable Energy (IER-UNAM), several conferences given at UNAM and the Senate in Mexico City and an article published by Úrsula Oswald Spring (2017). “Seguridad, disponibilidad y sustentabilidad energética en México”, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, UNAM, Vol. XII, No. 230: 155–196. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_17

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enterprise. For years, these missing investments were covered by Pemex together with internal and foreign debts. Further, these budget constraints have prevented Pemex developing modern technologies for deep-water exploration, maintaining a complex infrastructure and undertaking costly investments into the exploration and extraction of new fossil fuels or ventures into the development of renewable energies. Given the manifold national economic crisis, Pemex (2014, 2015) has been the official financing institution for short-term income for the Mexican Government. Between 2007 and 2013, Pemex provided between 31 and 38% of government income and between 7.4 and 8.7% of gross domestic product (GDP; SHCP 2013). Without resources for its modernisation, consolidation and expansion, the Mexican Government failed to seize the opportunity when the cost of new wells – now no longer exploited – was dropping, or to discover new deposits and, even less, to develop renewable energies (SHCP 2015). A modern energy company also requires storage systems and systems of energy distribution, where gas and oil pipelines are crucial, and also refineries and petrochemical plants. During the last thirty years no new petrochemical industry have been built, as the Government exported crude oil and imported gasoline from the United States. Some politicians and trading companies and politicians benefited from these decisions at the cost of the country. In 2017 Pemex was deeply in debt and lacked the financial capacity to meet the challenges of a modern energy company and was less able to ensure energy security for Mexico. In addition, the precipitous drop in international oil prices has deprived the national Government of the resources needed to modernise Pemex (IEA 2015c) and Mexico. The lack of financial resources has also limited the investments required for the improvement and maintenance of the infrastructure, which is still incomplete in any emerging country. At this juncture, the Congress in 2013 approved an Energy Reform that privatised energy production and trade, but also allowed partnerships and private capital investments into Pemex (Belausteguigoitia et al. 2014).

17.1.1 Hypothesis Given this complex energy framework for Mexico, this chapter argues that the price of crude oil will not recover substantially in the short term, thus Pemex can no longer sustain the development of the country. This enterprise requires financial support from the Government to pay back its gigantic debts. Most Mexican fossil fuel reserves also face exhaustion, which will increase the costs for future extractions. Therefore, the past energy strategy has become unsustainable in economic, social, political, financial and environmental terms. After the Energy Reform Act, the present strategy is also failing, because it does not ensure a permanent energy supply with a strong national component, and thus depends on foreign prices and providers. Neither does this policy offer oil price stability or reduce its environmental impacts, as most of the power production is still linked to fossil fuels.

17.1

Introduction, Hypothesis and Contents

415

The alternative hypothesis postulates that the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC – now NDC) agreed in Paris in 2015 have created an opportunity for Mexico to develop its abundant renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and biomass) potential. The Government may promote co-investments with citizens, public, private national and international capital and reinforce its energy security in remote regions, to consolidate energy supply, based on sustainability and collective welfare.

17.1.2 Structure of the Chapter This chapter first explores the dominant concept of energy security linked to a political-military approach of national security in the international arena (EIA 2015a). It partially takes into account a widened understanding of security (economic, environmental and societal security) that was conceptualised by the Copenhagen School (Buzan et al. 1998; Wæver 1995; Brauch et al. 2008, 2011). This conceptualisation also includes a deepened understanding based on human and gender security (UNDP 1994, 2003; Brauch 2005; Brauch et al. 2009; Oswald Spring 2009, 2013; Serrano Oswald 2009) and a sectorialised one, which includes energy, food, water and livelihood security (IEA 2015a; Bogardi et al. 2015; Oswald Spring/Brauch 2009a, 2011; Bohle 2009). Then the chapter analyses the fluctuation of international oil prices, political pressures by the industrialised countries against producing countries, unleashed wars over oil and gas, and changing geopolitical interests around these non-renewable fuels. The next part explores the changes in the conceptualisation of energy security in Mexico, mostly understood in a national security context, which is increasingly threatened by organised crime. Given the global geopolitical, environmental and climate changes, the text studies the trinational energy security proposed by the Obama Administration to Canada and Mexico. Energy was not included in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), due to the constitutional limits in Mexico, but it existed de facto among the three countries. With the constitutional change through the Energy Reform of 2015–2016, the legal constraints were overcome. The next section examines the existing abundant renewable energy potential in Mexico and the commitments assumed by Mexico under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) within the UN Framework Convention of the United Nations on Climate Change (UNFCCC; INECC/Semarnat 2015a). The promotion of renewable energies may improve life quality and thus lead to a deepened (human, gender) and widened understanding of security (environmental, economic, societal), and a comprehensive sectorialised energy security approach. In the conclusions this chapter discusses Mexico’s large renewable energy potential, which may result in a longer-term sustainable power supply. This approach may increase equity and equality in one of the most unequal countries, due to the fact that, in 2016, 60% of the gasoline subsidies benefited 20% of the richest people (INEGI 2017).

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It may also reduce present health dangers for 16.4 million women, who still use between 36 and 45% firewood as an energy source for cooking (GIRA 2003; INEGI 2010). They often cook on open fires whose black particles and gases produce serious health problems, especially respiratory diseases, for them and the babies lying nearby.

17.2

Energy Security: A Complex Concept

Energy security is closely linked to geopolitical events and armed conflicts in the world, especially in the Middle East. The US Energy Information Agency (EIA 2015b) stated that stable oil prices and a continuous supply of hydrocarbons are a prerequisite for energy security. Therefore, not only the military dimension, but also political, economic, societal and environmental considerations are relevant for a long-term global energy security.

17.2.1 Geopolitics of Oil and Oil Prices During World War I, the United Kingdom (UK) and France experienced disruption to their oil supply due to the Russian Revolution (1917). Both had used oil for their warships instead of coal, as this enabled the ships to travel faster and stay longer at sea. To mitigate against future disruption, France established a strategic oil reserve of 14% of its demand, a strategy later imitated by many other countries. Franklin D. Roosevelt well understood that lack of oil was one of the factors which led to Germany’s defeat, as the Nazis could not completely replace oil with the ‘Ersatz’ (replacement) from coal. Since the early twentieth century, oil has become a strategic commodity for the British Empire. Thus access to oil in the Middle East became crucial, because Britain lacked it in the British Isles. Other nations sought alternative safe supplies of fossil fuels. During World War 2, Mexico and Venezuela were safe and relatively near suppliers for the US. On 8 August 1944 Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement, which divided access to the oil in the Middle East between the US and UK, without taking the supply countries into account. According to Roosevelt: “Persian oil … is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it’s ours” (Anglo-American Petroleum Agreement 1944). In the mid-1950s, the Arab countries gained more autonomy and awareness of the strategic importance and value of oil (Fig. 17.1). In 1956, when President Nasser deliberately sank ships in the Suez Canal and thus prevented the passage of cargo ships, a global crisis broke out. By controlling the strategic Suez Canal, the Government of Egypt substantially increased the operational costs of oil tankers which transported oil from Arab suppliers. Tensions continued between oil producers and western nations, which increasingly depended on the black gold for their

17.2

Energy Security: A Complex Concept

417

Fig. 17.1 Nominal and real oil prices. Source U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA 2015a, b: Oil_Prices_Since_1861.svg, Washington, IEA)

industrial growth. Since the start of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October 1973, when Egypt and Syria simultaneously invaded Israel, several conflicts in the Middle East have directly affected the international oil price (Fig. 17.2). The oil embargo by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) against the US and Western Europe, which had supported Israel, pushed up oil prices in 1974. Prices rose further during the war between Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). Only the substantial increase in oil production in Saudi Arabia guaranteed lower global prices, but after the invasion of Kuwait in July 1990, the oil price rose again.

Fig. 17.2 The influence of geopolitical impacts and conflicts on real oil prices (USD real 2008 of Brent Spot). Source US EIA (2013) and the author 2013–2016: http://www.eia.gov/finance/ markets/reports_presentations/eia_what_drives_crude_oil_prices.pdf

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However, not all pressures on oil prices have been geopolitical. Multiple global financial crises have also affected the oil supply and demand, so prices dropped again during the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1990s, a drastic reduction in OPEC oil production again pushed the price higher, especially because of the massive increase in oil demand by China, which increased the oil price to top levels (Fig. 17.1). This phenomenon occurred in 1863 during the US civil war and in 1980 during the second OPEC price hike. After the global financial crisis of 2008 the price of oil declined, but in 2011 rapid economic recovery led to another peak in the oil price. But the excess supply of fossil fuels, especially from the new unconventional sources of shale gas and oil and tar sands, and a massive production increase in biofuels in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Europe and Canada saturated the world market, which resulted in the collapse of the price of crude oil in 2014–2016. Russia had also become the third largest producer and a strong competitor in the global fossil fuel market. The so-called Islamic State sold oil illegally at giveaway prices from Syria, while Iran returned as a major supplier in the fossil fuel market after the lifting of the embargo in January 2016. All this increased the oil supply, resulting in a collapse in oil prices in 2015. The economic slowdown in China, greater energy efficiency in production processes and car engines and greater availability of renewable energy have systematically reduced the demand for fossil fuels, while an oversupply of oil continues to reduce its price (Baffes et al. 2015). Finally, OPEC no longer controls the global oil supply. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have decided not to limit their production, thus adding more oil to the abundant global supply, a policy that has slightly changed since September 2016.

17.2.2 Evolution of the Concept of Energy Security In 1974, due to fluctuations in oil prices, changes in supply and demand, and new technology, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) founded the International Energy Agency (IEA), initially with sixteen members. The main goals of the IEA, whose membership had increased to twenty-nine in 2014, were, according to Jacoby (2009: 345): • To maintain and improve systems for coping with oil supply disruptions; • To promote rational energy policies in a global context through co-operative relations with non-member countries, industry and international organizations; • To operate a permanent information system on the international oil market; • To improve the world’s energy supply and demand structure by developing alternative energy sources and increasing the efficiency energy use; and • To assist in the integration of environmental and energy policies. A key political goal was to put pressure on oil-exporting countries (e.g. Mexico, Norway) not to join OPEC, and thereby ensure greater fossil fuel supply outside OPEC and stabilise the price of oil in the medium term.

17.2

Energy Security: A Complex Concept

419

A short-term goal of IEA was to manage the energy crises through greater oil supply and better information on reserves, investments and extractions. The IEA and the EU promoted both an improvement in national energy policies and increased stability between supply and demand by fostering diversification of supply sources. In the context of armed conflicts, economic crises and sudden changes in supply, demand and fluctuation of oil prices, the IEA (2015b) defined energy security narrowly as ‘the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at affordable prices’. Among its general policy goals the IEA included long-term investments, reflecting the dynamism of the global economy, but it also aimed to reduce environmental impacts. The IEA’s definition of energy security is related to military and political security and represents, therefore, a Hobbesian vision of security. Wolfers (1962) had distinguished between objective security as the absence of threats to acquired values and subjective security as the absence of fears that these values could be attacked. But it is necessary to ask which values are to be attacked and how as well as who is threatened and by what means? Wolfers (1962) identified whether these threats were serious, which were imagined and which were real and demonstrated how to distinguish between them. In addition, geopolitical and military conditions changed with the end of the Cold War, but also with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, international military intervention in Libya (2011) and the war in Syria (since 2011). Given this overall complex situation, the Copenhagen School has introduced the concept of intersubjective security. ‘Thus, the exact definition and criteria of securitization is constituted by the intersubjective establishment of an existential threat with a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects’ (Buzan et al. 1998: 25). Actors get involved in the securitisation process and the reaction of citizens is analysed through their role as security actors. Therefore, Buzan et al. (1998) distinguished between the reference object and asked about the security for whom? In the traditional military view, the referent object is the Government, but in human security, it is human beings or humankind. The values at risk are, in the first case, national sovereignty and territorial integrity, whereas in human security it is the survival of humankind, its quality of life and cultural integrity. Finally, Buzan, Wæver, de Wilde asked about the sources of threats: security against whom or from what? In military security, threats come from other states, terrorism, organised crime or guerrillas, while in human security the threats come from the state, globalisation, nature, disasters, poverty and fundamentalism. Thus, besides the objective threat, there are subjective or individual perceptions and intersubjective ones, which ‘express the collective perceptions of the threat’ (García et al. 2006: 324). The new approaches to security brought Wæver (1995) to securitise the threat. All securitisation processes involve: (a) a securitising actor or entity that makes the securitising movement, generally a political leader; (b) an existential threat, where an object of value has been identified as potentially harmful (terrorists); (c) a reference object that is being threatened and needs to be protected

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(citizens); and (d) an audience that needs to be persuaded and to accept it as a security threat. The securitising actor that declares a threat is not solely the nation state but may also be a transnational epistemic community (e.g. IPCC). The referent objects are not only the state and the international community but also primarily individual human beings and humankind, who are both causes and victims of climate change. The actors are not identical, which creates new equity problems’ (Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009: 6). These comments indicate that in security analysis it has become necessary to distinguish between the actor, who legitimises an act, and the audience that must accept it. Following global political and military changes, especially with the end of the Cold War, the Copenhagen School has broadened the definition of military and political security to economic, environmental and societal security (Buzan et al. 1998) with reference objects, values and regionally different risks and threats, according to the security in question. The United Nations (UNDP 1994) deepened the security approach by developing a concept of human security that ranges from the individual, family, community and nation to global level. Human security has evolved with different pillars. The first pillar of human security emphasises the absence of fear, such as of being killed by landmines or small arms. Ogata and Sen (UNDP 2003) proposed as a second pillar ‘freedom from want’ in order to overcome structural inequalities and empower the most vulnerable. The United Nations University (UNU-EHS; Bogardi/Brauch 2005; Brauch 2005) proposed as a third pillar ‘freedom from hazard impacts’, where the exposed population is protected by early warning, preventive evacuation and the reduction of environmental and social vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2013). Finally, Annan (2005) developed the fourth pillar of human security, when he assessed the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, and insisted on the rule of law, respect for human rights and the empowerment of the most vulnerable people and UNESCO introduced the fifth pillar ‘freedom to cultural diversity’. Within this process of deepening security, Serrano Oswald (2009) proposed the concept of an engendered security and Oswald Spring/Brauch (2009b, 2013) of gender security. Since the 1960s, various organisations of the United Nations have explored sectorial security concepts, e.g. the Food and Agriculture Organization that tabled the food security concept (FAO 1983). Brauch et al. (2009) systematically analysed different sectorial securities, such as water (Bogardi et al. 2015; Oswald Spring 2011; Oswald Spring/Brauch 2009a), health (Leaning 2009), sustainable livelihood security (Bohle 2009) and energy security (Bielecki 2007; IEA 2015a) among others. Energy security, due to complex political interests, achieved an international military and political security understanding. The expansion of energy security (towards economic, environmental and societal) and deepening human and gender security were not included in the definition of the IEA (2015a). Rarely, a relationship with other sectorialised securities was established with the exception of water security in hydroelectric power generation, food security in biofuels, and health security impacts from air pollution (Cherp et al. 2014). It was the World Economic Forum (WEF 2011) which proposed the nexus among water, food and energy security from a military security perspective (Oswald Spring 2016).

17.2

Energy Security: A Complex Concept

421

In terms of threats, political interests and predetermined and socially constructed realities had little impact on the redefinition of energy security (Ciută 2010). In the short term, the IEA was tasked with energy security to avoid sudden changes in the demand and supply of hydrocarbons and to develop negotiations between producers and consumers. The energy security concept, like no other sectorial one, indicates the relationship between resources used in different production processes, armed conflicts due to increasing scarcity, price shocks and impacts on the global economy. As indicated above in Fig. 17.2, in the twentieth century OPEC was a major player for energy security, but in the twenty-first century it has lost its monopoly control over the supply and pricing of oil. While in 1975 OPEC still supplied 72% of oil globally, in 2011 this supply was reduced to 45% (IEA 2013). However, as the Copenhagen School indicated, security is interdependent, and energy security depends on both producers and consumers. Both need price stability to provide safe consumption and infrastructure, requiring supply agreements in the medium and long term to ensure the substantial investments for oil extraction. The data reviewed above indicate a close relationship between economic, political and geopolitical factors, where military causes have affected sudden oil price fluctuations and also actors (producers, suppliers, distributors, traders, organisations, intermediaries and consumers). Stable agreements between producers and consumers maintain oil price stability that may improve the development of the world economy. Therefore, energy security is closely linked to economic security (Labandeira/Manzano 2012), but its lack can also induce armed conflicts (military and political security). The Westminster Energy Forum (2006) and the Economic Commission for Europe (2007) insisted on the political context, not only in the energy markets of Europe, but also in the global system (Umbach 2010). They explored the consolidation of clean electricity through network interconnections and integration, including large investments for future infrastructure that reduces GHG emissions and their negative impacts on health (Belkin 2008). In addition, the studies of IPCC (2013, 2014a, b) on climate change impacts stated that GHG emissions from the massive use of fossil fuels are responsible for global warming (IPCC 1990). Therefore, GHG emissions have caused anthropogenic climate change, affecting both humankind and their production systems, but also natural resources and ecosystem services (IPCC 2013). The IPCC (2014b) summarised the co-benefits between the quality of clean air and health, ecosystem recovery and reduced risk of disasters. They consolidated virtuous circles with the generation of clean jobs from renewables that improve productivity, reduce poverty and promote sustainable development in rural and urban areas (Trilateral Commission 2007). Winzer (2011) integrated this complexity and proposed a dynamic model of analysis of energy security. He interrelated the factors of demand, supply, global economic development, environment and society with the sources of technological,

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Fig. 17.3 Model of analysis of energy security. Source Winzer (2011: 20)

human and extreme natural hazards.2 All these elements can generate impacts on speed, size, duration, expansion, peculiarity and certainty of energy security (Fig. 17.3). Depending on productive and economic efficiency, energy security is maintained in the area of sustainability and security. But if any filter indicates changes or the risks related to extreme weather events, then energy security is altered (Kowalski/Sead 2008), affecting economic security and environmental security, which again increases the risks for the sustainability of the environment (Beck 2009, 2011).

17.3

Energy Security and Availability of Energy Resources in Mexico

Mexico was traditionally an oil exporting country and cannot escape the global discussion on the conceptualisation of energy security. As an exporter of crude oil and importer of gasoline from the US, Mexico depends on international oil prices (Fig. 17.1). Since 2015, the fall of oil prices has seriously affected its public finances and macroeconomic stability. The uncertainty of further drops in prices has limited middle-term planning and may affect Mexico’s development (IMF 2015).

2

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit oil storage tanks and the petrochemical industry, leaving severe toxic pollution in the air, soil and water in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.

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17.3.1 Energy Security in Mexico Mexico’s National Development Plan 2013–2018 (PND 2013) only once mentions the term ‘energy security’ and relates it to renewables. Its Sectorial Energy Programme 2013–2018 (PSE 2013) refers to energy security five times – in relation to safe supply, sustainability, modernisation of the sector, storage of gas and transportation in gas pipelines, as well as to the general storage of all energetic products. The Development Programme on Electricity (Prodesen 2015; Programa de Desarrollo del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional in Spanish) does not mention the term, but stresses nuclear safety, economic security and the protection of workers in the energy sector. In general, Mexican policy has prioritised a vision of national security in the area of energy, water and food security. However, these sectorial securities should ensure for each citizen a permanent condition of freedom, peace, development and social justice, which exceeds the limited vision of military and political security. Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) related energy security primarily to national security. Both emphasised the stealing or ‘milked’ oil and gas pipelines and the so-called ‘little devils’ on electricity transmission lines. These thefts not only cause hazards, explosions and accidents in residential and industrial areas, but also generate a significant financial loss to the state and serious environmental destruction. In 2015 the former director of Pemex, Emilio Lozoya Austin, acknowledged that ‘oil theft is one of the biggest problems currently facing Petroleos Mexicanos’. Pemex (2013, 2015) reported that in 2012 they had officially detected 1,550; in 2013 2,377; in 2014 over 4000 and in 2015 more than 5574 clandestine perforations, with financial losses of $ 11 BP (billion pesos). If repairs are included, the damage in 2015 amounted to 40 BP. The theft was carried out at 75.7% in pipelines transporting gasoline or gas, and in 24.3% of pipelines with crude oil. In November 2015, Pemex estimated that 1.9 million pesos per hour were stolen or $ 48 million each day (Pemex, 21 January 2016). Nuche/Etellekt (2015: 1) claimed that ‘theft of oil continues to rise despite the actions implemented by the federal Government … before completing the first half of the period of the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018), 2,620 clandestine taps were recorded in addition to those during the previous two presidential terms’. Of the reported robberies, 65% occurred in the states of Tamaulipas, Guanajuato, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Puebla and Tabasco, and the Press blamed organised crime. However, the National Institute of Criminal Sciences (Inacipe 2016) indicated that drug traffickers represented only one link in this process, together with public officials, national and international employers and employees of Pemex and CFE, who are involved in illegal extractions. Pemex (2012) legally justified this theft in the US and in 2013 sued six US companies for fuel robbery totalling 300 million dollars (Forbes 2013), which was reimbursed to Mexico. Despite increased surveillance at national level, this theft has continued to rise. These crimes have caused several accidents, explosions, damage to persons and property, as well as hydrocarbon pollution in wetlands, water bodies and farmlands.

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They have reached such an extreme level that supply shortages occurred in various regions, especially when oil tankers that supplied gas stations were massively stolen. To counter the increase in fuel robbery, Pemex entered into an alliance with the national police and the army. ‘The problem has spread to new locations, and in 2004 at least one theft in 51 municipalities was detected, while in 2014 this figure increased to 236 municipalities. Probably, this dispersion is related to a larger number of criminal gangs involved in stealing oil, a highly profitable crime, which also appears to be stimulated by the high rate of impunity that prevails’ (Nuche/ Etellekt 2015: 6). Figure 17.4 shows the increase in energy theft in the country and links it mainly to organised crime groups. Besides drug trafficking to the US, these criminal gangs have diversified their illegal activities to include fuel theft. According to Nuche/ Etellekt (2015), there is little oversight and it has become a highly profitable business. In addition, they state that grand larceny matches the high incidence of organised crime, both along the Gulf and the Pacific regions, although since 2013 the centre of the country, especially Puebla, has also been increasingly affected. The sale of the stolen oil is ‘laundered’ mainly in private gas stations with franchises from Pemex. Despite the increase in cars, due to this theft there was no increase in the number of gasoline distribution stations. This parallel marketing channel has deprived Pemex of income, and prevented the Secretaria de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP; Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit) getting tax from the sale of illegal gasoline, even though the consumer paid tax at the point of sale.

Fig. 17.4 Total number of illegal connections of oil thefts detected in Mexico. Source Nuche/ Etellekt (2015: 8), complemented 2013–2015 by the Author

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Energy Security and Availability of Energy Resources in Mexico

425

Thus, these stations are also linked to organised crime. A weak legal framework has limited the fight against fuel theft, although in 2014 the deputies and senators have approved a reinforcement of the penalties, which were again strengthened in 2016. The massive spread of oil thefts in Mexico and the increase of robbery from pipelines have so far resulted in few criminal arrests. The Ministry of Defense (Sedena), The Ministry of the Marine (Semar), Pemex, the Federal Ministry of Public Security (SSP-Federal) and the Federal Preventive Police are continuing to pursue these crimes with the aid of better surveillance of pipes and distribution centres. However, the results remain poor and the income from this illegal activity is increasing. Mexican energy security is not totally related to theft. Comprehensive energy security is achieved by combining different strategies in order to ensure a continuous energy supply at reasonable prices. This proposal includes diversified national energy sources, which do not affect its long-term supply. A comprehensive energy security strategy should also reduce pollution within factories and the environment, as well as losses by evaporation and theft. But neither Pemex nor Sener (2013b) have outlined a comprehensive energy security policy; in particular, they have not decided how to obtain the needed financial resources to modernise Pemex and reduce the heavy tax burden. Given these conflictive relations between the Government and Pemex, the parastatal company has suffered from internal constraints (lack of investments and high taxes). Fuel thefts, exhausted wells and US pressures for privatisation have reduced the extraction of oil and gas. The fall in oil prices has limited the Mexican Federal Government’s budget for investments in renewable energies, which is making it harder for the country to achieve energy security. Finally, the substantial increase of gasoline prices in January 2016 produced citizen mobilisations throughout the country.

17.3.2 Fossil Energy Supply in Mexico Since 2004, when Mexico produced 3.383 MBD (million barrels per day), its oil extraction has declined (Sener 2013a) and in 2015 Pemex extracted only 2.27 MBD (Pemex 2016). The US is gradually becoming self-sufficient in its fuel energy supply, relying increasingly on shale gas and oil and on biofuels. While Mexico wanted to export more to balance its federal budget, due to a lack of investment, high debts, inadequate management of the Cantarrel3 camp, and the depletion of several oil fields, Mexican oil exports dropped. While in 2004 Mexico exported to the US 1.65 MBD and imported 0.2 MBD of gasoline, in 2012, the exports fell to just over a thousand MBD and the imports almost tripled (Fig. 17.5).

3

In 1979, the Cantarell complex began operations and accounted for almost two-thirds of oil extraction in the country. It was one of the most important sites in the world, but from 2004, when more than 2 MBD were extracted, productivity began to decline (Sener 2013a).

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Fig. 17.5 Export of crude oil and import of fuel products between Mexico and US in TBD. Source EIA (2013)

Fig. 17.6 Production of crude oil and investment in exploration and extraction of the Mexican oil mix (1997–2016); investment/year. Source Data from Pemex (1997–2016)

The crisis in Mexican energy security is not a cyclical but a structural one. In 2007 the curve between investment and production costs crossed, thus, despite higher costs for extraction, there were fewer investments in Pemex (Fig. 17.6). While in 2004 the total cost to Pemex for extraction was 113 BP, in 2012, with 75.3% lower production, the cost increased to 273 BP (Pemex 2013). In 2014 Mexico had the second largest fall in oil extraction, and in August 2016 production was reduced by 33% compared to 2004 (EIA 2015b). Operating declining oil fields also increased operating costs, further reducing profits, while new investments for future explorations were lacking. Additionally, corruption and the global drop in oil prices forced the Mexican Federal Government to cut its budget and later to increase the price of gasoline, due to 45% being tax. For Pemex this had severe implications for its suppliers and contractors, and resulted in shortages in various

17.3

Energy Security and Availability of Energy Resources in Mexico

427

Fig. 17.7 Projection of production and consumption of fuel in Mexico (MBD). Source Arena Pública (2015)

petrochemical inputs. In response, in 2013 the Mexican Congress passed the Energy Reform that allowed Pemex to promote joint ventures with foreign investors and the Ministry of Energy (Sener) to privatise its oil sector. Mexico’s energy projections indicate a steady increase in energy consumption, which should be covered by growing production (Fig. 17.7). This policy still predominantly relies on fossil fuels, although the Energy Transition Law and Prodesen (Development Program for the National Electric System 2016–2030), which were both passed by the Mexican Congress in 2015, also include renewable energies. Given the severe crisis of Pemex, low oil prices, the lack of a national refining capacity and the technical and financial weakness of the Mexican Government, it turned to its most important trading partner, the US. Pemex (2015) estimated that Mexico had enough offshore oil reserves to meet its domestic supply, but estimates of the costs of exploration and exploitation amounted to about 44 BD (billion dollars). The IEA (2014) estimated its consumption at 3 MBD, but the supply in 2015 was only 1.8 MBD. The rest was covered by imports. After the Energy Reform was approved, IEA (2014) estimated that Mexico could stabilise its production and consumption in 2020 at 2.9 MBD and reach about 3.7 MBD in 2040. This would imply an increase of 75%, including the estimates of the projected electrical consumption (León et al. 2014), which would increase GHG emissions. As Mexico relies on the sale of crude oil and its supply of gasoline from the United States, it is necessary to review its energy security in the regional context of North America, which includes Canada, a major producer of heavy oil from tar sands in Alberta. In January the new US Government approved the construction of a pipeline to refine heavy oil in Houston, Texas. This pipeline could easily be extended to Mexico and increase Mexico’s long-term dependency on imported oil.

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17 Energy Security: Policies and Potentials in Mexico

Trinational Energy Security

The US energy context has changed due to the massive production of bioenergy, shale gas or fracking. Since 2014, the US has become the world’s largest oil producer, with 14.021 MBD, but is still not fully self-sufficient as its domestic consumption amounted to 111.11 MBD. In June 2015 the US also exported 10% of its production of refined gasoline and liquid bioenergy (DOE 2015). In 2014 Canada produced 4.383 MBD of fossil oil and had the third largest global fossil fuel reserves. In April 2016, the production of light oil amounted to 1.66 MBD, of heavy oil to 1.94 MBD, or a total of 3.61 MBD. The Canadian National Energy Board (2016) stated that its production reached a total of 4.07 MBD in November 2016. However, a major part of this crude oil is bitumen extracted from the Athabasca oil sands. This heavy oil will not be refined in Canada and will be transported to the US in the planned pipelines. Therefore, in 2014 Canada imported 0.5 MBD for its eastern states and exported 2.9 MDB from its western states and from offshore oil fields on the Atlantic coast (Canadian National Energy Board 2016). Oil production is also highly concentrated in three Canadian provinces. Alberta produced 71.2%, Saskatchewan 13.5% and the easternmost province of Newfoundland 4.2% and Labrador 3.1%. (In 2015 Canada became the fifth most important global oil producer and the fourth largest exporter. In 2015, 43% of US crude oil imports came from Canada and both countries have a long-term close oil cooperation (Canadian National Energy Board 2016). Mexico is integrated into this North American oil market. In 2013 these three countries together produced 16.826 MBD of crude oil, and 21.389 MBD of gasoline were refined (IEA 2015b). Although the US recently became the largest oil producer, it still depends on oil imports from Arab, African and other Latin American countries. The religious and political instability in the Middle East, Venezuela and Nigeria may jeopardise the supply of hydrocarbons that are required for a country with high energy inputs in its productive process. The costs of energy production, distribution and consumption depend on highly competitive private companies. Increasingly, consumers have become more aware of the health threats from air pollution, and citizens are now pushing for a clean energy security. In 2014, after the reform of the Mexican energy sector, the Obama Administration became interested in promoting a trinational energy alliance with Canada and Mexico. Oil had been on the agenda since the signing of NAFTA, but was not included due to constitutional constraints in Mexico. However, for decades a close collaboration, investments and support for the energy sector have existed. With the Energy Reform Act in Mexico the legal barriers disappeared, although the integration progressed much earlier. For now, the process may accelerate or get limited due to the Trump administration. The three countries have begun by analysing the best way to homogenise regulations, standards and laws. They have reviewed the hydrocarbon markets, production costs, subsidies, export strategies and issues of environmental regulation (Krupnick et al. 2014) among others.

17.4

Trinational Energy Security

429

This homogenisation of legal, economic and environmental factors and norms should permit an integrated coordination of actions for a common import-export strategy in the energy sector (Belausteguigoitia et al. 2014). Since 2000 the US had worked towards greater economic integration not only in the energy sector, but also on environmental problems and climate change, and especially on closer military coordination (Deutch et al. 2007). Therefore, the trilateral proposal on energy security reflects a trinational military-political vision of integration, which also includes energy security, which may also disappear due to the changing policy of the Trump Administration. In 2013, these three countries achieved a GDP of 19,858 billion US$, Mexico of 1,261,4 Canada of 1,827 and the US of 16,770 billion US dollars (World Bank 2013). These differences indicate that the border between the US and Mexico is one of the most unequal in the world in terms of GDP/cap. Retana Yarto (2015) analysed this trinational integration and argued that the Obama Administration was interested in promoting a comprehensive energy opening among the three countries to compete more efficiently with China. Several US think-tanks believed that only through a firm trinational alliance could sufficient oil reserves be exploited to guarantee secure medium- and long-term energy based on their geographical proximity. The US Government also believed that this partnership could benefit the three countries, although US interests predominated, together with the fear of an economic shift by China. The proposal for a tripartite US-guided energy alliance might not only ensure a secure long-term oil supply for their countries, but also allow Mexico to exploit a transboundary offshore site in the Gulf of Mexico (parallel 26) in the Cinturón Plegado de Perdido. The US was aware that Mexico lacked the financial resources and technology for such an exploitation. However, US multinational oil companies have both and could extract this offshore oil. For Canada, and especially Mexico, this partnership would imply an even greater loss of energy sovereignty, but in the absence of an alternative vision of energy security, lack of money and technology, this partnership would allow Mexico to extract these oil reserves in the parallel 26 and guarantee its oil supply by 2040. Given the negative results of NAFTA for most Mexicans, especially in agriculture, but also the stagnation of its economic growth, the persistence of poverty and increasing inequality during the past two decades (Escobar et al. 2008), from the perspective of Mexican researchers the potential benefits of this trinational agreement would be highest for the US. However, the Trump administration disagrees with this analysis. Like other trade treaties (NAFTA, FTAA, TTP), they were negotiated in secret, so nobody could put pressure on the three governments to defend the public interest of the majority of the people. The present US administration only addresses the trade deficit between US and Mexico, but does not take into account the supply chain produced in the US and only assembled in Mexico. By prioritising energy security in a politico-military understanding and subject to

4

The World Bank (2013) estimated that for Mexico the GDP in terms of PPP is 1,971 billon USD.

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US geopolitical and geoeconomic interests, there are also concerns about compliance with human and social rights, as well as the protection of indigenous peoples, peasants and poor women. Previous treaties and agreements signed in the context of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization on workers’ conditions and social protection to vulnerable groups may be undermined. As with NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), from which Trump withdrew in January 2017, transnational corporations would limit and condition the adoption of public policies and impose their own interests, including job insecurity (Jimenez/Bosos 2016). The trilateral energy security approach relies on offshore crude oil, a sector in which transnational oil companies have caused severe accidents that have affected the environment and coastal natural resources (e.g. Shell on 3 May 2016 in the Gulf of Mexico). This policy would jeopardise the biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico based on economic and energy interests. Ruiz (2012: 347) has argued that any agreement should include the compliance with a ‘minimum floor of social protection’. On the contrary, Bauer (2007: 336) argued that Mexico should overcome its ‘interventionist-nationalist quadrant with respect to Government interference and cooperation and integration’. He pointed out that in recent years, thanks to constitutional and legal changes, these processes have been gradually overcome and have smoothed the path for greater North America cooperation. This trinational energy integration cannot be realised with the current US Government. However, this is not the only way to achieve comprehensive energy security. Mexico has a high renewable energy potential and should first resolve the funnels in the supply and refining capacity of fossil fuels. Second, renewables would protect the environment and reduces emissions of GHG. Nevertheless, this alternative goes beyond a military-political energy security vision and would permit Mexico more independence from the US interests, focusing on a long-term sustainable energy supply for growing power needs.

17.5

Renewable Energy Potential and Sustainability in Mexico

Pemex and Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) not only had the monopoly of power generation, but were also the biggest polluters and emitters of GHG in Mexico (CFE 2015). To meet the voluntary commitments the Mexican Government made in the framework of the Paris Agreement of UNFCCC in December 20155 Mexico must substantially change its energy matrix. It must

5

The Paris Agreement was ratified by the Mexican Senate on 14 September 2016 and is thus legally binding for Mexico.

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Fig. 17.8 Indicative path for emissions compliance of NDC by Mexico. Source INECC (2015b: 34)

change its previous practice of ‘business as usual’ (BAU) and dramatically reduce its GHG emissions to achieve the UNFCCC goals by 2025 (Fig. 17.8). The Energy Reform Act that was passed in 2013 has not yet improved the environment, although large investments are expected on renewable energy with foreign investments. In 2015, with the adoption of its Law on Energy Transition, Mexico launched a long-term programme for clean energy (Prodesen 2015). The main objectives of this law are to promote and regulate the use of sustainable energy. Thus Mexico expects to achieve the reduction of its pollutant emissions (NDC) in the electrical sector and provide consumers with cleaner energy. But the Mexican Government has prioritised oil extraction due to financial problems, which may increase GHG emissions and potential offshore oil spills. Mexico still has a medium carbon footprint compared with industrialised countries such as China, and is ranked 13 on global GHG emissions (INECC 2015b). Mexico and Brazil emit half the GHGs in Latin America. The National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC 2015b) reported 492 Mt (million tonnes) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per year by Mexico, or the equivalent of 3.7 t/cap/year. Of these GHGs, 26.2% came from transportation, 19% from electricity generation, 17.3% from industry, 16.9% from agriculture and changing land use and 12.1% from oil and gas production (Fig. 17.9). Most (75.1%) of these GHG emissions are from carbon dioxide, 19% from methane and 6.1% from nitrogen dioxide. After the massive deforestation in Mexico in the twentieth century, the remaining biota absorbs only 35% of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to 173 Mt of CO2, and there are a further 85.8 million hectares of damaged soils, which limits the absorption of CO2 in the loam. The rest of GHG accumulates in the sea, causing an increase in temperature and high rates of energy below 2000 m (Fig. 17.10). The resulting acidification (IPCC 2013) is threatening the protecting coral reef, the second most important on Earth, and most of the crustaceans. These conditions particularly affect Mexico and Central America, which are located in the tropics between two oceans with increasing sea

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Fig. 17.9 National inventory of GHG emissions. Source INECC (2015a, b: 111)

Fig. 17.10 Content of energy in the ocean at 2000 m depth. Source NOAA, NESDIS, NODC, Ocean Climate Laboratory (2015), further elaborated by Levitus et al. (2012)

17.5

Renewable Energy Potential and Sustainability in Mexico

433

Fig. 17.11 Power generation technology in Mexico. Source Prodesen (2015: 18)

temperature. Thus, the whole region is highly exposed to extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, landslides, bushfires and droughts (IPCC 2012, 2014a). As stated earlier, Mexican power generation is strongly tied to fossil energy (Fig. 17.11), although there is an official effort to promote clean energy, which includes renewables. Most electricity (74.1%) is produced by the combined cycle, together with conventional thermal power stations, coal-fired plants, internal combustion, and mixed facilities. Despite the high oil price, the development of renewable energy was stagnant, while the thermoelectric production ratio with fossil fuels increased from 51.4 to 62.7% between 1987 and 2007 (INEGI 2009). With the recent legal changes and greater awareness about GHG emissions, Mexico could exploit its excellent potentials of renewables. In 2016, geothermal and solar contributed roughly 5% of the 25.9% of clean energy. Nuclear energy contributed 8 cent, wind 12% and most clean energy is from hydropower (73%), and nuclear other 2%. According to a comparative study about the costs of clean energy per MWh (megawatt/hour) in the UK in 2015, gas and nuclear energy were compared with renewable energy sources (The Economist, August 2016). Neither could compete with the cost of solar and wind energy on land and offshore. In addition, the Fukushima accident (2011) has increased popular resistance to nuclear energy, because absolutely secure systems do not exist, and the problem of nuclear storage has not been solved. In the past, Mexico has invested significant resources in hydropower, but the high cost of dams, the siltation, reduced flows in rivers due to many other water uses, increased evaporation related to increased temperatures and, especially,

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the opposition of the population to be relocated, has delayed the expansion of this energy. Between 1987 and 2007 the portion of hydropower dropped from 32.6 to 211.4%, and in 2013 to only 12% (CIDAC 2013: 40). The time lost in Mexico for developing and investing in clean technologies illustrates the short-sightedness of former Mexican governments, but it also indicates that public finances still depended on oil exports. Due to the impacts of climate change, the commitments Mexico made to the UNFCCC in 2015, and falling oil prices, its Government intended to produce, with private investments, about 25% of electricity from renewable sources by 2018 and 35% by 2024. Prodesen (2015) estimated that by 2030 a total of 81% of electricity would be produced from clean sources (Fig. 17.13), including renewables, while conventional energy would increase by only 37.8%. It predicted an expansion of 62.2% in the total power generation. Regarding the planned combined cycle of 26,400 MW, only 20.544 MW were under construction or tender, thus the increase of this technology was reduced from 9,763 to 6,459 MW (Fig. 17.12). The Mexican Association of Wind Power (Amdee 2015) reported a recent growth in wind energy, which increased ninefold between 2001 and 2011. In 2013 thirty-one wind farms produced 2,551 MW from 1,570 wind turbines and an investment of 5.1 BD. Amdee estimates that production will reach 15,000 MW in 2020. In 2016 a solar park was inaugurated in the state of Mexico. In the construction sector, thirteen private investments are developing renewable energy projects: four, using wind, have the capacity to produce 200 MW; five, using photovoltaic solar panels, are capable of producing 112.2 MW; two, focusing on

Fig. 17.12 Increase in the estimated power demand 2015–2030. Source Prodesen (2015: 35)

17.5

Renewable Energy Potential and Sustainability in Mexico

435

Fig. 17.13 Growth of gas consumption and reduction in production in Mexico. Source León et al. (2014)

biomass, have the potential to yield 20 MW; one small hydro should produce 5 MW; and one biofuel is designed to produce 438,000 gallons/year. In addition, two natural gas projects producing 402 MW and one geothermal energy plant were offered for private investment (SHCP 2015). Prodesen (2015) used both a low and a high scenario when planning for the generation of clean energy (Fig. 17.13). In Round 1 of the power auction, the CFE would buy 5,385 gigawatts/hour (GWh) of electricity and 5,426,000 renewable energy certificates (RECs). Mexico also possesses the important geothermal potential to generate electricity from steam coming from hot water that is in direct contact with the Earth’s magma. Mexico began exploring this technology in 1973 and is now ranked fifth worldwide (behind the United States, Island, Turkey and the Philippines) in this field. Twenty-four other countries exploit this resource, but produce only 10,715 MW. It is estimated that by 2016 Mexico had installed 923 MW – only 10% of its capacity.6 Detecting the exploitation site is the most expensive phase in geothermal energy, because it requires sophisticated equipment to find suitable sites where the highest level of steam can be obtained. In Round 1 of the renewable electricity tender, the seven winning companies are committed to investing 3.817 BP (billion pesos) in solar panels and wind power in

There exist four geothermal fields under exploitation in the national territory. In the Valley of Mexicali, Baja California, a plant in Cerro Prieto with a capacity 720 MW is the largest geothermal energy facility globally and produces 40% of the energy in the state of Baja California (La Jornada. 17-11-2016). The facilities Azufres in Michoacan produce (188 MW), Las Tres Virgenes in Baja California Sur (10 MW) and Los Humeros in Puebla (40 MW) have lower capacities. In future Los Humeros II, Phase A, and Los Humeros II, Phase B, will generate 25 MW and 21 MW respectively (Forbes 2013).

6

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the states of Aguascalientes, Coahuila, Guanajuato, Tamaulipas and Zacatecas. All these states are located in the north or centre of Mexico, where the production of cars, planes and other assembly processes (maquila) are important. The lack of involvement of local people in renewables has created conflicts, especially in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where wind has exceptional conditions. It is important to share part of the income from power concessions with landowners, to offer these impoverished farmers a diversified income from crops and energy production, whereby they offer their manpower and the national or transnational companies offer technology and capital. This model has worked well in Germany and other countries, but lack of awareness within the Mexican Government is impeding the process that would enable all social sectors to benefit from the development of renewables. Prodesen (2015) also requested tenders for five nuclear power centres in Veracruz. The excessive costs, the implicit threat of nuclear power plants, and the opposition of the people living in the region has reduced the feasibility of these projects. The Federal Government also plans twenty-nine geothermal energy plants in different parts of the country, about ninety wind power projects and another eighty parks with solar power, plus three of bioenergy in Hidalgo, Veracruz and Coahuila. In the last case, there is concern about competition for the use of soil, water and investments that would be taken away from food production, in which Mexico is deficient. Prodesen has also scheduled sixty-nine dams in various parts of the country, especially in the south and south-east, where water resources are abundant in the regions of marginalised indigenous groups. However, there are other hydroelectric projects proposed in semi-arid areas (Nayarit, San Luis Potosi, Sinaloa, Guanajuato, Jalisco) and in arid (Sonora, Chihuahua) or densely populated areas that require not only electricity, but also water (State of Mexico, Puebla, Hidalgo). In all these cases, questions have been raised over whether these hydroelectric projects are feasible. Since 2017 the electricity market can choose from the best offer, while domestic consumers remain under the control and prices of CFE. According to the Energy Reform, six subsidiaries of CFE will be responsible for generating electric power, a subsidiary for transmission and another for the distribution of electricity, although there will be sixteen companies, which will split their financial structures. This plan is expected to reduce the loss of power – now reaching 12.8% – to 10% by 2018. However, the target is still higher than levels achieved in other OECD countries, where the losses are estimated at 6%. Mexico must also train staff to construct and maintain clean and renewable energy facilities to harness the exceptional renewables potential of Mexico. Thus, Mexico should be able to meet its international commitments to reduce its GHG emissions and achieve its NDC. This implies creating technical careers, degrees and postgraduate scholarships to study abroad to generate, in the short-term, human capital capable of responding to the challenges of the new era of clean energy. If Mexico does not quickly enter into this process, but continues with its current model of BAU and using Pemex finances to boost the Government budget, Mexico will soon have a severe energy shortage and thus undermine its energy security.

17.5

Renewable Energy Potential and Sustainability in Mexico

437

It will depend increasingly on imports and will be exposed to a variation of international power and fuel prices. Another issue related to energy security is the growing consumption of gas, used mainly in electricity generation as a cleaner input compared with oil. Figure 17.13 indicates the steady increase in gas consumption, while production has stagnated since 2009 in Mexico. Morales (2013: 8) specified that about 85% of the gas is controlled by Pemex and the enterprise uses it for reinjection into wells and other refining processes. Since the 1990s, the CFE has changed part of the generation of electricity from low quality fuel oil to gas (IEA 2015c) and to combined cycle plants that now produce more than half of Mexico’s electricity (ENE 2013: 3) with less pollution. An alternative technique for extracting gas from the ground is hydraulic fracturing (fracking), in which highly toxic chemicals generate explosions for extracting natural shale gas and oil from rocks at depths of up to 5 km, with horizontal drilling of similar sizes. The US Department of Energy (DOE 2015) estimated that Mexico has 681 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, representing eleven times the proven gas reserves, but not all will be technically and financially feasible to exploit. In particular, Pemex has identified five geological provinces as precursors for the extraction of shale gas and oil: Sabinas, Burros-Picachos, Burgos, Tampico-Misantla and Veracruz, where authorities estimate a potential of 141.5 trillion cubic feet of shale gas and 31.9 billion barrels of oil (Sener 2013c). Mexico seems to be the sixth country for this resource, only after China, Argentina, Algeria, the USA and Canada (EIA 2014: 9). However, there exists strong opposition by the population in the affected regions (Godoy 2016). In addition, many sites in the north lack water to remove the oil trapped in the tar sands. Reyes-Gonzalez (2015) also mentioned that significant investments would be required for the construction of gas pipelines. The present Mexican Government is building twelve gas pipelines with an extension of more than 5,000 km, covering the needs of sixteen states to provide a safe and competitively priced natural gas supply. This is a long-term policy designed to create a standby and lower the prices for industry and private homes. This author believes that fracking will not help improve energy security, especially when international prices are so depressed and this technology implies high costs. Efforts to exploit this technique imply high risks, besides hazards of increased earthquakes, accidents, severe pollution of soil, water, air and aquifers. Fracking may also have a dangerous impact on the health of inhabitants close to these extractions (Goldthau/Wade 2012). It further limits the funds in Mexico to invest in renewable energies, which have the potential to reduce GHG emissions thus supporting global efforts against climate change.

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17 Energy Security: Policies and Potentials in Mexico

Conclusions: A Future with a Sustainable Renewable Energy Transition in Mexico

Based on the above analysis, the energy challenges in Mexico show multiple facets. The country has exceptional potential, both in the supply and demand of power, especially renewables. The reduction of domestic supply and export of fossil fuels by Pemex and CFE is directly related to the short- and medium-term policy. Until recently, in Mexico Pemex was the driving force behind its energy development and infrastructure. This public enterprise had also supplied a significant percentage of the Federal Government’s budget. Since 1988, based on the preferences of the neoliberal governments, Pemex has moved away from the consolidation of its infrastructure and the development of its industry. The priority focused on current expenditures with high salaries for senior officials, luxurious working conditions, and interest payments for new foreign and domestic debts. Due to the pressure of the IMF, Mexico privatised profitable businesses, the salaries of most employees lost purchase power, subsidies were reduced and poverty increased. This neoliberal Mexican policy has stagnated the GDP growth for three decades (SHCP 2015) and multinational enterprises and local oligarchs have benefited, while Mexico has remained one of the most unequal countries in the world, with a Gini of 47.2 (UNDP 2013), due to extremely low salaries. Faced with declining oil prices and reserves, high debt services, pressures from global rating agencies and more than half of its population living in poverty, Mexico must search for new development paths. It is also important to understand that the recent recovery in oil price of around 40 USD/barrel is higher than that which existed between 1888 and 1972 and 1987 and 2005, when scarcer supplies increased the long-term oil price. This means that the Federal Government must adjust its budget and, with the privatisation of parts of the oil business, Pemex will contribute less to the budget. There are two ways to deal with the decline in tax income: either to reduce expenditure and control corruption better, or to increase revenues based on a fiscal reform that obliges businesses to pay their taxes. In 2016, the available energy resources in Mexico showed a depletion in available fossil fuels. Both Pemex and CFE, but also industries and households, increased the demand for natural gas, while the capacity for production, transportation and distribution declined (Fig. 17.13). In addition, the cost of leaks, spills and illegal seizures of fuel and electricity, along with the ‘venting’ of gas and reinjection into oil wells by Pemex, affected the federal budget.7 External audits evaluated the performance of Pemex in the first half of 2016 and found a negative equity of 1,442.2 BP and labour passives of 811.7 BP, together with financial commitments of 3,497.733 BP, equivalent to an increase of 12.6%, compared with the same half year of 2015. This negative performance is mainly due to falling oil prices, the high tax burden, reduction in extraction and sales, amortisation of debt service, labour liabilities and an increase in the cost of management compared with the previous administration. Consequently, Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings lowered the credit rating of Pemex, which will increase the cost of future borrowing.

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If Pemex had the same working conditions as private concessionaires,8 it could regain the ability to develop and consolidate its public enterprise. For new technology, Pemex could ally with private companies and share with them the risks in the extraction and refining process. Otherwise, Energy Reform will become a delivery of strategic public goods to transnational corporations and national companies, mostly ‘friends’ of the current Government. The loss of public goods towards private enterprises began in the 1990s with the privatisation of petrochemicals. It continues with round 2.2 of tender (Sener 2016), where the extraction of hydrocarbons on land is offered in ‘12 contract areas containing 39 oil fields and gas’ (@JoaquinColdwell), with an extension of land fourteen times larger than previous tenders. These tenders cover the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, where Burgos is also included. Given this complex energy framework for Mexico, this chapter has argued that Pemex can no longer sustain the energy development of the country. This enterprise requires financial support from the Government to pay back its gigantic debts, and transparent management and technical modernisation based on modern national and international science and technology. Most Mexican fossil fuel reserves face exhaustion, which will increase the cost of future extractions and reduce the extraction of crude oil, thus the income for exportation. Since the oil and gas fields are gradually being depleted, their operating and rehabilitation costs are rising (IEA 2015b). The Energy Reform Act is also failing, because it does not ensure a permanent energy supply based on a strong national component. Mexico’s energy security depends on the price of the dollar, on foreign prices and providers. This policy has increased gasoline and gas prices and in January 2017 triggered massive protests against the Government. In late 2016 Mexico’s President had the lowest popularity rate of all leaders in Latin America (Latinobarómetro 2016). Therefore, the policy of promoting renewable energy is desirable and necessary to grant the power required for future development. This policy provides an opportunity for Mexico to develop its abundant renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and biomass) potential. The Government may promote first co-investments with citizens and public investments and only later private national and international capital. This will reinforce Mexico’s energy security, especially in remote regions, based on sustainability and collective welfare. This will also make it possible to achieve the NDC, to which Mexico is committed based on the Paris Agreement (2015). The proposed alternative energy security requires the country to discard the traditional perspective of militarily and politically orientated energy security and to promote a comprehensive long-term energy strategy, which is orientated towards

To improve public finances, the needs of the ministry of finance must completely break away from the activities of Pemex. The national company should have the same fiscal conditions as transnational corporations, so that it can recover economically, pay back its debts and reinvest its resources efficiently and with expertise. Pemex could also collaborate with companies that provide the missing technology and thereby recover the production levels of 2004.

8

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energy sovereignty, social welfare, poverty alleviation and environmental restoration. The uncertain political context since the Trump Government took power in January 2017 offers Mexico an opportunity to promote a different energy development process with existing financial and scientific knowledge. But this approach will require an alternative understanding of security. Only through a widened and deepened understanding of energy security, taking human, gender, economic, societal and environmental care into account, may Mexico achieve a sustainable development with peace and justice. To achieve this goal, Mexico needs to develop its huge renewable energy potential. Thus, it is necessary to take the intermittency of renewables into account, sometimes in dispersed locations with limited regional capacity. An efficient energy mix may reduce costs, and renewables may become even more competitive in the future (Fig. 17.11). The future vision of Prodesen (2015) offers alternatives to strengthen energy security with clean energy, but it is still limited with regard to the renewables which offer Mexico a real sustainable future. One limit is the available financial resources. There is a possibility of promoting decentralised regional and local investments, with direct involvement of the people who suffer from energy insecurity or who could not afford to pay the increasing costs of electricity. There is low interconnectivity in the electricity sector, especially in remote areas. A decentralised management of renewables would reduce the margin of operating reserves, but at the same time create the opportunity for power in remote areas without previous access to the grid. A regionally organised energy policy may overcome many energy deficiencies without incurring high costs for missing transmission lines. The simultaneous development of various renewable energies may prevent isolated areas running out of power for hours during the night. There is also the potential for storage and small hydro energy, which grants a permanent and stable energy supply. At the same time, existing energy subsidies in Mexico are not only regressive (CIDAC 2013), but counterproductive and harmful for the environment, since they promote energy waste in the agricultural and domestic sector and support the richest in the country. Subsidies for diesel mean the agribusinesses in the North work with heavy machinery on agricultural land, causing overexploited aquifers, salinised soils with brackish water drawn from deep aquifers (Sánchez Cohen et al. 2010) and compaction of soils. The overexploitation of groundwater has caused the intrusion of seawater into coastal aquifers in Baja California and Sonora (Rangel et al. 2011). Removing energy subsidies for commercial export agriculture and dairy production in La Laguna will permit overexploited aquifers to recover and promote more sustainable methods of agriculture and food security. In addition, the Government could transfer the subsidies for paying the foreign debt, the highest in the history of Mexico (IMF 2015). These savings would also allow investment in renewable energies, whereby national, government and social capital could strengthen national energy security. The transition to renewable energy sources is a fundamental part of energy security, and Mexico can diversify its energy basket. Greater diversity in the

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Conclusions: A Future with a Sustainable Renewable Energy …

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generation of clean energy and a policy of differential prices, e.g. higher costs for electricity during peak hours, would promote power savings and reduce the problems of intermittency. Better storage systems, smart grids and the simultaneous use of various renewable energies would reduce the risks of intermittency, lack of energy and regional blackouts. The reduction of the dependence on fossil fuels may help Mexico to become independent of the sharp fluctuations in international fuel prices and the multiple geopolitical instabilities (see Fig. 17.2). Thus, a long-term renewable energy policy may ensure a safe and healthy power supply with fewer GHG emissions. The debate on energy security generally focuses on technical, economic or political terms, but rarely integrates the interactions among the environment, economy, geopolitics, engineering, society, culture and the respective world view. In the past, the energy sector has been the engine of Mexico’s economic development. The future will also require a safe energy supply, and this forces the Mexican state, that is, the Government, business and society (Weber 1978) to promote a long-term vision, where energy reserves, which are so far not explored and exploited by Pemex or others, will be crucial for Mexico’s future. The same is true for CFE (2015), where reconfiguration of energy security does not automatically imply being dismantled into multiple companies with often incompatible interests. Energy governance signifies working with agents and actors who are able to create an agenda that guarantees peace, development and prosperity for the whole Mexican society. Mexico should use its institutions and resources in an efficient and transparent way, to enable the whole of society – not just a few rich people – to profit from them. It also involves clean and, especially, renewable energy, which overcomes the production of highly polluting power that destroys the environment and produces airborne diseases. Thus, the process of fracking should be eliminated from the basket of Mexican energy production, because it affects energy security and pollute scarce and necessary natural resources. The consolidation of Mexican energy security is complex, due to the pressure and power of the US. The negotiation must care about a just and sustainable trinational energy partnership, which will be complex and uncertain with the new Trump administration. To reinforce national energy security will help the development of the whole country. It is necessary to prevent the most vulnerable groups (Coneval 2015) of our country suffering even more due to a potentially disadvantageous association, similar to what happened with NAFTA (Wise 2012; Cord et al. 2015) for peasants and indigenous people. So far, hybrid contracts for oil and gas exploration wells have transformed Pemex into the sole investor, so the company has had to assume all the risks in the process of exploration and drilling, while transnational oil companies have claimed millions in profits without any risk. With the Energy Reform, Pemex can now act on an equal base and spread risks among the companies involved. Lower international oil prices and pressure from the Ministry of Finance to supply immediate income might lead the authorities to squander Mexican energy resources because of the need to export fossil fuels and get urgent foreign currency. Only a long-term policy and investment in renewables and staff training can produce the human capital and funding needed to provide

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clean and, especially, renewable power nationwide. This may promote the development of local industries, regions and social groups with a comprehensive sustainable energy security, able to care for the environment and future generations. In short, so far Energy Reform has not strengthened national energy sovereignty, as Mexican citizens pay increasing prices for electricity, gas and gasoline. There is higher unemployment, there are poorer social conditions for oil workers and the financial situation of Pemex has drastically worsened, while poverty has increased. Resuming our alternative hypothesis and facing a complex and adverse energy situation in the production of fossil fuels (oil and gas), it would be appropriate for Mexico to promote, through national investment and citizen participation, its abundant renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal and ocean power) potentials, complemented with gas as the cleanest fossil energy source. Nuclear power is risky, too expensive, and produces dangerous radioactive waste, thus offers no alternative for sustainable energy security. Fracking is the worst option and will exhaust and pollute scarce water, contaminate soils in the fragile drylands and produce diseases among people and animals. Taking the cost and risks of nuclear energy and the opposition to fracking and dams by affected residents into account, as well as the high emissions of methane gas from flooded biomass – a much more dangerous GHG than CO2 (IPCC 2013) – only a massive promotion of renewable energy can produce comprehensive energy security with equity, sustainability and equality. Mexican citizens have savings9 and there exist personal savings for retirement (Afores), which could be invested in various regions to consolidate the development of renewable energies. These investments could be complemented with public, private, national and international capital. Prodesen (2015) developed a national guide that opens a realistic perspective about the present and potential energy situation. Government policy prioritises the development of clean energy, and middle-term planning makes it possible to make the decisions and investments needed in the short, medium and long-term. The Government proposed increasing clean energy infrastructure by 81% by 2030, which will reduce the use of polluting fossil fuels. So Mexico will not only strengthen its energy security and promote an environmentally friendly energy generation, but would also produce co-benefits for health, income, natural resources and the quality of life (IPCC 2014a). In addition, Mexico could meet its voluntary commitments to the UNFCCC and consolidate a comprehensive energy security, based on sustainability and the well-being of all Mexicans that is able to overcome high poverty levels.

9

Germany, with much less favourable solar conditions than Mexico, was able to promote among its citizens 400,000 sunroofs and these ‘facilities generated in 2012 around 2.7 billion euros in profit, despite solar energy being built 3 times less compared to wind’ (ISI 2014: 1).

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Sánchez Cohen, Ignacio, Gabriel Díaz Padilla, Hilario Macías Rodríguez, Juan Estrada Avalos (2010). “Proceso jerárquico analítico para la toma de decisiones en el manejo de los recursos naturales”, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1 of July-30 of September, pp. 305–3111. Sener [Ministry of Energy, Secretaría de Energía] (2013a). Balance Nacional de Energía 2013, Mexico, D.F., Secretaria de Energía. Sener [Ministry of Energy, Secretaría de Energía] (2013b). Programa Sectorial de Energía 2013– 2018, Mexico, D.F., Sener http://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5326587&fecha= 13/12/2013. Sener [Ministry of Energy, Secretaría de Energía] (2013c). Estrategia Nacional de Energía 2013– 2027, México, D.F., Sener. Serrano Oswald, Serena Eréndira (2009). “The Impossibility of Securitizing Gender vis a vis Engendering Security”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1151–1164. SHCP [Ministry of Finance; Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público] (2015). Criterios Generales de Política Económica para la Iniciativa de Ley de Ingresos y el Proyecto de Presupuesto de Egresos de la Federación Correspondientes al Ejercicio Fiscal 2015 http:// www.apartados.hacienda.gob.mx/presupuesto/antPPEF2015/paquete/criterios_generales_pe_ 2015.pdf. SHCP [Ministry of Finance; Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público] (2013). Informes de Labores www.shcp.gob.mx/RDC/Informe_labores/Informe_Labores_SHCP_2012-2013.pdf. The Trilateral Commission (2007). Energy Security and Climate Change, The Triangle Papers, No. 61, Washington, Paris, Tokyo, The Trilateral Commission. Umbach, Frank (2010). “Global energy security and the implications for the EU”, Energy Policy, No. 38, pp. 1229–1240. UNDP [United Nations Program for Development] (2013). Human Development Report 2013, New York, UNDP. UNDP [United Nations Program for Development] (2003). Human Development Report 2003, New York, UNDP. UNDP [United Nations Program for Development] (1994). Human Development Report 1994, New York, UNDP. Wæver, Ole (1995). “Securitization and Desecuritization”, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (Ed.), On Security, New York, Columbia University Press, pp. 46–86. Weber, Max (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Berkeley, University of California Press. Westminster Energy Forum (2006). The New Energy Security Paradigm, Geneva, Westminster Energy Forum. Winzer, Christian (2011). Conceptualizing Energy Security, EPRG Working Paper 1123, Cambridge Working Paper in Economics 1151, New York, University of Cambridge. Wise, Timothy A. (2012). “The impacts of U.S. agricultural policies on Mexican producers”, Paper 8, Global Development and Environment Institute, Boston, Tufts University. Wolfers, Arnold (1962). “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol”, in A. Wolfers (Ed.) Discord and Collaboration. Essays on International Politics, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, pp. 147–165. World Bank (2013). World Development Indicators 2013, Washington, D.C., World Bank.

Part IV

Texts on Migration, the Nexus among Sectorial Securities and Outlook

Chapter 18

Analysing Migration and Environmental-Induced Migration with the PEISOR Model

18.1

Introduction

This chapter addresses migration from Mexico to the USA and internally. It explores first the environmental-induced migration (EIM) in Mexico and later focuses on rural areas, where changing environmental conditions1 have produced environmental-forced migration (Sanchez et al. 2012) or environmentally induced migration (IOM 2009, 2008; Laczko et al. 2009; Oswald Spring et al. 2012, 2014; OECD 2008). There are different types of EIM: (a) rural-rural, when people migrate from a disaster-prone or environmentally destroyed region to another rural part with better soil, water and productive conditions; (b) rural-urban, mostly inside a country, where people abandon their precarious livelihood and hope to find better life conditions in the cities; (c) rural and urban international migration, where people cross borders – often without documents – and try to find jobs in rural or urban spaces. This chapter focus on the international undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States (USA) and some internal movements. With data, the chapter explains how the pressure of global environmental change and poverty force people to leave their homes and undertake a hazardous and risky migration process to the northern neighbouring country, in the hope of finding better living conditions or a paid job which allows them to send money to Mexico and the family left behind. However, the present conditions of reinforced control on the border have increased the difficulty and cost of crossing without documents, thus a significant number of

1

Synthesis of the chapters written by the author and published in a collective book co-authored by Úrsula Oswald Spring, S. Eéndira Serrano Oswald, Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Fátima Flores Palacios, Maribel Ríos Everardo, Hans Günter Brauch, Teresita E. Ruíz Pantoja, Carlos Lemus Ramírez, Ariana Estrada Villanueva, Mónica Cruz Rivera, Vulnerabilidad social y género entre migrantes ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_18

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migrants have got stuck on the Mexican side, including Haitians, Cubans, Central Americans and other nations. The abysmal socio-economic differences (USA has a GDP 3.14 times of Latin America), environmental threats and public insecurity between both countries are some of the complex reasons for moving. Since 1986, the legal status of Latin migrants in the USA has changed and now most cross illegally or undocumented. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, the number of this type of Mexicans has increased, especially due to the massive import of subsidised grain that has destroyed the peasant economy and the internal price of maize. Despite the fence, a sophisticated electronic observation system with drones, as estimated 450,000–500,000 Mexicans illegally crossed the border in 2007, and 150,000–200,000 in 2014. Since the massive repatriation of illegal migrants during the Obama Administration and the beginning of the Trump Administration, the balance between immigration and expulsion is negative for Mexicans. The successive reduction in undocumented migration is related to harsher conditions at the border, high costs for crossing and the threat of being expelled or kidnapped by illegal groups. During the first four years of the Obama Administration 800,000 people were expelled and during 2009–2015 more than 2.5 million people were deported; in fact, George Washington University estimated over 3 million deported people. Obama also returned to their original countries 91% of those previously convicted of a crime. These numbers do not include the migrants who were turned away, are waiting on the border for better crossing condition or have returned on the way to their home country. These physical and psychological obstacles have created new conflicts, which increased with the rejection of an immigration law in 2007 by the U.S. Congress controlled by the Republicans and the campaign of Donald Trump in 2016 against illegal immigrants and the building of a wall. All these factors have increased the vulnerability of Latin immigrants in the USA and undocumented migrants.

18.1.1 Research Questions The following chapter asks: what are the causes of EIM? Is it pollution, degradation or stress at local level or is EIM related to more regional or global processes, such as global environmental change (GEC), climate change (CC), desertification, water pollution and stress? Later an additional question arises: what are the dependent and the independent variables that have caused EIM? A third cluster of questions is related to the present debates of EIM. Is EIM: • produced by specific phenomenon such as risk factors and vulnerability? • centred on human beings from an anthropological, psychological or sociological approach?

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• centred on the policies of the State: migration, refugees, asylum, and migrant states? • focused on international regimes, their evolution, implementation, and ongoing changes? • centred on human rights, their protection, and their integration as full citizens or located in ghettos? These theoretical approaches also offer different methodologies to deal with and define the concrete research agenda and a wider understanding for the theme. This chapter focuses on Mexican internal and international migration to the USA, where EIM is still absent from theoretical discussions. However, the migration wave from Honduras after hurricane Mitch and the international migration after the merged hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel in the Mountain of Guerrero indicate that EIM was being used as a survival strategy by the affected people while their Governments were unable to grant recovery inside their home countries. Thus, both were predominantly EIM, whenever the people explained that their livelihood got destroyed or there was no government support to rebuild damaged homes, food and harvests. Both examples also demonstrate that rural areas are more exposed to extreme hydrometeorological events than urban zones, because farmers depend directly on their natural resources, which can be destroyed by one extreme event or by long-term slow-ongoing processes such as drought, desertification, loss of soil fertility or multiple small disasters.

18.1.2 Objective of the Study The present chapter analyses the internal and international migration with its geopolitical repercussions between Mexico and the USA. It focuses on climate-induced or environmental-induced migration, both called EIM, which is considered to be a security risk by the authorities of both countries: the USA and Mexico. Further, Mexico is also a country of transit, especially from Central America, but also from Cuba, Haiti, and other South American and African countries. The more than 3000 km border with the USA, and the complex natural conditions, including the long River Bravo and a dangerous desert in Arizona, have influenced the migration process. The campaign of Donald Trump has further increased xenophobia and racism against Latinos in the USA. Nevertheless, Latinos are the largest minority there, and half of them are illegal or undocumented migrants, the majority of them Mexicans. They are exposed to all kinds of threats, discrimination and persecution. Further, the financial crisis in 2008 had most severely affected Hispanics. The unemployment rate among Mexicans was the highest with 7.4% compared to 6.4% for the overall labour force work (Passel/Cohn 2011). Another option is to ally with the transnational organised crime (drug, arms, human and organs traffickers), which has transformed the border on the Mexican

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side into the most violent region, with repercussions in both countries due to prostitution (Klot/DeLargy 2007), public insecurity, crime, VIH-AIDS, money laundering, kidnapping and drug trafficking and consumption. The present situation of insecurity is also related to high drug consumption and overdoses of heroin in the USA, as John Kerry, Homeland Security Minister, accepted in his visit to Mexico in July 2017. This interconnection between Mexico and the USA has obliged both countries to combat drug trafficking jointly through the Mérida agreement (Kochhar 2009). However, there is also arms trafficking from the USA to Mexico; most of the illegally introduced arms in Mexico came from the USA, which was only recently accepted by the U.S. authorities.

18.1.3 Conceptualisation of Environmental-Induced Migration Migration has always been a complex phenomenon. Basically, the theories focus on push factors (poverty, insecurity, erosion, landless), pull factors (better socio-economic and environmental conditions) and mediation factors such as trajectories. But drought and lack of government support or private investment in drylands have destroyed the productive condition and crop yields, and thus increased internal and international migration, due to the loss of food, income and livelihood. Rural people in developing countries depend on natural resources for their food and survival and when these were lost due to climate change, these people searched for a better livelihood outside. Confronted with worsening soil, water and crop conditions, Myers (2002, 2005) has forecast that in 2050 there will be 250 million environmental refugees worldwide. Whenever, his data missed any serious empirical study, the number started to threaten Governments in industrialised countries. In 2007, the UK Minister of Foreign Affairs brought the debate to the UN Security Council (Wisner et al. 2007). From this date on, the discourse of environmental migration has been securitised in terms of national security (White, 2011), although empirical data on the strategies of affected populations are still lacking. Further, there has been no discussion on the socio-economic impacts on the people left behind, often women or elders in charge of families, households and fields. This chapter will not discuss the question of environmental refugees, due to the fact that 65.6 million forcibly displaced people exist globally, half of them are under 18 years old, only 17.2 million are under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and 5.3 million Palestinian refugees are registered by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The wars in Syria have expelled 5.5 million, Afghanistan 2.5 million and Sudan 1.4 million people (UNHCR 2017). Therefore, it is better to deal with EIM and not environmental refugees, since these people receive legal protection from UN bodies.

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The chapter analyses EIM as a complex phenomenon related to extreme events and interlinked with poverty at micro level. Thus, climate or environmental-induced migration is caused by extreme (flash floods, landslides, hurricanes) or low-ongoing (droughts, desertification, sea level rise) hydrometeorological events, triggered by socio-economic threats and personal aspirations. It is also often a result of survival strategies (Oswald Spring 1991) or an adaptation process to difficult life conditions (IPCC 2014a). The International Organisation of Migration (IOM 2007) proposed the following definition: “Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad” (IOM, MC/INF/288 2007: 2). The UK Government Office for Science (2011: 12 and 33) developed a conceptual framework that goes further into the dichotomist approaches of push and pull factors. The scheme includes macro variables, such as environment, social, economic, demographic and political factors, with a gradual or sudden appearance (Fig. 18.1). Thus, this proposal takes into account spatial and temporal variables whenever cultural and gender factors are missing. This last is crucial for analysing who is left behind: generally, women who are in charge of their children, their extensive families and their fields, sometimes also elders who morally or physically support the enormous amount of work load. Sometimes, they also have to pay for the illegal crossing of their husband. At micro-level are personal, family and community characteristics which influence the decision to migrate or stay. Four decades ago it was mostly men who migrated to the USA to work in agribusiness and construction. In the last two decades more women are migrating – generally young and unmarried, who found employment faster in the service sector, but also female heads of household with some children. In the last decade a timid policy of reunification of families has allowed some women and children to join their husbands/fathers in the USA. However, this was of short duration. By contrast, legal changes and the reinforcement of border controls as a security issue for the USA has not only increased border checks and deportation, but also the cost of undocumented migration. The policy of Obama and Trump is stronger control, which has also produced a massive expulsion of migrants back to their homeland, called migration of return. Migration was always linked to existing social or family networks in the USA or Mexico City. These relations with the diaspora had provided the contacts and money to pay a specialised person (colloquially known as a coyote and now often linked to organised crime) to smuggle the undocumented migrant across the border and, once in the USA, get the required fake ‘security number’ and find a job. During the last decade the reinforcement of the Border Patrol and more expulsions in the USA have tripled the cost of an illegal crossing and increased the dangers because of a more dangerous route through the desert of Arizona and the presence of criminal gangs on the border. These difficulties have substantially reduced the number of undocumented migrants from Mexico. However, the ones from Central America continue to try to

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Fig. 18.1 Conceptual framework for EIM. Source UK Government Office of Science (2011: 12 and 33)

cross, because their local conditions of life and security are even harsher. They are prepared to risk their lives, not only during the dangerous conditions in transit through Mexico and on the border, but also with regard to potential raids in the USA at workplaces or at home, when undocumented migrants are arrested. The reflections above indicate that EIM is a complex process and there are no theoretical agreements about who is forced or who is induced by environment to migrate. There are also contradictions related to this environmental focus. Should it be global and explain the general policies between both countries (in this case, the USA and Mexico), or should EIM be studied in detail with anthropological methods in the community? Because of these complications, this chapter focuses on the global discussion on migration and its relation to EIM, while the next chapter (25) analyses the causes, motives, personal, family, gender and communitarian impacts of rural migrants from different agricultural backgrounds and the impacts of disasters. Both approaches may be complementary and might facilitate the formulation of policies for Mexico as a country of expulsion, transit and, recently, return migration. Further, the empirical approaches allow analysis of the concrete factors of EIM, which normally get lost in the global studies on migration, since the first answer of every migrant is that they leave because of lack of socio-economic stability. However, the frequent loss of harvests, reduction of field yields and small periodic disasters can only be examined through concrete field research.

18.1.4 Structure of the Chapter After this introduction this chapter focuses on the methodological approach (18.2) related to the PEISOR model. The next subchapter reviews the Pressure (P) of CC for EIM (18.3) and continue to see the Effects (E) of CC as a threat multiplier to human security (18.4). Within this part, the study focus on the effects of CC as a

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security risk in Mexico (18.4.1), caused by environmental scarcity (18.4.2), environmental degradation (18.4.3) and environmental stress (18.4.4). The next subchapter centres on the Impacts (I) of CC (18.5), while in 18.6 the Societal Outcomes (SO) of rural EIM are addressed in the case of internal (18.6.1) and international (18.6.2) migration, together with its societal outcomes and security threats (18.6.3). The chapter continues by searching for Policy Responses (R) to deal with EIM (18.7) and the political perspectives and security implications of EIM (18.8). It finishes with some conclusions and policy remarks on EIM in the case of Mexico.

18.2

Methodological Approach

Migration theories have pointed to both so-called push and pull factors, i.e. attractions in the target areas. The PEISOR model (see Fig. 15.1) is designed to make it easier to understand the often contradictory dynamics of EIM, in which environmental factors play a crucial role, although they are not always mentioned as key drivers by affected people. However, in focus groups and deep interviews climate variability and climate change are crucial factors in understanding the complexity of the motivations to migrate or stay at home. The conceptual analysis of this complex process of EIM with feedback is based on the PEISOR model,2 which will be discussed in the following five consecutive stages: P (pressure; 18.3) coming from the interaction between the natural and the human system. This produces E (effects; 18.4), such as land degradation, scarcity of water and clean air and loss of biodiversity, which are further aggravated by population growth and unsustainable production processes. I (impacts; 18.5) are related to natural events and human-made disasters, with Mexico being severely affected by climate change because of two warming-up oceans on both sides of the country. Extreme hydro-meteorological events are related to hurricanes and tropical depressions, which produce floods, landslides, and the Niño-Niña (ENSO) cycle has also resulted in severe droughts in most of the territory, including the tropical humid region. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and industrial accidents exacerbate these impacts. The SO (societal outcomes; 18.6) are complex for people, who face old (poverty, small plots of land) and new threats related to climate change and global environmental change. They have produced a deterioration of life quality and a loss of well-being that has forced families and communities to find alternatives through migration or to adapt to new dangers and risks.

2 OECD (2012), UNCDS, EEA, MA (2005) developed different models of socio-economic and environmental interactions. The PEISOR model goes further into the PSR (pressure, state, response) developed by OECD (2001). Brauch/Oswald Spring (2009) suggested an octagon of interactions among the natural and social system. This model also includes national and international contexts, boundary conditions and feedback (neoliberalism, regressive globalisation, etc.), because institutional discrimination and erroneous policies have often obliged illiterate peasants to migrate without documents to the USA or to other rural or urban areas within Mexico.

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In several scientific papers migration has also been seen as an adaptation strategy (IPCC 2012, 2014a, 2014b; O’Brien et al. 2010; Pelling et al. 2007; Kirmayer et al. 2011), although it is sometimes associated with high social, financial and personal costs, especially for people left behind (Oswald Spring 2013b), usually women, infants and elderly people. Overexploitation and pressure at work and home has increased their social vulnerability, often expressed by depression or illnesses (Flores 2014). Even for those who manage to migrate to the USA without documents, the situation is difficult, due to persecution, the stress of making an illegal border crossing, and the control by corrupt officials or organised crime syndicates. All these phenomena have increased the dangers of losing their life or physical integrity on the train, called ‘La Bestia’ (the beast), or the border. These conflicts on both sides of the migration process – the migrants and the left behind – require R (political and social responses; 18.7) and public policies. The Government of Mexico and the USA need to strengthen human rights protection on Mexico’s northern border and also on its southern border with Guatemala. These approaches involve improving living standards and security conditions for people and migrants inside each country, which includes decent income and living conditions (e.g. dignified salaries in the maquila-assembly industry and agriculture), so that people do not need to emigrate and can live in their home countries. In the USA, undocumented migrants face persecution, discrimination, racism, permanent threats of deportation, lower salaries and high-risk jobs. From society, R also includes processes of resilience, whereby women and men develop strategies to adapt to the changing socio-environmental conditions. Especially vulnerable people are female migrants and children, because they are frequently raped or sexually abused during the migration process, and often end up in prostitution or pederasty networks. From 2008 on, with the global financial and economic crisis, unauthorised Mexican-USA migration has dramatically changed (Fig. 18.2). From the peak in 2007 with 6.9 million undocumented migrants the number has reduced to 5.6 million in 2017. Unauthorised Mexicans will no longer be the largest minority in the USA, but other nations now constitute a more significant proportion with an estimated 5.7 million people (Pew Research Center 2017). This recent process is related to the massive deportation of Mexicans during the Obama Administration, the present xenophobic and racist behaviour of the Trump Government and the increasing costs, which have drastically reduced Mexican immigration to the USA. But there is also a demographic change in Mexico, where the birth rates in both urban and rural areas have declined and families often need their children for the family business or field work. Finally, about a million young people got involved in criminal activities such as robbery, extortion, kidnapping, drugs etc.

18.3

P: Climate Change as a Pressure for Environmentally Induced Migration (EIM)

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Fig. 18.2 Among unauthorised migrants Mexicans may no longer be the majority. Source Pew Research Center (2017)

18.3

P: Climate Change as a Pressure for Environmentally Induced Migration (EIM)

EIM is a result of the interactions and feedback between the natural and the human system. Global environmental change (GEC) has produced sometimes chaotic relationships between deteriorated ecosystems, low crop yields, loss of harvest and hunger or malnutrition. Not all the consequences are predictable, but negative outputs can become very dangerous for both systems. Climate change factors, the stress and deterioration of water, the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services are all interrelated. All three natural resources directly degrade the soil quality, resulting in loss of natural fertility, erosion and desertification. In Mexico the effects of GEC are intensifying and have generated multiple risks for the population, their production processes and the natural environment, due to more irregular rainfall and extreme events. But the negative interaction between deforestation, water pollution, inadequate soil management, invasion in ravines and water pollution have also increased the dangers of flash floods, droughts, disasters, landslides, diseases and crop losses. When these environmental threats impact on people with low levels of education and weak social organisation, the resilience from below is limited. Sometimes, even with external support, they have been unable to cope with the dramatic situation and have had to leave. Often in indigenous poor regions, the Government had forgotten to promote mitigation and adaptation. There are limited early warning systems, thus the resilience of the affected people is very low, because they suffer from a dual vulnerability, the environmental and the social one (Oswald Spring 2013a).

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Fig. 18.3 Dendroclimatic analysis in the Northern States of Mexico. Source Villanueva-Diaz et al. (2010)

Especially affected by climate change are the northern drylands. Experimental dentroclimatic analysis of old tree rings (Fig. 18.3) indicates great annual rainfall variability in the northern states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango and Sinaloa. The long-term trend is not yet responding to the recent reduction of precipitation in these states, which is on average about 18% in these arid regions. Conagua (2016) has attributed these drastic changes to CC, changing trade winds, increase in temperature, higher evapotranspiration and especially high extreme temperatures.

18.4

E: Effects of Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier to Human Security

The effects of climate change in Mexico with their human, economic, environmental and social implications transcend the narrow view of national and political security (Waltz 1979, 2000) and include a widened understanding of security (Wæver 1997; Buzan et al. 1998; Buzan 1997, 2004) as proposed by the Copenhagen School of Security Studies. These three authors widened the dimensions of military and political security towards economic, environmental and societal security. In this widened understanding, the reference object changes from the State to humankind and vulnerable groups, to the economy and nature. The threats were no more other states, but financial crisis, extreme hydrometeorological events and loss of livelihood. The interrelationships between the human and the natural system focused on the impact of humans on the environment, while natural events on humans created disasters, deaths and losses. Specifically, the concept of environmental security made it possible to understand the multiple security challenges raised and produced by GEC (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011b). By using the concept of environmental security (Dalby et al. 2009; Oswald Spring et al. 2009; Brauch et al. 2011a), we can now analyse the risks related to water, soil, air pollution, greenhouse gases, deforestation, loss of biodiversity,

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E: Effects of Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier to Human Security

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chemical and biological accidents and other similar processes that may threaten both the natural and the human system. Since the industrial revolution, but especially during the past fifty years, the burning of cheap fossil fuels has facilitated rapid industrialisation and globalisation and promoted a consumerist lifestyle globally. Focusing on the sources of threats, others (enemies) are no longer the key threat; our behaviour, excessive use of hydrocarbons and wasteful consumerism are producing the new dangers and risks. For this reason, we are at the same time both the threats and the victims (Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009). Thus, these dangers can no longer be countered with traditional military tools, because we produce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the waste, based on our personal consumption, and thus each of us contributes to the destruction of ecosystems and their services. This deterioration creates risks which are affecting multiple regions and producing different effects on social groups, but could become a global risk (Beck 1999, 2007, 2011). The existing anarchy among these linkages may also produce tipping points (Lenton et al. 2008), although we do not know when, where and how these may occur. The effects of extreme hydro-meteorological events can be mitigated by preventative actions and through creative resilience-building, which can reduce the loss of life, material goods and lack of governance (Barnett 2010; In t’Veld 2011). Facing these new risks of GEC and especially of climate change, people must adapt to the unknown environmental threats that require new learning capacities to prepare for unidentified circumstances, which are potentially more difficult to deal with, to avoid forced mass migrations (Sánchez et al. 2012). While people who are affected by climate change predominantly live in developing countries, greenhouse gas emissions have historically been and continue to be largely generated by the industrialised nations, but increasingly also by rapidly industrialising threshold states (China, India, Brazil, Mexico, etc.), posing equity problems for rich and poor nations and dissent over who should take responsibility for historically accumulated GHG. This global injustice was not taken into account during the negotiation process in Paris on new agreements to reduce GHG emissions, but did offer some financial support to poor countries. A committed behaviour should include cooperation, financial support and transfer of clean technologies to the Global South that could support developing nations and promote rapid development of renewable energy to limit further GHG emissions. As the biggest producer and supplier of solar panels, China has brought down prices, and in off-grid areas solar energy has already become competitive even when sun activity is at its lowest level. Nevertheless, the effects of CC and GEC not only affect developing nations, but also impact on rich nations, such as extreme events from 2011 to 2020 in Australia, Europe, the USA, Japan and Canada. Furthermore, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has declared each year since 2009 to be the warmest year on the planet since comparative measurements became available (Mendoza/Espíndola 2015).

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18.4.1 Effects of Climate Change as a Security Risk in Mexico The biggest environmental problems in Mexico are directly related to the processes of climate change, such as increase in temperature, more intense and frequent hurricanes, extreme torrential rains and long and intense droughts, which are eroding the soil and destroying the green cover. The expansion of agriculture in the drylands and urban frontier on natural areas has further deteriorated biodiversity and led to overexploitation of aquifers in coastal areas. The intrusion of seawater into groundwater, especially in arid areas (Baja California, Sonora) where intensive farming depends on irrigation, is salinising soils and reducing clean water for people. Figure 18.4 explains the aridity index in Mexico; and the most arid regions (Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango) are precisely where export agribusiness is located. In these arid region, higher temperatures, more variable and reduced rainfall and longer interestival drought periods have altered the traditional agricultural cycles and generated threats not only to environmental safety (Brauch et al. 2011b), but also to humans (Truong et al. 2011) and communities (Serrano Oswald 2010), due to the loss of subsistence crops and extreme temperatures.

18.4.2 Environmental Scarcity The regional and temporal distribution of water has created wide-ranging pressures in Mexico, because it primarily rains between July and September during the

Fig. 18.4 Aridity index in Mexico. Source INEGI (2016)

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Fig. 18.5 Unequal geographical, economic and demographic distribution of water. Source PNH (2013: 19)

monsoon season, while during the remainder of the year only an average of 5% of rainfall occurs (Oswald Spring 2011). This is aggravated by the unequal concentration of the population and productive activities in dry areas (Fig. 18.5). Seventy-seven per cent of the people produce 79% of the GDP, but receive only 32% of the rain. This mis-planning has historical development roots, yet water intensive industries are much more concentrated in the south-south-west, especially agriculture, which still uses 76% of all the water. Thus, safe water access throughout the whole year depends on the supply from aquifers. Of the existing 653 aquifers in Mexico, 108 have been overexploited and generate more than 85% of the pumped water3 for human beings, ecosystems and productive activities (Conagua 2016). Undoubtedly, environmental threats due to CC are greater for the people living in drylands and on the coast, especially small farmers and indigenous people who live in remote mountainous regions with poor communications and lack of irrigation, where early warning alerts do not reach them or are not understood, because they speak an indigenous language. Special attention should also be given to small but recurring hydrometeorological events that affect vulnerable groups several times

3

The aquifers of the Metropolitan Valley of Mexico City are the most exploited in the world and the worst is in Texcoco with an overuse of 850% that produces severe subsidence processes (Oswald Spring 2011). This has arisen because out of 6800 wells only 3300 have legal permission. Corruption among the federal, state and local authorities, lack of cooperation and political tensions increase in-governance, because all three entities belong to different political parties.

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a year. This includes the slow-onset process of land degradation and desertification, which is exacerbated by global warming. Specifically, these processes systematically affect the welfare of peasants and ultimately force them to abandon their lands and communities. Finally, a fifth of the land is given by the Ministry of Economy in concessions lasting more than 30 years to mining companies that use significant quantities of water and pollute the soil, air and water and also destroy ecosystems. Their services are often located on traditional communal land. These mining companies generate not only threats to the security of people because of pollution, but also create severe local and regional conflicts, as the land and water belong to the communities or to peasant organisations and are used for their productive process. These concessions further undermine the Government’s credibility, since they are given without the necessary informed consent of the indigenous people (ILO, Art. 169). This government procedure has been another factor impeding efficient collaboration with civil society to improve early warning systems and build resilience. Latinobarómetro (2015) stated that only 17% of Mexican citizens feel represented by their parliament and confidence in the President fell from 59% in 2011 to 35% in 2015 to an unprecedented low of 29% in early 2017, the lowest in Latin America. Only 18% of citizens believe that Mexico will progress during the next few years.

18.4.3 Environmental Degradation Mexico is severely affected by land degradation and droughts of long duration and high intensity that have become more acute since 2012 (Fig. 18.6). The reasons for the natural loss of soil fertility are related to 18% of over-fertilisation and overgrazing; 12% of water erosion and 8% of salinisation (CICC 2015). Once the soil is

Fig. 18.6 Severe droughts in Mexico: 2012–2014. Source CICC (2015: 70)

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damaged, it loses the basic function of sustaining natural ecosystems, water drainage and carbon storage. Thus, the ability of ecosystem services is reduced and affects those who depend on healthy soil, especially small-scale peasant farmers.

18.4.4 Environmental Stress In Mexico the processes of desertification and land degradation are crucial push factors for emigration and contradict the results of Schmidt-Verkerk (2010) in Tlaxcala. Other studies conducted in the field of environmental migration in Morelos, Sonora, Chihuahua, Oaxaca and Guerrero found that rural-urban and international migration are basically related to the loss of natural soil fertility, water shortage and decline in agricultural yields, thus reducing subsistence and income, which limits survival in the field (Garatuza et al. 2011; Oswald Spring 2009b; Pelling et al. 2007). Similar results were reported by INIFAP and UNAM, whose researchers found that the population migrated because of drought, decreased performance and deterioration of soil fertility (Sánchez et al. 2012). Contaminated water and soils have also created local conflicts over access to communal lands, collecting firewood and grazing areas, and the lack of transparency in communal property rights and conflicts between communities has often led to violent clashes, especially when agribusinesses in the Chihuahuan desert are overexploiting aquifers with official permission (Quintana 2012). Social networks are crucial for communities and families that lack Government support and are living in precarious socio-economic conditions. During extreme events, disasters or desertification, community networks often disintegrate and families or lone individuals have to face new threats. This situation is particularly critical for women, infants and the elderly. These vulnerable groups are often victims of human trafficking networks and during an evacuation or migration process they sometimes end up in forced prostitution or their organs and goods are stolen. During migration to the USA women, family and community networks usually help migrants to survive during the journey, and pay the ransom for crossing the border or to be freed from kidnappers. They also help newcomers to get a job when they reach the neighbouring country (Fuentes/Peña 2005). Similar conditions exist in rural-urban and rural-rural migration within Mexico, when families help migrants find shelter and a job or protect them from corrupt authorities. This support helps the newcomers adapt to often unfriendly and alien environments compared to their traditional communitarian culture (Ojeda de la Peña et al. 1994; Ceballos 2003; Anguiano/Hernández 2003). Further, family networks protect infants who migrate alone to reach their relatives in the USA, hoping for a better education or medical care. If a family member becomes ill or dies in the USA, the same networks support the repatriation and burial ceremony in the place of origin. Therefore, these bonds are called transnational communities (Castillo et al. 2009).

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Scarcity, degradation and environmental stress have placed pressure on the northern drylands, where the most significant migrations to the USA have also occurred. Sánchez et al. (2012) argued that the short distance to the border is an additional push factor; however, even in these highly exposed regions migration to the USA has recently almost stopped. Nevertheless, people have moved to urban cities in the region or to some agricultural emporium in search of jobs and income.

18.5

I or Impact of Climate Change

Climate change is one of many environmental factors that aggravate GEC and have forced people to migrate. Mexico is exposed to several factors related to climatic, geophysical and chemical-technological hazards. Sea level rise in the Pacific and Atlantic has caused erosion in coastal regions and sea-water intrusion into fertile land and aquifers, aggravated by waves from hurricanes and tropical depressions. Cyclones or hurricanes occur on both coasts, some with highly destructive forces which also generate landslides. Floods and droughts are the most frequent threats that may be aggravated by the destruction of mangroves and the deforestation of hills and mountains, but the most deadly events are landslides and droughts. Future scenarios for precipitation and temperature indicate that drylands will become more arid and hotter (Figs. 18.7 and 18.8), which will affect mainly rain-fed agriculture. EIM often constitutes the only survival alternative under these hostile conditions. Since 1994, longer droughts have reduced crop yields and forced farmers to extract more water from aquifers, resulting in overexploitation of groundwater across almost the whole country (Garatuza et al. 2011). The scenarios for 2050 predict less rainfall in drylands, an increase in the humid areas in the south and east, and stronger and more frequent hurricanes and storms. Less rainfall and more extreme temperatures affect the cover of vegetation and soils. This increases the existing processes of desertification, which further reduces the capture of CO2

Average daily median between1961 and 1990

annual

precipitation

Projection of daily median annual precipitations in percentage with the model ECHAM4

Fig. 18.7 Projected changes in precipitation patterns in 2050. Source CCA (2009)

18.5

I or Impact of Climate Change

Based on average temperature/year (ºC) between 1961-1990

467

Projection of average temperature/year (ºC) in per cent with model ECHAM4 (middle range impact)

Fig. 18.8 Projected temperature changes (°C) in 2050. Source CCA (2009)

and increases GHG emissions. Especially affected are areas in Sonora and Tamaulipas, as well as the mountainous regions of Durango, Zacatecas, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacán and Morelos. Drought, variability in rainfall, flooding coasts, pests and diseases, along with salinisation of the soil and aquifers, will affect agricultural yields, which may become unsustainable for the production of small farmers in key regions of Mexico. Nevertheless, adverse environmental conditions will exert even greater pressure on young people, and eventually the whole family will have to leave the community. When living in areas of steep slopes, water and wind erosion create additional risks for degraded ecosystems, since the lack of vegetation wears away soils and reduces the recharge of tropical rain into the aquifers. Eroded soils also create new threats of landslides. Finally, warmer and extremely cold days can affect the immune system of people, animals and plants, causing threats to human health and ecosystems. The lack of government support and frequent disasters have pushed some small peasant farmers to plant illegal crops as an alternative to undocumented migration, but with high personal risks and an increase of physical violence. All these factors have generated a picture of high risk of floods, droughts and compromised food sovereignty in Mexico. CICC (2015) estimated that in 2050 between 13 and 27% of rain-fed land may no longer be planted with corn, according to the three scenarios proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2013). About 78% of peasants without irrigation and lack of government support will have to abandon their communities in the near future. Fifty-eight per cent of the national area is located in semi-arid and arid regions (Fig. 18.5) and it is precisely on these lands that 80% of farmers and indigenous people live today in extreme poverty (Coneval 2015).

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SO: Societal Outcomes: Rural Environmentally-Induced Migration (R-EIM)

In 1992, with the change of Article 27 of the Constitution, the traditional system of ejido land tenure, which protected small-scale peasants due to the revolution, was changed. Since then conflicts on land have increased and between 1992 and 2003 the Department of Agrarian Reform (SRA) counted 631,314 agrarian conflicts,4 often also related to problems over access to water. Of these, 104 were considered to be red flags, i.e. conflicts with armed confrontations that posed risks to the security of an entire region, especially the most vulnerable farmers. In terms of gender vulnerability, existing ejido laws give the Ejido Assembly the right to define the use of land and to assign the land to their participants. Although many wives work the ejido lands without interruption when their husband emigrates, women rarely get the land, when their spouse dies, due to the prevailing patriarchal practices in the traditional ejido system and an untransparent decision-making process within the ejido assembly. This has been the reason why women in Mexico accounted for only 18% of the land. This discrimination increased their vulnerability, and also limited their role as productive farmers. These entrenched practices of discrimination often obliged women to develop survival strategies that frequently contributed to the loss of social cohesion and welfare of an entire poor family. This behaviour is related to the existing patriarchal culture and its dominant social representations, as well as the need to engender security in Mexico (Serrano Oswald 2009). Within the ejido there is also the problem of mini-parcels which cannot be further divided. Therefore, the elders continue to tend their land, while the younger generation is migrating to cities or abroad. The lack of transparent land tenure, irrational land use, unequal water rights and government corruption have generated local conflicts and ‘complex emergencies’ (Oswald Spring/Brauch 2006; Oswald Spring 2005) within communities and regions. An additional factor of instability is the governmental concession of land and water to transnational and national mining companies, which use the resources intensively and have polluted surface and groundwater through frequent accidents, such as the mining accident of Grupo Mexico in Sonora in 2016. Along with public insecurity, entire communities have

4

Of 631,314 conflicts, 432,785 were related to individual ownership of land (33.4% with direct possession; 31.9% with inheritance issues and 11.7% with urban plots). The other 105,744 are collective conflicts among communities (boundary issues) and women, who were deprived of their legal rights by the Ejidal General Assembly, a local decision-making institution, and 55,789 are problems with communal rights.

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been forced to abandon their communities to escape the physical and structural violence.5 This complex combination of crises and insecurity has created new security risks that may be aggravated by climate change.

18.6.1 Internal Migration Over the past decades, more than five million farmers have been affected by environmental problems besides low prices for their products and price hikes on production inputs. Consequently, many have had to leave their communities. Figure 18.9 compares the internal movements of people from 1990 to 2000 with those from 2000 to 2005. This first approach to municipal mobility, regardless of fertility rates and mortality, indicated a drastic population change in the drylands. This was an early indicator of the deterioration of the quality of life of the affected people not only due to environmental problems, but also because of the abandonment of social policy. Socio-economic internal migration, which was later aggravated by climate change, is more serious in arid and semi-arid lands. These adverse conditions were further aggravated by the policy of granting new concessions to transnational mining companies during the PAN government, which has increased poverty, marginalisation, accidents, violence and socio-natural disasters. These large concessions have also limited farmers’ access to water and contributed to the contamination of soil and water. On average, the loss of purchasing power in Mexico, which is one of the most unequal countries in the world, declined by 15.8% between 2006 and 2010 (Fig. 18.10). In addition, expectations of a better future in the same period declined by 25%. In October 2011, 80% of Mexicans believed that the future would be worse (Consulta Mitofsky 2011). In due time, several demographic studies (Boltvinik 2009; ENIGH 2009; Coneval, 2009, 2012, 2015) have also analysed regional differences in poverty. While the number of poor people in the city of Mexico was 32% in 2015, in the three most marginal states – Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas – it rose to 72%. The income in the capital of Mexico City is also five times higher on average than in these poor states (World Bank 2008; Coneval 2009). In addition, international migration is more important in the northern states compared with the poorest southern states, which not only reflects its geographical proximity to the border with the USA (Sanchez et al. 2012), but is also closely related to changes in environmental conditions in the drylands and better paid job opportunities in the USA (Fuentes/Peña 2005). However, the cost of crossing the USA

5

The Human Rights Commission estimates that during the presidency of Felipe Calderon (2006– 2012) in Mexico there were more than 100,000 homicides related to the war against drug trafficking, 20,000 missing people and 1.5 million people who were internally displaced. During the 50 months of the Government of Enrique Peña, the violence increased, with more than 90,000 official assassinations excluding the disappeared and kidnapped people (INEGI 2017).

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Fig. 18.9 Socio-demographic dynamic in Mexico. Source Developed by Lozano (2009) and based on data from INEGI (1995, 2000, 2005)

Fig. 18.10 Average household income/month in Mexico. Source ENIGH (1992–2016), based on real pesos of 1992

border without documents also requires, besides money,6 fearlessness (due to the organised crime and the Border Patrol), networks and personal initiative to overcome the dangers and risks. These data confirm the hypothesis that inadequate income associated with poor harvests, increased production costs, lack of credit and little technological support from the government, combined with erratic rains, have pushed peasants to leave their home communities to urban slums and the USA. Finally, by analysing scenarios on climate change, we could predict that between 3.25 and 6.75 million small farmers and their families will have to leave their land due to adverse weather conditions in 2050 (PINCC 2016). These will be EIM, due to the loss of soil fertility, desertification and lack of conditions for survival. 6

In July 2017 the cost for crossing without documents had increased from 1500 USD in 2013 to 15,000 USD.

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However, whether it turns out to be a greater or smaller number of migrants depends primarily on the success of the Mexican government’s policies to mitigate the effects of climate change. Some of these policies are promoting small-scale irrigation, paying for environmental services provided to indigenous people and peasants, and encouraging people in the most affected regions to grow crops which are less susceptible to climate variability. Currently, given the absence of a government urban development policy or strategy for creating dignified-paid jobs, the better-educated young people leave Mexico (brain drain to the Global North), while other sectors are involved in illegal activities linked to organised crime, which has recruited more than a million young people between 2006 and 2016 (Congress 2016; González 2009).

18.6.2 International Migration International migration to the USA is therefore a result of multiple factors, whereby the differences of salaries and services between both countries, environmental threats, recurring economic crises in Mexico, the lack of job opportunities and support for the peasantry, along with public insecurity, have reinforced each other. Since 1986, the legal status of Latino immigrants has changed and possibilities for temporary work contracts have decreased. In 2016, most Mexican migrants crossed the border without documents. Although the reasons for emigration have been manifold, economic and environmental factors have grown since the signing of NAFTA, when migration has increased substantially. In particular, the politics of Vicente Fox (2000–2006) accelerated emigration to the USA (Fig. 18.11).

Fig. 18.11 Estimation of Mexican undocumented migrants in the USA (million people). Source Passel/Cohn (2016: 4)

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However from the financial crisis onwards, fewer undocumented migrants cross the border to the USA. Passel and Cohn (2014) attributed the decline in the number of Mexican immigrants residing in the US to the expulsion of illegal immigrants during the Obama Administration. Between 2007 and 2014 there were more than 1.1 million fewer undocumented Mexicans in the USA, from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. Out of 30.7 million Latin-Americans living in the US, 65% are Mexicans. 37% of these were born in the US and 63.4% have arrived from Latin America since the 1990s. Only 22% of all people who identify themselves as Mexicans are USA citizens, 78% immigrated without papers and 48.2% were married. The average age was 25 years, and 53% were men and 47% women. Their educational level was low and only 24% of Mexicans spoke English at home and in school, 76% spoke only Spanish and more than half spoke hardly any English. Due to these structural disadvantages they got the worst paid jobs in the USA and had to accept the most risky jobs. The average annual income for Mexicans over 16 years in the USA in 2008 was $20,368 ($21,488 for other Latinos) and 34.8% had no life or health insurance. Therefore 22.3% were considered poor, compared with 12.7% of the general population in the USA. These disadvantages made it necessary for Mexicans to find family and community networks, which is why migration has been concentrated in specific regions: 36.7% live in California and 25.2% in Texas (Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2008). Mexicans born in the United States amounted to almost 13 million people and account for about 11% of Mexico’s population living in the USA. This second generation has had a better education, better facilities for study and other organisational abilities, which means for Mexico a significant loss of brains and qualified workforce has occurred. Mexican immigrants made up about four per cent of the total US labour force and one in every four foreign-born workers was from Mexico. “Of the 4.4 million employed Mexican immigrants, 1.3 million or 29% worked in production, transportation, and material moving occupations, while 1.1 million or 25% worked in service occupations. Combined, these two occupation groups accounted for 54% of all employed Mexican immigrants” (Pew Research 2017). Their employment was concentrated in two occupations: about a third worked in farming, fishing and forestry, and one fifth worked in the manufacturing industry. In the primary sectors about 12.5% of employed workers were from Mexico (US Census 2010).

Table 18.1 Undocumented Mexicans and their relation to population and workforce. Source Pew Research Center (2017) State

Undocumented Mexicans

% of population

% of workforce

California Texas New Jersey Arizona Nevada

2,550,000 1,650,000 550,000 400,000 190,000

6.8 6.7 6.2 6.0 7.2

11.7 11.0 8.6 7.4 10.0

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Fig. 18.12 Unauthorised migrants are long-term residents in the USA. Source Passel/Cohn 2016: 6

There is also a geographical concentration of the illegal migrants. Most concentrate in the Southern states. California has the highest number of undocumented Mexicans (Table 18.1), but it is Nevada, with a relatively small number of illegal residents among the State’s 2.65 million inhabitants, which has the highest percentage of Mexican labour force and also represents the highest percentage of Mexicans in its population. This concentration of undocumented migrants is the particular result of the transnational network, whereby family and community bonds facilitate better starting positions for newcomers. However, since the financial crisis of 2008 and the low growth rates in the United States, the migration dynamics have changed substantially. Prior to the crisis of 2008, more than one million people immigrated each year, but in 2009 this number dropped to less than 636,000 people. Although the return migration has stabilised at around 435,000 people, the net balance of immigrants in the United States is gradually declining and reached zero in 2017. Figure 18.12 indicates further that 66% of unauthorised adults live and work in the USA for more than 10 years and only 14% have a more recent immigration history of less than five years. The average length of residence is 13.6 years (Passel/Cohn 2016). These new conditions could facilitate a migration agreement between both countries. In reviewing the migration dynamics, there is a trend towards a balance, but there are also seasonal fluctuations. Traditionally, migrants with papers returned to Mexico for Christmas; however the complicated controls and the insecurity on the border have changed this habit and people prefer to stay in the USA. Changes in the migration patterns were not solely related to the crisis of 2007– 2008. In reviewing the entry and exit of Mexican immigrants to the USA, a significant reduction has occurred since 2004, although the increase in 2007 may have

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been be related to a serious drought and adverse weather conditions in Mexico. When looking at more structural factors, less migration highlights both the contraction in the USA market and higher GDP growth in Mexico compared with the USA after 2008. Probably an important factor has also been also the reduction in the fertility rate in Mexico, which has led to a decreased migration rate because families employ young people in their fields. While the birth rate in 1960 was 7.3 children per woman, this had declined by 2010 to 2.3. To these factors we have to add the growing insecurity and violence along the border, and the increased cost of crossing without documents, which amounted in 2016 to over 5,000 USD. It is further influenced by the policy of deportation in the United States, the reinforced control by the Border Patrol and by new technologies to detect illegal migrants. The US Department of Homeland Security repatriated about 27% of migrants without documents who had lived in the USA for less than a year. The largest number of deportees was newcomers who were seeking to integrate. When analysing these deportations in more detail, it is striking that 17% of the people were caught in their home. Human Rights Watch denounced the lack of respect for human rights in these raids. When the expelled were asked if they would try to return in one week, 81% confirmed in 2005 ‘yes’, while in 2010 only 60% did so. The response ‘probably’ increased over the same period from 11 to 20% and a clear ‘no’ increased from 7 to 20% (Passel/Cohn 2011). The forced repatriations have almost doubled during the past decade (Fig. 18.13). In reviewing the border control capture, it is striking that the number of people who were caught has declined from 1,637,000 people in 2000 to 286,000 in 2011 and went even further down in 2015 to 188,000. This implies that there were more expulsions among people who had settled undocumented in the USA and had an organised life with stable working conditions. It also indicates that fewer Mexicans tried to cross the border without documents. This policy is particularly affecting unskilled labour in agriculture. The US Department Homeland Security

Fig. 18.13 Border patrol arrests. Source Gonzalez-Barrera 2016, Pew Research Center (data for 1976 covered 15 months)

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SO: Societal Outcomes: Rural Environmentally-Induced Migration (R-EIM)

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estimated that in 2016 at least about fifty per cent of immigrants entered legally with a visa. While in 2003 most were illegal migrants, in 2010 this number had fallen by half. From 2008 onward, the Mexican labour force stabilised at around twelve million people. About three million had immigrated before 1990, about three to 2.7 million between 1990 and 1997 and after this date Mexican immigration to the United States increased from 4.5 to 7.4 million people. This shift in migration dynamics also influenced the type of migration. In 2012, 34% of Mexicans in the USA have attended high school, half are between 25 and 49 years old, 8% are under 18, 11% are aged 18–24 and 25% are over 45 years old. In reviewing the activities of immigrants, the census highlights an increased migration of women after 2007. Forty-five per cent of these female immigrants were employed in the services sector, 20% in sales and 18% in transportation (US Census 2011). To analyse the history of migration from Mexico to the United States during the last two decades (Fig. 18.14), the year 2000 was exceptional, when 770,000 Mexicans entered the USA without documents. This number was reduced in subsequent years and rebounded again in 2005. Since 2010 there has been a sharp decline with an entry of only 140,000 people per year, many of whom were professionals, students and skilled workers who had a working visa. Comparing the years 1995 and 2000 with significant immigration from the south to the north, between 2005 and 2010 this trend was reversed and the entry and exit of Mexicans to the United States was in balance and reached around 1.4 million people, although many of them were expelled against their will. These changing population dynamics have implications for both countries (Fig. 18.15). In 2017 there has been less immigration from Mexico, expulsion of long-time working population and Mexicans who decide to return on their own, resulting in a negative net flow of 140,000 people (Pew Research Center 2017). These data should reduce the pressure from the Trump Administration towards Mexico and make the construction of a wall less important.

Fig. 18.14 Migrant flow to USA and return to Mexico. Source Passel et al. (2012: 7). Dark migration Mexico-USA; clear from USA to Mexico (in thousand people)

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Fig. 18.15 Net Mexican migration after 2008 recession is negative. Source Pew Research Center (2017)

The anti-immigrant laws accepted by the Republicans and reinforced by several state laws together with the persecution during the Obama and Trump Administrations have affected the northern neighbour not only demographically, but has also increasingly turned temporary into more permanent migration (Fig. 18.16). This settled population has had comparatively higher fertility rates than other ethnic groups. From 13,000 migrants in 1850, by 2016 the Mexican-origin population had reached 35 million. This migration has also influenced the population dynamics in Mexico. While in 1950 the migrants represented 1.7% of the population, this number had increased in 2016 to 11.1%. Many of these more than 35 million were born in the United States and are US citizens or have dual nationality. The set of politically interrelated factors opens the possibility of reaching an immigration law that would reduce the violence and dangers of the now clandestine crossing into the northern border. It would also increase security in the USA and allow employers in the USA to account for a stable workforce, who

Fig. 18.16 Temporary and permanent migrants. Source Based on data of Passel (2005: 4) and Segob (2012)

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participate in the cultural life of the country, pay taxes, social and other services. Their living conditions would improve and there would be more stable development for both countries. A key concern for the Trump Administration is the security on the USA’s southern border. In addition to long-standing awareness of drug trafficking, the North American authorities recently acknowledged the illegal trafficking of weapons, the money laundering in the USA and their high level of drug consumption. From the Nixon period onwards, a drug war was imposed on Mexico. The negative security impacts in Mexico and especially on the border are dramatical. During the Calderon (2006–2012) and the Peña Government, organised crime has controlled ever more the routes of illegal crossing and expanded their illegal activities towards trafficking of humans, weapons, narcotics, fuel, pornography, human organs, infants for adoption, prostitution, and archaeological and colonial pieces. All these activities have increased the violence in the Mexican Border States. Criminal groups are fighting for the most profitable places near the border, which has increased the cost of illegal crossing, and also caused additional threats to migrants. Interviews and surveys in Mexico and elsewhere (Serrano 2013, 2010; Truong et al. 2013; Oswald Spring 2012) among migrant families have shown that international migration requires resources, skills, basic education and especially networks of family and community in the USA for lodging, food, work, social security card and other obligatory documents for employers. Because of the major difficulties of crossing the border and the active role of organised crime, migrants require trustworthy networks of family and community. The goal of migration is to send remittances to relatives who remain in Mexico, and this money reaches the most remote and marginalised villages, where it supports poor families (Fig. 18.17). These remittances peaked in 2007, and after the economic crisis of 2008, they were systematically reduced because of both unemployment among Latinos and the difficulty of crossing the border. It was only in 2016 that they achieved almost 27 billion dollars. There are several explanations for this drastic increase, mostly related to the uncertainty of the new Trump Government. People sent as much as possible of money to Mexico, so that in case of being deported they would have enough money to start a new life in Mexico. Another explanation is related to the rumour that the North Americans will confiscate the remittances and use them to pay for the construction of the wall. The third explanation is related to the general improvement in jobs and salaries in the USA, enabling workers to send more money to their families in Mexico. In surveys and interviews it was found that remittances are crucial for poor families, due to the lack of effective governmental support. Remittances represented, up to 2015, the second largest foreign financial transfers to Mexico, after oil exports. In December 2015, they were more than twice the value of crude oil exports and continue to grow. Since 2000 they have increased from 7.24 billion dollars (MMD) and rose to 25.145 MMD in 2008 (Fig. 18.18). In 2009, due to the global financial crisis, remittances dropped by 15% and there was a slight recovery in 2011 of 6.8% compared with 2010, when they reached 22.311 MMD. In 2011,

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Fig. 18.17 Remittances sent from USA to Mexico. Source Elaborated with data from Banxico (2019)

Fig. 18.18 Arrests on the border between Mexico and USA. Source Pew Research (2017)

Mexico received $22.803 million in remittances, an amount 7.2% higher than the $21.271 million obtained in 2010. In 2012, the Bank of Mexico gave with 22.446 MMD, a slightly lower figure than in the previous year; in 2013, remittances increased by 4.7% to 22.303; in 2014, there was an increase of 7.8% up to 23.647, and in 2015 an increase of 4.8% or 24.771 billions (Banxico 2016). The increasing trend continued in 2016 and reached 26.97 billions, above the maximum of 2007. In 2019, remittances increased 13.9% from 2018 and 38 billion dolars were sent from the US to Mexico (Banco of Mexico 2020), the highest amount in a year.

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By increasing the number of returned migrants due to the policy of the Administration of Trump and the increase of remittances, migrants settled in the United States have more stable and better-paid conditions, in relation to the expelled people. This also applied to the improvement in schooling for legal immigrants who had stable employment contracts. Finally greater amounts of remittances flow into the poorest regions, supporting families leaving a high precarious conditions of poverty.

18.6.3 Societal Outcomes and Security Threats Environmentally-Induced Migration (EIM) has brought both positive and negative outcomes for society, families and individuals. On the one hand, EIM represents an adaptation measure to address the deteriorating socio-environmental conditions in Mexico; on the other hand, EIM creates pressures and tensions in the place of origin. The financial and food crisis in 2009 in Mexico led to a further increase of 3 million people living with lack of food, and extreme poverty increased by 5 million (ENIGH 2010).7 Marginality included, in 2014, 46.2% of the population or 53.3 million people (Coneval 2012), which means an increase of 3.2% between 2008 and 2010. The World Bank (2016) indicated that 53% of people live in poverty and 24% are extremely poor and live on less than a dollar per day. The devaluation of the peso and a high inflation rate of 7% in 2017, which is even higher for food products, has depreciated the income of ordinary Mexicans and reduced their standard of living (Banco de Mexico 2017). This contrasts with 10% of the richest people, whose share of national wealth increased from 35.4 to 41.3% in the same period. To cope with this extreme poverty in the context of the global crisis and the Mexican citizens’ lack of faith in the Government (Latinobarámetro 2012, 2015), it is necessary to fundamentally change this neoliberal policy. This involves a policy of food sovereignty (Via Campesina 1996; Oswald Spring 2009a), changes in investments from the war against drug trafficking to education, science and technology, as well as promotion of infrastructure and public services. During these multiple crises, countercyclical policies would be able to strengthen micro enterprises, which are generating 40% of the jobs. Together, environmental recovery and job creation, especially in renewable energy, would improve ecosystem services, recover deteriorated land and forests, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lower

The comparison between ENIGH 2008 and 2010 shows a reduction of −13.6% in money spending, of which income fell by 8.0% and self-employment income by 38.9%. The financial crisis since 2008 has also reduced the positive trends in poverty reduction in Latin America between 2002 and 2008, which has brought 60 million people out of poverty, mainly in Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela. Between 2008 and 2009, again 10 million people fell into the poverty trap (half of them in Mexico, due to the high dependence on the USA market and the recession in the maquiladora export industry; Cepal 2011, 2012).

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energy costs, and thereby support female heads of household and the most marginal people in Mexico. These policies would push Mexico in the right direction to achieve its sustainable development goals (SDGs) and offer a more sustainable future, where its soils and natural resources and its increasingly scarcer water resources could produce enough food to guarantee decent living conditions. Reducing the marginal sector would also benefit the domestic demand, as one fifth of the poorest spent 46.1% of their income on food. Mexico could improve its sustainable future by preventing pollution from mine tailings and open pit mines into rivers and aquifers. These policies would further reduce GHG emissions, replenish soil and biodiversity and qualify Mexico to obtain resources from the Green Fund for further ecosystem restoration and renewable energy. Public insecurity, under- and unemployment8 and environmental deterioration in Mexico are all push factors, while the higher salaries in the USA are pull factors for general migration and EIM. Explosive social conditions are emerging in Mexico from climate change that destroys the conditions of life and survival for thousands of people, from overcrowded cities without space to live, to work or to get water, and from the closure of the US border. Further, organised crime is passing these migrants illegally to the USA, together with other criminal activities that affect both countries. On the 7th of July 2017, John Kelly, US Homeland Secretary said “We live in a dangerous world… Those dangers are increasing, and changing speed and direction every single day… We are a nation under attack”, thus the southern US border with Mexico must be reinforced. However, in the present history of the USA, no terrorist have entered the USA from Mexico, thus the new investments in this border are basically to avoid illegal immigration from Central America and Mexico. Figure 18.13 indicates that Mexicans are no longer the most detained people on the border. Therefore, there is great pressure on Mexico to control its southern border and stop people from Central America and the Caribbean crossing it illegally. As socio-economic migration and EIM have existed for decades, there are currently limited legal ways for poor people to cross the border to the USA. Indeed, millions of Mexicans have been and may be deported by the US Administration since the beginning of 2017. Within Mexico, corruption, collusion between organised crime and public authorities at all levels and an unfair binational migration policy have created additional complex security risks, especially for the most vulnerable groups trying to survive in miserable conditions in both countries.

8

Unemployment in Mexico increased substantially and more than half of the economic employed population is currently working in the informal sector of the economy. According to official statistics (ENIGH-INEGI 2010), 7% of the workforce is unemployed and does not have any unemployment insurance. Additionally, AH1N1 influenza has led to the drop of more than a million jobs, 300,000 in the tourism sector alone. The current neoliberal policy cannot provide jobs for all the young people entering the labour market annually, and often better educated people now occupy jobs with a lower salary than their qualifications merit.

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These negative social outcomes are direct results of the criminalisation of migration by the US Government and others in the world. It produces a decline in social cohesion, rising xenophobia, extreme nationalism and a loss of solidarity with other nationalities. The severe surveillance by the US Border Patrol has not only increased the vulnerability of the migrants, but has also affected the institutional consolidation in both countries. The Mexican border cities are examples of extreme violence, due to conflicts among cartels, who control access to these strategic points of entry to the US. The presence of police and the military has not improved the security of citizens. In 2010, Ciudad Juarez was considered to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world, despite the presence of thousands of policemen and soldiers.9 These data point to another phenomenon that generates insecurity and lack of credibility. In Mexico, corruption has increased within the police, the military, public authorities, judges, public prosecutors and migration authorities. This corruption is accompanied by an inefficient judicial system where laws are not implemented, which has created impunity. As a result, citizens no longer trust the executive or the judicial and legislative powers, and private security services have in many cases replaced the official system of security. OECD (2012) estimates that Mexico has lost five per cent of its GDP each year due to insecurity and a lack of law enforcement. The complex interplay between the forces of the police and the army in criminal activities have increased the number of other illegal activities, including kidnapping and the trafficking of people (including children and infants), organs, weapons, drugs, plants and exotic animals, along with armed robbery and extortion. In all these illegal activities billions of dollars are involved (González Reyes 2009). The big drug kingpins fight over trafficking routes to the US market, 9

In Ciudad Júarez homicides increased from 1619 in 2008 to 2635 in 2009 and 3156 in 2010 and fell to 2538 in 2011 (Attorney General of Chihuahua, January 2012). The Mexican press estimated that the recent reduction could not be attributed to the presence of the armed and police forces, but rather to the control exerted by the Gulf criminal group over their adversaries and the dismantling of the most violent group, called Zeta. In addition, in Ciudad Juarez over 600 women have been killed or abducted during the past decade. In 2008, 57 young women were killed; in 2009 a total of 130; in 2010 between 306 and 400; and in 2011 at least 132 (Commission on Human Rights 2012; Attorney General in the State of Chihuahua year). Almost none of these crimes were pursued by the police or courts, and local people accused the highest levels of their Government of being involved with drug cartels, thus increasing violence and instability. The population of Ciudad Juarez has also denounced the increase in public insecurity since the arrival of the federal police and the army. However, violence is not confined to the border and has dramatically increased in the cities with ports (Acapulco, Lázaro Cardenas, Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán on the Pacific and Veracruz, Altamira, Tampico, Tamaulipas on the Atlantic side), where the trade with drugs and synthetic precursors are also controlled by the organised crime. Further, in Lázaro Cardenas raw minerals were illegally exported to China. The authorities explain this violence as conflicts among cartels, and deaths among the civilian population are called ‘collateral damage’. In this war against drug trafficking more than 45,000 soldiers and policemen have been involved in the combat, with an increased security budget. However, this policy has not brought peace. On the contrary, it has resulted in growing public and personal insecurity. Mexico has become the country with the highest number of journalists killed, especially those who investigated the links between drug barons and public authorities, and homicide rates have increased again since 2017.

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without neglecting the major cities in Mexico. The money obtained from these activities must be laundered. Thus, the stock market, private enterprises and the financial sector are increasingly involved, not only in Mexico but especially in the US and other clandestine financial markets (e.g. Panama etc.). Something similar has happened with illegal arms trafficking, in which the US is the biggest seller and only recently acknowledged (US Department of Urban Studies and Environment 2009). Regardless of the increased public insecurity, threats related to environmental and socio-economic migration will increase in the future, and a significant number of households will have to move from their place of origin, either temporarily or permanently because of global warming. The impact of climate change on humans, albeit relatively small in relation to other environmental effects, is present and will grow in local communities, which will affect the national, binational and international policy. As was argued above, the reasons for leaving indigenous communities are complex and combine factors of environmental degradation and lost economic processes with failed neoliberal economic policies and wrong rural and food policies, while populist programmes of poverty alleviation are all primarily orientated at maintaining the status quo for existing political parties and public functionaries. Threats from climate change exist not just in rural and indigenous regions, but also for 41 million people living in exposed cities. These citizens experience high risks from recurring hydrometeorological events, especially floods (Segob 2009), but also from lack of water during the dry season. After several floods, people try to sell their property and find a better place elsewhere. Without doubt, the decision to migrate implies different motivations, whereby socio-economic migration (Chavez/ Lozano 2008) coexists with EIM. Migration has also generated conflictive situations within families, and has sometimes weakened the ties with relatives or with the former community (Serrano 2010). EIM has produced social vulnerability for those who stayed, especially female heads of households (Oswald Spring 2013a), who are now working in the field, caring for their children and elderly parents. They maintain their families financially and have often to pay the debt for the illegal crossing. During the process of illegal migration, the danger is also high and greater for women: between 70 and 80% of them have been raped and some have ended up in forced prostitution (Catholic Church 2008), with a high risk of HIV-AIDS (Klot/DeLargy 2007; Flores/Wagner 2011). However, remittances and new roles in the household of migrants have also empowered women and have made them more independent and more involved in business (Maier/Lebon 2010; Truong et al. 2013). Finally, for about 20% of the deported people, the persecution of adults in the USA and their forced repatriation to Mexico has often left infants unattended and alone. The procedure to deport family members and their children at different border crossings has severely affected these children and often destroyed their family ties. These infants, who were often born in the USA, were citizens of the US due to the law of ius soli, but lacked documents because their parents feared being deported if they registered the child. Another negative situation was created by the

18.6

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policy of repatriation or persecution of immigrants who lack legal documents. Often either parents, or only one, were deported at the border of Tijuana and Juarez, and their descendants in Tampico. Such administrative procedures clearly contradicted the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that entered into force in 1990, but was never ratified by the US Congress.10 This approach often destroyed the mental health of members of the migrant family (Buechler 2009), and threatened their physical and psychological survival, exposing infants and women to rape, human trafficking, drug abuse and forced prostitution. Migrant children are particularly vulnerable. The American Community Survey Census Bureau (2008) estimated that 17% of the infants were undocumented Mexicans. Of the 5.5 million Latino infants in the USA, about 4.5 million were born in the USA and were entitled to US citizenship. However, other siblings or their relatives were threatened with deportation for lack of documents. According to estimates by Human Rights Watch from 2009 to 2011, 1.1 million immigrants were deported; two-thirds of these had no criminal records and many others were criminalised due to their violation of US immigration laws. The children who were deported without their parents had to learn fast to survive by themselves at this dangerous border. Different churches, NGO and business associations have provided these children with food and shelter, and sometimes also schools, but the increasing number and their interest in staying at the border has impeded an integrated approach. It was estimated that in this region in 2008 about 123,500 children tried to reach their parents in the USA or were deported and had no money or did not want to return to their original villages in Mexico. Their survival strategies were begging, prostitution and engaging in illegal activities. Five months prior to the elections of November 2012 and again in 2016, President Barack Obama suspended the deportation of young people, which could have benefited about 800,000 young people who entered the USA without documents during their childhood: This law was interpreted by the Republicans in both Houses of Congress as a measure to ensure Latino vote in an election year, thus they opposed these measures. Further, migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Central America and Africa are now blocked on the Mexican side of the border, waiting for a positive resolution from the migration authorities in the US. In June 2017, 3,500 Haitians were living in Tijuana and 2500 had a legal document to stay there. They worked in the maquila industries, received social security and rented a room or lived in one of the 31 improvised refuges. Similar conditions exist in Mexicali. When Donald Trump started his presidency, conditions worsened but these people preferred staying in Tijuana to living in Haiti. However they received permission to work there for one year only and are now illegally in Mexico.

10

The UNGA passed the resolution 44/25 on 20 November 1981. The Convention entered into force on 2 September 1990, in accordance with article 411. This Convention was signed in 1995 by the Clinton Administration, but never ratified by the Republican-controlled US Senate.

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R: Policy Responses to Environmentally Induced Migration

In the USA and Mexico, national and international policy responses to potential conflicts and threats to security along Mexico’s northern border region were limited. The Mexican Government has been unable to create the jobs required for these young people (Jiménez/Boso 2016) and in the framework of the Merida Initiative (2008) the war on drugs in Mexico was a direct response to US pressure to combat transnational drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America. However, in the USA there are still insufficient preventative measures to combat drug consumption and the medical system is also increasing usage of legal drugs, especially painkillers. There is also a failure to enforce the clamp-down on illegal weapon trafficking to Mexico and Central America, where 90% of the arms arrive illegally from the USA. The Obama Administration’s proposal to legalise illegal immigrants was rejected in the US Congress controlled by the Republicans. Tougher laws in some southern states and discriminatory immigration mechanisms with greater control on the border and the criminalisation of undocumented migrants (Fig. 18.19) have also changed the scenario for undocumented migration to the USA. The drastic increase in arrests of these migrants since 2008 and their criminalisation represents a policy of securitisation of borders, while drug offences have drastically reduced. However, the number of drug overdoses (mostly heroin or powerful pain killers with fentanyl) in 2016 exceeded 59,000 deaths, an estimated increase of 19% on the previous year and now the most significant cause of death in adults under 50 years old (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2017). The reduction in weapons from 7 to 4% in response to multiple massacres in schools, hospitals and recreation centres indicates another policy of civil protection, in which migrants without documents, who simply want to make a living, were considered the most criminal in the USA. These policies have created distrust between the USA, Mexico and Central American countries. In June 2017, indecision of the Supreme Court regarding young people who were brought to the US by their parents when they were small children, known as ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’ (DACCA) or ‘dreamers’, limits infants and young families without papers by making it impossible for them to study at American universities, which has thus increased their vulnerability. The Merida Initiative was signed to reinforce the fight against organised crime and drug trafficking and to control illegal migration. It forced Mexico to buy new intelligence technology from the USA in exchange for military equipment, military training and political security advice. In Mexico, this drug war was heavily criticised by all opposition parties and most social groups, NGOs, intellectuals and scientists. As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto not to abandon the drug war but to adhere to the military

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Fig. 18.19 Criminalisation of undocumented migration (in %). Federal criminal arrests. Source Pew Research Center (2017), based on US Bureau of Justice, Statistics, September 2017

strategy initiated by Felipe Calderon, simultaneously, the US Department of State warned US citizens to avoid travelling to those cities that were heavily involved in the war against drug trafficking in Mexico. Similar travel warnings were also announced in several European countries. The foreign and security policy of the US government was motivated by geopolitical interests. While deaths, social instability and public insecurity occurred at the expense of Mexican citizens, the illegal arms sales and trafficking as well as money-laundering in the US benefited companies and financial organisations in the USA. A second problem with transnational migration was linked to the Merida Initiative between the USA, Mexico and Central America. The southern border of Mexico had become another violent area (Tuñón 2001), because organised crime had infiltrated migrant communities in Central America. They were abducting migrants from neighbouring countries, often in close collaboration with the officials of immigration authorities in Mexico. It is estimated that between 350,000 and 400,000 people annually have tried to cross Mexico to the USA without documents and about 200,000 were deported by the Mexican Institute of Migration (Arámbula et al. 2007: 5). In 2020, the National Guard is controlling the southern border and deporting Central American migrants from Mexico. Human Rights Watch reported that in 2010, about 25,000 migrants were kidnapped and many more were missing. There is also the danger of travelling by the train called ‘The Beast’ (Fig. 18.20). In October 2010 the murder of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas by the criminal cartel Zetas was closely linked to the Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador. These massacres have increased the pressure from Central America on the Mexican government to protect their citizens. Other clandestine mass graves and many reports showed that hundreds of Central American migrants were killed. Their relatives in the USA, Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras were unable or unwilling to pay the ransom or the kidnapped person could not offer an organ to pay for their rescue or refused to work for organised crime. Another group of migrants became enganchadores (hookers) of organised crime, their role being to detect their compatriots, facilitate their kidnapping and support the subsequent rescue. The dangers of this transnational migration through Mexico has reduced the number of undocumented

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Fig. 18.20 Undocumented migrants jump on ‘The Beast’. Source The Author

migrants. In 2015 176,726 and in 2016 143,226 Central American Migrants were deported by the Mexican authorities, and only 6.7% received a refugee visa (Segob 2017). On 9 January 2011, the governments of Honduras and Mexico signed an agreement on behalf of 18 other countries in Latin America to reduce the violence against transnational migrants. They offered to coordinate efforts in their own countries to monitor the activities of the cells of organised crime. The Honduran government estimated that of the 25,000 people that were kidnapped, about 10,000 were from Honduras. The government of Honduras stated that the Zeta cartel was active in Honduras and Guatemala and that only international cooperation among all countries could improve the safety of its migrants. International pressure on Mexico and multiple allegations of corruption within the Mexican immigration authorities in almost every state forced the Ministry of Interior to replace its General Director of Migration. A few months later the same ruling party (PAN) elected her general secretary of PAN. In 2016 the situation was getting worse, as more children travelled alone through Mexico to the USA. In 2017, the drug war forced the governments of Mexico and the USA to cooperate, to exchange intelligence and to coordinate their policies against criminal cartels within the Merida Agreement, also in which Central America’s Government also got involved. With the Trump Administration, there is strong pressure on

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Mexico to accept the North American Plan developed in Colombia with military bases, training of soldiers and police and the direct involvement of US armed forces in the drug war. However, the most sophisticated surveillance systems on the northern border cannot stop the migration while there is a lack of employment and inadequate survival conditions in Mexico and Central America. The sole alternative for illegal migrants is to rely on organised crime to cross the border, which further consolidates their illegal activities.11 The current policy of repatriating undocumented migrants has also created some geopolitical conflicts between Mexico and the USA.12 Over time, the strong border control has increasingly moved efforts to cross the border to more dangerous areas like the desert of Arizona, where those who migrate are exposed to extreme weather, extreme temperature in the desert during the day, cold flashes at night, poisonous snakebites and attacks by wild animals (Castillo et al. 2009; Ceballos 2003). Nevertheless, a successful policy response should involve organised society, the business community and all branches of government to find new ways to solve this complex problem.

18.8

Political Perspective and Security

Environmental and social problems reinforce and exacerbate the complexity of international and transnational migration. Up to the end of 2016, the number of undocumented immigrants in the USA continued to increase slowly. During the Government of Barak Obama, millions of expulsions increased the pressure on Mexico from these returned people. These repatriated and criminalised migrants had to return unexpectedly to shanty towns and poor rural areas, where no public policies existed to assist them to find a new livelihood in Mexico. Many were held for weeks in US jails without access to lawyers and without any supervision by human rights groups. More than half of the returnees were deported by sending them back across the border, without money, clothes or other support for onward travel to their place of origin. Only 2% of those who were repatriated by force had committed a crime, often only by not paying a traffic fine. Nevertheless, illegal migration and the fight against organised crime have become a shared responsibility for both countries. It requires a more comprehensive

11

There is also an initiative under discussion to legalise certain group of immigrants in the USA who do not have criminal records. Republicans fiercely oppose this measure. However, the whole of American society benefits from illegal workers, either through lower wages or labour exploitation. Illegal migrants cannot denounce these abuses because of the threat of deportation. They also contribute towards the cost of social services, unemployment benefits and retirement pensions in the USA without having the right to use these services or ask for the money back, due to their illegal status, despite subsidising the system with their taxes. 12 In April 2010, in Laredo criminals associated with organised crime attacked the consulate and the North American Government closed it temporary.

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approach, in which hospitality and international solidarity facilitate the international mobility of people and reinforce their human security. This requires equality between nationals and foreigners, and a strict application of existing laws in both countries, not a military security approach. From a human security perspective, the human rights of migrants, their family units and the superior interests of children must be respected, as well as the socio-cultural integration between both nations. The joint promotion of voluntary returns with financial incentives for migrants who want to leave could reduce persecution and ensure the social reintegration of returning migrants when they arrive home in Mexico and Central America. Such principles not only apply to the United States, but are also valid for Mexico, where Central American migrants, who crossed the borders in the hope of the American dream, later suffered precarious conditions, discrimination, persecution, extreme violence and some lost their health or life during their transit through Mexico. Without doubt, socio-economic migration and EIM are also a consequence of the neoliberal model with low growth rates (below 2% during the last three decades), a corrupt privatisation process with a high concentration of wealth, an inefficient education system, low investment in infrastructure, private concessions to multinational mining companies and tourist development in fragile coastal areas covered by mangrove or on sand barriers (Cancun). There is also no effective policy for job creation inside Mexico, where salaries were sacrificed to compete for foreign investments. Additionally, young and better trained people who cannot find a well-paid job are often attracted by illegal activities. But in the USA there is also a demand for cheap labour, drugs, pornography and other illegal activities as a driver for undocumented migration.

18.9

Conclusive Reflections

This chapter has empirically documented that both environmental-induced migration (Myers 2002, 2005; IOM 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010; Castles 2002; Black 2001; Biermann/Boas 2012; Jakobeit/Methmann 2012) and socio-economic migration (Torres 2003; Lozano/Rivera 2009) are closely interrelated. The EIM concept refers to a complex, multi-causal and interactive phenomenon that may trigger non-linear environmental, societal and political consequences, which may affect communities and families and increase social vulnerability among all marginalised groups, especially women, children and the elderly (Passel/Cohn 2011; Ariyabandu/Fonseca 2009; Serrano 2009, 2010, 2013; Oswald Spring 2009a, 2012, 2013a). In some cases EIM may also produce adaptation strategies and resilience building. These new processes may produce well-being, different cultural behaviours and alternative strategies in the host and the original countries. Often returned migrants promote new business in Mexico and integrate family members in remote rural areas. These activities may improve the previously precarious living conditions, and when human security concerns become the leitmotiv for policies, they could encourage more voluntary return migration (UNDP 2011).

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Conclusive Reflections

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However, in most of the policies explored during this study, a transversal gender perspective is missing. There are limited activities which protect and support the most vulnerable: girls and women. Also lacking is a systemic theory that tackles dimensions, factors and levels that can integrate the transition in culture and identity with the multiple vulnerabilities resulting from the migrant process. A different approach should include this systemic, multilevel and interdisciplinary approach to understand EIM and illegal migration more deeply. So far there has been a limited advance in the theories of EIM, due to them focusing on projection with limited scientific support (Myers 2002, 2005). Thus, these approaches have induced the US Government to justify the military securitisation of its border. Also in Europe, India and Israel the migration of millions of people who have fled adverse environmental and socio-economic conditions has produced walls, discrimination and repression. In relation to the research questions, there is no doubt – and the empirical data supports this – that EIM is a systemic and complex phenomenon, in which specific risk factors increase vulnerability to such an extent that leaving is often the only possible option. The chapter has tried to include, in addition to socio-economic and environmental factors, an anthropological, psychological and sociological approach which centred on human beings and not on the migration process alone. However, different political regimes and alteration in the public administration might have abruptly changed the arena of migration. When these processes are interlinked with worsening environmental conditions and military security on the borders, people often get stranded on the way to their American dreams, as has happened with the Haitians on the border of Mexico. Without doubts, there are still little empirical studies which could integrate a coherent conceptual approach to the complexity of migration and especially a systemic one to EIM. Mexico is an excellent place for such studies, since people have migrated internally from rural areas with scarce resources and frequent disasters (Mountain of Guerrero) to the fertile valleys of Morelos or to the megacity of Mexico City, Guadalajara or Monterrey, often also to mostly the southern states of the USA. However, IOM (2007, 2008, 2009) has proved that globally and also in Mexico migration is principally inside the country. Better legal knowledge and cultural integration inside a country facilitate the migration process. EIM creates an additional complexity, because socio-economic problems add to the environmental destruction and the disasters. There is a special challenge in the low-onset processes such as loss of natural fertility of the soil, progressive pollution and scarcity of water or frequent small disasters which periodically affect the family or the community. Most of these people who slowly lose their livelihood and often precarious survival conditions find new homes in nearby cities or in a megacity. Therefore, there is a lack of theoretical and conceptual approaches that aid a better understanding of EIM. These rapprochements also define the different methodologies necessary to deal with the complex realities, where only an interdisciplinary design will be able to define the concrete research agenda and a wider systemic understanding of EIM. This chapter has focused on Mexican internal and international undocumented migration to the USA, where EIM is still largely absent from theoretical discussions. However, the migration wave from Honduras to the

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USA after Hurricane Mitch and the internal migration after the merged hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel in the Mountain of Guerrero are examples that allow us to understand the survival strategies of the affected people. So far, Governments have been unable to grant a stable recovery to the affected people inside their home countries and their response to an increased migration process has been military securitisation and penal persecution of these migrants. The study also indicated that rural areas are more exposed to extreme hydrometeorological events than urban zones, due to farmers depending directly on their natural resources, which can be destroyed by one extreme event or by long-term slow-ongoing processes such as drought, desertification, loss of soil fertility or multiple small disasters. The present study also showed that poor rural people, such as peasants, small-scale farmers and indigenous, have fewer resources and less resilience to deal with unknown and threatening conditions. When CC and GEC are directly or slowly affecting their base of living, they have no other alternative than to leave and get to a safer place in another rural area or to rebuild the lost livelihood in an urban environment. Thus, in EIM the subjacent problem is the environmental conditions, whenever the people explain that their livelihood and family got destroyed by a landslide. They also often assert that there was no governmental support to rebuild the lost houses, food, harvests and working tools. Coffee growers who lost all their plants and the protecting forest in Hurricane Stan (2005) are unable to recover alone, thus need governmental support for several years to restore their former productive conditions. The collapse of the international coffee prices in 2019 has increased the migration from Central America. There are also increasing threats in urban areas. Sharma et al. (2013) analysed ten cities in four Asian Countries (India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam) and demonstrated the vulnerability of the urban climate. “The study indicates that the overall process adopted was unique in each of the cities and that differences in the methodologies have arisen due to a number of contextual factors in each of the cities, including existing governance structures, industrial makeup, population and demographic conditions, as well as the implementing partners’ prior experience and level of comfort with quantitative and qualitative assessments” (idem, p. 10.). Greater population density, fewer natural forests and trees, intensive traffic and congestion not only increase the air pollution, but also impede preventative evacuation during serious events. No megacities can be evacuated, thus the Government, business community and people must prepare strategies to increase their resilience without leaving the megacity. Finally, the present chapter analysed the international migration, with its geopolitical repercussions, between Mexico, Central America and the USA. It focused on EIM and undocumented migration, which are considered to be security risks by the authorities of both countries: the USA and Mexico. Mexico as country of transit, especially from Central America, but also from Cuba, Haiti, and other South American and African countries, has a double pressure, one on the northern and the other on the southern border. The more than 3000 km border with the USA, the complex natural conditions with the long River Bravo and the dangerous desert of Arizona have influenced the migration process. The election of Donald Trump,

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Conclusive Reflections

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and his former campaign against Mexicans, have further increased xenophobia and racism in the USA. Nevertheless, Mexicans are the largest minority there, and half of them are illegal or undocumented migrants who have been in the USA a long time and contributed to its productivity. They are exposed to all kinds of threats, discrimination, persecution and forced expulsion. Despite the existence of international treaties and recommendations, the US and Mexican Governments have developed a militarised strategy on both borders. Corrupt behaviour contradicts public statements made in the international arena. Often public functionaries take personal advantage at the cost of the most vulnerable people, the illegal migrants. Therefore, the reinforcement of human rights, and their concrete protection with social movements, churches and committed citizens, should help to reduce the violence and inhumanity that exist today in the international and transnational migration process. This approach goes away from the narrow military and political security towards a widened (societal, economic and environmental) and deepened (human and gender) security understanding. This new approach might not only resolve the present rhetoric and actions against undocumented migrants who work and live in a neighbouring country, but open the understanding towards a collaborative way to protect the labour force in their own country and to accept the additional support for resolving jobs that the native population will not do. Finally, this human and environmental security approach might prepare the political arena for more EIM, due to CC and GEC. Instead of a military and repressive answer, these expelled people might find a new livelihood with fewer threats and better life conditions inside or outside their country. Peaceful conflict resolution and a deep environmental understanding might help to overcome the present tension and offer in this part of the American continent a different way to deal with EIM and socio-economic migrants who cannot survive in their home place.

References Anguiano Téllez, María Eugenia, Miguel J. Hernández Madrid (Eds.) (2003). Migración internacional e identidades cambiantes, México, D.F., El Colef/El Colegio de Michoacán. Arámbula Reyes, Alma, Gabriel Mario Santos Villarreal (2007). “El flujo migratorio centroamericanos hacia México”, México, D.F., Cámara de Diputados, LIX Legislatura, México. Ariyabandu, Madhavi M, Dilrukshi Fonseka (2009). “Do Disasters Discriminate? A Human Security Analysis of the Tsunami Impacts in India, Sri Lanka and Kashmir Earthquake”, in Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1223–1236. Banco de México (2016). “Datos estadísticas” www.banxico.org.mx/. Banco de México (2017–2020). “Datos estadísticas” www.banxico.gob.mx. Barnett, John (2010). “Human Rights and Vulnerability to Climate Change”, in S. Humphreys (Ed.). Human Rights and Climate Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 257–271. Beck, Ulrich (1999). World Risk Society, Cambridge, Polity.

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Beck, Ulrich (2007). Weltrisikogesellschaft auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, Frankfurt a. M., Surkamp. Beck, Ulrich (2011). “Living in and Coping with the World Risk Society”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 11–16. Biermann, Frank, Ingrid Boas (2012). “Climate Change and Human Migration. Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees”, in J. Scheffran et al. (Eds.), Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 291–300. Black, Richard (2001). Environmental Refugees. Myth or Reality? New Issues in Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 34, Geneva, UNHCR/IOM – Brighton, University of Sussex. Boltvinik, Julio (2009). “Métodos para la medición de la pobreza”; at: http://catarina.udlap.mx/u_ dl_a/tales/documentos/lec/escaroz_c_ga/capitulo2.pdf. Brauch, Hans Günter (2008). “From a Security to a Survival Dilemma”, in: Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.): Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century. Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 535–550. Brauch, Hans Günter (2008). “Conceptual Quartet. Security and its Linkages with peace, Development and Environment”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Globalization and Environmental Challenges. Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 65–98. Brauch, Hans Günter, Simon Dalby, Úrsula Oswald Spring (2011). “Political Geoecology for the Anthropocene”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 1453–1486. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring (2009). Securitizing the Ground, Grounding Security, Bonn, UNCCD, sponsored by the Government of Spain. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Pal Dunay, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, P.H. Liotta (2008) (Eds.). Globalization and Environmental Challenges). Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou, Heinz Krummenacher (2009) (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change). Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Czeslaw Mesjasz, John Grin, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Bechir Chourou, Jörn Birkmann (2011) (Eds.), Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Buechler, Stephanie (2009). “Gender, water, and climate change in Sonora, Mexico. Implications for policies and programmes on agricultural income-generation”, in Geraldine Terry (Ed.), Climate Change and Gender Justice, London, Practical Action Publishing and Oxfam, pp. 71–86. Buzan, Barry (1997). “Rethinking Security after the Cold War”, Cooperation & Conflict, Vol. 32, No. 1, March, pp. 5–28. Buzan, Barry (2004). The United States and the Great Powers, Cambridge, Polity. Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, Jaap de Wilde (1998). On Security. A Framework of Analysis, Boulder, Lynne Rienner. Castillo Manuel Ángel, Rodolfo Cruz, Jorge Santibáñez (Eds.) (2009). Nuevas tendencias y nuevos desafíos de la migración internacional. Memorias del Seminario Permanente sobre Migración Internacional. Vol. III, Tijuana, El Colef/El Colmex/SOMEDE/Sin Fronteras. Castles, Stephen (2002). Environmental Change and Forced Migration. Making Sense of the Debate, New Issues in Refugee Research No. 70, Geneva, UNHCR. Catholic Church (2008). “Survey on Gender Violence of Migration”, San Antonio, Catholic Church. CCA-UNAM [Centro de Ciencias de la Atmósfera] (2009). Models developed for Climate Change Projections in Mexico, Mexico, D.F., CCA-UNAM.

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Chapter 19

Environmentally-Induced Migration from Bottom-Up in Central Mexico

19.1

Introduction

When more knowledge on the impacts of climate change had emerged, new questions about its impact on the environment and the people were developed. Mexico is extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts because of its location in the tropics and between the Atlantic and the Pacific with a high influence of the ENSO phenomena (Niño-Niña). Without doubt, disasters were the first concern, especially with the high impacts of hurricanes, landslides and floods (Guha-Sapir et al. 2013), Later came the impacts of slow on-going processes such as drought and desertification, the silent killer of people and ecosystems, and the threats to small islands by sea level rise. Since 2006, the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS) in Bonn focused the scientific discussion on risks, threats and vulnerabilities due to climate-induced processes. This resulted in a new theme on the research agenda: the emergence of environmentally forced or induced migration and its impacts on human security (Bogardi/Brauch 2005), resulting in loss of livelihood (Bohle 2007, 2009), productive processes and food security (FAO 2016b; Oswald Spring 2009). The conceptual debate during an international conference in October 2008 in Bonn inspired this empirical research project in the centre of Mexico, which includes the eastern part of the state of Mexico, part of the southern delegation of Milpa Alta in Mexico City and about half the state of Morelos in the centre-east and south, with the basins of the rivers Yautepec and Cuautla1 and the Sierra Madre del Sur.

This text is a synthesis of five years of empirical research (2012–2017) by the author and her team on environmental-induced migration in Mexico. Part of the research written by the author was published in a book elaborated by ten scientists of an interdisciplinary research group led by Oswald Spring et al. (2014). Vulnerabilidad social y género entre migrantes ambientales, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_19

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Environmentally-Induced Migration from Bottom-Up in Central …

19.1.1 Objective of the Research The changing environmental conditions produced by deforestation, land use changes, destruction of biodiversity, loss of natural soil fertility, harm to ecosystem services and scarcity of water, together with the pollution of air, soil and water, have produced in Mexico, and especially in the research region, environmentally induced migration triggered by global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011, 2016) and climate change (IPCC 2013, 2014a, b; PINCC 2016). This central part of Mexico is highly exposed to disaster due to the high mountains and volcanoes and the influence of hurricanes from both oceans, but the region also suffers from periodic droughts. Further, climate change impacts with extreme weather events have affected people’s lives, their infrastructure and their livelihood. The high volcanoes (Popocatéptl, Chichinautzin, Tepozteco, Ajusco) and the Southern Sierra Madre, which characterise the research area, have produced an abrupt geography, with fragile soils in the mountainous areas and a fertile valley in the central part, as a result of long-time alluvial erosion and deep fertile soils. Further, the frequent eruptions of the volcano Popocatépetl cover the roofs of the houses and the fields with clouds of ashes, and forces the people and domestic animals to stay inside to avoid air-borne diseases. Finally, due to the instability between the tectonic plates of North America and the Cocos, Mexicans in this region are also threatened by periodic earthquakes. Further, all our productive and consumer activities emit CO2 from burning fossil fuels, deforestation and land use activity. In a public talk Paul Hawken (2017) accurately observed, “We are stealing the future, selling it in the present and calling it GDP.” Real and systemic change is hindered or impeded by poor policies, embedded in economic interests of greed and carbon-intensive infrastructure. There is also a deliberate misinformation going on to diminish the real impacts of this collective intensive fossil consumption (IPCC 2014a) and often governments cheat about their greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, we are going deeply into debt with ecosystem services, air, soil water and biodiversity, and worse, we are leaving our children to foot the bill. In the study region there are naturally contrasting conditions, which are further aggravated by global environmental change and climate change impacts. These changing socio-environmental conditions challenged poor people to find ways to survive in both the northern and the southern mountainous areas. Especially difficult are the productive conditions in the southern Sierra Madre, where the destruction of the deciduous low tropical forest and the inadequate soil management had desertified wide parts of their former agricultural land, increased poverty and led to loss of livelihood. Given these socio-economic circumstances, the objective of this research is to analyse empirically the different trends of environmentally induced migration, often triggered by socio-economic problems. In the northern part of Morelos (Nicolás Zapata) a pendular daily rural-urban migration exists to the Metropolitan Valley of Mexico City (MVMC). In the same municipality of Tlanepantla, but lower and with

19.1

Introduction

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better soil conditions, the deforestation and introduction of a cash crop in La Cañada of ‘nopal’ (a cactus) has enabled families to get an income during the whole year. These productive activities allowed the integration of family migrants, many of them expelled from the USA after the financial crisis of 2008, into this small-scale agriculture, which requires an intensive labour force. This movement is called return migration. A third type, rural-rural migration, occurred from the Montaña [the mountainous region] of Guerrero to El Pañuelo in the central valley of Morelos. This valley belongs to the fertile zone, where irrigation and cash crop agriculture had created a demands for indigenous migrants, who are working there as day labourers. These indigenous people came from the poorest municipalities in Mexico (Cochaopan, Metlatonoc, etc.), a region which was also periodically exposed to extreme weather events. The last disaster occurred when hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel (2013) merged and landslides and flash floods destroyed lives, livelihoods, soils and vegetation. The fourth type of migration is undocumented international migration, which has occurred in Lorenzo Vázquez during the last three decades. This village is located in the Southern Sierra Madre. People have lost most their survival conditions, due to deforestation, massive soil erosion and the loss of natural soil fertility because of inadequate productive methods and excessive extraction of natural resources. In this region a multinational enterprise (Syntex, later sold to Roche) depleted then totally eradicated the barbasco (Dioscorea mexicana), from which progesterone was synthesised. Later, intensive agriculture with agrochemicals eroded the fragile mountain soils. These complex natural and social conditions are further aggravated by climate change, where, during the research years (2010– 2015), harvests were totally lost three times due to drought, and crop yields were minimal during the remaining two years. Although, in Lorenzo Vázquez, international migration began three decades ago, greater persecution during the Obama and now the Trump Administration has increased the threats to family members living in the USA, to new migrants who want to join them in the USA and to the families left behind in the southern Mountains, who survive on the remittances sent to them by relatives who have migrated. These four types of migration illustrate the different adaptation strategies that people used to cope with more adverse socio-environmental conditions, which have also affected their income, health and livelihood. The recollected data also exemplify the existing conditions of poverty, marginalisation, education and lack of governmental support, especially in the Sierra Madre. For their survival, entire families decided on a definitive migration to the USA, or to more fertile rural areas, or to deep ravines to produce illegal crops which have increased the insecurity of the people. This regional instability is further aggravated because the study region is an alternative transit route from the Montaña of Guerrero to Mexico City for the trafficking of opium gum and marijuana.

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19.1.2 Research Questions Given the limited support from the Government, how can people increase their resilience, when they are affected by extreme weather events related to climate change and global environmental change? How can these people adapt to reduced crop yields, when their soils are getting more fragile and eroded due to the excess of agrochemicals and lack of soil management in abrupt mountain slopes? How can women left behind by permanent migration produce enough food, when their small harvests are lost three times in five years? What is the regional adaptation capacity in the northern and southern mountains to limit environmental and socio-economic migration? Is environmentally induced migration really an adaptation to climate change and for whom? How can people survive in a region where the production of puppies (for opium gum) and marijuana, controlled by organised crime, have created further threats to public and personal security? How can people with a high marginality manage this complex emergency, when military governmental control is eradicating their small plots of illegal crops, while the drug business is valued at billions of dollars?2

19.1.3 Structure of the Chapter This chapter analyses different environmentally induced migration from bottom-up in a region highly exposed to climate change, where the natural resources have deteriorated due to global environmental change and people mostly live in extreme poverty (19.2.1). It uses the previously analysed PEISOR model to organise the complex data from five years of field research. The chapter discusses the quantitative and qualitative research methods that were used (19.2.2), introduces the three key concepts of gender, adaptation and resilience (19.2.3), briefly describes the research area with the existing socio-environmental threats (19.2.4) and concludes with an explanation of the random samples for three surveys (19.4.5).

19.2

Methodology and Methods of Research

19.2.1 The PEISOR Model from Bottom-Up In Fig. 15.1 the PEISOR model was influenced by several approaches by OECD (1994), Hughe et al. (2004), MA (2005), Brauch (2009), Brauch/Oswald (2009) and 2

Luis Caballero (2015) estimates that the trafficking of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and synthetics represents about 320 billion dollars/year in North America (http://eleconomista.com.mx/sociedad/ 2015/07/14/las-cifras-economicas-narco).

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Methodology and Methods of Research

503

Perevochtchikova (2012) to illustrate the complex human nature interactions. According to Brauch/Oswald, in the PEISOR model (2009) the pressure (P) is divided between the natural and social system (19.3) for analysing the local interrelations among the natural and social systems in the research region. Focusing on the regional environmental conditions, the research group developed an Environmental Vulnerability Perception Index (EVPI) at local level (19.3.1). On the social side, the study group synthesised the socio-economic and demographic results in a Social Vulnerability Index (19.3.2). The effects (E) on the environment are related to an unsustainable model of cultivation, excessive extraction of natural resources (barbasco), over-fertilisation of soils and more numerous extreme events (19.4.1), which have produced scarcity, degradation and pollution of natural resources in both mountainous regions. The effects on society (19.4.2) are the loss of income, increasing poverty, loss of communitarian solidarity, migration, crime and local or regional conflicts. The new means of communication via the internet have particularly affected the communitarian identity of the youth and have changed their traditional behaviour and social representations (Serrano 2010, 2015). Facing a lack of jobs and decent income and greater difficulties in migrating to the USA, these young people often choose to get involved in organised crime, which has increased insecurity in the villages (Barrera 2017) and produced a complex emergency in the region (Hopkins 1998; USAID 2003). On the impacts (I) (19.5) there are extreme hydrometeorological (flash floods, landslides, droughts), geophysical (several daily eruptions and emissions of ashes from Popocatépetl, periodic earthquakes) and technological events (car crashes, explosions related to the production of fireworks and explosion as a result of the robbery of gasoline from pipelines) (19.5.1). The social impacts can be synthesised with a loss of life, livelihood and services related to extreme hydrometeorological and technological events. The precarious public services are further damaged by flash floods and landslides, and poverty has increased malnutrition (obesity) and undernourishment among indigenous children, with serious health and development consequences (Álvarez/Oswald Spring 1993). The societal outcomes (SO) (19.6) are pendular rural-urban migration in Nicolás Zapata (19.6.1), return migration in La Cañada (19.6.2), permanent and periodic rural-rural migration from the Montaña of Guerrero to El Pañuelo (19.6.3), and changes in the international environmentally induced migration (19.6.4). The undocumented family members in the USA are now obliged to stay there permanently, due to their lack of visas and stronger border controls for illegal crossing. They can no longer visit their families in Mexico and are permanently exposed to the risk of deportation. The response (R) (19.7) to these local changes is limited by all the involved. The Government gave limited support after a disaster, but centred its efforts on bringing more police, the army and the marines into the region to fight against drug production, organised crime and their trafficking routes (19.7.1). This reactive

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policy increased the number of fatalities,3 mostly innocent citizens who were officially regarded as ‘collateral damage’. Confronted with this increasing insecurity and violence, the indigenous people in the mountain villages built up a communitarian police force to protect their people from both crime and official violence, which are often linked to the drug business and governmental corruption. These poor people, mostly indigenous, are also suffering from the loss of their communitarian land, due to greater violence by multinational enterprises that had obtained mining concessions from the federal government without the affected people being consulted. However, these people are now losing their livelihoods clean water and clean air through toxic pollution, so many have had to migrate (19.7.2). The chapter concludes with some responses to the research questions and objectives of the study based on the empirical evidence, and some reflections on the environmentally induced migration in a scenario of complex emergency.4

19.2.2 Interdisciplinary Research Methods with the Participation of the Affected People The interdisciplinary study group at the Centre for Regional Multidisciplinary Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (CRIM-UNAM) combined different scientific backgrounds in ecology, hydrology, edaphology, biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, geography, agronomy, history, political science, development studies, economy, international relations, and demography. The research team employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods for analysing water and soils. Three random surveys involving 4,370 persons were conducted after three flash floods, in 2010, 2012 and 2013 in the Yautepec and Cuautla river basins, to assess the impacts of these three floods on the people, their risk perception, their self-organisation to deal with the disasters and their adaptation strategies. Later two additional small surveys of 100 people each were conducted in 2015 and 2016 to understand the return migration and the resilience to extreme events. These extreme events might increase in the region due to climate change. Using qualitative methods, the research team conducted in-depth interviews with local leaders and authorities, and examined official databases related to meteorology and extreme historical events. The study group also used the anthropological 3

As of July 2017, the drug war has nationally produced more than 200,000 deaths and 40,000 disappeared people together with hundreds of thousands of displaced people. In June 2017 alone, 2,234 people were killed in one month, the deadliest number in 20 years (Segob 2017). 4 The official definition of a complex emergency is “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society, where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing United Nations country program.” (IASC December 1994).

19.2

Methodology and Methods of Research

505

methods of field study and participative observation. The partial results were discussed with the affected communities and authorities. Through five focus groups with affected people, some aspects of the environmentally induced migration could be addressed in more detail, including the respondents’ decision-making processes and the impact on the migrants and the people left behind. Simultaneously, the team studied water, waste management, socio-economic transformations, land use changes, desertification processes, plagues and diseases in the crops, yield reductions, and governmental support before, during and after the disasters. The research groups also explored social movements and the increase in organised crime in the region. With female heads of household from different communities, we compared their processes of adaptation and the resilience that they had developed during the absence of their husbands or partners. The study group also examined how the people have dealt with flash floods, loss of animals and crops and how they were managing soil degradation, the increasing droughts, the lack of water and plagues. During the five years of research, the group obtained multiple quantitative and qualitative data, which were shared with the community and with especially interested groups and local authorities. As a collective work with the people mostly affected by the flash floods in the basins of the river Yautepec, where the flash flood in August 2010 had increased 21 m in 20 min and destroyed houses, infrastructure, the market and flooded big parts of the city of Yautepec, the group developed a didactic map to help the people understand the complexity of periodic flash floods. This didactic map was distributed and discussed in schools, with authorities, peasant organisations, people from the market and neighbours living close to the river. Near the river Cuautla there is a similar effort on place (Aseca 1984). These participative research methodologies, also called research-actions (Bergold/Thomas 2012) helped both the people affected and the authorities responsible for preventing disasters to understand the complexity of the region and the risks related to the location, the deterioration of environment, and the impacts of climate change and organised crime.

19.2.3 Conceptual Approaches to Gender, Adaptation and Resilience Before discussing the empirical analysis of the research data, a few basic concepts will first be introduced. The first refers to gender as a social construction of masculinity and femininity, which was developed during the history of humankind, the second is related to the term adaptation, and the third refers to the capacity of resilience-building. Finally, the study area is introduced.

506

19.2.3.1

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Environmentally-Induced Migration from Bottom-Up in Central …

Gender

Gender is the social construction of masculinity and femininity, which depends on cultural assignation of roles, norms, identity and sexual behaviour. Gender identity refers to the social identification with a particular gender and its gender role in the specific society. These differences began thousands of years ago with the consolidation of irrigated agricultural societies, and were later reinforced by capitalism, the industrial revolution and neoliberal globalisation. During all these historical periods the unequal access to resources and power between women and men increased. Women were socialised to care for others and to work without remuneration inside their homes. Their work was not visible and men took it for granted that food was on the table, clothes were washed, children attended to and the house clean. On the other hand, men were considered breadwinners in most societies, thus they controlled the economy and the power relations from the household to the public sphere (for more details see Chaps. 10, 11 and 12).

19.2.3.2

Adaptation

Climate change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) developed two main responses: one is adaptation (IPCC 2014a) and the other is mitigation (IPCC 2014b). Both were widely explored in the last IPCC Report to reduce the impact of climate change on people and the environment. Adaptation was defined as: “In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate.” (IPCC 2012: 5) This definition places the responsibility on human beings, whose consumerist behaviour and massive emissions of greenhouse gases have caused the crisis, to mitigate and reduce these emissions through renewable energy and energy efficiency. Also, since CO2 stands in the atmosphere for several hundred years, it is necessary for people to rapidly develop ways to deal with the increasing impacts of extreme events related to the anthropogenically produced climate change impacts (Chap. 13). They must therefore adapt to the new conditions, but should also develop resilience to undesired conditions.

19.2.3.3

Resilience

Risk and vulnerability are increasing during climate change and affecting both humans and ecosystems. Resilience is a term which was first developed in physics and describes the way that a metal returns to its original size and form when the heat goes away. Psychologists use the term in therapy to refer to the ability of people who have been exposed to trauma to overcome the dramatic moment and regain their former strength and normal behaviour. In climate change, resilience is

19.2

Methodology and Methods of Research

507

understood as: “The ability of a system and its component or parts to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner, including through ensuring the preservation, restoration, or improvement of its essential basic structures and functions” (IPCC 2012: 5). Thus adaptation and resilience are related. However, the term resilience goes a step further. The Government and people should take preventative measures to avoid exposure to an extreme event and, if one occurs, together they should rebuild their infrastructure in such a way that in the next extreme event people and the infrastructure might suffer less damage. For instance, instead of rebuilding a village beside a riverbed or an unstable mountain slope, the reconstruction is done in a safer place, thus during the next extreme event people are better prepared and suffer less damage, because social and environmental vulnerability are reduced.

19.2.4 The Study Area The study area includes three federal entities: a tiny part of the delegation of Milpa Alta (the south-eastern mountainous part of Mexico City) with the watershed of the Chichinautzin volcano (3,476 m) in Mexico City; six municipalities in the east of the state of Mexico: Amecameca, Atlautla, Ecaztingo, Juchitepec, Ozumba and Tepetlixpa; and twenty-one municipalities totally or partially from the north to the south in the eastern part of Morelos: Atlatlahuacan, Ayala, Cuautla, Emiliano Zapata, Jantetelco, Jojutla, Jonacatepec, Ocuituco, Temoac, Tepalcingo, Tepoztlán, Tetela del Volcán, Tlaltizapan, Tlanepantla, Tlaquiltenango, Tlayacapan, Totolapan, Yautepec, Yecapixtla, Zacatepec and Zacualpan. The region is integrated by two river basins, the bigger from the river Yautepec and the smaller from the river Cuautla. Figure 19.1 indicates the complex mountainous geography of the study region, with a central agricultural valley and the conurbation of Cuautla and Yautepec. Both rivers rise from the former glacier, and now snow from the volcano Popocatépetl (5,452) and the river Yautepec further affect its tributaries from the neo-volcanic chain (Chichinautzin, Sierra de Juchitpec, Tepozteco, Ajusco) which horizontally crosses the country. In the south, some intermittent small rivers bring water from the Sierra Madre del Sur. These geographical conditions have also determined the human settlements and the productive activities. The central valley accounted for irrigation several thousand years ago and the Spaniards used this highly developed agricultural region for sugar cane production. Today, the municipality of Ayala is the most productive region in the state of Morelos and is the chief producer of green beans in Mexico. This central valley also exports and sells to the national market onions, sugar and other vegetables.

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Fig. 19.1 Map of the complex river systems, mostly functioning during the Monsoon. Source Designed by Joaquín Carulina

19.2.5 Sample The research group used quantitative and qualitative research methods including three random surveys with 4,370 persons from 1,119 families, where 51% were women (Table 19.1). Because of security reasons the survey was divided in these three phases and the study group was able to interview all selected members, thus the sample is representative for the whole study region. Morelos represented 81.5% of the population in the sample, the state of Mexico 18.0% and Milpa Alta (Mexico City) 0.5%, as it was only a marginal part with the watershed towards the south that influenced the study region. In Morelos, the cities of Cuautla, Yautepec, Ayala and a small part of Juitepec are basically urban settlements, whereas in the state of Mexico, the biggest municipality accounted only for 30,945 inhabitants. The concentration of inhabitants in urban areas explains the dominance of the state of Morelos in this sample. While the population is mostly urban in the three states, the landscape is still covered by forests and agricultural fields. Sixteen per cent of the existing rural people in Mexico produce around 1.2% of the GDP of the country and represent 0.2% of the surface.

19.2

Methodology and Methods of Research

509

Table 19.1 Survey about environmentally induced migration. Source Results from the study Phases of survey

Persons

Families

Percent of women

First phase (2011) Second phase (2012) Third phase (2013) Total

1,140 2,515 415 4,370

385 634 100 1,119

49 51 57 51

Between 2014 and 2016, we did several types of field research using qualitative methods, focus groups, interviews and two smaller surveys, each of 100 people, to understand the risk perception after a disaster and to comprehend the impacts of return migration from migrant families or individuals deported by the Obama Government. With these conceptual and methodological comments, along with the framework of the PEISOR model, we have the instruments to begin the empirical analysis of the region and the socio-environmental impacts of the four different types of environmentally induced migration: pendular rural-urban migration, return migration, rural-rural migration and international migration.

19.3

Pressure (P)

The interrelations of the environmental (air, soil, water and biodiversity) and the human system (rural, urban, transportation, industrialisation, population growth) have created in the region complex pressures on the environment and for humankind at both local and global level. WHO (2016) estimated 12.6 million premature deaths, due to air pollution or in the workplace.5 Since 1990 the planet has suffered dramatic land use change and biodiversity loss. In 2017, humankind uses more than 1.5 times the resources available to satisfy its productive and consumer needs. Further, during the last century population increased three times and water use six times. Thus, humankind has lost its balance and has systematically destroyed its natural resources and ecosystem services. In the study region a high diversity of two different ecosystems exists, which is threatened by population growth, land use change, deforestation, impoverishment of soils, industrialisation and population growth (MA 2005). Although the population rate has declined in most municipalities in Morelos, land use changes have altered the landscape due to immigration, return migration, agribusiness and tourism. All these processes have placed great pressure on the environment. The forest

5

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2016/deaths-attributable-to-unhealthy-environments/en/.

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Fig. 19.2 Past and projected changes of population fertility rate in Morelos 1970–2030. From left to right, the Spanish key below the maps means: ‘More than 2%’; ‘From 1 to 2%’; ‘From 0 to 1%’; and ‘Negative’. Source Rueda (2006: 178)

in the mountain is capturing up to 72% of the rain and recharging the CuautlaYautepec aquifer. Deforestation and the lack of forest from the steep volcanic slopes has not only eroded fragile soils, but also increased flash floods (Fig. 19.1) in the valley. Figure 19.2 establishes some scenarios of population growth. Probably, only the metropolitan area of Cuernavaca, Juitepec and Temixco will have an increase in population over 2%, while the Sierra Madre (south) might lose people and the north will have very low population growth. However, the recent trends of return migration to the northern mountain area might change these projections, because people prefer to settle in cheaper rural areas near the capital. This concentration of people in small areas aggravates deforestation in highly vulnerable areas and increases the environmental destruction because of lack of sustainable land and urban planning. A sustainable development would better protect these fragile areas and conserve the natural resources.

19.3.1 Environmental Deterioration and Index of Environmental Vulnerability Perception In the study region the differences of altitude have caused two main ecological zones to develop: the template forest and the dry tropical jungle. In both ecosystems terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity6 exist in vegetation and fauna. The northern volcanic region is characterised by vegetation of template forests of both pine and

6

Biodiversity is the interaction of living organisms, plants, animals and humans. IUCN (1994) includes all forms of life, while Reid/Miller (1989) proposed the variety of the world’s organism with their genetic diversity. MA (2005) assessed four categories for biodiversity: diversity of ecosystems, species diversity, genetic diversity and cultural diversity.

19.3

Pressure (P)

511

pine-oak, and some broadleaved trees (Reid/Miller 1989). This ecological zone is the natural habitat of the ‘teporingo’, ‘zacatuche’ or ‘rabbit of the volcanoes’ (Romerolagus diazi) that is unique in the region and in danger of extinction. This region still conserves natural forests, which are protected in the national parks of Izta-Popo, Chichinautzin and Tepozteco (Fig. 19.5). However, some criminal groups have promoted illegal logging and involved local people. Greater deforestation is increasing flash floods in the lower basins of Yautepec and Cuautla, due to lack of rainfall infiltration. Around the urban settlements, the forest is deteriorated by local deforestation, because of the use of firewood for cooking. But the greatest change in the north is the result of land use changes for cultivating nopal (a cactus) in Tlanepanta, Totolapan and Tlayacapacan. There are also some plantations of potatoes and other vegetables. These land use changes have increased the erosion of the steep slopes but people have learned to retain the humus with terraces. The valley of Yautepec-Cuautla is located in the central part of the state and is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of erosion from the high volcanoes. This sedimentation has produced deep soils, which are rich in organic matter and offer excellent productive conditions. This valley accounts for the best climate in the world, thus the urban expansion had reduced the agricultural areas. The soil is basically used for commercial agricultural crops (sugar cane since the arrival of the Spaniards, and also other vegetables later) for the consumption in Mexico City and for export. This intensive agriculture polluted soils, water and air and affected all natural resources, especially the ecosystem services. The southern part and the east are limited by the Sierra Montenegro, where conserved areas of low deciduous forest or dry tropical forest still exist, protected by the state governments. This protection should also limit the expansion of Juitepec, the second most important city in Morelos, where the industrial zone of CIVAC (Ciudad Industrial del Valle de Cuernavaca) is located. The southern mountainous region is characterised by the presence of low deciduous forest vegetation, which is still conserved in the most southern parts and protected by a federal declaration of the ‘Biosphere of the Sierra of Huautla’. This type of vegetation is the natural habitat of wildlife, which is well represented in this region (Contreras-MacBeath et al. 2006). In this ecological zone there are still some small-scale farmers with wide traditional knowledge of how to handle and use the fragile natural environment. However, in the past the Government allowed the multinational enterprises Syntex and Roche to extract barbasco (Dioscorea mexicana) on a massive scale until its eradication, which destroyed part of the dry tropical forest and eroded the rendzina soil. Additionally, green revolution practices were promoted on this fragile soil by the Government to improve the yields. The result was the total erosion of these soils and the loss of livelihood for many peasant families. Therefore, the southern part is environmentally the most deteriorated area and in most of this area people have lost the possibility to produce their own food, due to the deforestation, erosion of soils and lack of water. To address this process of deterioration, where agrochemicals, over-exploitation of roots, erosion, urbanisation and liquid and solid waste are the main sources of pollution, the study group developed an Environmental Vulnerability Perception

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Table 19.2 Environmental Vulnerability Perception Index (EVPI). Source Field research EVPI (in %)

Nicolas Zapata

La Cañada

El Pañuelo

Lorenzo Vázquez

Differences

273.4

286.6

220.3

307.0

86.7

Table 19.3 Composition of the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). Source Field research

Index of household Index of persons Index of dwelling Index of marginality (1–100) Index of migration Total SVI (in %)

Nicolas Zapata

La Cañada

El Pañuelo

Lorenzo Vázquez

Differences

82.36 67.87 151.69 12.02

63.42 52.35 109.2 9.89

135.10 92.92 109.03 13.25

89.18 68.55 120.97 10.98

71.68 40.60 28.12 3.36

29.75 263.8

30 202.58

45.98 290.11

42.4 253.12

35.29 87.53

Index (EVPI). Table 19.2 summarises the empirical research with the EVPI for the four study communities. The villages in the north and in the south had the best understanding of the negative impacts on the environment. In Nicolas Zapata in the north and in El Pañuelo in the centre issues of deforestation, the pollution of drinking water with agrochemicals and dust were the main environmental concerns in both communities. Lorenzo Vázquez had similar problems, but also suffered from high erosion, irregular rainfall and water supply and lack of drainage. The deforestation in the dry tropical jungle has further produced extreme temperatures and lack of firewood for cooking. In La Cañada, the community is infested with flies, due to the massive use of animal manure without previous composting. Thus, children cannot take a break outside and must eat their lunch inside the classrooms. There is also a lack of water for irrigation. However, nopal requires less water than the former vegetables, especially tomatoes, which were abandoned due to the lack of water in the river and more irregular rainfalls. All these environmental pressures have affected the livelihood of the people.

19.3.2 Socio-economic Deterioration and Index of Social Vulnerability The study region suffers from both environmental and social vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2013). To compare the existing social vulnerability of the different communities, the research group developed a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). The SVI weighted the data from the surveys and calculated the vulnerability within the

19.3

Pressure (P)

513

Fig. 19.3 Transformation of precarious houses in El Pañuelo. Source The Author

household, personal well-being, the quality of the construction and services in the house, the level of marginality and the difficulties caused by migration. Table 19.3 indicates that the highest SVI exist in the immigrated indigenous community of El Pañuelo. Their houses were built by the Government with concrete and are equipped with tap water and drainage; however, their high marginality resulting from the Montaña of Guerrero, the dependency of daily incomes, the lack of education and the significant migration of male partners to earn money when there are no jobs available locally, mean these people are still highly vulnerable. Their daily diet consists of tortilla with salt, with chicken once a week or, from time to time, lamb and some vegetables grown in the limited surroundings of the village (Fig. 19.3). Nicolas Zapata follows in vulnerability. This community was never recognised by the municipality of Totolapan or the state Government. Due to the lack of official recognition, the municipality seized almost all of the land that had been given to the village by the land reform after the revolution. Thus, the people lack the basic services of water, sewers, street lighting and poverty alleviation programmes. Their houses are precarious, their marginality is high, but as pendular migrants the impact of migration is lower, because they come home during the night and live in their houses in order not to lose their property rights. Lorenzo Vázquez has a low SVI index related to the income, education, services, female heads of household and low income, due to the permanent international migration of men, with women, elders and children left behind. Their houses are

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precarious and there are different Protestant churches, accepted by the women, as they forbid the male family members to drink alcohol, thus reducing intrafamiliar violence and personal fights. However, this is a region of limited production, and the transit of illegal crops, the violence from drug traffickers and governmental repression have increased. The lowest level of SVI is found in La Cañada. The change towards the cash crop nopal has consolidated the family economy, integrated return migrants, consolidated the extended families and reduced their marginality index. However, the inadequate management of the manure of animals, the high inputs of agrochemicals and the reality that only part of the producers could establish trade links for the crop, still maintain some of these people in precarious conditions. Both indexes document the dual vulnerability of all four communities, which share social and educational shortcomings, deficiencies or lack of public services, poverty and a high degree of marginality. The analysis of the empirical data also indicated that not all the dual vulnerability is related to naturally difficult conditions, but that anthropogenic activities also bear great responsibility for the deterioration of their quality of life. This also opens the opportunity to change, and in Lorenzo Vázquez women have started to compost their waste and recover some soil for their orchards (Feledyn-Szewczyk et al. 2016). In El Pañuelo, although the SVI is still low, the indigenous women claim that their lives have substantially improved, compared with their former highly precarious conditions. As Fig. 19.4 indicates, when these poor households from Cochoapan are compared with the ones in El Pañuelo

Fig. 19.4 Poor household in Cochoapan, Guerrero, the Poorest Municipality in Mexico. Source Field research

19.3

Pressure (P)

515

(Fig. 19.3), inhabitants feel that their standard of living has improved, although for foreigners these conditions are still very precarious and retain permanent nutritional deficiencies.

19.4

Effects (E)

The interaction of socio-economic precariousness, and scarcity and deterioration of natural conditions has produced effects (E) on humans and environment. The ongoing stress reduced livelihoods and health conditions, and increased threats to survival by extreme events. As a consequence, the people experimented with different types of migration to maintain their level of well-being or reduce the stress from lack of livelihood. These deteriorating regional conditions were further triggered by national socio-economic crisis and the loss of purchasing power parity due to the deterioration of the minimum wage. However, with regard to some general processes, the effects of international, national and regional events were perceived and responded to differently by the four study communities.

19.4.1 Effects on the Environment: Degradation, Scarcity and Stress The study region could be divided into three parts: the northern ecosystem of pine-oaks, the central region with fertile valleys for cash crop agriculture and intensive urban development, and the southern part with an ecosystem of dry deciduous tropical forest with poor soils which were prone to erosion. In the northern volcanic area the national resources were protected by the national parks of Popo-Ixta, the Corredor Chichinautzin and the Tepozteco; in the centre the state of Morelos had declared that El Texcal, containing the state’s most important aquifer, and the Sierra Montenegra, which permits a biological corridor between the northern and the southern ecosystem, were protected areas. In this region also exist the municipal park of the River of Cuautla and the privately managed Las Estacas. In the south lies the Biosphere Sierra de Huautla, one of the last important ecosystems of dry tropical forest in Mexico, which also extends to the states of Puebla and Guerrero (Fig. 19.5). Soils sustain the ecosystems and agriculture. Soils are the result of the interaction between climate, stones, vegetation and precipitation. Most of the original ecosystems were temperate forests and dry deciduous tropical jungle. The intensive use of fragile soils in both mountains (Fig. 19.6) created serious limits to agricultural development and produced an erosion affecting 80% of the area. With the anthropogenic action on some of the fragile soils, yield went down and harvests were often lost. FAO (2016a) conducted a global definition of soils and defined

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Fig. 19.5 National, State and Private Protected Areas. Source Field research

Fig. 19.6 Existing soils in the study region. Source INEGI (2010)

their productive capacity. The dominant soils are briefly mentioned in relation to their productive capacity. The phaeozem soil represents 24.4% of the study area and is located in the irrigated part of Tlaquiltenango, just before the Sierra Madre rises. Phaeozems are dark soils with at least 5% of organic matter. They are used for intensive crop agriculture. The vertisol (21–24%) is a heavy soil which is 40% clay,

19.4

Effects (E)

517

thus it is ideal for the production of rice and is also used for sugar cane in the central valley. The kastanosem soil is also rich in humus. It was originally covered with native grasslands vegetation, but is now over-exploited in the region by cash crops and tends to erode. It is used for livestock and some commercial agriculture. The andosol in the southern part of the rivers Yautepec and Cuautla are up to 50 cm deep, but prone to erosion. This type of soil has a medium capacity for production, but requires special management. Traditionally, the seasonal flood during the monsoon restored these soils, but with less rainfall and dams upstream, this soil has lost its productive capacity. The rendzina soils have developed in the upper Yautepec and in the Sierra Madre, but are very fragile and prone to erosion. These soils support the development of pine-oak forest and infiltrate water into the aquifer but erode rapidly when deforested. The lithosol has developed a very tinny productive horizon and is found on very steep mountains (FAO 2016a). It is unable to support any productive activity with the exception of the high mountain grassland on Popocatépetl, which is the natural habitat of the teporingo (Romerolagus diazi), or volcano rabbit, a species highly threatened by extinction. In higher altitudes the government promoted reforestation on this soil through the process of ‘blind tubes’ (tina ciega) or trenches 2 m large and 0.5 m wide and deep. Instead of recovering soil, this policy dramatically increased the erosion on the steep slopes and eliminated the precarious existing soil (Cotler 2015). In synthesis, with exception of the central valley, the rest of the soils are highly fragile and give limited support to the disturbed vegetation and its recovery. But they are also very limited for cash crops and livestock production. Further, the abrupt slopes of the high volcanoes and the fragile soils in the Sierra Madre are extremely prone to erosion, and also difficult terrain for the reforestation of pines and oak or dry tropical forests. These areas should only be conserved in national parks and the deforestation must be controlled. Land use change is the most significant change that has occurred in the region, and when an agricultural field is eroded in the mountains, the small-scale peasant deforests a new plot for the survival of the family. Table 19.4 indicates the deteriorated landscape, where more than half of the territory is dedicated to agriculture and 211.7% is secondary vegetation as the primary forests were destroyed. Thus, with exception of the central valley, the vocation of most existing soils is forestry. Urbanisation is crucial in terms of inhabitants, but is still concentrated in cities or villages, thus impacting on less than two per cent of the surface. Original forests represent only nine per cent of the surface and include the pine-oak and the dry tropical forest, therefore land protection is crucial for maintaining the ecosystem services and the biodiversity. The Spaniards introduced sugar cane, which, along with vegetables still uses, 95% of surface water and requires 23% of groundwater. Soils are eroded in different scale up to 80% and public investment in the environment has stagnated during the last decade. Crop yields have dropped with exception of sugar cane and cash crops in the central valley. However, the negative outcome of the 2017 sugar agreement with the USA is that Mexico is only allowed to sell brown sugar, thus the

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Table 19.4 Land use changes. Source Field research Land use

Surface km2

Percentage of global land use

Agriculture Grassland/livestock Secondary vegetation Forest Dry tropical forest Urban area Without vegetation Water bodies Desert scrub

634.6 68.3 372.2 112.1 24.6 22.7 11.1 4.4 1.5

50.7 5.5 211.7 11.0 2.0 1.8 0.7 0.4 0.1

agroindustrialisation process will now be done in North America. Sugar cane represents a safe income for poor peasants, because the Government offers the producer social security and support during the harvest with day labourers from indigenous regions. Thus, peasants like to produce sugar cane, especially since it only needs to be replanted every six years and, in between, will automatically regrow after being harvested. In both mountain areas yields of all crops have declined due to poor soil conditions and often also due to lack of water during the critical growth period.

19.4.2 Effects on Society: Poverty, Lack of Public Services, Loss of Solidarity and Conflicts Given these deteriorated and fragile environmental conditions, 70% of people are concerned about the future of nature and its associated ecosystem services. From 2000 to 2016 population growth in the study region was 1.3 compared with 1.7 at the national level, which results from greater emigration and less attraction of newcomers. Most people live in poverty and only 13.6% of the people have low or no marginality. This points to extreme social polarisation and a concentration of local wealth. People have an average of 8.2 years of school education (nationally 8.6 years), because the younger generation is better prepared and normally stays until high school. With regard to health, undernourishment declined from 8.3 in 1990 to 5.3% in 2010. Children’s undernourishment resulted in 6% being underweight and 12.2% short for their age. Malnutrition (obesity and overweight) were found in 37.5% of all school children. These children will die earlier than their parents because of the chronic diseases related to obesity. This malnutrition is also the most significant health problem among adults, with 82.3% affected, resulting in a dramatic increase in diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. But traditional diseases

19.4

Effects (E)

519

such as gastro-intestinal and respiratory infections still prevail in the region (Ensanut 2012, 2016). During these two decades, infant mortality was reduced to 4.1/1000 newborns. An increasing threat to health and livelihood in the whole region is physical aggression, due to the dominant violence. Organised crime is widespread in the region. First, it was related basically to drug production and trafficking. When a powerful regional drug lord (Arturo Beltran Leyva) was killed in December 2009, his criminal organisation started to fight for the new leadership. Later, the criminals reorganised themselves into three important cartels, but many small criminal groups also remained which made a living from kidnapping, extortion, armed robbery, and drug and human trafficking. The tighter control by large cartels had previously stabilised the violence at a higher level and the drug lords exercised strict control among their members. With the capture or assassination of these gang leaders, the number of homicides also increased dramatically in several other regions in Mexico (Segob 2017). Thus, in 2017 this study region no longer belongs to the three most violent, but to the ten most dangerous regions in Mexico. However, the number of homicides and other criminal acts of high impacts has not declined.

19.5

Impacts (I)

The third step in the PEISOR model is the Impact (I) related to natural and human-induced extreme events. In the study region in the state of Morelos both hydrometeorological events, geophysical and technological disasters occur. During the last decade violence linked to organised crime emerged as a new major threat that caused significant migration and forced displacements of people in the Sierra Madre who objected to producing illegal drugs. Public insecurity was mentioned by everybody, but not as a risk, but as a reality, due to the increase and the threats to public insecurity related to organised crime and the daily criminality of robbery, often with arms and fatal outcomes. During the last decade, Morelos was the state that was second in kidnapping and fourth in homicide rates. In 2017 the news on violence centred on Guerrero and the border states to the USA such as Tamaulipas, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Sinaloa. Thus, Morelos is no more in the first place but among the first ten, despite the decline in the number of homicides, kidnappings and armed robbery, but these crimes have increased dramatically in other states. People also seem to get accustomed to this violence and generally do not leave their homes at night. In relation to environmental issues, almost a quarter of the interviewed people did not notice any risk (Fig. 19.7). The largest threat people perceived was related to occasional earthquakes, followed by volcanic eruptions, then flash floods in the valley, forest fires and finally landslides. However, the last two events have been the most deadly, while during the last two decades there were multiple deaths

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Fig. 19.7 Perception of risks in the study area. Source Field research

related to the 2017 earthquakes and to volcanic eruptions. Why, then, do people feel more threatened by geophysical events, when the death toll from periodic hydrometeorological extreme events was higher during floods and especially from landslides? Since the big earthquake of 1985, which measured 7.8 on the Scale Richter and had hundreds of subsequent aftershocks that affected the south, the centre, the west and Mexico City, annual training and evacuation prevention in school and public offices has resulted in a perception of greater insecurity by the people. This personal assimilation of risks has not occurred with volcanic eruptions. However, during the last three decades people living near the cone of the Popocatépetl were twice preventatively evacuated from the erupting volcano. Most of the study region is dedicated to agriculture (Table 19.4). During the dry season the lack of water is the key limit for production, but people need a better water supply during the more variable monsoon. In this region the indigenous Xochimilcas developed a complex irrigation system hundreds of year before the Spanish conquest. During its final pre-conquest phase the region was controlled by the triple alliance of the Aztecs and had to pay significant tributes to Tenochtitlan in the form of cotton, agricultural products and guano. Today, in the eastern part of the Cuautla River, long pipes bring the water from the melting snows in the north to the lower lying fields. In the villages this illegal water management has created multiple conflicts related to the legal access to water, especially during the dry period. In the central valley the irrigation system is still very traditional, with a lot of water loss due to the surface water transportation. This irrigation serves the sugar cane plantations and the production of different vegetables both for the local domestic and the export market. The lack of water is especially mentioned by farmers and less by the urban population as a risk related to the changing climate conditions.

19.5

Impacts (I)

521

19.5.1 Impacts on the Environment: Extreme Hydrometeo-rological, Geophysical and Technological Events Both mountainous areas are highly exposed to landslides during the monsoon and especially during hurricanes. However, the risks of more and stronger flash floods were mentioned in the central valley, due to the velocity of the floods and the multiple small rivers, which all discharge into the rivers of Yautepec and Cuautla (see Fig. 19.1). Both rivers start on the snows of Popocatepetl at 5,452 m and the valley is steep down on 1,200 m only 20–23 km away. This difference in altitude increases the velocity of the river. In 2010, during a flash flood in Yautepec, the river in the entrance of this municipality rose by 21 m within 20 min. The river normally transports 190 m3 of water per second, but when the river brought more than 399 m3 the hydrometeorological station was destroyed, thus it was impossible to know how much water caused the dangerous flood in Yautepec. The river transported not only water, but, due to it volumes and velocity, also stones, trees, waste, parts of construction and a lot of sediments, so the violence of the flash flood increased the damage to infrastructure, houses, businesses and agricultural fields.

19.5.2 Impacts on Society: Poverty, Lack of Public Services, Malnutrition, Disease, Loss of Livelihood and Conflicts Since 2010 the town of Yautepec, in the central valley of Morelos (Fig. 19.1), was flooded several times each year. People have learned that they must get more actively involved in disaster risk management. A special survey in 2013 indicated that 62% of people are working with the authorities to deal with the increasing risks and only 8% don’t know what to do, while another 14% didn’t trust the authorities. Together with the municipality an early alert system was installed and when the river rises over a metre an alarm starts and when the level rises 3 m (often only 10– 20 min later) a loud siren warns people near the river to leave their houses and run to the refuge. The early warning and the blockage of the central road and the bridge beside the market (see Fig. 19.8) could avoid human fatalities. Most floods which have occurred were further triggered by regional mismanagement of waste: lack of municipal refuse collection and lazy people throwing their garbage in the canyons. From there it ends up in the rivers and during flash floods this waste accumulates and, at the first obstacle, builds a temporary dam. When the pressure of water breaks this accumulation of garbage, the wave and the height of the river might seriously flood the central valley. In the case of the River Cuautla, a shorter distance (15 km) from Popocatépetl, a deep canyon and less affluence protect the municipal capital and the city of Ayala

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Fig. 19.8 Flood over the Central Bridge in Yautepec. Source Civil protection during the 2010 flood

better. The most recent flash flood especially affected the southern fields in Tlaquiltenango, but did less damage to the densely populated urban areas. At the other extreme is the lack of water in Lorenzo Vázquez. This community has lost most of its fertile land, due to the overexploitation of barbasco, the deforestation of the dry tropical forest and the overuse of agrochemicals on very fragile soils. During the harsh dry period of 2012–2014 due to a Niña year, most animals died from lack of water (Fig. 19.9), and the water of the river Cuautla was so polluted by agrochemicals that the animals could no longer drink it. There was no alternative source of water supply for animals. People sporadically got some drinking water from the municipal capital of Tlaquiltengango, which was just enough for personal use, cooking, hygiene and cleaning. Most impacts and local responses are related to the expectations people have for the future of their children. However, the local conditions often imposed suboptimal solutions. Nicolás Zapata is a small community not legally recognised by the municipality of Totolapan. Its pyramid of age indicates that younger people migrate and only the older people remain in the community and care for the orchard, the houses and the domestic animals. In La Cañada, in the same municipality on the slopes of Popocatéptl, more than half the population worked in the community,

19.5

Impacts (I)

523

Fig. 19.9 Dead animals in Lorenzo Vázquez during the dry season of 2013. Source Field research

mostly in the fields. The great biodiversity in their orchards, with an average of 52 plants and animals, provided families with enough food where income was related to nopal. Lack of permanent drinking water and sewage was a problem in all four communities. El Pañuelo is a rapidly growing village with day labourers who work in the onion fields. Their life conditions have improved during the last five years, due to the financial support from the National Indigenous Institute, which allowed them to buy a plot of land and build stable houses with basic services. They feel safer in this community and are proud that their children can go to school. Women are also taking different courses in their native languages about nutrition, health care and hygiene, and several of them are involved in the alphabetisation programme for adults, first to finish their primary and later their secondary school education. At the same time they also learn Spanish, which helps them to reduce the discrimination in public offices. Lorenzo Vázquez was founded after the revolution when the former haciendas were distributed among peasants. When the natural soil and forest conditions got destroyed, a significant number of men migrated to the USA. Almost every family has a migrant and the pyramid of age indicates the male migration in the past, while women preferred to work in the MVMC or in Tijuana in the new created maquila

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(assembly) jobs. The life conditions were precarious. Only 31% had a roof covered by metallic or asbestos sheets and three-quarters of the people lacked any drainage or latrine. Given these precarious life and poor environmental conditions people struggled to survive in agricultural fields and orchards, with the exception of the people in El Pañuelo who did not own the fertile land for agriculture, but worked as day labourers, thus depended on an irregular income for buying food. Their nutritional conditions were therefore very precarious and their children still depend for their growth on the public school breakfast. However, women complain about the corruption surrounding these school breakfasts, which should be given free to the extremely poor children, but the municipal authorities of Ayala are charging for each meal. This money is often not available because there is no work in the fields, thus some children still suffer from chronic undernourishment, although less than in the former Montaña in Guerrero. The northern and southern regions are relatively far away from the main roads. Therefore, organised crime had pressured several peasants and their families to produce illegal crops in the deep ravines. They also employ other young people work for them in criminal activities or as hawks – observers and advisers of police or military action. Both processes have increased conflicts, armed interventions and resulted in the presence of the military and police in both regions, which has also increased rape and feminicides in the region.

19.6

Societal Outcome (SO)

Due to societal decisions or individual choices, many families faced a survival dilemma from the effects and impacts of climate change, economic crises and organised crime. Morelos has always been a region of social protests. The ‘Site of Cuautla’ was crucial for Mexico’s independence. A century later, during the Revolution the ‘Caudillo of the South’ Emiliano Zapata organised the Southern Army and wrote the Plan de Ayala, which later became the legal framework for the land reform and the establishment of ejidos. The struggle for social justice continued in Morelos with Ruben Jaramillo and his ‘Plan Cerro Prieto’. He pursued the demands and the struggles of Emiliano Zapata. He first used the electoral approach and when this was prevented by the Government he supported an armed guerrilla movement. Ruben Jaramillo was kidnapped in 1962 in Tlaquiltenango with his wife Epifania Zúñiga and his three sons Enrique, Filemón and Ricardo. Their bodies were later found in Xochicalco in the South-east of Morelos. This triggered a dirty war, in which several social leaders in Guerrero disappeared and were killed by the army and paramilitary groups in the 1970s. Not all history of Morelos was violent. There were also many social protests and strikes supported by a progressive Catholic Church, led by bishop Sergio Méndez Arceo. Several Christian groups, who supported the poor people, offered food and economic support during long strikes. At national level Morelos was considered to

19.6

Societal Outcome (SO)

525

be one of the most progressive and critical states with the highest number of researchers in relation to its population. Among the migration movements, female peasants and urban women organised themselves into mutual support groups and offered assistance and solidarity to each other and people in need, thus the state and the study regions experienced multiple episodes of struggles, solidarity and support. One of the crucial societal outcomes in Morelos was migration. Migration was always considered to be an adaptation to environmental threats and complex emergencies (IPCC 2014a), and the following section will compare different migration strategies taken in the study region. Table 19.5 establishes a comparison between men and women living in the four selected communities. Nicolás Zapata is the sole village, where more men than women live permanently. On the one hand, women decided to migrate and stay outside the community or work in the MVMC, as basic services and jobs did not exist in their village. Owners of precarious shelters had to stay there, because they could lose their homes as the community was still not officially recognised. This has occurred several times in the past with the municipal authorities of Totolapan and those of the state. People have lost about 900 ha of their fields, while other parts were invaded for potato production by farmers from the neighbouring state of Mexico. The other communities had a dominant migration by men and increasingly also by young men and women, who could not find dignified living conditions in their original villages. The extreme case represents Lorenzo Vázquez, where migrants in the past basically went to the USA. Almost every family has at least one migrant in the north. With the Obama and Trump Administration, their temporary migration to the USA got transformed into permanent, due to the recent military control at the border and the persecution of illegal migrants at work and home. Therefore, international undocumented migration was also reduced in Lorenzo Vazquez and several families were expelled from the USA and came back to the community (return migration). Migration is still one of the most common decisions to overcome poverty, insecurity, loss of livelihood and disasters. However, the type of migration chosen is very different depending on the existing human and financial assets and the existing relationships in the locality of immigration.

Table 19.5 Index of relation between men and women. Source Elaborated by the Author based on INEGI (2005, 2010, 2015) Communities

2005

2010

2015

Nicolás Zapata La Cañada El Pañuelo Lorenzo Vázquez

113.9 108.1 96.8 71.0

112.5 88.1 98.7 84.6

111.7 97.3 97.9 82.0

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19.6.1 Pendular Environmentally Induced Migration Migration in Nicolás Zapata and in some cases also in La Cañada is linked to the closeness to the MVMC. With public transportation many people commute daily to the MCMV, work there or are involved in small-scale commerce and return to their community for the night. This type of migration is related to the lack of jobs in the community, where only some day labourers find temporary jobs in the fumigation of potatoes in the neighbouring communities in the state of Mexico. The irregularity of these jobs, the impossibility of earning a living in their community, as they only own their plot of land for the house and the orchard, oblige them to find alternative incomes. Further, they permanently face the danger of intoxication from agrochemicals in the river, due to having no tap water in their houses. The lack of local conditions for dignified work and life forced these people to find alternatives in daily or weekly pendular migration to nearby Mexico City.

19.6.2 Return Migration Less than a fifth of the families in La Cañada do not have a plot of land, and all fields are in production. Greater irregularity in rainfall, stronger flash floods and plagues in the crop of tomatoes convinced the peasants to change to nopal. They still maintain a small plot for subsistence crops (maize, beans, chilli and pumpkins). The temperature in the region is ideal for these crops and the sun on the slopes of the Popocatépetl avoids frost. They can compete favourably with Milpa Alta in Mexico City, which is the most important nopal producer, but in winter faces frosts. In La Cañada nopal is cultivated during the whole year and although the initial costs are high, the income is permanent. The change from tomatoes to nopal occurred during the great recession in 2007– 2008, which produced negative growth rates in the USA (Statistica 2017) so unemployment among illegal migrants increased dramatically. A significant number decided to return to Mexico; others were deported.7 The return migrants in La Cañada were integrated into the cultivation and harvest of nopal, as well as into the trading in the Central de Abasto (the central market in Mexico City), as this crop requires a large labour force. This has a negative impact on children, who often are forced to abandon their secondary school and must help in the fields. Some migrants used their connections with the USA to organise a periodic trade of nopal to the USA with a previously established stable price for the whole year. This type

7 The ENOA (INEGI 2011) estimated a return flow of 1,375,000 Mexicans between 2005 and 2010, and the Survey about Migration in the USA estimated 2.11 million return migrants. Conapo (2014) claimed that 594,000 men and 231,000 women returned between 2005 and 2010.

19.6

Societal Outcome (SO)

527

of contractual agriculture has improved the income and livelihood of the people, but the pollution with untreated animal manure and the intensive use of agrochemicals has created new illnesses and a massive plague of flies.

19.6.3 Rural-Rural Environmentally Induced Migration Cochoapa has been the poorest municipality in Mexico. Until 2003 it belonged to Metlatonoc in the Montaña of Guerrero, but was divided because of land conflicts. Both municipalities are still the poorest in Guerrero, and their natural resources are limited. In the ravines organised crime promoted the cultivation of poppies and marijuana by some indigenous farmers. This region is also periodically exposed to disasters and, without preventative alert and evacuation, the people who survived the flash floods and landslides migrated to the central valley in Ayala, the most developed agricultural region in Morelos. The indigenous initially lived in plastic huts around the commercial fields where they worked, then after some years, and with the support of the Indigenous Commission, the migrants were able to buy five hectares of land and, with the same support, built houses, where they organised an indigenous community.

19.6.4 International Environmentally Induced Migration International environmentally induced migration is an outcome of a complex process, due to existing socio-economic differences and services between Mexico and the USA, where socio-economic and environmental factors intervened. Between 1994 and 2007 the periodic economic crisis in Mexico, chronic unemployment and environmental deterioration and disasters increased the undocumented migration (see Chap. 18). Since 1986 the conditions of Mexican migrants have changed and temporary visa facilities were reduced by the USA Authorities. With the signature of the NAFTA agreement, illegal migration increased, but with the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the policy of massive deportation during the Obama and now the Trump Administration, the picture for illegal migrants has drastically changed. One to three decades ago the dominant migration pattern in Lorenzo Vázquez was international environmentally induced migration. However, in all other study areas we have found some international illegal migrants. Generally, the husband has left, leaving his young wife at home and in charge of the fields, to take care of the children, the household and the extended families. Until the Government of Obama, these migrants regularly returned to Lorenzo Vázquez, normally for Christmas. They visited their families, brought gifts to the extended family and returned to their jobs in the USA (see Chap. 18). With the new border controls and greater difficulty in crossing illegally, migrants can no longer visit their families in Mexico and personal contact is basically limited to telephone calls and video-conferences.

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Today, several families were obliged to return to Mexico because their husband was deported. The return migration created serious problems in the small communities. For children, the adaptation to Lorenzo Vázquez was very difficult. It was a psychological shock to these children, who had previously lived in an urban location. They had never seen a small community with limited services, often without electricity, no drinking water, no toilets, sewers or treatment of solid and liquid waste. They were not trained to live in a precarious shelter which lacked water, sanitation, electricity and domestic machines (washer, mixer, etc.). Most of these children were born in the USA and are citizens of the United States and often speak very limited or no Spanish. Because they lacked a Mexican birth certificate, they were not allowed to enrol at a public school, a theme that is only recently under discussion in the Ministry of Education. Before moving to Mexico they went to school in the USA, spoke English at school and in the street, and Spanish at home. In the new school, they had no idea about Mexican history or social science, but were generally better at mathematics. Their new teachers had often authoritarian attitudes towards the kids, thus these newcomers insisted on their human rights and promoted a different behaviour in school. All these adjustments were very difficult for the children, but also for their parents. There was also the frustration of the wives, who had had a comfortable life in the USA with all facilities of an urban area. Now they had to fetch water and firewood, cultivate their own food in the orchards and suffer from the lack of water, toilets, food and supermarkets. For the husbands the situation was not easy. They had to find a job as a day labourer with a low salary, while at home the whole family asked for more comfort and income. Thus, return migration to a small village is a personal, family and social challenge, mostly undertaken only with family help. There is a last complication. The migrants previously sent money home regularly, but now need support and money themselves. Therefore, they frequently live in poor housing conditions and, until they get fully integrated into the local society, they and their families suffer within and outside the home.

19.7

Response (R)

The last part of the PEISOR model refers to the political response (R) to deal with effects, impacts and societal outcomes. There are both official governmental responses and private adaptations to new social and environmental conditions. The study regions offer not only problems, but also opportunities. Swetnam et al. (2017) have insisted that in mountain landscapes, trees aren’t lone agents at storing carbon. There’s more going on; factors such as nutrient availability, soil depth, precipitation, and overland water flow, among other things, all impact on the health of a forest and its ability to store carbon. Mountains first capture atmospheric moisture as it cools and condenses at high altitudes, and that rain and snow then provides catchments with moisture that eventually moves into valley bottoms.

19.7

Response (R)

529

Further, melting snow from mountains feeds the rivers, recharges aquifers and offers surface water for irrigation in the valley. Therefore, mountain areas and especially the high volcanoes are crucial for all types of ecosystem services, which require governmental and societal responses for conservation.

19.7.1 Governmental Response The government responded to the complex socio-environmental conditions and the knowledge of the importance of both mountain regions for the highly dense populated central valley by declaring both regions protected areas (Fig. 19.5). In the north, the Ixta-Popo, the Corredor Chichinautzin, the Tepozteco and the Ajusco, and, in the south, the biosphere of the Sierra de Huautla were declared federal natural parks. The corridor of connection between north and south was established by a state-protected park called Sierra Montenegro. Nevertheless, the lack of reinforcement of surveillance and the strict application of the management plan of these protected areas was unable to stop illegal logging, poaching and looting of threatened plants and animals. These activities are often also controlled by criminal gangs. Especially difficult is the illegal logging as a pine tree requires about 40 years to develop at high altitude, while in at a lower altitude downstream a pine tree grows in only 15 years. In relation to environmentally induced migration, the study did not find any public policy to prevent it and less to incorporate returned migrants into their communities. With the threats of the US Trump Administration for a massive return of all illegal Mexicans, the Mexican Government is organising some activities along the border to receive the deported people and support their transportation to their home regions. In June 2017 the Mexican Senate adopted a law that allows children and students to revalidate their studies from the USA, and the municipalities are now certifying the Mexican nationality of children of parents with Mexican birth certificates, so they can enter a public school. Nevertheless, a significant number of people are not going back to their home villages. They try to find a living in a different place and to reorganise their livelihood with their families in city suburbs or near the MVMC. Both regions are growing, often without any planning and at the cost of environmental destruction and disasters in other regions. Another policy is to create new jobs in private industry to absorb returning migrants. However, the neoliberal policy of the last three decades and the high debt service has impeded further Government investment in infrastructure and job creation. Therefore, primarily society and families deal with return migrants, with the occurring disasters and with the environmental deterioration of the research area.

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19.7.2 Societal Response Most of the response came from the migrants themselves and their families. Women who are left behind in the rural-rural, rural-urban and international migration have silently assumed the productive activities of their partners, produced the food for their children, cared for the extended family and often also paid back the debts for the illegal crossing (Oswald Spring 2013). In the beginning this over-exploitation of women often created tensions and especially mental and physical diseases. In response, once a month the Government distributed anti-depressive pills to these overloaded women (Flores Palacios 2014) to cope better with all new obligations. In Lorenzo Vázquez, in the Sierra Madre and the Montaña of Guerrero, the increased remittances were used to build new houses or to repair existing dwellings. People are now not only preparing for possible deportation, but have also sent back more money to have a better starting point (Fig. 18.17) on returning to Mexico. Additionally, several women started new businesses with the remittances, such as a small shop, a public transport service to the municipal capital, or the promotion of collective transportation for high school students. Some of these empowered women took responsibility for the water supply. First, they had to replace the former corrupt male administrator. With the improvement of the service, cleaner drinking water and the integration of new colonies into the water supply system, these women were publicly recognised and elected for a new term. Other women supervised their secondary schools. One of these female school supervisors supported a responsible school director, who was pushing the students towards higher studies but was opposed by several families who wanted to have their son or daughter as a free servant at home. With their process of empowerment, these women have learned how to deal with complicated situations and were able to resolve the situation in favour of the young students without major conflicts. Another problem is related to frequent disasters. People in all communities are starting to train young students to read the bulletin of the National Meteorological Service and to advise about possible extreme events, due to the lack of local early warning. They have also coordinated their activities better with the local Civil Protection authorities. Finally, after an extreme event, people have organised support groups to help the affected people, clean the flooded houses, give food and water, and take away the accumulated sludge (Fig. 19.10). The most complicated issue in the region is without doubt the permanence of organised crime, especially in the most violent region of the Sierra Madre and the mountains in the north, where illegal crops are produced. Historically, in the Montaña of Guerrero, during World War 2, people were trained to produce high quality opium gum to be transformed into morphine and heroine for the injured US soldiers. This tradition spread to the poorest regions and today most of the heroin in the USA comes from various places in Mexico, where Guerrero and la Montaña have become the greatest producer. The increasing environmental deterioration and the pressure from the organised crime had forced the poorest people in Mexico to produce illegal crops to survive.

19.7

Response (R)

531

Fig. 19.10 Solidarity and support after a Flash Flood. Source Field research

However, the intervention of the public forces and their alliances with some drug cartels increased the violence locally, but also resulted in the eradication of illegal crops by the army and the marine. Thus, the local people, often the poorest indigenous without any education, are exposed to all type of violence, injustice and often death (Barrera 2017). The Government has responded to the expansion of these illegal products with a militarisation and violent eradication of their crops. As most of the people are indigenous, and often do not speak Spanish, violent clashes occurred with public forces, the rape of women was frequent and young people were disappeared. Generally, the Government justified these interventions as conflicts among criminal groups, but the people know that it was the military or the police who committed these crimes. These local and federal authorities are also often involved with criminal gangs (Barrera 2017). In this context of growing insecurity, these communities came together and established a communitarian police force, which is constitutionally allowed in indigenous communities, who can be governed by communal laws. Since 1995 they have built up a Communitarian Police Force (CRAC-PC in Spanish) in Guerrero with 26 indigenous communities of Me’phaa and Na savi of the municipalities of San Luis Acatlán and Malinaltepec in the Montaña of Guerrero. Their ideology is based on an anti-colonial attitude and the reinforcement of indigenous autonomy. Their first struggle was against mining companies who

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were destroying their traditional sacred places with opencast mines. They based their defence on Article 169 of the Convention of ILO. Gelasio Barrera, the Coordinator of CRAC-PC in 2013, stated that “this struggle did not start for pleasure, but for serious problems” (González 2012). Legally, CRAC-PC is protected by the constitutional right for indigenous ‘customs and habits’. CRAC-PC started to protect roads and communities and drastically reduced the violence and assassinations of indigenous people. In 1999, with the support of the lawyers of the ‘Tlachinollan’ Montaña Human Rights Center, A.C, CRAC-PC strengthened its institutional structure with an Internal Regulation that defined functions, rights and obligations of each of the decision-making and operating instances of the Community System (Gonazález Cheves 2014). Without doubt, the authorities involved in the drug business fought against the communitarian police. First, they tried to divide CRAC-PC and later they arrested and held in jail one of its female leaders. In the mass media, the Government launched a national campaign against CRAC-PC and the indigenous intentions to defend their territory. With contradictory information, they confused public opinion and equated CRAC-PC with the ‘autodefensas’ (self-defence groups), some of whom were paramilitaries or criminal groups. However, CRAC-PC continue to protect indigenous lives, their customs, beliefs and sacred places, which would have been destroyed by opencast mines. In the Montaña of Guerrero, in a focus group the people Me’phaa and Na savi insisted that their lives now have greater security thanks to CRAC-PC. Women can once more go to wash in the river without the risk of being raped by the police or the military. As drug trafficking has become a multi-billion business, it is not limited to the Sierra Madre and to Mexico nor to heroin and marijuana. Therefore, a complex panorama exists for the indigenous people in the Montaña of Guerrero. There are also serious confrontations with the public authorities of Guerrero, where each important party is allied with a different drug cartel (Barrera 2017). Undoubtedly the financial interests linked to drug trafficking go beyond the study region and Mexico, and are linked to the global financial market, where this illegal money is laundered.

19.8

Conclusion on Environmentally Induced Migration

The environmentally induced migration of the study region exists in the whole region, due to failed development processes and the introduction of green revolution practices on fragile soil conditions. In the Sierra Madre the over-exploitation of the barbasco, triggered by massive deforestation, turned most of the former agricultural land sterile. There were also the concessions of opencast mines to transnational enterprises, which polluted soil, air and water and especially destroyed sacred places (Oliver-Smith 2009), which motivated the people to oppose these new projects by organising a communitarian militia (González 2012; González Chevez 2014). Further, in several communities people were obliged to leave their homes

19.8

Conclusion on Environmentally Induced Migration

533

because of the destruction of their small fields due to flash floods and landslides. In the northern part of the study area, geophysical events dominated the environmentally induced migration related due to the periodic eruption of Popocatépetl, landslides and earthquakes. But also extreme hydrometeorological events occurred there and the loss of yield fertility and plagues were additional reasons for environmentally induced migration (FAO 2010). Finally, there were also the slow-onset processes such as drought and multiple small disasters, which have destroyed the survival basis of poor peasants and indigenous people (Flintan 2001). In relation to the objectives and research questions, the first conclusion is that environmentally induced migration is a complex process and, with the exception of fast-ongoing disasters, people generally mention the environmental component only when they are asked why they have lost their income and livelihood (Oswald Spring 2009). The empirical study further showed that people tried to find alternatives and to stay as long as possible in their own communities or to migrate nearby. Personal and cultural links to the village (Melluci 1996) are one of the key reasons coming up in the research, and environmentally induced migrants periodically went back to their home village from the USA until a decade ago. But the recent restrictions and persecutions for undocumented migrants by the Obama and Trump Administrations have impeded these visits. Environmentally induced migration has not only directly affected migrants, but the whole family and the community. Often policies to mitigate environmentally induced migration or migration in general did not take this complexity into account and therefore failed to prevent or mitigate the political and socio-economic impacts (Gemenne 2011). The different types of environmentally induced migration further indicated the creativity of affected families and communities in dealing with emerging environmental problems (Truong/Des 2011). Although people were conscious of the deterioration, often their limited socio-economic assets prevented better management of the environmentally induced migration. In the four types of environmentally induced migration analysed, the personal costs are not equally distributed among the family members. Generally, women are not only the most vulnerable during the migration process, because of rape, but also when they are left behind. These women, now heads of households, often pay with their health for their multiple tasks and their over-exploitation (Oswald Spring 2013). Therefore, any analysis of environmentally induced migration must include a gender perspective which analyses their changes in identity and their adaptation to the new conditions of life, which finally also helped to empower them (Stuart 1990). There is also a different impact on children. When they lose their father due to environmentally induced migration, they often start to rebel at home and in school (Van Dijk 2009), fail to finish their courses and are easy prey for recruitment by organised crime. Also, children experiencing return migration face very difficult adaptation situations in the underdeveloped rural areas. Their original idea of the home village was a non-existent ideal of a beautiful village in the mountains. But when they are confronted with the daily deficiencies of water, food and firewood, together with the cultural restrictions from their grandparents, they dream of returning to the USA as soon as possible. These children are also aware that most of

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them are US citizens and want to go back when they have grown-up or, if possible, earlier, even without their parents. The idealisation of both conditions has created psychological tensions and identity problems (Serrano 2010, 2015), which are difficult to resolve. These children also have to struggle with their divided identity, which is simultaneously also a potential for building new global citizens, but is often forgotten by the authorities, teachers and family members (Ron 2011). Transnational environmentally induced migration is without doubt the most challenging, not only because of the costs, the illegal crossing of the border and the harsh conditions in the Arizona desert, but also to get integrated as undocumented workers into a completely different society with other rules, norms and behaviour (Truong/Gaper 2011; Truong et al. 2013). On the other side, pendular migration (Thomas/Martin 1973) is the easiest way to gain additional incomes and assets to mitigate the existing and growing environmental problems. Rural-rural migration can be temporary or permanent. People in El Pañuelo have emigrated permanently from the most violent and poorest region in the Montaña of Guerrero and settled in the fertile valley of Ayala. But their conditions as day labourers with an eventual job often forced them to migrate temporarily to Sinaloa and Sonora in the north to complement their low income. However, all indigenous women insist that their social vulnerability and survival threats have been drastically reduced with the migration to El Pañuelo. They have learnt to train themselves for education, hygiene, birth control and additional productive activities, such as orchards and some domestic animals. In all study regions, domestic animals represented a type of insurance for the existing precarious livelihoods. When there is a need for money (disease, migration, school, graduation, fiestas, etc.), people sell a chicken, a pig, a sheep, a goat or a cow to get the money for this financial emergency. Rural-urban environmentally induced migration is the most common in the region. Members or entire families have left their home villages due to a disaster or to the loss of survival conditions (Rionda 2011). As with transnational migration, people generally utilise family or communitarian links with somebody living in the city, thus the integration process is easier for the newcomers (Ochoa Serrano 2001). Since 1950 rural-urban migration was chiefly to the MVMC, but later also to the metropolitan areas of Guadalajara and Monterrey and today to all regional cities in the country. Finally, return migration is the most recent development and result of the harsher conditions against illegal migrants in the USA (Rivera 2013). During the Obama Administration almost three million Mexicans were deported, and during the Government of Trump the situation is not changing. Thus, now for undocumented Mexican migrants a negative balance exists in the USA and the growth is more related to birth than to immigrants (see Chap. 18). Mexico, in facing this new situation, is slowly reacting and getting ready to receive more return migrants. The Government has understood that all these migrants bring new capacities back and this is a positive item for the development of the country. Often, they have also invested in local infrastructure and their houses, but in other cases the deportation occurs with only what the people had on their body. La Cañada integrated these

19.8

Conclusion on Environmentally Induced Migration

535

return migrants into a new cash crop production, which absorbed enough labour force to offer a new livelihood for the expelled. Their former relationship with the USA and their language tools helped some of them to establish a permanent system of exportation of nopal to the USA and to get a stable and permanent income for the whole extended family. Without doubt, these four types of environmentally induced migration not only illustrate the creativity of the people to deal with adverse environmental conditions triggered by climate change and global environmental change, but also to adapt and create resilience in their home village and to cope with the worsening socio-environmental conditions. However, the lack of governmental support and public strategies to reinforce these bottom-up efforts has limited all these personal and family efforts. While they at least granted a more stable livelihood, the sole strategies from bottom-up were not enough to overcome the existing poverty and marginalisation. Confronted with greater environmental deterioration and more extreme events, the Government has not yet started to promote climate-smart agriculture at local level, reinforcement of subsistence agriculture or the involvement of women in this small-scale production. With new credit lines, technological support, and training in composting organic waste and manure from animals, not only could the well-being and the nutrition of the people improve, but the current overweight and obesity problem could be effectively combated. Finally, there is the interrelationship of public insecurity, poverty, lack of jobs and environmental deterioration, which has created a complex emergency in the whole region. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) includes, as dominant characteristics of this concept, the extensive violence and loss of life, which has produced displacements of people and widespread damage to economies and societies. Up until now, the Mexican Government, with pressure from the USA Government, has only used the repressive approach and has combated the drug production and trafficking with military forces, without much affecting the money-laundering process. The Government has also failed to provide large-scale and integrated humanitarian assistance for the extremely poor people, who only survived precariously by producing illegal crops. Therefore, an efficient strategy against organised crime would include not a military, but a human security approach (Brauch et al. 2008, 2009, 2011, 2016). The different human rights organisations existing in the Montaña of Guerrero and in Morelos, together with academics, might be able to propose alternatives, e.g. for the North American imposed system of the war on drugs. In this model, the benefits of weapons trafficking and money-laundering occur on the US side, while Mexico has faced more than 300,000 deaths, 60,000 disappearances, multiple displaced people and social disintegration. Hopefully, the growing number of deaths from overdoses in the US may change their policy of the drug war and move to a more integrated human security approach. In relation to the research questions, the four models of environmentally induced migration have empirically demonstrated that people are not waiting for insufficient governmental help, but, in precarious conditions, finding the optimal way to deal

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with the environmental and the social threats. The absence of a different paradigm in the Mexican Agricultural Ministry, which is still promoting the polluting ‘green revolution’, must be addressed, especially in the fragile mountain regions. There is great potential for women, also the heads of households, to improve their families’ livelihood with organic agriculture. Training, seeds adapted to regional conditions, and short-term and long-term credit for installing professional organic waste composting in the communities and municipalities might not only improve the nutrition of people, but also manage domestic waste productively. Water is a crucial issue, and neither mountainous region has facilities to retain the abundant rainfall during the monsoon. Thus, the Government might work more with people from the region to improve the rainwater capture. This would also create new jobs, well-being and limit the environmentally induced migration in these abandoned regions. This type of agriculture would additionally fix CO2 and could be presented for financing to the ‘Green Fund’ of UNFCCC. Finally, these alternatives with regional integration of organic markets might reduce the necessity of producing illegal crops and thus resolve the related violence. In these final observations, the question whether environmentally induced migration may be a real adaptation must be answered. In focus groups and collective interviews there was no doubt that people prefer to stay as long as possible in their home and send part of the family to get the necessary income to survive. Thus, environmentally induced migration is the last resource, when all other possibilities are used and threats are too high (landslides, dangerous volcanic eruption), when only preventative evacuation and resettlement might grant them an opportunity to survive. Environmentally induced migration is always a last solution and not the normal way for people to overcome marginalisation and poverty. This should also apply to governmental policies to combat drug trafficking. The present understanding of the drug war and the northern imposition of the current strategies have tremendously increased the violence, deaths, rape, poverty, pain and family disintegration. There is no positive outcome for the affected people in the Montaña of Guerrero. Thus the strategy must be changed across the whole country and a more stable and environmental friendly security approach should be explored. Without doubt CRAC-PC has brought greater local security to the affected people. The indigenous communities are also acting within their constitutional rights of self-government. Thus, the national and state governments must respect this organisation and support it to avoid para-militarisation or the emergence of new drug cartels. However, an integrated socio-environmental policy with negotiation of peace and the integration of the most vulnerable, including women, elders and children, may be able to overcome the present violence and natural destruction of the cultural and environmental diversity in this study region. The misguided military security approach has created hundreds of thousands of deaths, relocated and disappeared people. Mexico and the study region have the potential to promote a genuine development process that respects human rights and the environment. This policy might allow the damaged ecosystems to recover and the lost food sovereignty to be regained (La Via Campesina 1996), but it is also able to give quality of

19.8

Conclusion on Environmentally Induced Migration

537

Fig. 19.11 Fence in the Northern Border in Tijuana. Source The Author

life, services and well-being to the most marginalised people, respecting also their cultural beliefs. Walls and wars divide, solidarity and cohesion might bridge and help to overcome the existing difficulties (Fig. 19.11).

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Thomas, Robert N., Willis W. Martin (1973). “Patrones de Migración Pendular Cotidiana en Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Un Ejemplo de Movilidad Intra-Urbana”, Revista Geográfica, No. 79 (December), pp. 129–147. Truong, Thanh-Dam, Des Gasper (Eds.) (2011). Transnational Migration and Human Security. The Migration–Development–Security Nexus, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. Truong, Thanh-Dam, Des Gasper, Jeff Handmaker, Sylvia Bergh (Eds.) (2013). Migration, Gender and Social Justice. Perspectives on Human Insecurity, Berlin-Heidelberg, Springer. USAID (2003). “Zimbabwe – Complex Emergency” Situation Report #8, Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, Washington, D.C., DCHA, OFDA. van Dijk Kocherthaler, Sylvia (2009). Valoración de preescolares comunitarios en el Valle de Mexico, D.F. desde un enfoque de derechos. Caso Save the Children, PhD Thesis, Pachuca, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo.

Chapter 20

The Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security

20.1

Introduction

Human well-being, human development and peaceful coexistence require healthy ecosystems and ecosystem services.1 However, humankind has produced environmental pollution, water scarcity, climate change and soil depletion. Agriculture, cities and tourist centres have destroyed forests, grasslands and mangroves. Rivers were dammed for energy production, irrigation, and sometimes flood protection. Mining, especially opencast mines, and oil exploitation have often polluted the soil, air and rivers and destroyed the landscape. These recent changes that affected the functioning of natural systems are also related to population growth, sanitation improvements, the aspiration to live a better life, and especially to the greed of some multinational enterprises. All these processes have also affected the complex life support systems and ecosystem services (ESS; MA 2005). Until recently, most people have had a ‘horn of abundance’ or cornucopian world-view, in which natural resources are considered to be unlimited. It was only in 1972 that the Club of Rome warned for the first time that most natural resources are limited and that their overexploitation is affecting the present and the future of Earth and humankind. With the Brundtland Report in 1987, the concept ‘sustainability’ was scientised and, during the Earth Summit in 1992, politicised and transformed into a socially accepted discourse. The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro postulated that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature” (art.1). Positive outcomes of this global meeting were the approval of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which led to the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and, in 2015, An earlier and different version of this chapter was published by Úrsula Oswald Spring, “The Water, Energy, Food and Biodiversity Nexus: New Security Issues in the Case of Mexico”, in: Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, Juliet Bennett, Serena Eréndira Serrano Oswald (Eds.): Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective (Cham: Springer International Publishers, 2017): 113–144.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_20

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to the Paris Agreement. The loss of biodiversity in animals, plants and ecosystems was instrumental in the adoption, at Rio in 1992, of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to which was added in October 2010 a revised and updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the period 2011–2020. The 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) aims to limit the increasing deterioration of the soil, loss of its natural fertility and desertification. The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was set up in 1992 and was replaced in 2012 by the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development that meets each year as part of the UN’s ECOSOC and every four years in the framework of the UN General Assembly. The delegates at the UN Earth Summit also agreed in 1992 to promote Agenda 21 with concrete goals and tools for each country and its regions to aim for sustainable and inclusive development, in which women, children and indigenous people are also actively included. However, these conventions and related agreements were only partly implemented. A decade later in Johannesburg (2002) and twenty years later at Rio+20 the situation of ecosystems and their services was diagnosed globally as having become worse, water was scarcer and more polluted, and soils depleted, eroded and desertified. In 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began scientific assessment of the state of global peer-reviewed scientific knowledge about the deterioration of the physical-chemical composition of the air and in their last assessment (IPCC 2013, 2014a, b) scientists from all parts of the globe agreed that, with 99% probability, climate change is due to anthropogenic reasons related to the massive emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from fossil sources. Therefore, water specialists (hydrologists, geologists, engineers, chemists); natural scientists (biologists, zoologists, ecologists, soil, plant and landscape specialists); climate experts (meteorologists, disaster managers, IT specialists, engineers in satellite images, architects, social scientists working on mitigation and adaptation); energy specialists (engineers, economists, anthropologists, soil experts, political scientists); food and health experts (agronomists, specialists in fishing, nutrition, conservation, transformation of safe food); urbanisation specialists (architects, engineers, designers, land planners, economists, sociologists) and waste management experts (toxicologists, engineers, recyclers) have jointly addressed the new challenges of ecosystem deterioration, water scarcity, climate change, health deterioration, air pollution and inadequate food. These interdisciplinary groups included specialists from engineering, humanities, natural, social and political sciences who analyse the upcoming threats for the survival of Earth and humanity, in which peace and human security studies were also included. These natural and anthropogenic phenomena have different impacts on humans and regions. In poor countries their effects increased the dual environmental and social vulnerability (Bohle 2002; Oswald Spring 2013). These precarious conditions are aggravated by the neo-liberal policy imposed on the Mexican Government and the people by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), supported by World Bank (WB) loans. The agenda of a small global bourgeoisie also includes trade agreements with unequal terms of trade, and military control with representative wars in southern countries. These policies encompassed the privatisation of public

20.1

Introduction

545

services such as education, health, water, and sanitation, the reduction in workers’ salaries, targeted alleviation of poverty, importation of massively subsidised food imports, a low level of investment in science and technology, and increasing dependency on foreign investments, commodities, food and credits with high interest rates and repayments in dollars. Southern Governments increasingly depended on foreign exchange, and internal development was curtailed, due to the repayment of foreign and domestic debt services, capital flight, corruption and privatisation of basic services. Social inequality increased within most developing countries and also in industrialised nations, permitting a small transnational economic elite to control global financial and trade flows. Political opposition increased in most poor countries, many wars started in Africa and Asia, and a drug war in Latin America. All these developments increased poverty, insecurity, hunger, the homicide rate and social unrest (IPCC 2014a; CEPAL 2015). Confronted with these global threats, in 2011 the World Economic Forum (WEF 2011) launched a book on Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus2 that addressed security solely from a national security perspective and avoided the discussion of international and human security issues (Oswald Spring 2017). In 2012, this Forum stated in Davos that the world’s capacity to respond to water security risks is in doubt, as existing institutions and policies at most levels were struggling to monitor informed debates on water. Due to the recovery from the financial crisis of 2008, Asian economies in particular grew rapidly and increased the demand for water, food and energy. This intensified the pressure on water resources and raised cross-border water management issues. The local nature of water resources further strains institutional capacity; the world faces not one global water challenge, but many local ones with potential widespread consequences… Companies increasingly consider water as not just an environmental issue, but also as a complex issue representing serious risk to their business.3

In 2016, in its 11th Global Risk Report (WEF 2016), the World Economic Forum assessed the economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological risks. The report noted as key failures the lack of climate change mitigation and adaptation. This report evaluated scenarios of profound social instability with large-scale migration, state collapse or crises. The report argued that extreme weather events may increase food crises in different parts of the world, together with biodiversity loss, whereby ecosystems may collapse. A new financial crisis may increase unemployment and social unrest, and cyber-attacks are confronting governments and infrastructure with new security challenges. However, the outcomes for world regions differ. While in Latin America and Africa the failure of national governance dominate, the Middle East and South Asia are increasingly threatened by severe water crises, India and Pakistan by high unemployment, and

2

See at: http://www.weforum.org/reports/water-security-water-energy-food-climate-nexus. See World Economic Forum at: Davos, WEF.

3

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Russia and Central Asia by interstate conflicts. Europe faces a huge migration crisis and, especially in southern Europe, high youth unemployment, while the United States is struggling with cyber-attacks and extreme weather events. New global risks are emerging and old risks have increased, thus the geopolitical situation is getting more complex, conflicts are rising and internal stability is deteriorating in many countries, while poverty and violence rise.

20.2

Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security (WSFBE)

The water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy (WSFBE) nexus addresses the feedbacks and trade-offs between water and soil, land-use changes, food production and their impacts on biodiversity loss, water pollution or scarcity and fossil energy extraction. Climate change, with more frequent and severe droughts and extreme flash floods, has increased the threats to human lives and to the economy (IPCC 2012, 2014a). Water is life and crucial for human consumption, productive processes, food production, environment, ecosystem services (ESS) and energy generation. During its use, discharge and transportation, water gets polluted. Wastewater treatment requires energy, and the related sludge must be treated for reuse in agriculture. Worldwide, food production uses 70% of available water on Earth, but also needs energy (machinery, pumping system, irrigation and agrochemicals). Heavy machinery, compacted soils and inadequate irrigation patterns deteriorate the physical and chemical properties of the land, and agrochemicals pollute soils, air, surface and groundwater. Agriculture is responsible for most land use change (FAO 2000) and most pollution (Pérez 2016). Monocultivation and intensive production have depleted the nutrients in the soil, and created erosion, salinisation and desertification in fragile soils (FAO 2015). Food is energy-intensive in its process of production, transportation and transformation, which pollutes the air and produces waste. Energy production can adversely impact on water quality and its availability, and also pollutes the air, the oceans and the soils, and reinforces climate change (IPCC 2013). The increasing contamination and scarcity of resources impact not only on nature, but also on human health. WHO (2014) estimated that in 2012 more than seven million – one in eight – global deaths were related to air pollution and smoking in cities and inside houses. An estimated 1.7 million children under five die every year (WHO 2017a), due to environmental risks, such as indoor and outdoor air pollution, second-hand smoke, unsafe water, lack of sanitation, and inadequate hygiene. This means one in four deaths of children under five years of age is attributable to unhealthy environments (WHO 2017b). 3.4 million people, mostly children, die annually from water-related diseases. Of these, about 842,000

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Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security (WSFBE)

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people die from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe water, and another 12.6 million deaths – almost one in four fatalities globally – are related to an unhealthy environment (WHO 2016). Finally, food production needs soils for cultivation, and land use change from forest to agriculture reduces ecosystem services (ESS), biodiversity and refuge for wild animals, and alters the landscape. In short, water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy are interdependent and simultaneously affected by both productive processes and the present system of human consumption. The outcomes are scarcity, pollution, waste, undernourishment, malnutrition (obesity), degradation of soil, water and biota, biodiversity loss and deterioration of ecosystem services (ESS; MA 2005), together with an intensification in global environmental change (Brauch et al. 2008, 2011) and climate change (IPCC 2014a). The nexus among water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy may also produce conflicts and wars, thus reducing human (UNDP 1994; Brauch 2005, IPCC 2014a), gender (Serrano 2010; Oswald Spring 2013a, 2016a; see Chap. 10), soil (FAO 2015; Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009), food (Oswald Spring 2009a, see this chapter and Chap. 16), water (GWP 2000, see Chaps. 14 and 15), and energy security (IEA 2016, see Chap. 17). All these sectorialised securities impact differently on men and women, children and the elderly, thus any analysis requires a gender, race and age specific perspective (see Chap. 11). Confronted with this complexity, a worldwide marathon of nexus conferences ensued, in which the security component was rarely defined. The WEF (2011) and most other conferences centred on trade-offs between water, food and energy, with an implicit security understanding relying on the concept of military and political security. Whenever the economic and political world elite gathered in Davos or elsewhere, the G-20 meetings, the UNSC and other multilateral and bilateral meetings have, in the past, promoted a military option to achieve their goals. Particularly in the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, energy security was directly involved. However, the promoters of these wars underestimated the complexity of the political arena in the Middle East. In this chapter the WSFBE security is analysed from a human and gender security approach using the concept of securitisation of Wæver (2008: 582). This securitisation concept consists of three components: (a) the securitising actor, i.e. an entity that makes the securitising move; (b) the referent object that is being threatened, and the values to be protected; (c) the audience, which is the target of the securitisation act. From a human and gender security understanding of the WFSBE nexus, this securitisation move would mean that the most consolidated institution and legitimised people would be the securitising actors, generally political and military leaders, alliances formed from a human security understanding, and epistemic groups of scientists, such as the IPCC, NGOs etc. The reference object that is being threatened is water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy security, where global environmental change (GEC; Brauch et al. 2009) and

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climate change (IPCC 2013, 2014a, b) are the central causes of threats. The audience (urban and rural elites, ruling class, electorate, and affected people) accepted these changes in their productive and consumerist behaviour to avoid dangerous tipping points in the Earth and human system (Lenton 2008). However, the climate sceptics or deniers and the oil, biofuel, agribusiness and mining lobby, who are profiting from destructive activities of oil extraction, mining, land grabbing, deforestation of tropical forests, industrialised agriculture, and livestock, are opposing this securitisation move of climate change. They try to convince people that climate change is not posing an existential threat. According to Donald Trump at the recent G-20 meeting in Hamburg in 2017, there are no extraordinary measures required and therefore the USA left the Paris agreement. Through different mass media (Fox News), paid scientific research, films and part of the frustrated middle class in the USA and elsewhere, they have systematically denied the dangerous outcomes of climate change (CC) and global environmental change (GEC) in order to continue with their extractive and polluting activities. The carbon industry has also financed climate sceptical propaganda in the USA (Noami Klein 2011). On the other side, NOAA (2016) offered evidence that during 2016 global GHG emissions surpassed 400 parts per million of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Thus, human survival is getting threatened by climate change and the increase in hydro-meteorological extreme events all over the world provide physical proof of this. However, most people interested in consumerism passively support the current model or share the world-view proposed by Trump, because they are misinformed, uninterested and also often too busy with their struggle for daily survival. In the present globalised economy, world finances, markets and communication are totally globalised, but the legal frame is still organised at the level of the nation state. There exist no global governmental bodies able to control the excess of the financial minorities, and the global crisis in 2007–2008 did not permit stronger supervision of the stock markets. The lax money laundering reinforcement allowed criminals and corrupt people to transfer this illegal money to tax heavens in the Caribbean, Panama and elsewhere. With these practices wealth on Earth is getting more and more concentrated in 63 multinational oligarchs, who own the same amount of money as 90% of the poorer people worldwide (Oxfam 2016). In the international political and military arena, no powerful institution exists to negotiate a global governance and the national governments are pressured by powerful economic lobbies to defend their specific – often nationalist – interests. The UN, its General Assembly and its Security Council have clear mandates to prevent war and to counter aggression (UN Charter). The UN peacekeeping operations (‘Blue Helmets’) intervene to implement the tasks they are given by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), where the five permanent members (United States, China, Russia, United Kingdom and France) have the right of veto. This often impedes decisions that might touch their geopolitical or geo-economic interests. The political understanding of all five permanent members is still anchored in traditional national military security. However, the recent wars in

20.2

Nexus among Water, Soil, Food, Biodiversity and Energy Security (WSFBE)

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Libya, Iraq and Syria, although not endorsed by the UNSC, clearly represented the interests of the USA, UK and France to access cheap fossil energy. Many right-wing governments and corporate actors, especially from the old carbon and carbon-intensive industries, have promoted a business-as-usual policy at the cost of the people and of the environment. On the other hand, there are high tech industries (e.g. in Silicon Valley), renewable energy and energy efficiency companies and their key managers and shareholders, who have supported reductions in GHG and promoted environmental causes. China is currently the greatest global emitter of GHG, but in terms of GHG emissions per capita it is still behind the USA and many countries in Europe. China’s influence is increasing and, despite some domestic and regional issues, the country is ready to assume a stronger role at global level. China and Europe have globally taken the lead in combating climate change impacts and to also promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency in developing countries. In this complex and often contradictory global arena, the financial oligarchy controls the global economy, while some other multinational enterprises are trying to control agriculture with genetically modified organisms (Monsanto-Bayer), food transportation (Cargill Inc.), industrialised food and water (Nestlé, Coca Cola, Unilever), cars (Toyota, Volkwagen, Hundai/Kia, General Motors, Ford etc.), fashion (Luis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Hermes, Chanel, Guggi, Prada, etc.) and many other billionaires in different branches of the economy. While most multinational enterprises are still located in the USA rather than Europe, there is a trend towards Asia where not only China, but also India and South Korea, are competing in the global consumer market. While nobody is challenging the military supremacy of the USA, its President Trump feels threatened by the prospect of his country losing its economic dominance. He challenged several North American global enterprises who have outsourced their production, and his administration is pressuring them to shift to a productive nationalism. Within all these contradictory processes, there are also powerful lobbies in the USA and elsewhere to defend one of the two tendencies of business models—global versus national—causing human insecurity, particularly in the most vulnerable countries (UNEP 2014). Several enterprises have closed factories or commitments to invest in emerging countries and have thus increased unemployment in those countries. Without doubt, in all business models – including IT – energy is a key element for production, trade and consumption. Thus, the reinforcement of the carbon intensive production and consumption model of reference in the USA is based on a state-centred militarised concept of security with a high carbon footprint. This narrow militaristic concept of security also dominates in China, India, Pakistan, Europe, Turkey, North and South Korea, and many other countries. The preference for military security implies financial costs, which get reduced to resolve the commitment for human security and also affect the other sectorial security approaches (WSFBE). Centring now on the nexus discussion, water, food and energy were the three securities with a dominant military approach, while soil and biodiversity have

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allowed a more technical approach to soil security under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (FAO 2015) (Brauch/Oswald Spring 2009) and the Convention on Biological Diversity with the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity in the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Nevertheless, bioenergy is directly linked to the alteration of the tropical forests and to energy, while the deforestation of Indonesia and Brazil, among other places, is directly related to the production of biofuels. Therefore, the understanding of the multiple nexuses between water, soil, food, biodiversity, and energy security is basically related to a narrow military understanding of security. For this reason, the emissions of CO2 continue to grow at a dangerous level, and a drastic reduction of GHG will only be possible when the global economic, political, ideological, and military elite overcome their narrow understanding of security. This dominant military approach has also prevented or undermined the implementation of the two conventions on climate change (UNFCCC) and biodiversity (CBD) negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the deal on desertification that was accepted in 1994 (UNCCD). These obstacles, obstructions and delays have contributed to global human, gender and environmental insecurity.

20.3

Research Question and Working Hypothesis

On the background of this complex global geopolitical situation, the present chapter asks: How could the nexus of water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy security (WSFBE) enhance human and gender security for the people and overcome the dominant military approach in the security discussion? This approach goes beyond the objectives proposed by the WEF (2011, 2016) and centres on water, soil, food, biodiversity, and sustainable energy security. Both people and the environment already face climate change impacts, including rising sea levels and seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers, and also dramatic loss of ecosystem services (ESS), economic crises, greater poverty and violence. In many cases in southern countries, social unrest due to precarious life conditions is repressed by force. In Latin America public insecurity related to the drug war is increasingly placed in the hands of the military with high death rates, while the profits from drugs, crime and violence are laundered in many foreign tax havens. Thus, it seems that the nexus promoted by the WEF in 2011 was simply a new way to promote the expansion of global capital by using a narrow concept of military and political security to consolidate the neoliberal model at the cost of the majority of human beings and the environment. Further, the present economic globalisation is a kind of double-edged sword. Productivity, science and technology have improved and powered global growth; however, the distribution of the benefits has increased the inequality between the Global North and South and capital and labour across the whole planet, thus the efficiency and productivity have created greater inequality both globally and locally. With the Trump Administration, a change towards a narrow, nationalist and

20.3

Research Question and Working Hypothesis

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selfish ideology is promoted that especially affects Mexico and the illegal Mexican and Central American migrants (see Chap. 18). With his philosophy of ‘America first’, the USMC negotiations were also challenged. Globally, the present United States foreign policy fosters the rise of Chinese political and economic influence. The upcoming new Chinese billionaires are investing in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but also in Europe and North America. Confronted with this complexity, an alternative working hypothesis explores how the nexus among water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy (WSFBE), based on human, gender and environmental security, might also grant vulnerable people subsistence and a reasonable living standard while simultaneously conserving the environment. The indigenous Aymara in Peru have called this human and environmental-centred approach ‘living well’. To achieve this goal, the governments in the frame of the UNGA have accepted seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which include the five nexus themes with a gender perspective (number 5 of the SDG). With this official agreement, an alternative approach to the WFSBE security may be explored, asking: which are the necessary variables to improve the livelihood of the poorest and how can ESS be restored? How can nutritious food be provided for a growing population thanks to fertile soils and clean water? How can deteriorated ecosystems be restored and water conserved for nature and humans? Why is a tropical forest increasing evapotranspiration and cloud-building, which is increasing precipitation and producing clean water? How can renewable energy and its efficiency also be consolidated in the poorest countries? What are the laws and policies necessary to promote an arena of sustainable development with an integrated WSFBE security? The starting point of our WSFBE nexus is water. Tropical forests regulate climate and absorb carbon. Through evapotranspiration and cloud nucleation, they cool the planet and produce clouds, which increase the precipitation of clean water (W). Trees restore organic content in soil (S) and fertile soils improve infiltration of water into aquifers and improve the yields of natural and cultivated crops. Worldwide, women produce more than half of the food (F) and in developing countries even more. Nutritious food permits a healthy development of children and also reduces obesity and related diseases in adults. Forests contain about 80% of the terrestrial biodiversity (B) and more than two-thirds of all known terrestrial species. By expanding biodiversity, flora and fauna improve their habitat and the process of photosynthesis produces oxygen for humans and animals. Forests also generate moisture in the air, produce air flows and improve air quality. Trees also slow the run-off of surface water, stabilise water course flows and recharge the aquifers. Finally, sun, wind, sea, water and volcanoes are able to produce renewable energy at competitive and, very soon, cheaper costs (Ren21 2017), which is crucial for development. The SDGs also insist that women are not only key food producers, but make up 70% of poor people and earn only 10% of the global income (SDG 2016). They collaborate in their orchards, establish tree nurseries, plant trees and are able to transform their crops into healthy food. Empowering women and girls with micro-enterprises is essential for the achievement of the SDGs and for a sustainable

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WSFBE security. Often poverty and environmental degradation are intertwined, especially in marginal urban areas. The improvement of economic conditions for poorer people depends on biodiversity and nurturing natural resources and ESS. Most of the recovery of WSFBE security is related to empowering and training communities to improve their productive capacity without damaging the environment. Thus, tree nurseries, organic orchards, fish ponds and sustainable aquaculture, mixed sustainable agriculture and reforestation of destroyed ecosystems with native seeds not only end hunger, diversify food and improve nutrition, but promote also a sustainable relationship with nature (see also Chaps. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14 and 16). Climate change is a new threat that is aggravated by unplanned human settlements in risky places, such as ravines, sharp slopes, near rivers and water bodies, which is increasing the threat to people during an extreme event. Recovering landscapes not only improves the cultural belonging to a region, but also opens the economy to ecotourism and strengthens the community’s resilience to disasters. Biodiversity and forests, along with nutritious soils, are crucial to provide people with a basic livelihood. A billion people still directly rely on forests and biodiversity for their living. Combating deforestation, desertification and land use change allows biodiversity to recover and sustainable and resilient communities and ecosystems to be produced. In sum, the above comments indicate that there is a systemic interrelationship among the WSFBE nexus that is not military, but environmental and socially related. Further, soil and biodiversity security should be included in a sustainable nexus approach, where the gender perspective might improve human, gender and environment security – a HUGE security (Oswald Spring 2009, 2016). The understanding of this sustainable WSFBE nexus may offer analytical tools for a transition to sustainability, which might be able to overcome the existing destruction and exploitation of humans and nature.

20.4

Conceptualisation of Human Security, Dual Vulnerability, Gender Perspective, and Living Well

After this short introduction to a sustainable WSFBE nexus and some research questions, this chapter conceptualises some key elements that might overcome the traditional military understanding of WEF and support an alternative nexus understanding, which focuses on people. The WSFBE nexus security does not focus on analysing an exclusive or nationalist economic globalisation, but revises the underlying factors that have produced dual vulnerability and limited a human and gender security perspective. The philosophy propagated by the indigenous Amaya – ‘sumak qamaña’, understood as living well – could open the discussion for alternatives from bottom-up.

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Conceptualisation of Human Security, Dual Vulnerability …

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20.4.1 Human Security Human security includes a deepened approach to security from the individual to the global level, and has become more complex since its launch by UNDP in 1994 (for more details, see Chaps. 10, 11 and 12). “For too long, the concept of security has been shaped by the potential for conflict between states. For too long, security has been equated with the threats to a country’s borders. For too long, nations have sought arms to protect their security” (UNDP 1994: 1). Thus, human security focuses no more on the territory and sovereignty of the State, but on human beings, their development and their potential for peace dividends and new forms of cooperation among global, regional, national and local institutions. Going beyond a narrow concept of human security as ‘freedom from fear’, Ogata and Sen included the structural factors of poverty in their suggested second pillar of human security as ‘freedom from want’ (UN 2003). In his report on Larger Freedom UN Secretary, General Annan (2005) proposed a third pillar of ‘freedom to live in dignity’. Bogardi/Brauch (2005) suggested a fourth pillar of ‘freedom from hazard impacts’ (Brauch 2005) to define the specific mission of the new Institute on Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University (UNU-EHS).

20.4.2 Dual Vulnerability Hans-Georg Bohle (2001, 2002, 2009) explored the concept of dual vulnerability more deeply and linked environmental and societal factors, which were caused both by a rapidly expanding globalisation process and by a major increase in natural hazards due to an anthropogenically driven global environmental change. Crutzen (2002) argued that since the year 2000, direct human interventions into the earth system have triggered the first major human-driven change in geological time from the Holocene to the Anthropocene (Brauch 2017). Due to this dual vulnerability, many poor people have lost access to basic food, housing, schooling and wellbeing (see Fig. 11.1). With the concept of social vulnerability, the changes in food patterns, health impacts, poverty, violence and intergenerational conflicts may be examined, focusing also on the high unemployment of young people and lack of equal pay for women, which has resulted in high social insecurity (see Chap. 16). This concept may also be applied to analyse linkages among ethnic conflicts, urban violence and organised crime. The changes in food patterns have led to obesity and chronic degenerative diseases. Unplanned urbanisation with marginalisation and slum dwellers has increased health deterioration, the risk of disasters, poverty and drastic landscape changes. Difficult natural conditions have further damaged livelihoods and ecosystem services. As part of the present neoliberal consensus, the liberalisation of the markets for agricultural products without the protection of farmers has resulted in periodic

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national and global food crises, especially in the drylands of Africa. The periodic economic crises (1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2007–2008) concentrated wealth and reduced the purchasing power parity (PPP) of the poor people. In many developing and some threshold countries, lack of investment in local jobs produced ‘survival dilemma’ (Brauch 2007), and the migration of many poor households, where the livelihood and physical integrity of women in particular were negatively affected (Chap. 19). This systematic loss of income of the lower and middle classes also impacted on electoral processes in several industrialised countries and fostered populist movements and candidates (Trump in US, Brexit in UK, right-wing parties in Europe and Latin America). Environmental vulnerability analyses pollution and scarcity of water and air, climate variability, drought, flash floods and landslides, which produce disasters and often force people to migrate to safer places (see Chaps. 18 and 19). The loss of soil fertility and hydro-meteorological extreme events affected agricultural yields, while more agrochemicals polluted the soil, air and water, and negatively impacted on biodiversity and ESS. Northern consumerist lifestyles have produced more waste and emitted more GHG per capita. Further, the rapid population growth since the twentieth century has enhanced both vulnerabilities. In 2016, UNFPA (2016) estimated that the world population had reached 7.5 billion people. This mutual reinforcement of environmental and social vulnerability threatens the capacity of the natural reproduction of the planet. Biodiversity is highly affected by land use changes and lack of water, but water and soil depletion are also threatening the food supply, while the changes in the physical-chemical composition of air are producing anthropogenically-induced climate change (IPCC 2013), with serious impacts on health and a possible reduction of life expectancy (WHO 2016) for the most vulnerable people. The feedback from both vulnerabilities takes into account population growth, climate change, water scarcity, air pollution, soil depletion, erosion and desertification, an increasing loss of ESS, food crises (FAO 2000, 2016), rural-urban and international migration, urbanisation with slum development, physical and structural violence, gender, race and ethnic discrimination, youth unemployment, social and gender inequality, and economic crises. The interactions of these multiple challenges may result in extreme outcomes, especially for the vulnerable people living in risky places, and may reduce their human, gender and environmental security. Therefore, those who are poor and lack education and professional tools, women and girls, representing almost 80% of the most marginal people in the world (UNDP 2016), should be better protected by reducing their dual, environmental and social vulnerability.

20.4.3 Gender Perspective Gender is the social and historical construction of roles and behaviour in each culturally determined society, based on the sexual difference between men and

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Conceptualisation of Human Security, Dual Vulnerability …

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Fig. 20.1 Gender: a social construction of masculinity and femininity. Source The Author

women (see Chaps. 10, 11 and 12; Fig. 20.1). The concept helps to understand why men are more involved in productive and political activities and how they have justified, through the construction of a specific masculinity, their superiority in society (Butler 1990, 1993; Lamas 1996, 2002; Lagarde 1990). The gender concept also helps to analyse the subordination of women, and how societies were able to perpetuate and consolidate this discrimination for thousands of years. The concept also explains the underlying exercise of power within the family, communities, countries, and the world. Gender relations also reveal the relationships of socially structured behaviours based on dominant biological difference, which makes social changes so difficult. Often gender refers to studies of feminists and movements of women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), because the concept is considered neutral and permits a scientific analysis of any social situation of gender discrimination, mostly deeply charged with emotions (Lacan 1985). Thus, a gender perspective analyses how women and men interact, how they get access to resources, recognition, opportunities, and how the work within the family and the society is divided among women and men. Gender studies have emphasised the differences between women and men in each society. Gender is not only about women in society. It is about the ways women and men interact and their ability to access resources and opportunities in their communities depending on their being a woman or a man. Therefore, when any type of survey or analysis of a society is undertaken, it is important to have data that reflects the situation of women in comparison to the situation of men and vice versa. (UN-Habitat 2007: 26)

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A gender perspective also makes visible the silent exploitation and discrimination of women at home and in public. Both globally and locally, it focuses on achieving more equity in society. As a first step towards achieving greater equality globally and locally, a quota system has raised awareness in most countries. This system has improved female participation in public and private leadership, where the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ or ‘sticky floor’ are still expressions to describe why women are blocked in their careers and rarely get to the top. Of 178 countries, only 10 women4 held the top position in 2017. In the past, women have held the highest political positions in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and, until the recent dismissal of Park Geun-hye, South Korea. Still in post in Asia are Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan and Hilda Heine in the Marshall Islands. Catherine Samba-Panza was President of the Central African Republic 2014–2016; the current African female leaders are Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia and Ameenah Gurib in Mauritius. In Europe women were presidents or prime ministers in the past in Finland, UK and Ireland, while current female leaders in Europe include Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in Croatia and Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca in Malta. Angela Merkel has been Chancellor of Germany since November 2005 and has become one of the most powerful women in global politics. In Latin America Dilma Rousseff was ousted as Prime Minister by the Brazilian Senate on 1 September 2016. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner finished her elected term in Argentina in 2015, and Laura Chinchilla was President of Costa Rica 2010–2014. In 2017, Michelle Bachelet of Chile was the sole remaining female President in Latin America until the 11th of March, 2018. In the USA, Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election against Donald Trump. This limited access of women to top political positions is a clear expression of the existing and deeply embedded gender stereotypes, where women were traditionally expected to remain inside the household as housewives. This discrimination exists not only in politics, but also in business, where there are still few women in leading positions. Therefore the distribution of power and wealth are mostly still reserved for men in the present society.

20.4.4 Living Well The Aymara culture in Bolivia launched a new approach to consumerism which gave nature and humans the same constitutional rights: the different indigenous thinking in the Andean-Amazonian region approaches life from a holistic stance and obliges a rethink of the dominant economic paradigm of neoliberalism, where only money counts. The Aymara people called the understanding of complementarity sumak qamaña (living well, in Spanish vivir bien) also suamk kaway (good

4

Governor General: Dame Pearlette Louisy, Saint Lucia; Dame Marguerite Pindling, the Bahamas; Dame Cecile La Grenade, Grenada; Acting General Governor Dame Sian Elias, New Zealand.

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living or buen vivir). From a plurinational understanding, these indigenous groups promoted a diverse state that may strengthen equity and increase equality among the indigenous society, and also care for nature and promote sustainability. The modern constitution of Bolivia (of 2009) includes traditional indigenous rules to promote human, social and natural rights. ‘Mother earth’ (pacha mama) is regarded as more than a nature reserve in a specific space protected by special conservation rules (Gasca 2014); the concept has a spiritual component. Pacha mama includes a bottom-up process of environmental, social and cultural management, where solidarity and cooperation prevail instead of competition and exploitation, alongside care of nature and humankind. At the centre is “the reproduction of life as the means to understand the reproduction process as a whole, and as an organising criteria of economic issues, which could no longer be considered a divided dimension” (Ceceña 2014: 11) In terms of time, it refers to the ability to be part of and take part in the universe. Indigenous people are immersed in their cosmovision, together with economic, social and environmental processes. Living well represents a telluric approach with a socio-political and ecological content. Beside its partial implementation in the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador, this indigenous philosophy has been embraced by different social, environmental, mystical and alternative groups, who are exploring new ways to deal better with the socio-environmental threats. Another critical approach to western consumerism came from Bhutan with a different understanding of happiness as a guiding principle for life and living together. In Brazil, during the Presidency of Lula, the left PT government tried to overcome extreme inequality with a model called Bolsa familia, which granted food to everybody, economic support to children and the elderly, and also education and health care to the most vulnerable. Lula’s reforms challenged the dominant neoliberal model calling for the privatisation of public enterprises. The high debts his government had inherited from his predecessors, concessions for mine and oil extraction with multinational enterprises, and permanent pressure from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and the national bourgeoisie forced Brazil to continue to extract minerals from the soil to repay the foreign debt. These activities directly contradict the cosmovision of pacha mama, which offered alternative paradigms which had little probability of getting implemented. In Brazil the parliamentarian coups against Dilma Rousseff were a clear sign that the ruling national oligarchy and dominating international elites opposed this different economic model of social empathy.

20.5

Deepening the Nexus Discussion

In November 2011, the international conference in Bonn on ‘The Water, Energy and Food Security Nexus – Solutions for the Green Economy’ insisted that population growth and rising economic prosperity may increase the demand for energy, food and water, especially in emerging countries. The additional demand may

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compromise the sustainable use of natural resources. “This pressure on resources could finally result in shortages, which may put water, energy and food security for the people at risk, hamper economic development, lead to social and geopolitical tensions and cause lasting irreparable environmental damage”. The Handbook on Soil, (FAO 2015: 4) begins with the following sentence: “Soils are fundamental to life on earth”. The book refers to nine basic services provided by healthy soils: (1) they create goods and services which support ecosystems and human well-being; (2) the evolution of soils is a result of complex actions and interactions in different time and space scenarios; (3) sustainable management provides ESS (provisioning, supporting, regulating and cultural services); (4) soil management differs widely within socio-economic contexts and local or traditional knowledge; (5) the quality of soil depends on chemical, physical and biological properties; (6) soil represents a reservoir of biodiversity, from micro-organisms to flora and fauna; (7) a healthy soil regulates the global climate and water cycle; (8) when degraded, soil loses its function to support ESS; (9) a destroyed soil can be restored with rehabilitation techniques, with composting of organic waste being an especially efficient way to repair eroded landscapes. The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI 2011) developed a Background Paper for the Bonn Conference, in which the key concepts of water, food and energy security were defined. The compilers took the definition of water security from the MA (2005) as “access to safe drinking water and sanitation, both of which have recently become a human right. While not part of most water security definitions yet, availability of and access to water for other human and ecosystem uses is also very important from a nexus perspective” (SEI 2011: 11). Food security was formerly defined by FAO as “availability and access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet the dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Adequate food has also been defined as a human right. The emphasis on access in these definitions also implies that security is not so much about average (e.g. annual) availability of resources, but has to encompass variability and extreme situations such as droughts or price shocks, and the resilience of the poor. … Energy security … as access to clean, reliable and affordable energy services for cooking and heating, lighting, communications and productive uses (UN), and as uninterrupted physical availability [of energy] at a price which is affordable, while respecting environment concerns” (SEI 2011: 11). However, there was no discussion as to why and how these three concepts have been securitised or which are their reference objects: the Nation-state, human beings, humankind, gender relations, finances or the ecosystem? The SEI’s key interest is policy-orientated and not conceptual. The SEI suggested that this triple security may best be achieved by a combination of seven policy segments: increasing resource efficiency; using waste as a resource in multi-use systems; stimulating development through economic incentives, governance, institutions and

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policy coherence; benefiting from productive ecosystems; integrating poverty alleviation; green growth with capacity-building; and raising awareness. The two policy-driven efforts to address the nexus between water, food and energy slightly differ. While the book about the WEF’s water initiative (2011) solely refers to national security, in its background report the SEI does not refer to any specific reference object nor did the organisers of the conference in their three outcome documents, the key messages, the policy recommendations or the conference synopsis on the ‘Bonn Nexus Conference’. Thus, the key questions regarding the nexus of the three securities remain unanswered, as it is unclear whether the authors considered a state-centred or a people-centred framework. This nexus conference and the background paper did not address the linkages of water-food-energy security to soil and biodiversity, or to other securities, such as human, gender, health and livelihood security. Both the WEF and the Bonn-centred approach discussed, in their analyses, how to manage risks in a growing uncertainty with trade-offs and synergies between water, food and energy. However, during the twenty-first century different hygiene habits, population growth, urbanisation and a growing middle class, particularly in the emerging countries, will have a greater impact on soil and ecosystems, thus affecting the already deteriorated ESS. More GHG emissions will further worsen air quality and increase temperature, which will affect the precipitation cycle and

Fig. 20.2 Linkages between ecosystems services and human well-being. Source MA (2005: 50)

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therefore water and biodiversity security. Pollution, scarcity and degradation of water, soil, food, biodiversity and fossil energy and its nexuses will directly and indirectly affect the life quality of humankind, ecosystems and their services (Fig. 20.2). Therefore, the World Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, which emphasised the concept of sustainability, and the Agenda 21 was triggered by the Brundtland Report and its reference to intergenerational equity. Rio+20 (2012) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (2015) reinforced the need for sustainable management of all natural resources. As water (Chaps. 14 and 15), food (Chap. 16) and energy security (Chap. 17) are discussed in separate chapters in this volume, the following text will centre on soil and biodiversity security.

20.5.1 Soil Security Soil security was always a marginal theme in the scientific discussion on sustainability, and the UNCCD had less success with the securitisation of soil compared with UNFCC and climate change. Nevertheless, soil is similar to the skin of the human body; it sustains forests, crops and animals and allows the infiltration of water. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD 2016) estimated that globally 1,035 million km2 of soils are deteriorated by humans: 45% is affected by water erosion, 42% by wind erosion, 10% by chemical deterioration and 3% by physical deterioration of the soil structure. Most of this soil depletion is related to inadequate irrigation practices, overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, and lack of soil management in mountain areas. Directly impacted by soil degradation are drylands in over 110 countries with more than half a million of inhabitants, who are the poorest people and often get converted into environmental migrants (IPCC 2014a). IFAD (2016) estimated that more than a billion people in total are threatened by land degradation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. IFAD (2016) calculated that each year 12 million additional hectares are lost to deserts, where about 20 million tonnes of grain could have been produced. Climate change has increased the intensity of droughts, which leads to political crisis and conflicts (OCHA 1999). Especially affected by desertification processes are Sub-Saharan Africa, but also Australia, China, India and several countries in the Americas. Global Land Degradation Assessment (GLADA 2008: 1) argued that “land degradation is a global environmental and development issue” and Sivakumar and Ndiang’ui (2007: 5) claimed that land affected by erosion, loss of fertility and desertification covers between 33 and 41% of the Earth. Both researchers estimated that 46% of the land in Africa has deteriorated, with great accumulated agricultural losses of about 20% during the last 40 years – a significant issue in a continent which is currently inhabited by over 1.2 billion people (Fig. 20.3). Globally, 52% of agricultural land is affected by degradation, including 6 billion ha (40% of drylands) where one-third of the population produces 44% of the global food. Among hungry people, 80% are small farmers or landless poor, mostly

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Fig. 20.3 Soil degradation. Source UNEP, GRID, Arendal (w/d)

women and girls. The Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD 2016) estimated that in 2025 about 1.8 billion of the world’s population would be living with absolute water scarcity and 5.3 billion could be living under water-stress conditions. Land degradation may also reduce global food production up to 12%, and lead to an increase of 30% in world food prices, while 135 million people may be displaced as a result of the erosion and desertification of their land. In low-developing countries about 40% of international conflicts are linked to land struggles and land-grabbing, affecting over 30 countries. Therefore, the restoration and prevention of desertification is crucial for biodiversity, cloud-building, precipitation, water storage, food production and livelihood. Finally, land degradation and desertification also increase GHG emissions, and UNCCD (2016) estimated that deteriorated soils limit the capture of 10–12 Gt of CO2e per year, which represents 24% of the total GHG emissions, where 5–5.8 Gt CO2e per year come from agriculture and 4.3–5.5. Gt CO2e per year from inadequate soil management and land use change from forestry to crops or urban developments. Therefore, soil is an integrated element of the WSFBE nexus, with serious feedbacks on water, food, biodiversity and biofuel for energy, yet it is still not really assimilated in the political agenda and still underdeveloped in scientific discourse. Confronted with this lack of acknowledgement of soil degradation, Brauch and Oswald Spring (2009: 4) introduced the concept of ‘soil security’ to:

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discuss to what extent these interactions pose objective security dangers and subjective security concerns for human beings, the state and the international community; • introduce ‘soil security’ as a new sectoral concept by reviewing the various factors contributing to ‘soil insecurity’; • review the ‘securitising moves’ by international organisations, nation states and civil society and analyse DLDD5 as an issue of utmost importance that requires extraordinary measures for coping with its consequences to avoid them resulting in people’s movements, crises and conflicts.

With this proposed securitising process, both authors tried to create wider political awareness and promote strategies for the mitigation of soil destruction, more rational land management, and therefore also an adaptation to climate change due to the reduction of landslides and GHG capture. However, the securitisation process – e.g. declaring the destruction of soils to be a problem of the utmost urgency that requires extraordinary measures (Wæver 1995) – failed because of the narrow military understanding of security, whereby soils are only considered in relation to territorial defence and sovereignty. A sectorial approach to the security of soil as proposed by Brauch and Oswald Spring (2009) to UNCCD did not get the necessary response to limit the ongoing destruction of productive soils. FAO (2015) adopted a profound scientific approach to studying the status of soils globally and UNDP (2016) took up the global concern about the deterioration of land and supported the proposal of UNCCD of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) by directly linking soil deterioration to the Sustainable Development Goals. Without doubt, water, food, biodiversity and bioenergy all depend on healthy and productive soils with a high level of natural nutrient. Thus, UNDP suggested that LDN can be generally understood as a state where the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services, remains stable or increases. This can occur at different scales and within different ecosystems. At its core are better land management practices and more rational land use planning. It is really the combination of avoiding or reducing the rate of land degradation and increasing the rate of recovery.6

LDN must reverse the dominant paradigm in commercial and domestic agriculture that only with chemical fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides is it possible to produce and improve yields. On the contrary, long-term studies on soils (FAO 2015) have proved that agrochemicals have diminished the dynamic process of natural fertility in the soil and the assimilation of nitrogen from the atmosphere to the ground, therefore reduced the natural fertility and nitrogen in the soils. Figure 20.4 indicates schematically how the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the nodules of the root of legumes and the aerobic and anaerobic decomposers in the soil promote natural nitrogen-fixing bacteria, ammonification and nitrification, where nitrifying bacteria produce nitrates that are later assimilated by the roots of the

5

DLDD developed by UNCCD means desertification, land degradation and drought. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/global-policy-centres/sustainable_land management/slm.html.

6

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Fig. 20.4 Nitrogen cycle in the soil. Source Growjourney (2016), translated originally from German in https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Cicle_del_nitrogen_de.svg

plants. This method of managing soils maintains their natural fertility and produces healthy and fertile soil. This complex natural process was used by indigenous peasants, who traditionally cultivated corn, together with beans and squash. They also let the soil rest for a year or more to give the soil the opportunity to restore its natural fertility. The same system was traditionally used for centuries in Europe. However, industrialised agriculture with monocultivation in extended areas has destroyed this natural equilibrium and depends on increasing amounts of agrochemicals. The synthetic nitrogen fertilisers cause massive bacterial blooms in the soil, which deplete the carbon reserve or soil humus and destroy the microorganisms responsible for the natural nitrogen cycle. When the soils are no longer a living biological system, an overpopulation of pathogens and pests are attracted so the crops need pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, nematicides and insecticides, among others, which further destroy the natural equilibrium inside the soil. Soil can be re-established by adding compost from plants, organic kitchen waste, animal manure, cover crops and stubble to stimulate the nitrogen cycle inside the soil and simultaneously prevent evaporation, thus maintaining the humidity for the crops. A natural recovery of soils may also contribute to the four ecosystem services: provisioning the nutrient for a healthy crop; supporting the growth of plants; regulating the temperature in the soil and for the plants, as well as the retention of

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water for the crop; and granting the cultural integration between farmers, nature and crops. This type of agriculture is limited to small-scale production, where the stubble of the former cycle provides some of the nutrients for the following cycle. This process is crucial for subsistence agriculture. Coming back to the nexus argument, more than half of the food worldwide is produced by subsistence agriculture (IPCC 2014a: Chap. 16). In the future, subsistence farming may be able, on a small scale, to overcome undernourishment and hunger in regions chronically affected by drought, since this type of cultivation retains the humidity in the soil better, reduces evaporation and reinforces the immune system of the crop naturally during dry periods, thus improves the yields and grants food during longer dry periods. When supported with small systems of irrigation (drop, micro-aspersion) in regions periodically affected by longer drought, this type of farming improves livelihood and well-being. With locally adapted seeds, this cultivation system reinforces the resistance of the plants and reduces the production costs for small-scale farmers. Additionally, it fixes carbon in the soil and promotes an organic and climate-smart agriculture. Therefore, interlinks with the WFBE nexus are improved thanks to healthy soils (S) even in regions exposed to more extreme temperatures and irregular rainfall.

20.5.2 Biodiversity Security When we analyse biodiversity security, the determination by environmentalists is not primarily the military, but ecological. In the understanding of this author, biodiversity security is ecological and human-orientated, because it produces ESS for humans and is a support for all the WSFBE nexus. In relation to the reference object, biodiversity security is threatened by land use change, and thus by the expansion of rural and urban systems, industrialisation, extractivism and tourism. However, biodiversity security is also impacted by the alteration of water, climate, nitrogen and sulphur cycles, which affects the integrity of the ecosystems that sustain and produce them. The values at risk in biodiversity are sustainability, which includes the natural interactions in forests, savannahs, deserts, lakes and seas as shelters for plants, animals and humans. With regard to the sources of threats, the key pressures come from humankind and their anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems and their services. Biodiversity has evolved over 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s development, and humans only appeared about one million years ago, while the intensive use of ESS and the GHG emissions in the Anthropocene started only about six decades ago (Crutzen 2002). Thus, biodiversity security is crucial for the survival of humans and Earth, because biodiversity offers ESS. Plant life provides 80% of our diet and billions of small farmers, women and indigenous people rely directly on subsistence agriculture for their survival. Abundant harvests define their livelihoods and the potential to increase their standard of living. About 30% of Earth is covered by forests, which are responsible for important ESS and provide the habitats for people, animals and

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plants. Their principal ESS is providing clean air and water, but forests also protect from extreme weather events, regulate climate, support the nutrient cycle in the soil, and offer spaces for spiritual, cultural or recreational activities. One of the central risks to biodiversity security and its ESS is the extraction of minerals and fossil energy. They cause pollution and opencast mines destroy biodiversity. But there is also the globalised Western lifestyle, which is affecting the natural equilibrium, where people not only consume, but at the same time suffer from the loss of ESS. People are able to restore ecosystems by recovering biodiversity, protecting animals from poachers, reforesting trees and plants, restoring depleted soils and storing rainwater for small-scale irrigation. In the economic field, an effective ban on the trade of rhino horns and ivory and severe legal consequences for infractions may combat more effectively these environmental crimes. These critically endangered species can naturally recover as the growing number of African elephants in the Hwange reserve in Zimbabwe has shown. As an ethical commitment, national and local governments are best placed for protecting and recovering biodiversity, while international organisations (UNEP, WWF, IUCN, etc.) might monitor and support these efforts. But governments should also involve people in these restoration activities, because when people are actively involved, they understand the importance and are committed to protection. With changes in individual consumerist behaviour, better governmental controls of land use changes and better birth control in the poorest countries, biodiversity security can be reinforced and sustained, especially when all these actions are combined with efforts to counter GHG by stimulating renewable energy sources. The following data point to the threats of biodiversity loss and stress and the urgency to reinforce biodiversity security. The World Conservation Monitoring Centre of the United Nation’s Environment Programme (UNEP-WCMC 2016) has synthesised scientific data on global biodiversity issues. They discovered that from the existing 2.38 million registers about 39,123 species in 18,659 spaces are crucial, because they provide the equilibrium of ecosystems. The functioning of ecosystems and their services are fundamentally threatened by unsustainable management by humankind. The Natural History Museum in London estimated that 85–87% of existing biodiversity has already been lost. The same source indicated that a further 10% of the loss of species may affect the biodiversity security and the equilibrium on Earth. Figure 20.5 specifies the existing native species as a percentage of their original populations. The blue areas show the limits of proposed biodiversity security and the red areas indicate the regions most affected by the loss of species. The red is especially dangerous in regions of biodiversity hot spots, such as Latin America, Australia, the Congo Basin, Madagascar and Australia, among others. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN 2016) stated that there are about the same amount of plants threatened as the combined number of fishes, mammals and birds. An IUCN map of endangered plants (Fig. 20.6) illustrates that Latin America is the region not only with the greatest biodiversity, but also with the most significant dangers for plants, followed by sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Australia, Europe and East Asia. The latest update of the IUCN’s

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Fig. 20.5 Biodiversity security worldwide. Source Museum of Natural History, London, cited in (19-11-2016)

Fig. 20.6 Plants under pressure. Source IUCN (2016: Bangkok, IUCN; downloaded 18-3-2017)

(2012) Red List of Threatened Species indicated that globally 19,817 animals were threatened with extinction from a total of 63,837 species. This represents almost a third of the known global biodiversity. IUCN researchers found that 41% of amphibian species are threatened, 33% of reef building corals and 25% of mammals. The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF 2016a) published a list of animals endangered by extinction due to the loss of their natural habitat (Table 20.1). Among the 19 critically endangered species are Amur leopards, black rhinos and orangutans; the 28 endangered species include African elephants, wild dogs, tigers, bonobos, chimpanzees, sea lions; the 20 vulnerable animals include whales, giant

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Table 20.1 State of biodiversity in animals. Source WWF (2016a), Species Directory Critically endangered

Endangered

Vulnerable

Near threatened

Least concern

19

28

20

10

>11

Fig. 20.7 Threatened species worldwide and by regions. Source World Bank (2015: 33) World Development Indicators

pandas, polar bears and marine iguanas; the 10 nearly threatened are jaguars, tunas, white rhinos and the monarch butterfly, among others. Among those of least concern are dolphins, salmon, penguins, sharks, artic wolves, and foxes. The critically endangered and endangered species are almost extinct and often exist only in zoological gardens. They do not have enough partners and mostly breed within their family, thus loosing genetic diversity. Deforestation and the loss of the natural environment are critical processes that have reduced the state of biodiversity and the genetic diversity in animals. But climate change and temperature rise are also threats for the habitat of endangered fauna. According to a World Bank (2016) estimate, about 14,563 plants are threatened, 7,819 fishes, 4,393 birds and 3,309 mammals. The threats to biodiversity security are global. When regions with a higher biodiversity are destroying their natural capitals, they belong to the countries who have done this in the past or who are less biodiverse (Fig. 20.7). Latin America and the Caribbean, through deforestation and land use changes, are responsible for more than 5,000 losses of plants, while sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and the Pacific are threatening most of the mammals worldwide. Further, sub-Saharan Africa, followed by East Asia and the Pacific and Europe are also responsible for the loss of fish diversity, while Latin America and East Asia and the Pacific, followed by sub-Saharan Africa and Europe are diminishing the biodiversity of birds. Globally more than double the number of plants are threatened compared with animals. There are numerous negative links of biodiversity loss with ESS, soils, and food that also affect humankind. Both contribute to an increase in dual vulnerability and aggravate human insecurity

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(Chap. 11) by affecting freedom from want (food), but also freedom from hazard impacts (disasters). The destruction of ESS and biodiversity losses not only affect Mother Earth, but also have serious consequences for humans. Loss of ESS deprive people of their basic needs, such as food, water, shelter; diminish the regulation of climate and the mitigating function of nature; limit the natural capacity or restoration; and also reduce the cultural services related to a healthy environment. Confronted with a progressive erosion of biodiversity, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed that their Parties should establish national targets. The tool was to achieve the global Aichi Biodiversity Targets with all national contributions as a strategic plan to reduce biodiversity loss. The countries agreed and proposed 21 targets nationally to conserve biodiversity (NBSAP).7 Further, it was agreed that each Party should develop policy instruments that include and promote traditional knowledge. The signatories committed themselves to sharing scientific knowledge among Parties and mobilising financial resources to achieve the committed goals. The Aichi commitments are certainly a crucial step towards protecting and recovering the biodiversity worldwide and restoring its associated ESS. But they are still very vague and only four targets imply clear quantitative obligations. However, several poor countries still have little information about their biodiversity, and lack scientific specialists and financial resources to develop National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP). Several countries also lack the political stability to promote the conservation of biodiversity and face criminals and poachers, who abuse the weakness of the governments and continue to conduct their illegal trade in protected species. There are also significant doubts in biodiverse hotspots, mostly in poor countries, with regard to access to the financial resources needed for conservation. Often, this lack of money limits the political will to undertake action for avoiding further degradation and restoring existing biological and genetic interactions. There is also competition from the priority for economic development, in which multinational enterprises play a major role, especially in mining, oil extraction and logging, resulting in the destruction of tropical forests and their biodiversity.

7

These agreed measures included: to be aware of biodiversity and its conservation; include biodiversity conservation and restoration in their national plan of development and poverty alleviation; eliminate incentives and subsidies which are harmful for biodiversity; develop a plan for sustainable production and consumption at the national level; reduce to half the loss of forests and national habitats; promote in 2020 only a sustainable harvest of fishes and aquatic plants; implement a sustainable management of agriculture, aquaculture and forestry; avoid pollution and nutrients that harm ESS and biodiversity; identify, control and eradicate invasive alien species; limit anthropogenic pressure on coral reefs and vulnerable ecosystems and minimise the acidification of oceans; conserve 17% of terrestrial and inland waters and 10% of coastal and marine areas; promote conservation of endangered species; maintain genetic diversity of cultivated plant and domesticated animals to avoid genetic erosion; safeguard ESS for women, indigenous, poor and vulnerable people; restore 15% of degraded ecosystems and combat desertification; and grant a fair and equitable share of the benefits of biodiversity based on the Nagoya Protocol.

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The member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and many industrialised countries have developed international treaties and national laws which have protected multinational enterprises and their investments. When a country decides to cancel a concession due to violating their norms and polluting by extractive activities, the affected companies may sue these countries in the framework of the WTO and go to an international tribunal. In several cases in Latin America these enterprises have won and continue to pollute or the governments are paying for the rescission of the contract. In most cases nobody is paying for the loss of biodiversity, ESS, livelihood, water and health of the affected people or the destroyed nature. In general, Latin America is the region with the highest biodiversity in the world and Mexico is one of the five most biodiverse countries in the world, with ten distinct ecosystems, 958 endemic species of fauna and 5,161 of flora (Conabio-UAEM 2006: 155). This biodiversity is threatened by population growth, increasing demand for food, water and human settlements, and also by land use change and deforestation. Half of the country’s land is used for agriculture and livestock, often managed with an excess of agrochemicals, thus polluting soil, water, air and the health of animals and humans. “In Mexico between 3.5 and 5 million hectares of temperate and tropical forests have been lost during the last decade. The estimated annual deforestation rates in Mexico range from 0.5 to 1.14% since the early 1990s to 2000” (Commission for Environmental Cooperation n.d.: 2). Mangroves and cloud forests, rainforests, sub-humid forests, and dry tropical forests are seriously deteriorated due to beach tourism. All regions face further population growth and urbanisation. The related ESS have been widely destroyed, while xeric scrublands is expanding due to drier conditions and soil erosion related to climate change. The reduction in natural vegetation has a huge impact on evapotranspiration, heat flux and the albedo. It produces an increase in temperature and reduces the absorption of CO2e (Huete et al. 2002). The loss of natural vegetation also diminishes water infiltration, aquifer recharge and clean air in the cities and especially the megalopolis of Mexico City. The drier conditions in urban settlements cause further deterioration of the quality of the air, as well as the run-off of water and flooding during extreme events. All these phenomena reinforce the negative outcomes of climate change. These conditions also impact on human health and disasters take away human lives, and the well-being and livelihood of the affected people, especially women. Brazil, the most biodiverse country in the world, is also exposed to multiple human and development drivers, which have been threatening not only the green lung of the Amazonas, but also the livelihood of its indigenous people, whose survival depends on the ESS and on the biodiversity. The WWF (2016b: 5–6) argued that “the planetary stability our species has enjoyed for 11,700 years, that has allowed civilization to flourish, can no longer be relied upon”. The WWF Report continues:

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The richness and diversity of life on Earth is fundamental to the complex life systems that underpin it. Life supports life itself. We are part of the same equation. Lose biodiversity and the natural world and the life support systems, as we know them today, will collapse. We completely depend on nature, for the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, climate stability, the food and materials we use and the economy we rely on, and not least, for our health, inspiration and happiness.

20.6

Lessons Learned

The nexus among water, food, energy without soil and biodiversity security points to political challenges at international level. As humankind produces its own threats through its consumerism, but at the same time is affected by GEC and climate change, the narrow military understanding of security cannot resolve these new challenges. Therefore, a widened understanding, which includes economic, societal and environmental security, a deepened approach of human and gender security (Chaps. 10, 11, 12 and 13) and a sectorialised security of water, health (Chaps. 14 and 15), soil, food (Chap. 16), biodiversity and energy (Chap. 17), focuses on humankind and nature and not just on sovereignty and territorial control. Without doubt, the future interaction among the WSFBE security nexus might comprehend some of the new threats. Climate change will bring less and irregular precipitation, while longer and more intensive droughts are affecting the natural cover of biota. Food production in drylands therefore requires more water for irrigation (IPCC 2014), crop yields might decline and deeper extraction of groundwater is salinising soil, due to the extraction of brackish water. Deep water extraction from the aquifers raises the amount of dissolved salt in the groundwater (Garatuza et al. 2011), which is often further polluted by agrochemicals. These negative interactions rapidly deteriorate the soils. Longer and more intensive droughts related to climate change increase the dual vulnerability of exposed social groups and force many people from the drylands to rural-urban and international migration, hunger and malnutrition. Thus, by examining the complex interlinks among the WSFBE nexuses, both the social and the environmental vulnerability of the poor and often marginalised rural and urban populations may be better understood, and also the ongoing environmental destruction (Fig. 20.8). The outcomes of these socio-environmental WSFBE nexuses may require a change in the global arena of business – as usual, towards one of sustainability, in which the agendas focus on sustainable production, especially in agriculture and livestock with limited footprint on water, biodiversity and soil. An integrated water river management (IWRM) and the promotion of renewable energy and bioenergy generated purely from waste might change the destructive activities towards more sustainable ones. Finally, there are multiple stakeholders involved in the WSFBE

20.6

Lessons Learned

571

Fig. 20.8 Water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy (WSFBE) nexus. Source The Author

nexuses with often contradictory interests. In any case, the common good should be negotiated and governments must defend a policy of conservation, restoration and minimal impact on environment. However, the data analysis addressed by this nexus perspective indicates a growing human (Brauch 2005) and environmental insecurity (Dalby et al. 2009), thus a global arena of unsustainability. The present business-as-usual productive and consumption system is creating dangerous threats to both nature and humankind. To avoid painful experiences and the collapse of regions or the whole Earth system, a transition to sustainability (Brauch et al. 2016) is necessary. The multiple negative interactions between stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, atmospheric aerosol loading, acidification of oceans, biochemical flows in water and soils, desertification and land use change, freshwater overuse, pollution, urbanisation and loss of biodiversity have been threatening the ESS and shattering the potential of resilience and adaptation to the increasingly complex challenges posed by global environmental change. These negative processes are stimulating

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interactions that may be better analysed from the perspective of the nexus of WWFSBE. This focus also allows the understanding and the policy action to the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals to be related to a gender perspective. The ongoing processes and their linkages are increasing human, gender and environmental insecurity at local, regional and national level with potentially serious impacts on the global Earth system. In the context of the alternative working hypothesis, the WFSBE nexus among the five sectoral security perspectives also requires a human, gender and environmental-centred security approach. This approach may make politicians and people more aware of the threats and the actions which need to be taken to save the Earth, recover the ESS and protect humanity from powerful minority interests, which are only attentive to their own profit. A securitisation process might start simultaneously at local level and from bottom-up and from top-down with actions of reforestation, climate-smart agriculture, and the recovery of soils and the restoration of biodiversity. At national level, governments should reinforce laws and norms for environmental protection, landscape recovery, the establishment of natural parks, the protection of endangered plants or animals, and sustainable water and soil management. These measures also include the rigorous application of the Nationally Determined Contributions of each country committed in the Paris Agreement (2015) to the UNFCC,8 and the full implementation of the commitments of full name (NBSAP) under the Aichi Agreement to protect biodiversity. At global level, the organisations within the UN context and its Conventions (Biodiversity, Climate, Desertification/Soil), international NGOs and global social movements (Via Campesina) might promote integrated studies and apply political actions on water, soil, food, biodiversity and renewable energies. There is also financial support from the ‘Green Fund’ and the transfer of sustainable technologies required by the least developed countries. By restoring the ESS, the preservation of the diversity of seeds and organic or mixed agriculture nutritious food patterns might improve. The reforestation will create rural jobs and increase cloud-building and precipitation, and also a sustainable habitat for plants and animals. From the broader scientific analysis in the context of WSFBE suggested in this chapter instead of the narrower WEF nexus promoted by a study for the World Economic Forum (WEF 2011), it is crucial to integrate soil and biodiversity in the nexus analysis. Both sustain life and support water, climate mitigation, food diversity and sustainable energy. Further, it is necessary to deepen, widen and sectorise the security approach from the narrow military and national security dimension towards a human, gender, environmental, societal, economic, water, soil,

8

The parties of UNFCCC require clear indicators of efficiency and indices of control on their commitments, which would allow them to reduce their GHG emissions and stop the increase of CO2 concentration above 450 ppm in the global atmosphere. The initial success of the reduction of the ozone layer depletion after a quarter of century is an encouraging example of global cooperation, where consumers supported the steps taken by Governments and international organisation to overcome the global threat with new technologies of cooling and alternative consumption of spray products that did not affect the stratospheric ozone.

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Lessons Learned

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food, biodiversity and energy security. From this wider WSFBE security nexus perspective that combines the individual sectoral approaches, several lessons may be learned and applied at the local, national and international levels: 1. Different impacts from anthropogenically-induced extreme events exist for poor countries, where the dual vulnerability model also helps to examine the impacts for the more exposed people, such as women and girls to natural hazards and societal disasters, the loss of their lives and livelihoods. 2. Water, soil and biodiversity contribute to free ecosystem services (ESS), which provide, regulate, offer and support cultural services and goods for the survival of humans and nature. However, according to the Millennium Environmental Assessment (MA 2005), 19 of the 24 key ESS are severely deteriorated, thus affecting the survival of both the environment and humankind. 3. The world-view of the business-as-usual approach, where energy, water and human relations are commodified, has brought Planet Earth to its limits of survival. The still dominant business-as-usual approach limits available resources and affects the complex natural interactions and regulation, which could be better addressed from a WSFBE security perspective. 4. The multiple risks that were an outcome of this prevailing business-as-usual approach require new agendas and priorities for development planning. A practical problem-focused transformative scientific analysis may address the potential for increasing the resilience of highly exposed social groups and threatened ecosystems. 5. From the perspective of a wider WSFBE security nexus, it should be possible to address the shortcomings of strategies based on a world-view guided by business-as-usual – strategies that have made it difficult, if not impossible, to face the risks and threats of global environmental change. It is essential to redesign the activities of the Governments within a global governance model, so that financial resources play only one and not the key role for decision-making processes. 6. Climate-smart agriculture, restoration of biodiversity and recovery of deteriorated soils improve water quality, while renewable energy is granting a decentralised and just access to a sustainable development and livelihood that is also able to improve the well-being of the most vulnerable. 7. Strengthening food and water sovereignty by reinforcing human capacity, gender equity, social equality and sustainability at the local level may improve the resilience of socially and environmentally vulnerable people. 8. Infrastructure building must take the new threats of global environmental change into account as well as the negative outcomes of the business-as-usual policies that may be addressed from the perspective of a WSFBE security nexus. 9. Mitigation, adaptation and resilience-building require multiple forms of cooperation at local, national, regional and international level by states, societal groups and the environmentally-committed business community.

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10. Resilience is first of all orientated towards a sustainable livelihood security (Bohle 2009), whereby vulnerable groups can improve their economic and social conditions without causing further damage to the living planet. 11. Redesigned sustainable development policies that stress bottom-up approaches with water and food sovereignty at local level, where seeds are interchanged, biodiversity and soils restored and renewable energy promoted, may enhance resilience and improve adaptation and more effectively integrate exposed social groups. 12. Broader involvement and participation of vulnerable groups in decision-making processes may foster effective responses during emergencies and reinforce stable governance from the local to the national and global levels. 13. Complex emergencies require preventative actions and improved planning. These actions must respond to a wide range of disaster risks reduction actions, social inequality, environmental destruction, food and water crisis and land grabbing, which are often aggravated by social vulnerability, uprisings, conflicts and armed confrontations. 14. In synthesis, climate change, disasters, hunger and the societal consequences of the dual vulnerability of marginalised people can only be overcome when population growth and consumptive behaviour are in harmony with the available natural resources, which must be distributed with global equity and equality. Therefore, only from a human, gender and environmental, or a HUGE security approach (Oswald Spring 2009), is it possible to address the risks and challenges in the Anthropocene that have been caused by humankind, but are at the same time threatening all humans. Thus a new security approach that integrates the WSFBE nexus may offer alternatives for analysis and actions.

References Annan, Kofi (2005). In larger Freedom: Towards Security, Development and Human Rights for All. Report of the Secretary General for Decision by Head of States and Governments, New York, UN. Bogardi, Janos, Hans Günter Brauch (2005). “Global Environmental Change: A Challenge for Human Security-Defining and Conceptualising the Environment Dimension of Human Security”, in Andreas Rechkemmer, (Ed.) UNEO-Towards an International Environmental Organization-Approaches to a Sustainable Reform of Global Environmental Governance, Baden-Baden, Nomos, pp. 85–1011. Bohle, Hans-Georg (2002). “Land degradation and human security”, in Erich Plate (2003). Human security and environment, Universidad de Bonn, Bonn. Brauch, Hans Günter (2008). “From a Security to a Survival Dilemma”, in Hans Günter Brauch et al. (Eds.), Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century, Berlin–Heidelberg, Springer, pp. 535–550. Brauch, H. G., Ú. Oswald Spring, J. Grin, C. Mesjasz, B. Chourou, N. C. Behera, P. Kameri-Mbote, H. Krummenacher (2009) (Eds.). Facing Global Environmental Change. Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Berlin, Springer.

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Brauch, H. G., Ú. Oswald Spring, C. Mesjasz, J. Grin, P. Dunay, N. C. Behera, B. Chourou, P. Kameri-Mbote, P. H. Liotta, (Eds.) (2008). Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century, Berlin, Springer. Brauch, H. G., Ú. Oswald Spring, C. Mesjasz, J. Grin, P. Kameri-Mbote, B. Chourou, P. Dunay, J. Birkmann (2011) (Eds.). Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security: Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks, Berlin, Springer. Brauch, Hans Günter (2005). “Environment and Human Security. Towards Freedom from Hazard Impacts”, Intersection, Bonn, UNU-EHS. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring (2009). Securitizing the Ground; Grounding Security, Bonn, UNCCD, Government of Spain. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Jürgen Scheffran (2016) (Eds.). Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace Handbook. Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace 10, Cham, Springer International. Brundtland, Harlem (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf. Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, Routledge. Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, New York, Routledge. Ceceña, Ana Esther (2014). “Del desarrollo al ‘vivir bien’: la subversión epistémica”, in Alicia Girón (Ed.), Del “vivir bien” al “buen vivir”, entre la economía feminista, la filantropía y la migración: hacia la búsqueda de alternatives, Mexico, IIEc-UNAM, pp. 11–22. CEPAL (2015). Balance Preliminar de la Economía en América Latina, Santiago de Chile, CEPAL. Commission for Environmental Cooperation (s.d). “The North American Mosaic: An Overview of Key Environmental Issues”, Montreal, NAFTA. Conabio-UAEM (2006). La diversidad biológica en Morelos, Estudio del Estado, in T. Contreras, F. Jaramillo, J.C. Boyas (Eds.), México, D.F., CONABIO-UAEM. Crutzen, Paul (2002). “Geology of mankind”, Nature, Vol. 415, No. 3, pp. 23. ESSC [Environmental Science for Social Change] (2016). Science in context, http://essc.org.ph/ content. FAO (2000). A Millennium without Hunger, Rome, FAO. FAO (2015). Status of World’s Soil Resources, Rome, FAO. FAO (2016). Climate change and food security: risks and responses, Rome, FAO. Garatuza, Jaime, Julio César Rodríguez, Christopher Watts (2011). “Environmental monitoring and crop water demand”, in Úrsula Oswald Spring (Ed.), Water resources in Mexico, Berlin, Springer. Gasca Zamora, José (2014). “Comunalidad y gestión social de los recursos naturales en la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca”, in Boris Marañón Pimentel (Ed.), Buen vivir y descolonialidad. Crítica al desarrollo y la racionalidad instrumentales, Mexico, D.F., IIEc-UNAM. GLADA (2008). Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands. Growjourney (2016). “Five Amazing Soil Facts That Will Change the Way You View the World”, https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=Grow+Journey,+nitrogen+cycle+figure&sa=X&espv= 2&biw=1366&bih=613&tbm=isch&imgil=QtSMY5Njj0PTlM%253A%253BnkaANuhouQt OEM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.growjourney.com%25252F5-facts-synt hetic-nitrogen-fertilizer%25252F&source= iu&pf=m&fir=QtSMY5Njj0PTlM%253A%252 CnkaANuhouQtOEM%252C-&usg=-YFMLNRtRv6gRKnQwCTFkuJ-0LH4%3D&ved= 0ahUKEwjTqqG5tLXQAhWJqlQKHfdPA5gQyjcIJQ&ei=lJQwWNOQJInV0 gL3n43ACQ# imgrc=QtSMY5Njj0PTlM%3A. GWP [Global Water Partnership] (2000). Towards Water Security: A Framework for Action, Stockholm, GWP.

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Huete, A., K. Didan, T. Miura, E.P. Rodriguez, X. Gao, L.G. Ferreira (2002). “Overview of the radiometric and biophysical performance of the MODIS vegetation indices”, Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 83, pp. 195–213. IEA [International Energy Agency] (2014). World Energy Investment Outlook, Washington, IEA. IFAD [International Fund for Agricultural Development] (2016). Tackling land degradation and desertification. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2012). Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014a). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014b). Climate Change 2014. Mitigation of Climate Change. Working Group III Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] (2012). “The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species”, www.iucnredlist.org/. IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] (2016). Plants Under Pressure Project, www.plants2020.net/document/0207/. Lacan, Jacques (1985). Escritos II, Mexico, D.F., Siglo XXI eds. Lagarde y de los Ríos, Marcela (1990). Los cautiverios de las mujeres. Madresposas, monjas, putas, presas y locas, México, D.F., PUEG-UNAM. Lamas, Marta (1996) (Ed.). El género. La construcción cultural de la diferencia sexual, Mexico, D.F., PUEG-Porrúa. Lamas, Marta (2002). Cuerpo: diferencia sexual y género, Mexico, D.F., Taurus. Lenton, Thimoty (2008). “Earth tipping points”. MA [Millenium Ecosystem Assessment] (2005). Ecosystems and the Human Well-Being, Washington, D.C., Island Press. Museum of Natural History, London (2016). cited in http://ecosistemas.ovacen.com/. NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] (2016). “The NOAA Annual Gas Index (AGGI)”. OCHA [United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] (1999). OCHA Orientation Handbook on Complex Emergencies, E:\Conflictos ambientales\Complex emergencies\OCHAORIENTATION HANDBOOKON COMPLEX EMERGENCIES.mht. Oswald Spring Ú., S.E. Serrano Oswald, A. Estrada Álvarez, F. Flores Palacios, M. Ríos Everardo, H.G. Brauch, T.E. Ruiz Pantoja, C. Lemus Ramírez, A. Estrada Villanueva, M.T.M. Cruz Rivera (2014). Vulnerabilidad social y género entre migrantes ambientales, CRIM-UNAM, Cuernavaca. Oswald Spring, Ú. (2009). “A HUGE Gender Security Approach: Towards Human, Gender, and Environmental Security”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change. Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, Springer, Berlin, pp. 1165–1190. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2013). “Dual vulnerability among female household heads”, Acta Colombiana de Psicología, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 19–30. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2016). “The Water, Energy, Food and Biodiversity Nexus: New Security Issues in the Case of Mexico”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (Eds.), Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective, Cham, Springer International, pp. 113–144.

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WHO [World Health Organisation] (2016). “An estimated 12.6 million deaths each year are attributable to unhealthy environments”, Geneva, WHO. WWF [World Wildlife Fund] (2016a). “Species directory”, Washington, WWF. WWF [World Wildlife Fund] (2016b). Living Planet Report 2016, http://www.worldwildlife.org/ pages/living-planet-report-2016.

Chapter 21

The Global South Facing the Challenges of an Engendered, Sustainable and Peaceful Transition in a Hothouse Earth

21.1

Introduction

The threats and potential tipping points of “Hothouse Earth” (Steffen et al. 2018) require an interdisciplinary scientific approach to address the climate, environmental, development, disaster, social, health, political, security and peace linkages and achieve a sustainable future. During the 2019 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF 2019) in Davos, representatives of governments and top managers of corporate enterprises noted that the greatest risks to humankind include extreme meteorological events (floods and storms), the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures and severe geophysical natural catastrophes (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, geomagnetic storms). Among the major interconnected risks they named extreme climate events along with the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Among individual and interconnected risks, the top corporate finance managers listed climate change threats as the key risk for people and the economy. Hopefully, this awareness among the top leaders of globally operating enterprises, which are the key polluters and responsible for a high portion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that produce climate change, may also put pressure on governments to drastically change the present business-asusual (BAU) approach of production and consumption and to shift their investments away from fossil fuels. This rising awareness among the leaders of corporate enterprises – especially the new high technology firms, which globally represent the wealthiest enterprises – may change the existing power relations (Foucault 1983), based on fossil oil and financial speculation. This means that the dominant agent in the political, social and economic arena may put pressure on rich governments to develop laws, regulations, financial instruments and technical tools to tackle the climate change threat effectively, and above all enforce their implementation to guarantee that CO2 emissions will not increase globally above 1.5 °C by 2050 (IPCC 2018). This would involve total decarbonisation and dematerialisation of the global economy, thus a radical © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9_21

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change in the productive and consumption processes. Such a drastic move would not only affect public space, but would also have repercussions for households and personal consumption patterns. Just two countries (China and the US) and the 27 (after Brexit) or, at the time of writing, still 28 European Union member states are the top emitters and contribute more than half of all GHG emissions. These 30 countries emit 14 times the amount of the bottom 100 countries, which only contribute 3.5% of GHG emissions to the process of global warming. Going further and adding to these 30 countries the 15 countries with high GHG emissions: India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, Iran, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine and Thailand among 182 countries, are responsible for more than three-quarter of all GHG emissions (WRI 2019). The Kyoto Protocol identifies six GHGs. The most prevalent of which is CO2 at 76% (including the ones produced by land use changes; Fig. 21.1), with methane (CH4) representing 16% and the four other types of gas – nitrous oxide (N2O), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons (collectively known as F-gases) – the remaining 8%. This composition is why the accounting

Fig. 21.1 Six gases producing global greenhouse gas emissions. Source IPCC (2014)

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system generally uses CO2e (equivalent) to facilitate comparison between countries and sectors. The energy sector represents 72% of all emissions, while agriculture, transportation, waste and its management have produced the remaining GHG (WRI 2019). There are alternatives which could drastically reduce these GHG emissions in the energy sector by replacing existing methods with energy-efficient, renewable energy sources and by capturing CO2e through massive reforestation. However, the share of renewables has only been increasing slowly, and primarily in a few developing countries. The Clean Energy Transitions Programme (CETP 2019) concentrated its first-year efforts in Asia (India 19% and China 17%), while in 2019/20 collaboration with Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and more extensive regions (Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia) will increase. The irrational behaviour which leads to GHG emissions by developed countries and fossil industries produces social, economic, political, health, security, gender, environmental, legal and cultural impacts, which mostly affect the people who emit fewer GHGs. It is bringing Earth and humankind to potential tipping points (see Chap. 13), which may be irreversible and could result in the mass extinction of animals and plants, as has occurred in the recent past (MA 2005), but may also include the extinction of human beings due to serious health problems, disasters, pollution, and lack of food, water and clean air. Nevertheless, the threats are not the same in the north and in the tropics. Most extreme events with high loss of human life, livelihoods, infrastructure and well-being occur in the Global South, while the insured objects in the Global North represent higher financial costs that do not threaten the survival and well-being of the people due to insurance protection. Therefore, climate change impacts are challenging the whole planet, although the Global South is more seriously affected. So far there is no other known planet that is accessible within human lifetime which has the same exceptional conditions of life as our Earth. Thus it is crucial to prevent further disasters, conserve and re-establish the extraordinary biodiversity, and restore the ecosystem services of our planet. To achieve these goals during the next decade, only drastic changes in fuel sources and energy efficiency may prevent irreversible tipping points (Steffen et al. 2018). Feminist critics have argued that the present power exercise is based on a consolidated patriarchal power system, whereby half of humankind is subjugated by the other half, referring to the domination of women by men. Additionally, the Global North controls the Global South through financial mechanisms, commercial treaties and intellectual property rights, through which the North also exploits precious natural resources (mines, oil, forests, plants and animals).1 To overcome

1

Without any doubt, China as an upcoming superpower is the biggest emitter of GHG globally, and has also used extensive natural resources, although the per capita of GHG is lower than that of multiple industrialised countries: China 6.59 compared with USA 15.53; Canada 15.32; Saudi Arabia 16.85; and Australia 15.83 metric tons/year (https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/ science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html).

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this global hierarchical structure, which is culturally consolidated, socially reinforced and legally protected, thousands of years of patriarchal dominance must be eradicated, starting with the mindset that puts the man over the woman. In this subjugation, women are relegated to the domestic sphere or to secondary roles, in which their voice has been silenced2 in multiple ways (Caballé 2006). Thus, a radical change in the productive and consumption processes simultaneously also requires the deconstruction of patriarchal power relations and the establishment and maintenance of equality among genders, races, ethnics and social groups that are today discriminated against, by empowering these underprivileged groups to achieve equality. Ecofeminism has linked exploitation and degradation of nature, women and other underprivileged groups to the same patriarchal power relations, today represented by financial and industrial multinational enterprises and reinforced by the dominant churches. The transformation of this deeply rooted and culturally reinforced patriarchal system, which has regional variations in the way it is manifested, is a challenge that may promote profound changes globally, where the upcoming risks of climate change and the increasingly more dangerous extreme events (IPCC 2012) may precipitate the transition. There is also pressure from the youth living in the South and the North, whose want to live on a planet with quality of life and beauty. Thus protecting natural and social factors, together with the progressive empowerment of women, may represent a global opportunity to overcome the system of violence that has emerged over thousands of years. All social, political and legal layers of patriarchy must be eradicated (Lagarde 2009) in order to grant the survival of humankind on Earth.

21.1.1 Research Questions This chapter will address the following research questions: 1. Confronted with climate change threats and the lack of binding agreements among the important emitters of GHG, how may collective and small-scale bottom-up efforts consolidate family livelihood, communitarian food sovereignty, disaster prevention and resilience-building among women and men through the eradication of the existing dominant patriarchal practices and, conversely, promote sorority among genders, casts, classes, ethnic groups and other minorities? 2. How can progressive groups and especially the youth globally help the rest of humans, governments and elites to understand the ‘Hothouse Earth’ emergency (Steffen et al. 2018) that we are living in, where the present system of

“Silencing the other, ignoring her, keeping her invisible is perhaps the most perverse form of domination” (Caballé 2006: 36).

2

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Introduction

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consumerism is producing an accelerated process of socio-environmental destruction and dangerous climate events? 3. Which social actors – women, indigenous, youth and open-minded men – may develop strategies and actions from bottom-up and top-down to create adaptation and resilience in a ‘Hothouse Earth’ with increasingly extreme events? 4. How to achieve the requisite cultural transition and behavioural transformations that change the world-view (Menchú 2004) of southern and northern governments and their people to limit the present climate threats, the irrational exploitation of natural resources, the pollution of air, soil and water, and the lack of food while simultaneously promoting a process of redistribution of wealth to achieve equal development by overcoming social and gender discrimination? 5. How could an organized society with an engendered-sustainable approach orientated towards sustainable livelihood and peace for everybody transform the dominant neoliberal world-view of greed, exploitation and the insatiable accumulation of wealth into an engendered-sustainable peace for everybody?

21.1.2 Structure of This Chapter This chapter first addresses the threats of the ‘Hothouse Earth’ that is anthropogenically produced by irrational production and consumerist behaviour and the patriarchal world-view of violence, exploitation, discrimination and submission. This irrational and profit-orientated behaviour of multinational enterprises and consumerism among wealthy people produces social, economic, political, security, gender, environmental, legal and cultural impacts that is bringing Earth and humankind to potential tipping points, which may be irreversible and could produce the extinction of human beings and many other species (21.1). After several research questions (21.1.1), which discuss the lack of action by governments, representatives of the business community and society as a whole (21.1.2), the author defines four key conceptual terms: transition, sorority, engendered-sustainable peace and elements of a bottom-up approach towards survival (21.1.4). Section 21.2 explores existing and upcoming threats for the Global South (21.2) and analyses Hothouse Earth and climate change impacts (21.2.1), the concentration of wealth and violence (21.2.2), famine, thirst and diseases (21.2.3) and forced environmental migration (21.2.4). The key questions of this chapter are linked to an alternative world-view that is able to overcome the patriarchal world-view and the culturally deeply rooted social practices evolved over thousands of years. Which new world-view could promote the decarbonised and dematerialised management of our productive processes and consumption (21.3)? Undoubtedly humankind evolved with different other species into greater complex contexts (21.3.1) thus we are only a small part of the complex ecosystem. However, the greed of corporate enterprises based on the destruction of

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natural resources and extractivism has affected this natural evolution. Exposed society, scientists and environmentalists have joined their voices to avoid the further destruction of the atmosphere, biodiversity, soil and water (21.3.2). From a feminist perspective of gift economy (Vaughan 1997), a caring position may offer alternatives to the present deterioration of ‘Mother Earth’ instead of strategies aimed at accumulation and exploitation (21.3.3). Other sustainable approaches are linked to a circular economy, agroecology, social economy, solidarity and collaboration among the less privileged and most vulnerable, which may grant their survival in increasingly adverse conditions (21.3.4). Subchapter 21.4 deals with adaptation. Two strategies are explored: the top-down (21.4.1) and the bottom-up (21.4.2). Confronted with stronger, unexpected and potential cascading impacts of extreme events, the resilience-building based on personal and collective efforts (21.5) can open new resilience possibilities. The Global South and its poor communities are learning that they are currently left alone to deal with the upcoming climate threats, which are mostly produced in the Global North (21.5.1). A key process to grant independence and livelihood to people is the consolidation of food sovereignty among poor countries (21.5.2), together with ecosystem conservation and ecosystem adaptation (21.5.3). Only the systematic and preventative management of air, soil and water will be able to deal with more adverse climate impacts, especially droughts and floods (21.5.4). Finally, as an outlook to the future scenario for the Global South, the chapter explores an engendered-sustainable future with peace, solidarity and sorority in order to grant even the most vulnerable people dignified living conditions (21.6).

21.1.3 Definition of Key Concepts 21.1.3.1

Transition

Among people and especially youths there is a growing desire to shape the world as a common space that is habitable and worth living in. There are multiple commitments from different social groups, communities, individuals and scientists to explore new ways for a good life and there is profound criticism of corporate enterprises and allied governments. In all these new approaches patriarchal logic is vanishing, and alternatives emerge from diverse cultural backgrounds and traditional knowledge approaches, which are able to overcome the paralysis of fear that limits contemporary governments and enterprises to act against the dynamic of destruction of the Earth. The Dutch School of Transition proposed a model that starts from local changes. According to Geels (2006), transitions towards fundamental change have always started in small niches. Some were technologically driven while others were more culturally-socially orientated. Grin et al. (2010) claimed that learning processes with new dimensions tend to promote socio-technological changes first at local level and later more generally at regime level. These include changes in technology, science,

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policy, market preference, culture and social relations that could promote new perspectives and habits of change. Having reached regime level, changes may produce greater shifts, often also as a result of serious disasters, where more global landscape developments may emerge. Once at the top level of landscape, the changes may be able to put pressure on the dominant regime, promote innovations and then greater shifts towards the sustainable management of the Earth and social relations. In concrete terms, to reduce the threats of ‘Hothouse Earth’, a transition would include decarbonisation and the mass use of renewable energies (Belausteguigoitia et al. 2014; REN21 2019), together with a dematerialisation of production and consumption. Several economic models also propose a circular, social or popular economy where all waste is recycled and products that are not recyclable are eliminated from the productive process (UNEP 2012; Collin 2014). A change of the regime includes on the political side new participative governance processes (in ’t Veld 2018), which may be able to exert pressure on corporate enterprises and their unsustainable behaviour and also force their government to implement changes in legal and political terms. A combination of alternative media, interdisciplinary research and models of greater accountability of polluting enterprises and productive processes, together with greater direct political participation, may create an arena for alternative sustainable processes. A key issue for achieving sustainability, and also the SDG 2030, is improving equality globally (Sen 1992) within the global society. When combined with the sustainable management of natural resources (Sun/Trudel 2017) and the respect and promotion of cultural diversity (Praetorius 2014), multiple reinforcing transition processes from bottom-up could emerge (Brauch et al. 2016). These integrated socio-environmental, political and cultural elements may be able to stop the increase of hothouse threats (Steffen et al. 2018). However, emitted GHG will continue in the atmosphere for a long time, and the existing anthropogenic alterations can only be reduced by the systematic capture of these GHG or processes of sinking and absorption by massive reforestation, restoration of natural areas, productive processes with minimal emissions of GHG or decarbonisation and a radical change in consumption towards dematerialisation and recycling.

21.1.3.2

Sorority

The term ‘sorority’ was developed by different feminists. The Mexican sociologist Lagarde (1997: 52) argued that Patriarchy is a generic social order of power, based on a mode of domination whose paradigm is male dominance. This order ensures the supremacy of men and of the masculine over the inferiorisation of women and of the feminine. It is also an order of domination of some men over others and of alienation among women. Our world is dominated by men. In it, women, to varying degrees, are expropriated and subjected to oppression in premeditated form.

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The hegemonic discourses, while they appropriated the symbolic contents, narrate what women have been, what they are and what they will be, distributing to each women or girl a specific role to occupy, guaranteeing the traditional order of things, of life, of culture, and of civilization. However, every time more alternative activities emerge, framed and emerging from the livelihood of the poor that claim, denounce, reverse or simply explain this hegemony.

The term ‘sorority’ emerged from the need to relate women with other women to question and modify their position of relegation designed by the patriarchal domain. Sorority is a political pact between women who recognise themselves as interlocutors. They relate without hierarchy, but know the authority of each one. Sorority is based on the principle of human equality and equal values among all people, because if female values are diminished by gender discrimination, the gender itself is also diminished, including that of men. There is also still a lot of androgenic thinking among women, thus sorority shares responsibilities and their pact exceeds social classes, economic or caste interests, cultural and even ideological diversity. It promotes equality, solidarity, justice, freedom, peace and collaboration, especially in moments of tension and social disadvantage. ‘Sorority’ is a policy goal that seeks to dismantle misogyny, a basic action for the empowerment of women and the construction of equality, and proclaims equality between women and men. It is a claiming aspect of the feminist discourse, in which this pact among women reveals a deep empathy that brings unrestricted support in the face of adversity. Sorority is a positive option for life, which goes to the roots of the disadvantage that harms, injures and constrains a dignified way of life for women and most men. Sorority is also an experimental field to overcome inequalities and it tests transformation. Given the often misogynistic nature of the representatives of the patriarchal order, women in positions of authority have to overcome the additional hurdle of being accused of being at enmity with their gender, which tends to sustain the morally negative characteristics. Sorority is also based on the principle of reciprocity that enhances diversity. It involves sharing resources, tasks, actions, successes and defeats with other human beings, women, children, handicapped, men and elders. It also includes the care of nature, climate, conservation of biodiversity, reuse of products, recycling the used ones and, above all, reducing consumerism among the upper class. Another contribution of the sorority is to make known the contributions of women, to cite them, to discuss their achievements and to support a constructive valuation not only of all human conditions but also of their achievements.

21.1.3.3

Engendered-Sustainable Peace

The concept of an ‘engendered-sustainable peace’ refers to the structural factors related to long-term violence, deeply embedded in the patriarchal system and characterised by authoritarianism, exclusion, discrimination, exploitation, and violence. Power is shared disproportionately between men and women, and women and children live in legal dependency of men.

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Patriarchy was historically expressed in the social organisation of the Fertile Crescent (Diamond 1997), where men dominated first within families and later within city states, where kings assumed the role of god or were god’s representative on Earth (see Chap. 12 in this volume). Engendered-sustainable peace is crucial to counteract the upcoming threats to the Global South, the massive migration of people due to climate change and the loss of livelihoods related to extreme events, rising sea levels, drought, floods, diseases and hunger. Transition, sorority and engendered-sustainable peace are some of the key concepts which allow alternatives for dealing with the threats of ‘Hothouse Earth’ to be analysed and proposed, focusing especially on the Global South. So far, despite global conferences, UN agreements, WEF risk analysis and a consensus among the scientists that climate change is one of the most dangerous threats to the survival of humankind, no binding agreement with real reduction of GHG emissions has been achieved and climate change impacts are disproportionally affecting poor Southern countries. Thus, the next subchapter reviews the existing and upcoming threats for the Global South, where the traditional problems of poverty resulting from colonialism, slavery and capitalist exploitation are now reinforced by climate change impacts.

21.2

Existing and Upcoming Threats for the Global South

Inequality, conquest, slavery, exploitation and discrimination are producing a sixth mass extinction of flora and fauna3 (Kolbert 2015) aggravated by climate change impacts (IPCC 2014) and extreme hydrometeorological events (IPCC 2012) with outcomes of environmentally forced migration (Oswald Spring et al. 2014). Socially and environmentally vulnerable regions and social groups suffer more from stronger and deadlier events, due to a lack of resilience and adaptation capacity, but also from their traditional lack of support and discrimination from local, national and international governments and organisations.

21.2.1 Climate Change: A Hothouse Earth Scientists (Steffen et al. 2018) and mass media are increasingly concerned about the impacts of climate change. However, multiple corporate and governmental interests are diluting the urgency, manipulating the causes or denying the key actors of the increase in GHG. However, also critically, mass media are not explaining the root The five extinctions were: End of the Ordovician period, 444 million years ago, 86% of species lost; late Devonian period, 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost; end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost; end of the Triassic period, 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost; and end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago, 76% of all species lost.

3

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causes and actors and therefore the possible alternatives to change. In a video promoted by the New York Times Magazine on 3 August 2018, Rich (2018) stated that 30 years ago we had the opportunity to avoid climate change impacts and that the political arena was ready to act: [I]n the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis. The world’s major powers came within several signatures of endorsing a binding, global framework to reduce carbon emissions – far closer than we’ve come since. During those years, the conditions for success could not have been more favourable. The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way – nothing except ourselves.

However, the ‘we’ of Rich includes the greatest polluters, such as oil and mining companies, the US Government and other interest groups, as a homogenous group, instead of pointing to the key destroyers of the Earth. Climate change has been on the political agenda since February 1979, when 50 nations agreed in Geneva at the first World Climate Conference that it was “urgently necessary to act”. In September 1989 the group of the seven largest industrial countries (G-7) in Toronto called for climate change to be placed on its political agenda. In 1988 the General Assembly of the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since 1990, five IPCC assessment reports (1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013/2014) have been published but no global binding agreement has been achieved, except the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992. In the Paris Treaty of 2015 only voluntary Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) were approved, but without a global methodology to account and effectively reduce GHG emissions or verify the implementation of legally binding agreements and the measures of the NDC. Thus the 1.5 °C objective will not be attained with the present national efforts and global climate diplomacy may be considered a failure, based on present projections of GHG emissions that are instead forecast to rise by more than 3 °C above the level of the Industrial Revolution of 1750–1780 by the year 2100 (IPCC 2018). The North American journalist Naomi Klein criticised Rich and accused capitalism and not human nature for the lack of policy actions against climate change. She discussed the reasons for the failures to address the global climate crisis in the 1980s and insisted: Because the late ‘80s was the absolute zenith of the neoliberal crusade, a moment of peak ideological ascendency for the economic and social project that deliberately set out to vilify collective action in the name of liberating ‘free markets’ in every aspect of life called ‘human nature’ kicked in and messed everything up (Klein 2018).

That time the opportunity was destroyed by a perverse alliance among governments and GHG-responsible industries. In 2019 a more complex scenario is occurring because the ice shields in Greenland, Antarctica and glaciers are melting dramatically. Massive algae blooms have evolved in China’s third largest lake, tons of sargassum (a seaweed) from the nutrient-rich region from the Amazon are invading the white beaches of the Caribbean, and hurricanes in a strong Niño year in 2005 needed the support of the Greek alphabet because their numbers exceeded

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the name previously fixed by the Roman alphabet. Further vector diseases, such as the Zika and Chikungunya viruses, spread from Africa to Asia and Latin America. Without any doubt extreme temperatures, stronger storms, longer and harsher droughts, vector diseases, landslides and bushfires are indicators of the acceleration of climate change impacts. A report of the US National Academy of Science (NAS 2019) at the request of the White House stated that “the carbon dioxide issue should appear on the international agenda in a context that will maximise cooperation and consensus-building and minimize political manipulation, controversy and division.”4 However, some officials in the White House also plan to create an ad hoc group to reassess this government’s analysis and counter the conclusion that fossil fuels are producing the GHG emission and producing the Hothouse Earth. Nevertheless, the global agreement among scientists based on analysis of the evidence demonstrates the contrary (IPCC 2013, 2018). Rich and Steinmetz (2018) asserted that if, at the end of the 1980s, the industrialised countries had adopted a reduction of 20% by 2005, global warming could have been kept below 1.5 °C. The Kyoto Protocol (1997) of the UNFCCC (1992) called for Annex A countries to reduce their GHG emissions by an average of 8% by 2012 compared with the base year of 1990 by 2010, but the implementation of the Protocol partly failed as only industrialised countries were obliged to reduce their CO2 emissions. Klein (2018) stressed that humankind would be fully able to organise societies that are capable of living within ecological limits, but it is the profits of multinational enterprises that have impeded global political action and promoted global unnecessary consumerism. The result is an extreme concentration of wealth in very few people, often achieved through murder, war, eviction and violence. In France the insistence on living a carbon-intensive life style, using highly polluting diesel in cars and the lack of willingness to change has resulted in violent opposition to Macron’s policies by the so-called Yellow Jackets, who wear hi-vis vests to signal their views. However, there are also other corporate enterprises, especially the high tech industry (Microsoft, Google and others), which do not rely on carbon intensive fuels except through electricity and are in the scientific vanguard of renewables and energy efficiency. Without any doubt, the present neoliberal model has concentrated wealth in few corporate enterprises, and land-grabbing and extraction activities in particular have not only evicted people from their traditional land, but have also destroyed the deep cosmogony of the territory, established by indigenous and peasant groups. This wealth concentration has been related to violence since the beginning of capitalism, when entire continents were conquered by armies and the original people expelled from their traditional livelihoods. Today, modernisation processes and landgrabbing are other ways to dispossess the people of their land and livelihood.

4

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-white-house-is-forming-a-panel-to-reassess-the-climatechange-consensus.

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21.2.2 Wealth Concentration and Violence Pickett and Wilkinson (2018: 2) claimed that “inequality eats into the heart of our immediate, personal world, and the vast majority of the population is affected by the ways in which inequality becomes the enemy between us”. In the UK, the Mental Health Foundation Survey of 2018 found that 74% of adults were so stressed at times in the past year that they felt overwhelmed and were unable to cope with their daily life.5 One-third had suicidal thoughts and 16% had self-harmed sometime in their lives. These figures were much higher for young people. “Research in 28 European countries shows that inequality increases status anxiety in all income groups, from the poorest ten per cent to the richest tenth. The poor are affected most but even the richest ten per cent of the population are more worried about status in unequal societies” (Pickett/Wilkinson 2018: 3). Besides the internal inequality, there is also a gap between the Global North and the Global South, preventing vulnerable people reaching the minimum needs for survival. All these inequalities produce stress, disparity, poverty, hunger and malnutrition, which are again reinforced by climate impacts in the Global South. The International Labour Organization (ILO 2018) published a study on salaries in 189 countries, which revealed that 10% of salaries in developed countries represent 48.9% of the 3.3 billion individuals engaged in employment. On the other side, 20% (650 million) of the lowest wage earners will need three decades to achieve the same wage as the other 10%. Further, real wages were reduced during 2018 and the internal wage difference is the highest in the upper-middle income countries, with a Gini in South Africa of 63.9. Additionally, the gender pay gap is the highest in Pakistan with a difference of 47.2, followed by Nepal with 34.5 and South Korea with 36.0, which increases for women with children. All these inequalities reduce life quality and often generate famine and malnutrition in poor countries and stress and disease globally (ILO 2018). This study and Picket and Wilkinson (2018) argued that inequality increases social unrest and disparity among people, and thus produces stress and disease. In poor countries eviction from their land, climate disasters, conflicts and droughts deprived people even of their food.

21.2.3 Famine, Thirst and Diseases In 2019, The Global Report on the Food Crisis (GRFC 2019: 2) observed that more than 113 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger requiring urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance … The worst food crises in 2018, in order of severity, were: Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, 5

See report at: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/news/stressed-nation-74-uk-overwhelmed-orunable-cope-some-point-past-year.

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the Syrian Arab Republic, the Sudan, South Sudan and north Nigeria. These eight countries accounted for two thirds of the total number of people facing acute food insecurity – amounting to nearly 72 million people.

The key drivers for this calamity are conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. But economic shocks mainly in Burundi, Zimbabwe and Sudan, but also in West, South and South East Asia, the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, together with climate change impacts and natural disasters in the Global South, are also destroying the livelihoods of people. Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Sudan, South Sudan and north Nigeria are expected to remain among the world’s most severe food crises in 2019. (GRFC 2019: 3)

Further, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018 by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO 2018) identified an estimated 821 million undernourished people and 150 million stunted children, which includes different scales of chronic food insecurity worldwide. Children, adolescents, pregnant and breast-feeding women in particular are the most vulnerable groups, whose chronic undernourishment produces severe repercussion for the physical and mental development of these children (see Chaps. 16 and 20). To overcome the dramatic food crises and the chronic undernourishment, conflicts must first be ended. There is a second crucial issue. The FAO has recently discovered that women are not only nourishing and educating their children and families, but that in the Global South they are also producing more than 70% of food in their orchards, occupying less than 2% of the land. By empowering women working on small plots of land, social safety networks at local level can be reinforced and undernourishment eliminated. Together with local marketing, transformation of food and nutritional education, women are crucial and capable of overcoming the chronic undernourishment and the severe hunger of their families, while also simultaneously mitigating the upcoming impacts of climate change and natural disasters. However, drought and other climate-related disasters, especially slow-onset processes like the loss or serious reduction of harvests for several years (IPRA 2014), could induce entire communities or families to abandon their villages and migrate to places where their survival is more easily granted.

21.2.4 Forced Migration Environmental migration is often understood as an adaptation to high environmental vulnerability and disastrous extreme events, where droughts are the silent killers of humans, livestock and ecosystem services (IPCC 2014; see Chaps. 18 and 19). Migration can be internally rural-rural and rural-urban, as well as international from rural and urban areas, where people cross borders to find better conditions of survival in rural or urban spaces in foreign countries. The analysis of domestic and international migration is complex and involves different disciplines. Globally it is

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related to specific risk factors and vulnerability, where human beings are analysed from an anthropological, psychological or sociological point of view. Both the internal and the international movements often focus on human rights and the protection of the vulnerable (children, handicapped, ill). In the final destination, there is a difference between integration as full citizens in new socio-cultural contexts and habitation in ghettos and highly risky areas in the suburbs of megacities in the Global South. Further, the analysis of international migration also focuses on the legal status of migrants as refugees or asylum seekers, whereby existing international legal systems, their evolution, implementation and ongoing changes increase or reduce the possibility of making a successful living in a foreign country or urban context. All these factors have had drastic impacts on the routes and cost of any movement. Due to a global policy primarily in industrialised countries of closing borders to socio-economic and environmental migrants, the illegal crossing of borders is increasingly managed by organised crime, with human, organ and drug trafficking, prostitution and slavery often being the undesired outcomes of these restrictive border controls (Gemenne 2011; Passel/D’Vera 2016). As climate change impacts will displace increasing numbers of people not only in small islands and coastal areas, but also in the drylands, there is an urgent need to find ways to grant these displaced populations better human rights conditions and safety during the process of movement. However, the industrialised countries which have mostly contributed to the GHG emissions are increasingly less ready to compensate for the outcome of their industrialisation process, and the selfish xenophobic tendency of populist politicians, parties and movements is exerting pressure on more responsible governments. The result is greater suffering for those less responsible for these climate change impacts, who often pay with the loss of their life for an increasingly dangerous migration process. Thus, a different ethical approach is required to change the present model of egoism and selfish behaviour adopted by industrialised countries and their governments.

21.3

An Alternative World-View with an Engendered Commitment

Plants grow up from the ground with their roots in the nutrients that are in the soil. Traditional mythologies always understood Earth and humankind as a whole, and photographs taken from spaceships have reinforced the global interdisciplinary understanding of the interactions between nature and humans. However, the anthropocentric orientation of Western philosophy and religion, reinforced by Descartes and Bacon in the seventeenth century, propagated an understanding of nature as a soulless machine for the exclusive use of humankind, basically the occidental male-dominated world. Endless ‘growth’, ‘profit’ and ‘progress’ for an increasingly smaller elite also permeated the ‘development philosophy’ in the

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Global South, reinforced by colonialism, slavery, mercantilism and governmental corruption. In the 1980s ‘eco-philosophy’ (Drengson 1997), ‘ecological spirituality’ (Taylor 2001) and ‘ecopsychology’ (Khan 2009) emerged and questioned the anthropogenic understanding of the management of Earth. Some feminists (Mies 1985; Warren 1997; D’Eaubonne 1974; Aguilar 1997) developed an ecofeminist approach, finding that the same androgenic mechanisms of exploitation, violence and domination have subjugated both women and nature (Aguilar 1997). Thus, an alternative approach to nature and social organisation requires patriarchal dominance based on corporate elites, undemocratic governments and male-dominated religions to be unravelled globally. An integrated gender approach could comprise: Gender = Women’s Vulnerabilities + Women’s Power − Men’s Privileges (understood as dominance, risk-taking and aggression), since the greatest threat to the survival of humanity and the integrity of ecosystems is currently the global elite. In this new equation an understanding of the needs of the most vulnerable groups but also of nature fosters change towards co-responsibility between humans and nature, due to the fact that we are only one small part of the complex ecosystem setting on Earth (MA 2005). During the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s evolutionary history, humanoids only appeared in the last few million years, the agricultural revolution occurred about 8,000 years ago, the industrial revolution from 1750, and the globalisation process with neoliberalism and intensive use of fossil energy only since the 1950s. This last process led Crutzen (2002) to speak of a global change in Earth history, which he called the ‘Anthropocene’. Although humankind appeared only recently, humans belong to this Earth and are part of its evolution. In a few decades, globalisation and massive use of fossil oil have changed the history of Earth and produced severe damage in its systemic interactions though urbanisation, land use change, deforestation, the pollution of land, air and oceans, and GHG emissions. Thus, new behaviour must be promoted globally, due to the fact that we belong to these ecosystems, but we are not the owners of nature. The key question is how can we re-establish the destroyed equilibrium and recover the ecosystem services?

21.3.1 We Belong to This Earth; We Are Not Its Owners: Degrowth The present climate and environmental crises are challenging the dominant neoliberal capitalism among most of the world’s society, due to increasingly strong and more frequent disasters. Among critical analysts (Steffen et al. 2018), affected people and younger generations all over the world the changing Earth processes have brought about a new perspective, dubbed ‘Nowtopia’ by Carlsson and Manning (2010) with reference to people who have dropped out voluntarily or lost

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their formal jobs because of robotisation.6 Globally, multiple decentralised social movements have emerged, especially among the youth, who know that their future depends on radical changes to the production and consumption system. Changes always occur from daily practices among people who join and trust others in order to find alternative methods. Among critical people degrowth is one of these alternatives, whereby unemployed and alternative thinkers are exploring new ways to live within a different productive and consumer model. They care radically about their reduction of environmental and carbon footprints and explore sustainable ways of life and earning a living. Further, Hickel (2019) has asserted that growth produces more GHGs and may trigger the Earth towards its potential tipping points faster (Steffen et al. 2018). On the other hand, living with less energy is undesirable, especially for people in the Global South who lack energy and clean water. But it is also undesirable in the Global North, where people depend on electricity and the internet in almost all their daily activities. Nonetheless, renewable energies cannot just provide enough energy, often in a decentralised way, but may also produce environmentally friendly and sustainable abundance. The great enemies of change or transition are the multinational energy producers, sometimes also national monopolies of energy, which are against decentralised generation of energy and renewables. However, the concept of degrowth is wider and includes the decommodification of goods and the potential to organise production and consumption within ecological limits. Such a model includes public transportation, green public housing, and public ownership of energy, where renewable energy sources lead the way to a clean economy, where human and indigenous rights are granted and women are empowered and equally involved in the transformation process. It means a drastic change in the dominant world-view away from accumulation and profit at any cost (capitalism or neoliberalism) towards sustainable management of the available and recyclable resources. To reach this process of integrated environmentalism, there exist multiple obstacles from the dominant capitalist system.

21.3.2 Environmentalism Versus Capitalism A sustainable future world-view with environmentalism opens an ideological battleground, where industries, governments, parties, citizens, scientists and environmental groups have to find a path which leads away from climate change threats and the destruction of ecosystems. There was once a global possibility, when the entire society united to combat the ozone hole, changed their daily habits, found a technical alternative, reduced the CFC emissions which affected the tropospheric O3, and finally agreed the Montreal Protocol.

6

The ILO (2019) estimates that in South East Asia 7.1 million jobs could be lost in 2020 and about 137 million jobs by 2040 due to automation and robotisation.

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Today, the conditions are more complex and a 3 °C increase in the temperature will produce disasters globally which especially affect small Caribbean and Pacific islands and most of the coastal cities in the world, due to massive melting in the Artic, Greenland, Antarctica and the glaciers. In vast areas of China, India, America and also in the drylands of Europe deserts will be devoid of any agricultural production and rivers may dry out, creating largely uninhabitable (IPCC 2018) areas with high temperatures. To counter these dangerous outcomes different policy proposals are in elaboration and could be synthesised under the term ‘degrowth’. The key proposals are replacing fossil dependency with energy efficiency and renewable energies, and redistributing the existing income by expanding access to public goods for the poorer. Most proposals include job guarantees and shortening the working week, and some countries experiment with a basic salary for everybody (Van Parjis/ Vanderborght 2017). The key tool of any degrowth policy is the redistribution of existing income within countries through progressive tax charges and an integrated environmental policy with clean air, water, soil and sustainable urban and rural development. As Silver (2003: 179) asserted, “the early twenty-first century is the struggle not just against one’s own exploitation and exclusion, but for an international regime that truly subordinates profits to the livelihood of all”. Thus the struggle of class and exploitation of capitalism analysed by Marx was transformed into a global struggle for the survival of humankind. How do we change the dominant world-view of greed and profit against humans and the Earth (Hickel 2019) in order to produce a global movement for life and livelihoods for everybody and all ecosystems? The transition process toward sustainability includes new equilibrium in demography (Zlotnik 2016), decoupling of resource needs (Sjovaag 2016), alternative green urbanisation (Delgado 2018), water, food and health sector modification (Tortajada/ Keulertz 2016), and also a new governance structure (in ’t Veld 2016) and international and national resource efficiency in policy-making (Happaerts 2016). Thus, only new behaviour patterns, radical understanding of the emergency, fundamental modification of the political decision-making processes and deep changes in personal living and livelihood conditions could avoid the catastrophic outcomes of ‘Hothouse Earth’. This means overcoming the dominant model of accumulation at any cost and finding new ways to grant quality of life to everybody.

21.3.3 Caring Instead of Accumulating Several ways have been explored by the dominant corporate capital. One is related to risk-transfer through insurance, but insurance companies do not cover ‘slow-onset events’ such as drought or periodic small floods, basically because of the loss of profits or high insurance premium. Other market-orientated mechanisms do not take human rights and gender discrimination into account. Green funds managed by the World Bank exclude specific categories, but leave open the

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possibility of supporting fracking or biomass projects. Catastrophe bonds are ‘risk spreading’ and the customers in the most vulnerable countries would have to pay a high premium and in exchange receive low negotiation power. Further, with a business-as-usual approach, no fund can generate the revenue required to match the disaster funds of USD 300 billion in 2030 or 1.2 trillion in 2060 (IPCC 2018). Therefore, a market economy based on capital accumulation cannot resolve the upcoming costs of climate change impacts and only a radical new paradigm may enable even poor and vulnerable states to survive. For centuries women have spent much of their life caring for their children, husband and elderly, mostly without any payment. This ‘gift economy’ is based on relationships and is not a transaction for profit or personal gain. Different anthropologists (Malinowski 1945; Mauss 2009; Moore 1998) have discovered in traditional societies the use of gift economies to build and consolidate communities. Vaughan (1997) understood the maternal gift as an alternative economic model to the present capitalist system based on an exchange of money for goods and services, which is deeply patriarchal. Her gift economy is qualitatively orientated, engenders creativity and creates positive relationships, because it is geared to the satisfaction of direct needs, including emotional stability. This creates links, communication and a sense of community. Her giving and receiving produce trust and interdependence and promote solidarity with the most vulnerable people. Thanks to this gift economy, humankind has developed and survived during disasters and plagues. The ‘gift-giving’ remains largely unconscious, but influences thinking and behaviour to also enable peaceful negotiation processes. Without any doubt a small baby depends entirely on the support of its mother and father, and without permanent interaction with human beings, this creature will not develop as a human. ‘Gift giving’ is misrecognised by the capitalist system as valueless, and the unpaid work of women in the household has got lost in the accounting of the national economy and the GDP. Nevertheless this gift economy is the direct opposite of the exchange economy based on market values. The powerful message of ‘gift giving’ represents a threat to the dominant capitalistic ideology, which tries to limit it by victimising people and promoting alternative models of poverty alleviation, basic needs and social support policies, patrimonialism, etc., in order to limit the self-destructing impacts of capitalism. However, in absolute terms, poverty has increased globally, and living conditions not only in the Global South, but also in the Global North, have deteriorated in multiple countries, especially the US (UNEP 2018; Anurag/Jazila 2016). The ‘gift giving’ or mothering value is not only a highly creative process, but is independent of states and international organisms. Indigenous cultures have maintained multiple practices and gift aspects in their cultures to consolidate their cosmovision (López Austin 2004) and to resist colonialism and capitalism (Coulthard 2010; Betasamosake Simpson 2017). Therefore, caring is the key process for consolidating social relations among humans and may be an alternative model for survival,

21.3

An Alternative World-View with an Engendered Commitment

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whereby solidarity and sorority in the hands of women and sensible men are key actors for a paradigm shift, able to promote the emergence of a new global sustainable model of well-being for everybody.

21.3.4 Solidarity and Sorority Many social movements from the Global South, as well as the Global North, have promoted an integrated approach to global warming, including solidarity and sorority for those heavily affected by climate change impacts. Globally, these groups have fought against the corporate capture of different UN organisations (e.g. the World Bank, IMF, FAO, among others) and promoted the direct participation of women, youth and social movements (La Via Campesina), whereby marginalised people got a voice too. What is their impact? Demilitarisation, peace and gender equity are forming part of the SDG 2030, which require funding and commitment from top-down and bottom-up. A key problem is still the lack of critical approaches in international organisations, governments, parties and some NGOs to eliminate fossil extraction and promote renewable energy with the clear goal of decarbonising the planet by 2030. International organisations are financed by government contributions and represent the global state system. On the other hand, sorority or gift-giving relates not only to the solidarity of women with other women, but includes all socially vulnerable groups which are generally marginalised or excluded from the capitalistic system because they are considered unproductive. They include increasing groups of unemployed youth, small-scale peasants, small traders, informal workers, the under-employed, indigenous people, the disabled, and other marginal groups affected by climate change impacts. Thus sorority may help to modify their position of relegation designed by the patriarchal domain. It includes a human, cultural, social and political agreement between women and men, those discriminated against, children and the elderly for an alternative model of society and cosmovision. Sorority further recognises every excluded person as a valid interlocutor, helps to organise them and establishes relationships of solidarity with those in need. La Via Campesina in the South and the North has used this gift-giving behaviour to promote their agroecology and support peasant schools and universities, sustainable integration for small business and services for the handicapped. More regionally, some Southern countries, especially in Latin America, fight against organised crime, linked with corrupt governments, enterprises and international money laundering. Multinational enterprises of extractivism often include illegal activities (murder, displacement, human trafficking), but are frequently protected by national governments and pressure groups, and also by unjust international conventions and treaties which favour destructive extractions (Arach 2018). The compensation for abolishing corrupt contracts often destroys the scarce resources of poor countries, due to excessive payment obligations. These enterprises are destroying the natural resources with mining, tourist facilities,

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dam-building, and industrial agriculture, which entails the demolition of pristine forests (Burbano et al. 2018). All these practices not only produce threats and poverty, but also destroy crucial ecosystem services, leading to the loss of food and water security and an increase in poverty and marginalisation among vulnerable groups, while a privileged small sector obtains the profit from these destructive activities (Barrera 2018). Instead of well-being, these corporate companies create precarious jobs among local employees, where women in particular are badly paid and the young labour force often gets polluted and sick from agrochemical and mining activities. The end result of this extractivism (Arach 2018) is greater poverty, environmental destruction and illness for people who have lost confidence in their governments because they are not protecting them. But these activities also increase GHG emissions and create new threats during disasters, due to deforestation, landslides, pollution and flash floods. Furthermore, without any doubt, climate change impacts are happening and affecting countries in the Global South more seriously, due to their location in the tropics and their high degree of social and environmental vulnerability (Oswald Spring 2014). Therefore, different dependencies of the UN, based on its SDG 2030, governments and social organisations are training people to deal better with upcoming extreme events (UNISDR 2005, 2015). Bangladesh, a country highly exposed to cyclones and extreme events, was able to substantially reduce the death toll of humans and livestock, thanks to adaptation measures, early warning and preventative evacuation from risky locations. However, the question remains how to offer and improve adaptation measures for the most vulnerable as well, especially when extreme events increase and get stronger (IPCC 2012)?

21.4

Adaptation for Whom?

21.4.1 Adaption from Top-Down The IPCC (2014) defined adaptation as “the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects”. Scientists added that organisms, humans and institutions have different abilities to adjust and take advantage of opportunities or to avoid potential damage and reduce negative consequences of harm. However, most governments in developing countries care more about the stability of the economic success of big enterprises and less about a decarbonised productive system. Therefore, these governments still subsidise fossil energy and limit the support for renewables. The IMF (2018) found that the poorest 40% received only 7.4% of gasoline subsidy benefits, while the richest 40% received 83.2%, and fuel subsidies can even damage supply. The International

21.4

Adaptation for Whom?

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Energy Agency (IEA 2017a, b) estimated an additional investment of $56 USB (billions of US dollars), while subsidizing fossil fuel in 2015 was $425 USB, which is equivalent to 7.5 times the money required for universal access to electricity and clean cooking facilities. The present business as usual (BAU) model with pipelines and massive investment in fracking and refineries creates pressure for corporate enterprises to amortise their long-term investments with profits, therefore adaptation still faces a lot of obstacles. All these dominant economic pressures make it harder to achieve the goal of keeping the temperature increase below two degrees. This means that the world will probably lose its beautiful tropical reefs, sea-levels will rise, and food and water security in the tropics may disappear for small-scale farmers and fishers due to permanent drought, thus more conflicts and forced migration may emerge (IPCC 2014). Nevertheless, scientists across the whole world, politicians from affected islands and poor countries and people suffering under extreme weather events are pressuring their governments to establish tougher regulations in order to diminish GHG emissions. As noted above, 15 countries emit three-quarters of all CO2e. Would it be possible for committed citizens and governments in these countries to put pressure on their industries to drastically reduce the emissions of GHGs, promote reforestation and technologies to capture CO2e and encourage their citizens to eat a climate-friendly diet? As Fig. 21.2 indicates, governments and dependencies of the UN still promote a basically top-down adaptation policy (IPCC 2012) in which global projections, multilateral partners and global goals, such as the SDG 2030

Fig. 21.2 Adaptation. Source IPCC (2012: 346)

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(UN 2015) and the Sendai principles (UNISDR 2015), are at the centre of global policies. Nevertheless, the most affected countries, especially those in Africa, still lack sustained financial support to implement an integrated adaptation strategy.

21.4.2 Adaptation from Bottom-Up Confronted with greater risks and losses, the communities in the Global South are experimenting with their own adaptation practices often related to traditional knowledge and wisdom. But also in the Global North increasing opposition has evolved against the extreme high salaries of CEOs, the reduction of taxes for corporate enterprises and the lack of a coherent climate policy. Thus, the neoliberalism promoted by the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan in 1989 increasingly faces opposition from a growing movement of people with environmental and social understanding, supported by rigorous scientific analysis. The elections for the European Parliament in April 2019 indicated some advances for this vision, although outspoken groups of climate change deniers and sceptics also became more powerful. In New York massive protests have occurred against the Trump administration’s lack of climate policy. These socio-environmental movements and some parties call for concrete alternatives to the undemocratic extractivist policies supported in the past by both socialists and liberals and functioning presently in different countries (Arach 2018). As governments are still too much controlled by multinational enterprises and financial speculation, youth and environmental movements are taking up the policy of renewables and some of the degrowth philosophy and solidarity practices in order to consolidate, both locally and globally, the movement to safeguard humankind and the Earth (Hickel 2019). In the Global South, La Via Campesina and movements against dams and mining are allying with local groups against unsustainable development projects and promoting alternative policies of decentralised renewable energy systems, agroecology, an economy of solidarity and gift economy to support the highly affected people. Cuba led by example by planting millions of trees to reforest regions which are generally affected by the path of hurricanes. Further, women in poor countries produce their own food, while agribusiness companies mostly cultivate biofuel crops. This small-scale agroecological management and recycling of waste reinforces not only food security at local level, but also grants safe food to people in poor and affected regions. In all these cases, efficient governmental support that includes integrated water management and credits women could massively increase adaptation capacity, especially in regions highly exposed to extreme events, and reduce the losses arising from disasters.

21.5

21.5

Resilience-Building Based on Own Capacities in the South

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Resilience-Building Based on Own Capacities in the South

Confronted with a global economic system based on individual profit, many communities, families and individuals have had to cope alone with stronger, unexpected and cascading impacts of climate change (Steffen et al. 2018). Thus building resilience to often unknown outcomes of climate change is increasingly orientated towards strengthening self-reliant efforts. Existing survival strategies and new experiences with extreme events are helping the Global South and especially its poor communities to learn that they must cope alone with the impending climate threats for which the industrial countries of the Global North have historically been primarily responsible. As the global political arena is different compared with the neoliberal time of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, in 2015 the UNGA adopted the SDG 2030 and now local, national and citizen movements are supporting global education and actions for sustainable development to mitigate ‘Hothouse Earth’. Some governments, including Chile, have started to charge speculation taxes on financial transactions, and the Tobin tax is discussed globally to limit upcoming financial crises. Several countries have started levying carbon taxes or other financial mechanisms to finance the reduction of GHG emissions and to obtain the financial resources to mitigate CO2e, for example by restoring natural areas, coastal and mountainous ecosystems, water and air pollution in cities (WHO 2017), together with an integrated management of solid and liquid sewage (Miezah et al. 2015; WHO 2018). Energy returns on investment (EROI), also called ecological energetics, calculates the amount of energy that is used in order to produce a certain amount of energy for electricity. EROI is demystifying traditional energy efficiency understanding based on fossil fuels, which did not include in its accounts the socio-environmental externalities paid by the whole of society and the environment (WHO 2017, 2018). Because of the global climate change impacts, these negative outcomes are today clearly understood (IPCC 2018). There is also some stress on governments to reduce the subsidies for fossil fuel7 and transfer this money to renewable energy sources, although the political lobby of oil companies still pressures industrialised and developing governments. China, as the greatest global emitter of GHGs, has substantially reduced the costs of wind, thermal solar and photovoltaic energy (REN21 2019). Further, industries are establishing quality standards and best practices, whereby ISO 26000 guidance on social responsibility, together with the International Labour

“G7 countries provided at least $100 billion annually (2015 and 2016) in government support for the production and consumption of oil, gas and coal, both at home and abroad in more than 50 countries around the world. This included $81 billion in fiscal support through direct spending and tax breaks; and $20 billion in public finance on average per year in 2015 and 2016” (Whitley et al. 2018).

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Fig. 21.3 Synthesis of alternative efforts. Source Mother Pelican (2014)

Organisation (ILO 2018, 2019),8 is promoting human standards for all workers to overcome the exploitation often linked to forced and sexually exploited labour force. The cheapest way to reduce GHGs is still energy efficiency, and industries and consumers are interested in getting new items to save all types of resources that are necessary for modern life (IEA 2015, 2017a, b). In Finland and some other Nordic countries, a guaranteed basic personal income is explored, which would eliminate all types of support for vulnerable people, including pension funds. This attractive proposal may reduce corruption, bureaucracy and avoid people being left out, but implementing it globally would require substantial public funding, which cannot be offered in developing countries (Van Parjis/Vanderborght 2017). Mother Pelican 2014 systematised some of these alternative efforts in Fig. 21.3, which applies especially to the Global North. But what about the Global South, whose governments must first guarantee people the development of basic public services and simultaneously have to struggle with increasing climate disasters, rising sea levels, organised crime and chronic and new emerging diseases, often related to climate change?

21.5.1 The Global South Is Alone: Promoting Living Well Household consumption in the mountains of Peru and in a middle-class family home in Germany is not the same (Fig. 21.4), and the amount of garbage and sewage is also totally different. Metabolic patterns of consumption co-evolve with The estimates of ILO “show that 20.9 million people around the world are still subjected to it. Of the total number of victims of forced labour, 18.7 million (90%) are exploited in the private economy, by individuals or enterprises, and the remaining 2.2 million (10%) are in state-imposed forms of forced labour. Among those exploited by private individuals or enterprises, 4.5 million (22%) are victims of forced sexual exploitation and 14.2 million (68%) of forced labour exploitation. Forced labour in the private economy generates US$150 billion in illegal profits per year: two-thirds of the estimated total (or US$99 billion) comes from commercial sexual exploitation, while another US$51 billion results from forced economic exploitation, including domestic work, agriculture and other economic activities” (ILO 2019).

8

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Fig. 21.4 Food consumption by an indigenous family in the Peruvian Andes and by a middle-class family in Germany

household changes in relation to the rest of the economy. Therefore subsistence production and food sovereignty at household level (see Chap. 16) are not the same in indigenous communities in Peru, where most consumed products are recycled and transformed into compost, as in Germany, where a middle-class family buys primarily industrial food and produces enormous amounts of waste that could not easily be recycled. Thus, the patterns of goods and services should be better coordinated by governments to promote a change in society in the produced and the consumed food items. The indigenous Aymara in the Andes have systematised and divulgated their philosophy of ‘living well’. In their cosmovision a good life entails equilibrium between the requirements of nature and humans, which were guaranteed in the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador. Their ‘living well’ includes happiness as a guiding principle of life and embraces personal and family spheres as well as work. Social integration, dancing, and moderation in eating, drinking and working create a happy life. Special attention is placed on respect for and care of the elderly and children, along with the protection of nature. In the same spirit, the bolsa familia (family allowance) granted in Brazil during the Lula and Dilma governments every family, child and elderly person enough food for a stable life. In facing the dominant neoliberalism promoted in the Global North, southern countries have low negotiation powers against multinational enterprises and global capital. Just three companies (Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch) control 95% of the global credit rating business (Forbes 2019). Therefore, several countries are avoiding or reversing former privatisation processes in their countries, often related to corruption among past governments. Their key interest is maintaining the basic supply of food, water, health and education. In most Latin American countries most ethnic and indigenous groups are still discriminated against. To grant their basic constitutional rights, legal frames of plurinational and diversified states were accepted to strengthen equity and increase equality among these marginalised ethnic groups. In some countries two legal systems coexist: the traditional indigenous rules (‘usos y costumbres’) and a modern constitution.

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This dual legal system should also protect the human rights of the most marginal ethnic groups. These indigenous societies are further defending the rights of Mother Earth, which include more than space and time, and their traditions and style of life and beliefs integrate respect for others and nature. These indigenous groups consider themselves to belong to the universe. They are totally immersed in a telluric cosmovision with socio-political, ecological and conflict resolution content (Oswald Spring 2004). These principles of life usually collide with both extractivism and the privatisation of space and services. However, free trade agreements, the World Trade Organisation and other UN institutions are denying these rights, and in international tribunals indigenous people have often lost their telluric rights, while their governments are forced to compensate the multinational mining companies with extremely high fines based on estimated profits. All these financial resources for polluting corporate enterprises reduce the potential for development and disaster risk-reduction policies in remote areas.

21.5.2 Indigenous Zapatistas Another radical model of indigenous delinking from the capitalist system has occurred since 1994 in the mountains of Chiapas in Mexico. Leading by obeying (mandando obedeciendo) was a key call of the Zapatistas when they promoted an uprising in the indigenous state of Chiapas in Mexico on 1 January 1994 to protest against the signing of theNorth American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by the US, Canada and Mexico. Since the outset, the national struggles of these indigenous peoples have been globally orientated. “We have been exploited, repressed, hated and stripped by centuries of bosses until today, the end of 2014” (Zapatistas 2012/2013).

Their struggle was not only about race, languages, nationalities or generations, but about the ‘disease called capitalism’, with every family in the whole world that suffers from capitalist exploitation being championed. From the beginning the Zapatistas opposed corporate multinational enterprises, because “we only want to live in peace without exploitation of man by man, with equality between men and women, with respect for what is different, and to decide together what we want in the countryside and in the city”. They would not accept any public support from the Mexican government and developed their self-reliance. Their system of law stresses the collective responsibility to serve and also opposes exploitation at any level. Their local authorities represent the people and do not supplant some types of collective democratic decision-making process to maintain the system, as it has happened in the past in Mexico. Their philosophy is to build and not to destroy by achieving consensus about sometimes very contradictory issues. Leaders must obey the people and cannot command. They can propose but not impose, and agreements are achieved by discussion. The key principle of the Zapatistas is going down and not going up (which includes the

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Resilience-Building Based on Own Capacities in the South

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work from the most vulnerable jobs to the highest ones), with woman ‘equally participating before the bullets’ (during the armed uprising), which means they are involved in all the existing activities. The Zapatistas also valued their collective memory, which includes the historical experience of parents and grandparents and their myths. This identity gives the Zapatistas the opportunity to speak with the people and to avoid academic discourse, in which the global world is generally transformed in a very abstract way, but the key problems of the dominant capitalism are not criticised and alternative ways of life are not explored.9 The integration of all generations from the past and the present has allowed them to deepen their knowledge of the truth about daily life that occurs at home, but also in the world. Thus, a key practice of the indigenous of Chiapas is a participative governance in order to eradicate the extreme corruption and to overcome the discrimination of indigenous, women, children, the handicapped and other vulnerable groups in Mexico and elsewhere. Their understanding of governance differs from that of representatives in the UN system,10 but includes decision-making processes through collective discussions, where everybody participates and learns about consensual agreements. To avoid social stratification, the leadership rotates yearly and is without payment. The community cares about the well-being of their momentary leader and his or her family. A basic principle is equality in leadership of women and men and the active and equal participation of men and women in decision-making processes. Special care and training are given to young girls and boys in order to qualify them for an alternative lifestyle and a democratic decision-making process. Social inconformity and changes of authority were publically discussed and the decisions were taken by collective agreements. As Menchú (2004) argued, the prevention of crime is a task for the whole community, and the punishment of an offence and the reintegration of the offender is the result of intensive work within the community, and discussions about the fault with elderly women and men so that the offenders can be gradually reintegrated into the indigenous community. A key principle is social solidarity in the case of personal need or disasters not only among the Zapatistas, but also with other marginal and indigenous communities, as occurred in September 2017 during the severest earthquakes in Mexico, when Zapatistas sent food and medicine to the affected communities. The political model of the Zapatistas is represented by a shell (caracol). “For the first time in our history we met representatives of our five Boards of Good Government and our Autonomous Municipalities Zapatista Rebels (called Marez)

Specifically, the ‘Green Economy’ or the ‘Green Deal’ represents these efforts of multinational organisations to green the environment without promoting any alternative democratic anti-capitalist processes. 10 Weiss and Thakur (2010) defined participative governance as “the complex of formal and informal institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among states, markets, citizens and organizations, both inter- and non-governmental, through which collective interests on the global plane are articulated, rights and obligations are established, and differences are mediated”. 9

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to talk publicly about our humble work and about all the problems and challenges we face. We are not an example, we will only try to show you what we are doing with a lot of trouble but also eager to build another world, one where the one who commands, commands obeying” (speech of Lieutenant Colonel Moisés, a leader of the Zapatista). This model represents a globally organised way of life, based on values, norms, beliefs, institutions and productive processes, including the development of science, knowledge, wisdom and technology. This model is transmitted from generation to generation by formal and informal processes that are similar to those of the Aymara communities in the Andes. It is a learning process which includes acculturation and enculturation that is founded on basic indigenous values. It is not grounded on natural laws, but on socially constructed ones, where interests that maintain and reinforce structures of power and mechanisms of control are criticised and abolished. As most of these values are so deeply internalised, they are generally perceived by the people as natural, such as the discrimination of women and children, an intensive process of deconstruction of negative values started by the Zapatistas. In 2012/2013 the Zapatistas established a balance of their achievements: They do not need us to fail. We do not need them to survive. We, who never left even if they were determined to make believe the media of the whole spectrum, resurfaced as indigenous Zapatistas that we are and will be. In these years we have strengthened and we have significantly improved our living conditions. Our standard of living is higher than that of the indigenous communities related to the governments in turn, who receive the alms and waste them in alcohol and useless articles. Our homes are improved and without hurting nature by imposing paths that are not sustainable. In our villages, the land that was used to fatten the cattle of farmers and landowners now is for corn, beans and vegetables that illuminate our tables (Zapatistas 2012/2013).

Without any doubt, extractivism, production, distribution, commercialisation and waste – mainly coming from the so-called developed countries or regions, but increasingly also from the emerging countries – have altered the planetary balance to such a critical extent that this affects the life of our planet, and also our own lives and livelihoods, especially among the most vulnerable sectors, who pay a very high price – sometimes their lives – for the welfare of a few. Beyond these two examples of indigenous societies, other alternative models are emerging, which could generally be called ‘social economy’, or an ‘economy of solidarity’ or a ‘gift economy’.

21.5.3 Economy of Solidarity Millions of former peasants – many of them indigenous people – have become the industrial working class or self-employed marginal urban dwellers, who do not know the traditions of the workers of the twentieth century, but who carry with them a community vision that allows them to identify their enemy and its

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exploitation more quickly. They have also understood the deep crises in which they are involved. Without any doubt, the present crises are complex and permanent and tend to get worse not only for indigenous and migrants, but for almost everybody of the world who does not belong to the select group of the top rich. The complexity of these crises comprises work, income, energy, food, environment, climate, the economy, society, education and the legal system that is based on occidental laws, security, livelihood and culture. Therefore, a global crisis of civilisation exists that has affected the whole world. Scientists have proposed alternative models to capitalism such as communism (Marx), neoliberalism (Margaret Thatcher, Donald Reagan), a ‘Third Way’ (Giddens 1998) etc., but all of them have resulted in further violence, the discrimination of women, exploitation, the destruction of natural resources and climate change. The present risks and threats are so serious that not only the Earth and its interaction are at stake, but even the survival of humankind. The consolidated model of capitalism and neoliberalism, with its irrational behaviour, has produced a new geological era by transforming the Holocene into the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002). In almost all religions, the hegemonic vision from evolutionary biology perceived humans as the supreme achievement, which also justified the supremacy of men over nature. During the last 500 years of capitalism and four decades of neoliberalism the economy has become separated from society and nature. Natural products were commodified and the economy was the key achievement of occidental science. Later, necessities and services were also merchandised, and the traditional support among neighbours, communities and countries systematically disappeared, with the exception of the caring services of mothers and fathers for their family and women for their society. Anthropologists explained that the traditional interchange produced reciprocity (Meillasoux 1999) and the cycle of the gift is give – receive – give again – receive, etc., which maintains solidarity and respect among these interchanges. The key interchange model is the Earth, which offers multiple ecosystem services. In this “4.54 billion years old planet, life is perhaps as much as 3.7 billion years old, photosynthesis and multi-cellularity dozens of times independently around 3.0 billion years old, and the emergence of plants, animals, and fungi on to land, by at least the Ordovician period, perhaps 480 million years ago, forests appearing around 370 million years ago, and the origin of modern groups such as mammals, birds, reptiles, and land plants subsequently” (PAS 2017: 1). Homo sapiens appeared only during the last million years. The era of the Holocene started about 11,700 years ago, when humans developed and settled in small communities. No consensus exists among geologists when exactly the Anthropocene started. The majority of experts agree that the Anthropocene started with the great acceleration in the 1950s and they observed that during this short time air, soil, water and biodiversity have changed in such a significant way that most ecosystem services have declined ever since. How could these gift-giving processes be restored? For several centuries, markets have been the key global paradigm of production and consumption, although

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the role of markets in the modern economy has drastically changed (Godelier 1976) with the globalisation process (Stiglitz 2007, 2016). Nevertheless, cooperatives and some other social systems of interchange, such as the ejido in Mexico, remain. Collins (2014) argued that the ‘economy of solidarity’ is today in an ambivalent position and offers on the one hand a better world and on the other an option for poor people. Coraggio (2009) estimated that between the dominant market economy and the tiny social economy a mixed economy has emerged. Laville (2009) suggested that the States should transfer a part of the market economy to the social sector. Cattani (2003) asserted that the social economy or economy of solidarity is not a route to capitalism, and Collin (2014: 115) claimed that on the contrary, it supposes a radical upheaval of their bases of support, since there is consensus, in the various proposals, as to what arises and is based on principles opposite to capitalism, therefore operates with a different logic. The social economy is not aimed at oriented production to profit, accumulate and concentrate wealth, nor part of the premise of the existence of scarce goods and the consequent struggle for their appropriation.

It represents a new paradigm and is social, because it promotes the social tissue, therefore it is a type of associative economy, where both producers and consumers satisfy their necessities without maximising their profit. The economy of solidarity differs, promoting solidarity with other human beings, with nature and with culture (Collin 2014). Collin compared both economies and found that the economy of solidarity is able to promote interchanges, produce reciprocity, and generate labour, cultural beings and a sustainable and ethical consumption when participative solidarity exists thanks to the interchange. Conversely, the market economy prioritises the accumulation of profits, the production of wealth, is depersonalised and addicted to money; there is a fetishised interchange and increasing control of consumers through a hierarchical-mechanical participation. By instituting new practices and new conceptions, a new habitus (Bourdieu 1972) is created and the way of perceiving, evaluating and acting gets modified, which supports this culture of solidarity and care (Bourdieu/Wacquant 1995). Richards (2018: 316–317) claimed that in different parts of the world an economy of solidarity still exists: everything mentioned above as a solidarity economy improvised in times of crisis; the public sector, parts of the private sector, the non-profit sector, the cooperative sector, and what Coraggio calls ‘the people’s economy’. I repeat that the popular economy is made up of the many self-employed people and small business people who are in business to make a living, but who do not accumulate any considerable amount of capital.

He concluded: to subordinate all ecological and social objectives to the overriding objective of making investors confident that their investments will be profitable, it will be possible to solve many problems that today appear to have no solutions. Accumulation just for the sake of accumulation can become responsible management. The private appropriation of the social surplus can become the commitment of persons with a moral compass to serve the common good (Felber 2015). Surplus can be prudently recycled, partly to future production and

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partly to social spending – especially the surplus from the new advanced technologies. Through both public and private channels, resources can be transferred from where they are not needed to where they are needed. The excluded can be included by funding the separation of the right to live from the necessity of selling. Instead of standing around the streets dealing drugs, hustling, hooking, or just wandering around depressed, the formerly excluded can develop their talents (for example musical talent) or do useful work (for example planting trees to reverse global warming) while robots do the grunt work that in earlier times was done by human beings. (Richards 2018: 317–318)

21.6

Outlook: An Engendered-Sustainable Future with Peace, Sorority and Solidarity

Confronted with this crisis of civilisation, among the six billion people in the Global South who have consciously reinforced traditional efforts to survive in this ‘Hothouse Earth’ there are key actors who were generally disregarded and whose work was not visible in the dominant capitalist system. Ina Praetorius (2014) asserted that Women’s achievements for civilization are traditionally focused on the well-being of individuals and groups, often within the context of families and communities. In addition, there exist still more or less strict rules for women defining their public and political articulations almost everywhere, limiting their full participation. Their interests, values and contributions to a well-functioning society are often belittled as irrelevant, disregarded and derided as naive. In spite of this it is a matter of fact that no coexistence would be possible without the daily sense-giving and life-encouraging activities of women…Therefore, I call on women and others who are primarily focused on caring and nurturing to come out of the background and proclaim their ways of successful living together. Here I see a global perspective for peace already put into practice but that needs to be realized, appreciated and lived even more. (Praetorius 2014)

The idea that there is no other horizon than the sole one of capitalism is erroneous, and instead of Margaret Thatcher’s proclamation that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) (Mies 1985), ecofeminists have asserted that ‘there are many alternatives’ (TAMA). To grant the survival of ‘Mother Earth’, we must go beyond capital accumulation and its mechanisms of profit, violence, destruction and exploitation. A brighter future is not under the total control of a single superpower, corporate enterprises or an international organisation which can enforce legally binding commitments contained in treaties and conventions. These approaches – often promoted by left-wing intellectuals, mostly men – triggered cynical resignation among critical people, disaster prognosis that paralysed and created inactivity, and messianic hopes for help from outside, which never arrived. To find a new world-view, these approaches did not help to foster understanding of the deeply intertwined power structures developed by dominant men over thousands of years of patriarchy. In indigenous societies, cultural products are shared by all members of society and this sharing links people together, consolidates their identity patterns and

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anchors social representations (Serrano 2010) and community feelings (Menchú 2004). This cognition process legitimises deep structures of beliefs, behaviours and complex relationships and explains the interdependence between the ongoing progressive destruction of both natural and human systems on Earth. As a result, individuals and social actors, institutions, regimes and world-views require fundamental changes by moving from the dominant cornucopian world-view of capitalist consumerism to the complex, interdependent and sustainable biological-human system, where ‘gift-giving’ and caring are at the centre of human activities. This approach has the potential to save Mother Earth and its gift-giving ecosystem services, reduces the threats of Hothouse Earth and also gives the most vulnerable the opportunity to survive. This alternative paradigm is currently the sole one capable of saving a biodiverse and beautiful planet. As there are no similar planets in reach with the same conditions for survival, urgent and drastic changes are required. Decarbonisation and dematerialisation are two key processes to reduce the pressure on Earth. Both developments require an integrated view and balance, which are linked to equilibrium between humankind and nature. Realising a sustainable peace (Chap. 3) may restore the environment and protect the ecosystem services offered for free (Fig. 21.5). Achieving positive peace may re-establish harmony among social groups and also grant freedom to the most

Fig. 21.5 A utopia of a HUGE peace and security. Source The Author

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vulnerable people. Agreements between governments, social groups and vulnerable countries and people may constrain corporate capitalism and reduce the conflicts over land, water and ecosystems. With empowered women an engendered peace may spread the gift-giving economy, in which the basic needs of everybody are covered by limiting the plunder of global capital. Structural peace is crucial for a stable future, so governments and international organisations must redistribute the social inequality among countries, social groups, gender and people. Equality is a way and equity is a tool that will allow justice, where creativity may emerge in a cultural and biodiverse context to recover the lost balance between Earth and humans. The synthesis is an integrated human, gender and environmental peace and security, a HUGE security with harmony, sustainability, diversity, equality and equity that offers diverse ways to achieve these goals. These integrated efforts may allow humankind as a whole to survive and ensure a future for coming generations. The time frame to achieve this utopia is very short and what is not completed in the next decade may be lost for ever.

References Aguilar Fernández, Susana (1997). El Reto del Medio Ambiente, Madrid, Alianza Universidad. Anurag Prathipati, Stephan, Lulu Jazila (2016). Human Security and its Challenges. An approach for global peace and sustainable prosperity, New York, UN. Arach, Omar (2018). “‘Like an Army in Enemy Territory’. Epistemic Violence in Megaextractivist Expansion”, in Ú. Oswald Spring, S. E. Serrano Oswald (eds.), Risks, Violence and Peace in Latin America, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 101–112. Barrera Hernández, Abel (2018). “Human rights, Peace and Security in Mexico and in La Montaña, Guerrero”, Ú. Oswald Spring, S. E. Serrano Oswald (eds.), Risks, Violence and Peace in Latin America, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 155–174. Belausteguigoitia, Juan Carlos, Carlos Muños-Piña, Mariza Montes de Oca, Santiago Ramírez, Artemisa Aguirre, Rodrigo Gonzales, Ana Paula Gil, Renata Lozano, Raul Livas, Marisol Fonseca (2014). Attaining Sustainable Development of Oil and Gas in North America. Appendix: Mexico Policy Briefs, Washington, D.C., Resource for the Future. Betasamosake Simpson, Leanne (2017). As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1972). Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre, Loic Wacquant (1995). Respuestas. Por una antropología reflexiva. México D. F., Editorial Grijalbo. Brauch, Hans Günter, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Jürgen Scheffran (2016). Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer International Publishing. Burbano Nathaly, Maleli Linares, Fabiola Nava (2018). Socio-environmental risks and conflicts in Colombia, in Ú. Oswald Spring, S. E. Serrano Oswald (eds.), Risks, Violence and Peace in Latin America, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 113–128. Caballé, Anna (2006). Una breve historia de la misoginia, Barcelona, Lumen. Carlsson, Cris, Francesca Manning (2010). “Nowtopia: Strategic Exodus?”, Antipode, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 924–953. Cattani, Antonio (2003). La Otra Economía, Puerto Alegre, Editora Veraz Ltda. Collin Harguindeguy, Laura (2008). “La Economía Social y Solidaria”, CLASCO, http:// bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/Costa_Rica/dei/20120710101354/economia.pdf. Collin Harguindeguy, Laura (2014). Economía Solidaria: local y diversa, Tlaxcala, Coltlax.

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Coraggio, José Luis (2004a). De la emergencia a la estrategia, Buenos Aires, Espacio Editores. Coraggio, José Luis (2004b). La Gente o el Capital, Buenos Aires, Espacio Editores. Coulthard, Glen (2010). “Place against Empire: Understanding Indigenous Anti-Colonialism”, Affinities, November. Crutzen, Paul J. (2002). Geology of Mankind, Nature, Vol. 415, No. 6867, p. 23. D’Eaubonne, Françoise (1974). Le Féminisme ou la Mort, Paris, Pierre Horay. Delgado Ramos, Gian Carlo, Maryke van Staden, Edgar Villaseñor Franco (eds.) (2018), Diálogo Mexicano de Talanoa, CDMX, CEIICH-UNAM. Drengson, Allan (1997). “An Ecophilosophy Approach, the Deep Ecology Movement, and Diverse Ecosophies”, The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Vol. 14, No. 3, Summer, pp. 110– 111. Felber, Christian (2015). Change Everything. Creating an Economy of the Common Good, London, Zed. Forbes (2019). GLOBAL 2000. The World’s Largest Public Companies, Forbes, 15 May. Foucault, Michel (1983). “Afterword: The Subject and Power”, in Hubert Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow (Eds.) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Geels, F.W. (2006). “Major system change through stepwise reconfiguration: A multilevel analysis of American factory production (1850–1930)”, Technology in Society, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 445– 476. Gemenne, Francois (2011). “How they became the human face of climate change research and policy interactions in the birth of ‘environmental migration’ concept”, in Etienne Piguet et al. (Eds.), Migration and Climate Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 225– 2511. Giddens, Anthony (1998). The Third Way: Renewable of the Social Democracy, London, Polity Press. Godelier, Maurice (1976). Les sociétés précapitalistes, PUF, Paris. GRFC (2019). Global Report on Food Crises, Rome, FSIN, FAO, WFP, IFPRI. Grin, John, Jan Rotmans, Johan Schot (2010). Transition to Sustainable Development. New Directions in the Study of Long-term Transformative Change, New York, Routledge. Happaerts, Sander (2016). “Discourse and Practice of Transition in International Policy-making on Resource Efficiency”, in H.G. Brauch et al. (eds.), Handbook on Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 869–884. Hickel, Jason (2019). “Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance”, Real-World Economics Review, No. 87, 54–68. IEA [International Energy Agency] (2015). Energy Efficiency Market Report 2015, Paris, OECD-IEA. IEA (2017a). Energy Efficiency 2017, Paris, IEA. IEA [International Energy Agency] (2017b). 2017 Energy Access Outlook, Washington, IEA. ILO [International Labour Organisation] (2018). Global Wage Report 2018/19. What lies behind gender pay gaps, Geneva, ILO. ILO [International Labour Organisation] (2019). “International Labour Standards on Forced labour”, Geneva, ILO. IMF (2018). “Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates”, IMF Working Paper WP 18/19, Washington, IMF. in ’t Veld (2016). “Governance of Sustainable Development in Knowledge Democracies – Its Consequences for Science”, in H.G. Brauch et al. Handbook o Sustainability Transition and Sustainable Peace, Cham, Springer International Publishing, pp. 855–868. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2014). Fifth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Geneva, WMO/IPCC. IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] (2012). Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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International Peace Research Association (IPRA)

Founded in 1964, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) developed from a conference organized by the “Quaker International Conferences and Seminars” in Clarens, Switzerland, 16–20 August 1963. The participants decided to hold international Conferences on Research on International Peace and Security (COROIPAS), which would be organised by a Continuing Committee similar to the Pugwash Conferences. Under the leadership of John Burton, the Continuing Committee met in London, 1–3 December 1964. At that time, they took steps to broaden the original concept of holding research conferences. The decision was made to form a professional association with the principal aim of increasing the quantity of research focused on world peace and ensuring its scientific quality. An Executive Committee including Bert V A. Röling, Secretary General (The Netherlands), John Burton (United Kingdom), Ljubivoje Acimovic (Yugoslavia), Jerzy Sawicki (Poland), and Johan Galtung (Norway) was appointed. This group was also designated as Nominating Committee for a 15-person Advisory Council to be elected at the first general conference of IPRA, to represent various regions, disciplines, and research interests in developing the work of the Association. Since then, IPRA has held 27 biennial general conferences, the venues of which were chosen with a view to reflecting the association’s global scope. IPRA, the global network of peace researchers, has held its 25th General Conference on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in Istanbul, Turkey in August 2014 where peace researchers from all parts of the world had the opportunity to exchange actionable knowledge on the conference broad theme of ‘Uniting for sustainable peace and universal values’. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9

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International Peace Research Association (IPRA)

The 26th IPRA General Conference took place from 27 November to 1 December 2016 in Freetown, Sierra Leone on the theme: Agenda for Peace and Development: Conflict prevention, Post-conflict transformation, and the Conflict, Disaster and Development Debate. The 27th IPRA General Conference took place in Ahmedabad, India, 24–27 November, 2018 on the theme Innovation for Sustainable Global Peace. The 28th IPRA General Conference was in Ahmedabad, India, 24–27 November, 2018 on the theme Innovation for Sustainable Global Peace. The next General Conference will be in Nairobi, Keny during January 2021. On IPRA: http://www.iprapeace.org/ On the IPRA Foundation: http://iprafoundation.org/

IPRA Conferences, Secretary Generals and Presidents 1964–2018

IPRA general conferences

IPRA Secretary Generals/Presidents

1. Groningen, The Netherlands (1965) 2. Tallberg, Sweden (1967) 3. Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia (1969) 4. Bled, Yugoslavia (1971) 5. Varanasi, India (1974) 6. Turku, Finland (1975) 7. Oaxtepec, Mexico (1977) 8. Königstein, FRG (1979) 9. Orillia, Canada (1981) 10. Győr, Hungary (1983) 11. Sussex, England (1986) 12. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1988) 13. Groningen, the Netherlands (1990) 14. Kyoto, Japan (1992) 15. Valletta, Malta (1994) 16. Brisbane, Australia (1996) 17. Durban, South Africa (1998) 18. Tampere, Finland (2000) 19. Suwon, Korea (2002) 20. Sopron, Hungary (2004) 21. Calgary, Canada (2006) 22. Leuven, Belgium (2008) 23. Sydney, Australia (2010) 24. Mie, Japan (2012) 25. Istanbul, Turkey (2014) 26. Freetown, Sierra Leone (2016) 27. Ahmedebad, India (2018)

1964–1971 Bert V. A. Röling (The Netherlands) 1971–1975 Asbjorn Eide (Norway) 1975–1979 Raimo Väyrynen (Finland) 1979–1983 Yoshikazu Sakamoto (Japan) 1983–1987 Chadwick Alger (USA) 1987–1989 Clovis Brigagão (Brazil) 1989–1991 Elise Bouding (USA) 1991–1994 Paul Smoker (USA) 1995–1997 Karlheinz Koppe (Germany) 1997–2000 Bjørn Møller (Denmark) 2000–2005 Katsuya Kodama (Japan) 2005–2009Luc Reychler (Belgium) 2009–2012 Jake Lynch (UK/Australia) Katsuya Kodama (Japan) 2012–2016 Nesrin Kenar (Turkey) Ibrahim Shaw (Sierra Leone/UK) 2016–2018 Úrsula Oswald Spring (Mexico) Katsuya Kodama (Japan) 2019–2020 Christina Atieno (Kenya) Matt Meyer (USA) Presidents The first IPRA President was Kevin Clements (New Zealand/USA, 1994–98) His successor was Úrsula Oswald Spring (Mexico, 1998–2000)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9

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About the Author

Úrsula Oswald Spring (Mexico), full time Professor/ Researcher at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) in the Regional Multidisciplinary Research Center (CRIM), she was national coordinator of water research for the National Council of Science and Technology (RETAC–CONACYT), first Chair on Social Vulnerability at the United National University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU–EHS); founding Secretary-General of El Colegio de Tlaxcala; General Attorney of Ecology in the State of Morelos (1992–1994), National Delegate of the Federal General Attorney of Environment (1994–1995); Minister of Ecological Development in the State of Morelos (1994–1998). She was President of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA, 1998–2000) and General Secretary of the Latin-American Council for Peace Research (2002–2006) and is Secretary General of IPRA (2016–2018). She studied medicine, clinical psychology, anthropology, ecology, and classical and modern languages. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Zürich (1978). For her scientific work she received the Premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (2005), the Environmental Merit in Tlaxcala, Mexico (2005, 2006), and the UN Development Prize. She was recognized as Women Academic of UNAM (1990 and 2000); and in Women of the Year (2000). She works on nonviolence and sustainable agriculture with groups of peasants and women and is President of the Advisory Council of the Peasant University. She has written fifty-seven books and more than 379 scientific articles and book chapters on sustainability, water, gender, development, poverty, drug consumption, brain damage due to undernourishment, peasantry, social vulnerability, genetically modified organisms, bioethics, and human, gender, and environmental security, adaptation, resilience, climate-induced migration, peace and conflict resolution, democracy and negotiation. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9

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Among her major publications are: (co-author with Rudolf Strahm): Por esto somos tan pobre (translated into 17 languages); Unterentwicklung als Folge von Abhängigkeit (Berne: Lang, 1978); Mercado y Dependencia (México, D.F.: Ed. Nueva Imagen, 1979); Piedras en el Surco (México, D.F.: UAM-X, 1983); Campesinos Protagonistas de su Historia: la Coalición de los Ejidos Colectivos de los Valles del Yaqui y Mayo, una Salida a la Cultura de la Pobreza (México, D.F.: UAM-X, 1986); Estrategias de Supervivencia en la Ciudad de México (Cuernavaca: CRIM/UNAM, 1991); Fuenteovejuna o Caos Ecológico (Cuernavaca: CRIM/UNAM, 1999); Peace Studies from a Global Perspective: Human Needs in a Cooperative World (Ed.) (New Delhi: Mbooks, 2000); (co-author with Mario Salinas): Gestión de Paz, Democracia y Seguridad en América Latina (México, D.F.: UNAM–CRIM/Coltlax, Böll, 2002); El recurso agua en el Alto Balsas (Ed.) (México: IGF, CRIM/UNAM, 2003); Soberanía y Desarrollo Regional. El México que queremos (Ed.) (México, D.F.: UNAM, 2003); Resolución noviolenta de conflictos en sociedades indígenas y minorías (Ed.) (México, D.F.: CLAIP, IPRA & Böll Fundation, COLTLAX, 2004); El valor del agua: una visión socioeconómica de un Conflicto Ambiental (COLTLAX, CONACYT, 2005); International Security, Peace, Development, and Environment, Book 39: Encyclopaedia on Life Support Systems (Ed.) (Paris: UNESCO—EOLSS, UK, online); Gender and Disasters (Bonn: UNU–EHS, 2008); (co-ed. with H. G. Brauch, C. Mesjasz, J. Grin, P. Dunay, N. Chadha Behera, B. Chourou, P. Kameri-Mbote, P. H. Liotta), 2008: Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century (translated into Chinese); (co-ed. with H. G. Brauch, J. Grin, C. Mesjasz, P. Kameri-Mbote, N. Chadha Behera, B. Chourou, H. Krummenacher (translated into Chinese), 2009: Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts; (co-ed. with H.G. Brauch): Reconceptualizar la Seguridad en el Siglo XXI, 2009; (co-author with H. G. Brauch: Securitizing the Ground—Grounding Security and Seguritizar la Tierra—Aterrizar la Seguridad (Bonn: UNCCD), 2009; (guest co-ed. with H. G. Brauch and M. Aydin of a special issue of Uluslararasi Iliskiler/International Relations, 5,18 (Summer) Special Issue on ‘Security’, 2009: (co-ed. with H. G. Brauch, C. Tsardanidis and Y. Kinnas: Greek translations of 7 chapters, vol. 3: Globalization and Environmental Challenges, in: Agora, Spring 2010; (co-ed. with H. G. Brauch, C. Tsardanidis and Y. Kinnas): Greek translations of chapters, vol. 4: Facing Global Environmental Change, in: Agora, Summer, 2010; Retos de la investigación del agua en México (Ed.), 2011, CRIM–UNAM, CONACYT, México; Water Research in Mexico, Springer Verlag, Berlin; Coping with Global Environmental Change: Disaster and Security (co-ed. with H. G. Brauch, C. Mesjasz, J. Grin, P. Dunay, N. Chadha Behera, B. Chourou, P. Kameri-Mbote, P. Dunay, J. Birkmann) 2011 (translated into Chinese: 应对全球环境变化、灾难及安全——威胁、挑战、缺陷和风险); “Can health be Securitized?”, Human evolution 2012, 27 (1–3), 2015, pp. 21–29; “Vulnerabilidad social en eventos hidrometeoro-lógios extremos: una comparación entre los huracanes Stan y Wilma”, SocioTam, 2012, 22 (2) (July–Dec), pp. 125– 145.; “Forced migration, climate change, mitigation and adaptive policies in

About the Author

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Mexico. Some functional relationships”, International Migration, 2013 (co-author with I. Sánchez, G. Díaz et al.); “Water security and national water law in Mexico”, Earth Perspectives, 2013: vol. 1, núm. 7: 1–15. “Dual Vulnerability among Female Household Heads”, Acta Colombiana de Psicología, 2013: 16(2), pp. 19–30; Vulnerabilidad Social y Género entre Migrantes Ambientales, (co-author with S. E. Serrano, Adriana. Estrada, F. Flores, M. Ríos, H. G. Brauch, T. E. Ruíz, C. Lemus, Ariana Estrada, M. Cruz), 2014, CRIM, DGAPA–UNAM, Cuernavaca; Expanding Peace Ecology: Security, Sustainability, Equity and Peace, 2015, (co-ed. with H. G. Brauch, K. G. Tidball) Berlin, Springer Verlag; “Human Security”, 2014, (co-author with N. Adger et al.), Fifth Assessment Report, IPCC, WG 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 755–791; “Cambio Climático, Salud y Género”, 2014, (co-author with A. R. Moreno, O. Tena, in: M. Ímaz et al. (Eds.). Cambio climático, miradas de género, México, UNAM, pp. 85–136; América Latina en el Camino hacia una Paz Sustentable: Herramientas y Aportes, 2015: (co-ed. with S. E. Serrano, D. de la Rúa) ARP, FLACSO, CLAIP, Guatemala; México ante la Urgencia Climática: Ciencia, Política y Sociedad (co-ed. with X. Cruz, G. C. Delgado), 2015, CCEIICH, CRIM, PINCC, UNAM; “Water Security: Past, Present and Future of a Controversial Concept”, 2015, (co-author with J. Bogardi, H. G. Brauch), in: Handbook on Water Security, C. Pahl-Wostl, A. Bhaduri, J. Gupta (Eds.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 38–58; “Seguridad humana”, in C. Gay, C. Ruiz (Eds.), 2015: Reporte Mexicano de Cambio Climático GRUPO II Impactos, vulnerabilidad y adaptación, PINCC– UNAM, pp. 183–210; co-ed. with S.E. Serrano Oswald: Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin America: 40 Years of the Latin American Council of Peace Research (CLAIP), 2018; co-ed. with H.G. Brauch, A.E. Collins, S.E. Serrano Oswald (Eds.), 2018: Climate Change, Disasters, Sustainability Transitions and Peace in the Anthropocene (Cham: Springer Nature, Switzerland); Ú. Oswald Spring, Úrsula (2019). Úrsula Oswald Spring: Pioneer on Gender, Peace, Development, Environment, Food and Water, Series: Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol. 17, Cham, Springer International Publishing; Ú. Oswald Spring (2020). Reconceptualizar la seguridad y la paz: Una antología de estudios sobre género, seguridad, paz, agua, alimentos y alternativas, Cuernavavaca, CRIM e IER-UNAM (in press); co-ed. with M.R. Hernández Ponce, M. Velázquez Gutiérrez (2020). Transformando al Mundo y a México. Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible 2030: justicia, bienestar, igualdad y paz con perspectiva de género, Cuernavaca, CRIM-UNAM. Email: [email protected]. Website: http://www.afes-press.de/html/download_oswald.html.

Index

A Abnormality, 377, 378 Abundance, 31, 52, 53, 93, 99, 222, 266, 339, 378, 399, 543, 594 Accountability, 144, 585 Acculturation, 606 Achievement, 15, 35, 71, 74, 78, 168, 178, 206, 225, 242, 344, 551, 586, 606, 607, 609 Adaption, 22, 359, 598 Africa, 3, 4, 7, 9, 17, 31, 32, 35–38, 53, 59, 61, 64, 65, 68, 72, 76, 79, 80, 82, 83, 87, 105, 116, 117, 119, 123, 124, 135, 140, 164, 165, 183, 200, 203–205, 209, 227, 236, 243–245, 255, 256, 263, 285, 287, 298–300, 302, 307, 311, 342, 355, 370, 396, 408, 483, 545, 551, 554, 560, 565, 567, 580, 581, 589–591, 600, 619 Agreement(s), 13, 24, 30, 35, 40, 41, 48, 52, 71, 81, 94–96, 105, 106, 129, 143–146, 148, 149, 153, 155, 156, 171, 207, 227, 236, 239–241, 244, 258, 268, 285, 294, 309, 315, 334, 358, 360, 387, 402, 403, 415, 416, 421, 429, 430, 439, 452, 454, 456, 461, 473, 486, 517, 527, 544, 548, 551, 572, 582, 587–589, 597, 604, 605, 611 Agriculture, 9, 19, 20, 24, 34, 38, 48, 50, 53, 60, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 89, 114, 117–121, 123, 124, 127, 130, 135, 143, 146, 150–152, 156, 167, 171, 200, 202, 204–206, 208, 209, 229, 236, 238, 244, 264, 268, 271, 290, 316, 340–342, 352, 354–356, 359, 361, 372, 381, 384–386, 394, 395, 398, 399, 402–408, 420, 429,

431, 440, 458, 462, 463, 466, 474, 501, 511, 515–518, 520, 524, 527, 535, 536, 543, 546–549, 552, 561–564, 568–570, 572, 573, 581, 598, 602 Agroecology, 394, 395, 405–408, 584, 597, 600 Ahimsa, 10, 32, 36, 59, 60, 84, 86, 87, 89, 130, 183 Air, 4, 6, 33, 44, 45, 53, 54, 69, 70, 85, 94, 103, 105, 114, 115, 124, 126–128, 130, 137, 138, 141–143, 197, 198, 205, 229, 235, 236, 242, 245, 271, 285, 288, 290, 291, 313, 314, 319, 332, 339, 359, 365, 366, 376, 382, 394, 395, 403, 407, 420–422, 428, 437, 457, 460, 464, 490, 500, 504, 509, 511, 532, 543, 544, 546, 551, 554, 559, 565, 569, 570, 581, 583, 584, 593, 595, 601, 607 Altermundism, 169, 181, 240 Alternative(s), 5, 6, 8–10, 13, 22, 24, 25, 39, 47–51, 54, 60, 62, 63, 65, 67, 71, 76, 85, 86, 88, 89, 94, 127, 128, 148, 151, 156, 166, 169, 174, 180–182, 200, 205, 207, 209, 224, 227, 236–242, 246, 265–270, 272, 292, 293, 296, 314, 316, 318, 319, 329, 332, 334, 357, 387, 394, 395, 397, 408, 413, 415, 416, 418, 429, 430, 437, 439, 440, 442, 457, 466, 467, 487, 488, 490, 501, 522, 526, 533, 535, 536, 551, 552, 557, 572, 574, 581, 583–588, 592–597, 600, 602, 605–607, 609, 610 Amazon, 64, 124, 152, 153, 155, 199, 201, 204, 588 Anchoring, 226, 232, 241

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Ú. Oswald Spring, Earth at Risk in the 21st Century: Rethinking Peace, Environment, Gender, and Human, Water, Health, Food, Energy Security, and Migration, Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice 18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38569-9

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626 Androgenic, 5, 167, 169, 225, 285, 304, 312, 329–333, 336, 344, 399, 586, 593 Antarctic, 64, 199 Anthropocene, 3, 6, 10, 29, 53, 94, 126, 167, 259, 264, 272, 282, 291, 296, 307, 319, 332, 345, 359, 553, 564, 574, 607 Appropriation, 30, 180, 235, 236, 246, 608 Aquifers, 5, 9, 20–22, 44, 53, 67, 69, 94, 106, 117–120, 125, 138, 141, 143, 146, 149, 151, 152, 155–158, 197, 202, 204, 238, 290, 338, 340, 342, 351, 359, 375, 376, 384, 385, 402, 403, 408, 437, 440, 462, 463, 465–467, 480, 510, 515, 517, 529, 550, 551, 569, 570 Arid, 145, 146, 149–151, 158, 202, 374, 375, 436, 460, 462, 466, 467, 469 Arrest, 425, 474, 478, 484, 485 Artic, 332, 567, 595 Artificial Intelligence (AI), 137, 178, 179 Asia, 4, 31–34, 36, 38, 53, 59, 61, 65, 68, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 116, 117, 119, 120, 123, 124, 140, 164, 165, 170, 179, 183, 199, 200, 204, 205, 236, 244, 256, 285, 287, 288, 298, 300, 302, 335, 336, 341, 342, 355, 370, 393, 396, 400, 403, 545, 546, 549, 551, 556, 560, 565, 567, 581, 589, 591, 594 B Balance, 31, 37, 40, 51, 64, 84, 86, 149, 183, 184, 196, 197, 218, 305, 376, 425, 452, 473, 475, 509, 534, 606, 610, 611 Biodiversity, 5, 9, 20, 46–48, 52, 64, 66, 69, 70, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 123–127, 130, 141, 146, 147, 149, 155–157, 193, 194, 196, 202, 204, 206, 208, 209, 229, 235–238, 244, 264, 271, 288, 290, 291, 294, 313, 314, 319, 330, 332, 341, 354, 373, 375, 378, 381–384, 394, 395, 403, 407, 408, 430, 457, 459, 460, 462, 480, 500, 509, 510, 517, 523, 544–547, 549–552, 554, 558–562, 564–574, 581, 584, 586, 607 Biodiversity security, 20, 552, 560, 564–567, 570 Biological factors, 333 Border, 14, 31–33, 35, 81, 99, 136, 145–148, 150–152, 202, 287, 331, 374, 429, 451–453, 455, 456, 458, 465, 466, 469–474, 476–478, 480–485, 487–491, 503, 519, 525, 527, 529, 534, 537, 553, 591, 592 Border Patrol, 455, 470, 474, 481

Index Bottom-up, 5, 9, 18, 24, 89, 148, 150, 227, 240, 257, 258, 264, 268, 270, 271, 281, 293, 308, 311, 316, 318, 338, 367, 370, 384, 502, 535, 552, 557, 572, 574, 582–585, 597, 600 Boundary(-ies), 104, 164, 202, 380 Breakdowns, 271, 369, 372, 504 Bushfire, 198, 330, 340, 341, 395, 407, 433, 589 Business-as-usual (BAU), 118, 287, 384, 386, 431, 436, 549, 571, 573, 579, 596, 599 C Capitalism, 5, 45, 46, 74, 164, 177, 179, 180, 184, 228, 229, 233, 235, 237, 284, 286, 290, 293, 300, 303, 304, 318, 371, 506, 588, 589, 593–596, 605, 607–609, 611 Carbon dioxide, 15, 63, 64, 72, 97, 104–107, 113, 115, 125, 129, 198, 199, 207, 269, 291, 331, 332, 403, 431, 442, 466, 500, 506, 536, 548, 550, 572, 579, 580, 589 Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), 561, 569, 581, 599, 601 Care, 24, 40, 45, 48, 61, 70, 77, 102, 116, 127, 139, 145, 147, 152, 155, 165, 173, 176, 185, 224, 229, 236, 257, 269, 272, 286, 289, 294, 314, 317–319, 329, 334, 336, 342, 343, 356, 370, 385, 395, 400, 403, 407, 408, 440–442, 465, 506, 522, 523, 527, 557, 586, 594, 598, 603, 605, 608 Cascading effects, 199, 332, 333 Catastrophic outcomes, 11, 71, 263, 332, 595 Circular economy, 51, 89, 584 Civil Right, 179, 181 Class oppression, 308, 310 Clean energy, 270, 428, 431, 433, 435, 436, 440–442, 581 Climate Change (CC), 5, 6, 9, 10, 13–16, 18, 21–25, 30, 34, 36, 39, 46, 47, 50, 59, 60, 63, 65, 69, 71, 93–99, 101, 103–105, 117, 119–122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 138–140, 143, 145, 147, 149–151, 155, 158, 164, 165, 167, 198, 199, 238, 243, 259, 260, 263, 266, 270, 271, 288, 290, 296, 303, 307, 329–332, 335, 338–343, 345, 353, 354, 357, 359, 360, 365–367, 369, 371–373, 376–379, 382–386, 395, 398–400, 403, 404, 407, 408, 415, 420, 421, 429, 431, 434, 437, 452, 454, 456, 457, 459–463, 466, 467, 469–471, 480, 482, 490, 491, 499–502, 504–506, 524, 535, 543–550, 552, 554, 560, 562, 567,

Index 569–571, 574, 579, 581–583, 587–589, 591, 592, 594, 596–598, 600–602, 607 Climate change impact(s), 198, 331, 379 Climate-smart agriculture, 9, 123, 127, 130, 208, 341, 359, 361, 398, 535, 564, 572, 573 Coexistence, 89, 141, 185, 293, 302, 366, 543, 609 Cold War, 5, 8, 17, 29, 31–37, 60, 61, 95, 97, 100, 163, 184, 302, 303, 309, 352, 366, 371, 419, 420 Collective memory, 156, 605 Compensation, 84, 141, 142, 153, 156, 157, 398, 597 Complex(ity), 5, 11, 14, 29, 32, 36, 37, 39, 45, 46, 52, 59, 71, 83, 86, 89, 94, 95, 98, 100, 101, 104, 105, 114, 120, 121, 126, 136, 141, 143, 145, 146, 148–151, 155, 158, 164, 165, 169, 174, 176, 180–182, 184, 217, 223, 224, 228, 232, 233, 243, 255, 256, 261, 267, 271, 272, 282, 289, 292–294, 315, 318, 319, 334, 335, 351, 359, 365, 367, 371–374, 376, 378, 384, 386, 393, 399, 400, 404, 407, 414, 416, 419–421, 425, 439, 441, 442, 452–457, 468, 469, 480–482, 487–490, 501–505, 507–509, 520, 525, 527, 529, 532, 533, 535, 543, 545–547, 549–551, 553, 558, 563, 570, 571, 573, 574, 583, 588, 591, 593, 595, 605, 607, 610 Concession(s), 154, 156, 157, 180, 218, 436, 464, 468, 469, 488, 504, 532, 557, 569 Conference of Parties(COP), 309 Conflicts, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14, 15, 17, 20–22, 24, 29–33, 35–41, 44, 49, 51–54, 59–62, 66, 67, 75, 82, 86–89, 93–95, 97–102, 104–106, 124, 130, 135–144, 146–149, 151–153, 155–158, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173–175, 178, 180, 181, 183, 184, 196, 201, 202, 209, 227, 230, 234, 239, 242, 255, 256, 258, 260, 265, 266, 268–270, 282, 293–296, 302, 304, 306–308, 311, 314, 334, 351, 352, 356–361, 373, 375, 376, 379–381, 386, 396, 397, 399, 416, 417, 419, 421, 436, 452, 458, 464, 465, 468, 481, 484, 487, 491, 503, 518, 520, 521, 524, 527, 530, 531, 546, 547, 553, 560–562, 574, 590, 591, 599, 604, 611, 618, 621 Confrontations, 24, 29, 32, 38, 39, 136, 137, 166, 171, 184, 302, 468, 532, 574 Consumption, 13, 19, 32, 39, 40, 50, 51, 53, 66, 67, 70–72, 75, 78, 79, 81, 103, 105, 106, 129, 138, 148, 180, 193, 197, 201,

627 204–206, 244, 246, 261, 263, 287, 313, 331–333, 340–342, 377, 393, 396, 398, 401, 421, 427, 428, 435, 437, 454, 461, 477, 484, 500, 511, 546, 547, 549, 571, 579, 580, 582, 583, 585, 594, 602, 603, 607, 608, 621 Contamination, 145, 146, 154, 203, 238, 290, 345, 469, 546 Corporate capitalism, 371, 611 Cosmovision, 25, 156, 176, 230, 238, 242, 246, 266, 283, 292, 308, 557, 596, 597, 603, 604 Creativity, 40, 48, 54, 228, 235, 344, 533, 535, 596, 611 Criminalisation, 481, 484, 485 Cultural heritage, 156, 356 Culture of peace, 38, 40, 41, 87, 167, 281, 308, 309, 311, 317 D Dam(s), 4, 12, 22, 66, 68, 136, 142–145, 148, 153, 155, 156, 199, 202, 203, 205, 354, 356, 359, 374–376, 380, 399, 433, 436, 442, 517, 521, 600 Decarbonise, 15, 53, 106, 107, 246, 332, 579, 583, 585, 597, 598, 610 Decommodification, 594 Deepen(ing), 7, 8, 12, 15, 17, 20, 21, 37, 38, 96, 148, 172, 222, 228, 236, 261, 266, 308, 358, 366, 420, 557, 572, 605 Degradation, 67, 68, 70, 86, 97, 98, 103, 120, 121, 123, 130, 138, 205, 206, 229, 238, 263, 342, 355, 357, 372, 373, 375, 382, 452, 457, 464–466, 482, 503, 505, 515, 547, 552, 560–562, 568, 582 Degrowth, 6, 128, 594, 595, 600 Dematerialise, 53, 107, 246, 579, 583, 585, 610 Democracy, 31, 36, 39, 40, 45–48, 54, 60, 78, 86–89, 169, 173, 176, 178, 180, 183, 185, 209, 221, 236, 240, 241, 243, 293, 301, 303, 315, 384, 621 Desertification, 9, 33, 44, 45, 94, 102, 105, 120, 122, 146, 149, 261, 264, 291, 340, 341, 382, 452, 453, 455, 459, 464–466, 470, 490, 499, 505, 544, 546, 550, 552, 554, 560–562, 568, 571, 572 Destruction, 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 25, 32, 34, 36, 38, 45–47, 49, 52, 60, 62, 63, 65, 67, 70, 75, 82, 83, 86, 87, 89, 93–95, 97, 123, 128, 146, 147, 156, 158, 164, 169, 180, 183, 185, 194, 196, 200, 205, 219, 228, 236–238, 240, 245, 246, 259, 261, 266, 270, 272, 288, 290, 291, 293, 294, 302, 307, 308, 312, 313, 315, 318, 329, 331,

628 333, 334, 345, 385, 395, 402, 404, 407, 423, 461, 466, 489, 500, 510, 529, 533, 536, 552, 562, 568, 570, 574, 583, 584, 594, 598, 607, 609, 610 Developed countries, 36, 45, 50, 72, 75, 76, 81, 98, 101, 164, 242, 287, 355, 357, 400, 572, 581, 590, 606 Developing countries, 4, 6, 9, 13, 21, 44, 45, 48, 63, 66, 71, 78, 82, 89, 102, 125, 137, 163, 164, 197, 198, 203, 205, 206, 241, 243, 244, 261, 263, 265, 287, 288, 293, 300, 305, 340, 342, 356, 357, 369, 370, 393, 454, 461, 545, 549, 551, 581, 598, 602 Development, 3–7, 12, 13, 29–31, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 45–54, 59, 61–63, 67, 68, 70–72, 74–76, 78, 81, 82, 84–89, 94, 99, 100, 102, 106, 116, 128, 136, 137, 139, 141–144, 146, 148–150, 153–156, 163–166, 169–172, 174–176, 179–182, 184, 193–197, 205–207, 209, 218, 221, 224, 227, 228, 230, 232, 235–238, 240, 241, 245, 255, 260, 262, 263, 265, 267, 269, 270, 272, 282–284, 288, 291–293, 304–307, 314, 316, 318, 333, 335, 340, 344, 353–355, 358–361, 368, 370, 372, 373, 378, 382–386, 399, 400, 406–408, 413, 414, 418, 420–423, 427, 433, 436, 438–442, 461, 463, 471, 477, 480, 488, 503, 504, 510, 515, 517, 532, 534, 536, 543–545, 551, 553, 554, 558, 560–562, 564, 567–569, 572–574, 579, 583, 585, 591, 592, 595, 600–602, 604, 606, 610, 618, 621–623 Diarrhoea, 10, 19, 66, 116, 197, 203, 339, 352, 365, 547 Digital age, 137 Dilemma, 22, 46, 84, 106, 128, 130, 157, 180, 243, 302, 330, 524, 554 Disaster, 5, 6, 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 24, 30, 37, 39, 40, 45, 65, 66, 71, 84–87, 98, 99, 103, 106, 127, 129, 130, 143, 155, 165, 167, 175, 183, 193, 197, 199–201, 207, 238, 255–258, 261, 263–265, 268, 270, 271, 291, 316, 318, 330, 331, 335–339, 344, 354–356, 360, 361, 365, 372, 377, 383, 384, 408, 409, 419, 421, 453, 456, 457, 459, 460, 465, 467, 469, 489, 490, 499–501, 503–505, 509, 519, 521, 525, 527, 529, 530, 533, 534, 544, 552–554, 568, 569, 573, 574, 579, 581, 582, 585, 590, 591, 593, 595, 596, 598, 600, 602, 604, 605, 609

Index Disaster Risk Management (DRM), 99, 360, 361, 521 Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), 99, 100, 130, 255, 335, 360 Dreamer(s), 484 Drought, 5, 6, 12, 13, 20, 21, 23, 38, 39, 64, 65, 100, 102, 114, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 146, 150, 158, 198, 199, 220, 244, 263, 331, 332, 340, 341, 344, 354, 357, 359, 360, 366, 372, 374, 377, 381, 383, 386, 398, 404, 433, 453–455, 457, 459, 462, 464–467, 474, 490, 499–501, 503, 505, 533, 546, 554, 558, 560, 562, 564, 570, 584, 587, 589–591, 595, 599 Drylands, 9, 67, 69, 120, 135, 140, 144, 146, 153, 155, 283, 332, 372, 374, 375, 381, 442, 454, 460, 462, 463, 466, 469, 554, 560, 570, 592, 595 E Ecofemin-ism(ist), 8, 9, 169–171, 228, 236–238, 241, 243, 268, 269, 282, 290, 291, 296, 308, 313, 318, 332, 582, 593, 609 Ecological spirituality, 593 Ecology, 3, 8, 33, 46–48, 51, 53, 54, 60, 98, 113, 114, 281, 303, 376, 431, 504, 543 Economy of solidarity, 6, 87, 127, 148, 239, 240, 268, 269, 600, 606, 608 Eco-philosophy, 593 Ecopsychology, 593 Ecosystem Services (ESS), 6, 9, 13, 15, 51, 53, 84, 93–95, 103, 114, 116, 121, 122, 124–127, 130, 141, 156, 196, 208, 222, 261, 264, 271, 285, 290, 291, 294, 314, 315, 331, 332, 334, 341, 345, 351, 352, 354–357, 366, 368, 382, 384, 385, 387, 394, 402, 421, 459, 465, 479, 500, 509, 511, 517, 518, 529, 543, 546, 547, 550–554, 558, 559, 563–565, 567–569, 571–573, 581, 591, 593, 598, 607, 610 Efficiency, 38, 45, 48, 50, 60, 74, 96, 114, 148, 153, 207, 255, 306, 314, 343, 354, 376, 381, 408, 418, 422, 506, 549–551, 558, 572, 581, 589, 595, 601, 602 Efforts, 12, 15, 30, 36, 38, 39, 54, 71, 84, 87–89, 99, 106, 107, 114, 128, 130, 139, 141, 143, 145, 175, 182–185, 207, 230–232, 237, 255, 258, 269, 281, 292, 295, 303, 304, 309, 311, 314, 316, 319, 334, 342, 355, 358, 370, 384, 400, 401, 406, 433, 437, 486, 487, 503, 505, 535,

Index 559, 565, 581, 582, 584, 588, 601, 602, 605, 609, 611 Egoism (selfish), 86, 592 Ejido, 236, 380, 468, 524, 608, 622 Electric power, 436 Elite, 7, 35, 50, 53, 63, 74, 77, 78, 84, 101, 164, 168, 170, 175–178, 180, 193, 219, 221, 222, 234, 240, 261, 265, 266, 285–287, 291, 294–297, 331, 335, 365, 371, 545, 547, 548, 550, 557, 582, 592, 593 El Pañuelo, 501, 503, 512–514, 523–525, 534 Emancipation, 169, 173, 238, 284 Employment, 13, 50, 51, 63, 74, 75, 78, 81, 84, 148, 157, 173, 174, 206, 208, 269, 271, 305, 379, 380, 404, 408, 455, 472, 479, 487, 590 Empowerment, 18, 31, 78, 165, 208, 233, 238, 242, 258, 263, 265, 268, 292, 294, 298–300, 303, 307, 308, 311–316, 335, 406, 420, 530, 582, 586 Enculturation, 606 Endangered, 86, 139, 204, 232, 270, 565–568, 572 Energy, 5, 6, 9, 12, 15, 19, 20, 22, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 47, 48, 51, 53, 60, 66, 70, 71, 76, 81, 89, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 113, 121, 126, 128, 152, 155, 193, 197, 198, 201, 202, 207, 209, 236, 245, 264, 270, 271, 311, 313, 315, 335, 352, 354, 356, 359, 365, 366, 370, 377, 384, 387, 394, 396, 408, 413–442, 461, 479, 480, 506, 543–547, 549–551, 557–561, 565, 570–574, 581, 589, 593–595, 597–602, 607 Energy Return on Investment (EROI), 601 Energy security, 5, 6, 9, 12, 19, 121, 201, 335, 352, 413–416, 418–423, 425–430, 436, 437, 439–442, 546, 547, 550, 558, 560, 573 Engendered, 8, 10, 18, 262, 282, 288, 291, 293, 295, 303, 306, 315, 318, 345, 420, 611 Engendered peace, 282, 288, 295, 306, 315, 318, 611 ENSO (niño/niña cycle), 499 Environment, 3–9, 12, 17, 24, 25, 29, 34, 36, 37, 40, 46, 48, 50–53, 61, 69–71, 85–88, 93, 96, 97, 100, 113, 115, 123, 126–128, 138, 139, 141, 142, 146, 151, 153, 156, 157, 165, 173, 184, 206, 207, 218, 221, 224, 229, 230, 232, 237, 242, 257, 260, 264, 270, 281, 283, 288, 290, 293, 294, 302, 308, 313–315, 317, 331, 335, 339, 344, 345, 351, 354, 355, 357,

629 358, 365, 368–371, 374, 385, 394, 396, 397, 407, 421, 422, 425, 430, 431, 440–442, 455, 456, 459, 460, 465, 482, 490, 499, 503, 505, 506, 509, 511, 512, 515, 517, 536, 546, 547, 549–553, 558, 565, 567, 568, 571, 573, 601, 607, 610 Environmental deterioration, 93, 94, 196, 239, 243, 261, 338, 365, 395, 398, 403, 480, 510, 527, 529, 530, 535 Environmental-Induced Migration (EIM), 22, 94, 128, 158, 359, 451–457, 459, 466, 470, 479, 480, 482, 488–491, 499 Environmentalism, 594 Environmental peace, 10, 611 Environmental risk, 22, 138, 242, 383, 546 Environmental security, 4, 8, 10, 11, 16, 19, 22, 38, 89, 93–101, 106, 130, 140, 167, 174, 175, 183, 196, 207, 209, 222, 223, 246, 256, 257, 259, 261, 263, 264, 266, 269–272, 296, 311, 317, 331, 334, 335, 352, 355, 357, 359, 367, 368, 385, 394, 422, 460, 491, 551, 554, 570, 621 Environmental vulnerability, 18, 22, 39, 64, 99, 127, 260, 503, 507, 510–512, 554, 570, 591, 598 Epidemiology, 365 Ethnic, 6, 22, 24, 32, 33, 37, 39, 43, 44, 51, 52, 79, 89, 106, 163, 164, 174, 183, 184, 226, 228, 233, 234, 240, 292, 308, 332, 476, 553, 554, 582, 603, 604 Europe, 4, 14, 20, 30–32, 34–36, 52, 61, 64, 65, 75, 82, 96, 116, 117, 119, 123–125, 140, 164, 170, 171, 178, 180, 182, 183, 199, 219, 256, 284, 287, 288, 298, 300–302, 306, 396, 417, 418, 421, 461, 489, 546, 549, 551, 554, 556, 563, 565, 567, 591, 595 European Union (EU), 30, 31, 33, 36, 63, 103, 182, 198, 311, 330, 419, 580 Everyday life, 136 Exploitation, 7, 8, 12, 37, 46, 60, 83, 84, 95, 124, 152, 169–171, 177–180, 193, 201, 206, 228, 229, 236, 237, 245, 257, 262, 265–267, 269, 271, 282–284, 288, 290, 293, 297, 306, 308–313, 318, 329, 331, 334, 338, 427, 429, 435, 487, 543, 552, 556, 557, 582–584, 586, 587, 593, 595, 602, 604, 607, 609 Export, 31, 33, 67, 75–77, 83, 120, 164, 206, 370, 404, 407, 425, 426, 428, 434, 438, 440, 441, 462, 477, 479, 507, 511, 520 Expression, 30, 65, 97, 126, 167, 173, 177, 184, 224, 235, 237, 329, 556

630 Extractivism, 142, 143, 196, 206, 245, 271, 564, 584, 597, 598, 604, 606 Extreme weather events, 21, 39, 106, 158, 193, 332, 422, 433, 500–502, 545, 546, 565, 599 F Father(hood), 303 Feminicide, 18, 257, 262, 271, 283, 285, 288, 289, 336, 524 Femininity, 218, 226, 246, 257, 271, 283, 303, 311, 316, 319, 331, 505, 506, 555 Flash flood, 100, 114, 124, 125, 128, 158, 372, 374, 377, 378, 383, 403, 455, 459, 501, 503–505, 510, 511, 519, 521, 522, 526, 527, 531, 533, 546, 554, 598 Flood, 6, 12, 23, 39, 64, 65, 78, 94, 100, 102, 114, 125, 128, 139, 144, 153, 155, 199, 200, 244, 330, 332, 339, 344, 354, 357, 359, 366, 374, 376–378, 381–383, 399, 403, 433, 455, 457, 459, 466, 467, 482, 499, 501, 503–505, 510, 511, 517, 519–522, 526, 527, 531, 533, 543, 546, 554, 579, 584, 587, 595, 598 Fluctuation, 143, 306, 415, 418, 419, 421, 441, 473 Food, 3–6, 8–10, 12, 15, 19, 20, 23, 24, 29, 37, 38, 40, 44, 48, 50, 53, 62, 64, 67, 69, 70, 75–78, 83–85, 87, 88, 94, 95, 97, 99–103, 105, 114, 116, 120–123, 125–128, 130, 137, 139, 143, 150, 171, 173, 176, 183, 195, 196, 198, 199, 203–209, 220, 221, 226, 227, 235, 236, 240–244, 255–258, 260, 262, 268–271, 282, 283, 290, 294, 307, 311, 316, 319, 332, 334–336, 339–341, 344, 345, 352, 355–359, 361, 366–368, 370, 371, 380–387, 393–409, 415, 420, 423, 436, 453, 454, 467, 477, 479, 480, 482, 483, 490, 499, 502, 506, 511, 523, 524, 528, 530, 533, 536, 543–547, 549–554, 557–562, 564, 567–574, 581–584, 590, 591, 595, 598–600, 603, 605, 607, 622, 623 Food security, 6, 19, 20, 23, 24, 40, 48, 64, 70, 75, 83, 84, 88, 99, 101, 195, 205–207, 244, 339–341, 352, 355–357, 384, 387, 394, 396, 397, 399, 400, 420, 440, 499, 558, 591 Food waste, 341, 395, 401, 404, 406 Fossil (energy), 30, 31, 53, 126, 245, 264, 313, 315, 365, 425, 433, 442, 546, 549, 560, 565, 593, 598

Index Fracking, 201, 330, 428, 437, 441, 442, 596, 599 Fundamentalism, 44, 59, 88, 419 Future, 4, 5, 14, 15, 17, 23, 25, 29, 33, 34, 37, 39–41, 46–49, 52–54, 60, 70, 74, 76, 82, 85–88, 97, 106, 107, 117, 127, 128, 130, 137, 141, 144, 148, 149, 151, 152, 155, 180, 183, 197, 206, 209, 223, 244, 246, 259, 263, 269, 295, 306, 309, 317, 319, 337, 342, 344, 360, 361, 366–368, 375, 377, 380, 386, 396, 399–401, 414, 416, 421, 426, 435, 438–442, 466, 467, 469, 480, 482, 500, 518, 522, 543, 564, 570, 579, 584, 594, 608, 609, 611, 623 G Gas, 6, 12, 13, 31, 33, 36, 48, 50, 53, 64, 69, 71, 105, 113, 115, 152, 194, 196, 197, 201, 207, 259, 261, 290, 291, 313, 330, 340, 345, 351, 377, 378, 382, 387, 393, 395, 398, 403, 404, 406, 408, 414–416, 418, 423–425, 428, 431, 433, 435, 437–439, 441, 442, 460, 461, 479, 500, 506, 544, 579, 580, 601 Gasoline, 12, 94, 414, 415, 422–428, 439, 442, 503, 598 Gender, 3–8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 37, 39, 46, 47, 49, 52, 62, 68, 78, 80–82, 84, 86, 88, 89, 93, 95, 100, 106, 127, 130, 143, 151, 163–169, 171–176, 183, 184, 206, 217–219, 221–234, 236, 240–242, 244, 245, 246, 256–272, 281, 283, 286, 288, 290, 292–300, 303, 304, 306–311, 313, 314, 316, 319, 329–339, 341–344, 356–359, 361, 366–368, 373, 379, 380, 385, 386, 395, 398, 399, 404, 405, 415, 420, 440, 455, 456, 468, 489, 491, 502, 505, 506, 533, 547, 550, 552, 554–556, 558, 559, 572–574, 581–583, 586, 590, 593, 595, 611 Gender gap, 263, 298–300, 336, 338, 344 Gender security, 4, 6, 8, 15, 17, 18, 37, 89, 95, 100, 168, 207, 218, 221, 222, 227–230, 233, 237, 239, 241, 242, 245, 246, 257–259, 261–263, 266–268, 271, 272, 281, 307, 315, 335, 336, 355, 358, 359, 366, 420, 468, 547, 550, 552 Genetical(ly) Modified Organisms (GMO), 9, 19, 48, 60, 169, 196, 204, 264, 270, 340, 394, 397, 549 Geopoliti-c (-cy), 12, 61, 148, 416, 441 Geothermal, 415, 433, 435, 436, 439, 442

Index Gift economy, 127, 235, 236, 240, 270, 319, 584, 596, 600, 606 Global Environmental Change (GEC), 5, 10, 13, 15, 18, 25, 37, 60, 93–97, 99, 105, 106, 167, 175, 238, 259, 261, 262, 264, 266, 267, 270–272, 281, 288, 290, 294, 296, 302, 303, 307, 318, 331, 332, 351, 355, 357, 359, 366, 373, 451, 452, 457, 459–461, 466, 490, 491, 500, 502, 535, 547, 548, 553, 570, 571, 573, 622 Globalisation, 4, 6, 11–13, 22, 24, 29, 34, 37, 40, 43, 47, 49–52, 60, 61, 75, 81, 85, 88, 89, 93, 98, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174–176, 178–182, 184, 193, 194, 207, 209, 222, 228, 237–242, 246, 262, 263, 269, 270, 284, 287, 288, 293, 300, 302, 304, 308, 309, 314, 315, 318, 319, 331, 335, 345, 366, 367, 369–372, 419, 457, 461, 506, 550, 552, 553, 593, 608 Global North, 19, 48, 52, 75, 87, 127, 137, 169, 344, 345, 404, 471, 550, 581, 584, 590, 594, 596, 597, 600–603 Global Performance Index (GPI), 329 Global South, 5–7, 10, 14, 15, 17, 19, 24, 31, 33, 52, 61, 63, 64, 72, 75–77, 84, 89, 93, 100, 101, 117, 120, 127, 128, 135, 137, 166, 170, 171, 180, 182, 193, 197, 226, 285, 287, 288, 303, 306, 330, 344, 402, 405, 406, 461, 581, 583, 584, 587, 590–594, 596–598, 600–602, 609 Goddess, 169, 170, 176, 220, 221, 282, 292 Good, 6, 24, 25, 51, 96, 138, 169, 194, 220, 222, 223, 244, 294, 300, 309, 310, 356, 384, 401, 556, 571, 584, 603, 605, 608 Greed, 3, 22, 25, 60, 86, 258, 268, 308, 334, 386, 500, 543, 583, 595 Green economy, 294, 557, 605 Groundwater, 20, 22, 44, 68, 99, 116–120, 139, 141, 151, 155, 157, 202, 205, 264, 341, 356, 375, 395, 407, 440, 462, 466, 468, 517, 546, 570 Guidelines, 202, 256, 267, 268, 271, 303, 314, 368, 386 H Hammurabi, 282, 288, 303 Hazard, 15, 18, 20, 38, 39, 99–101, 125, 158, 166, 167, 205, 238, 257, 261, 264, 266, 269–272, 311, 316, 317, 337, 354, 358, 360, 365, 366, 368, 371, 373, 378, 420, 422, 423, 437, 466, 553, 568, 573 Health, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11–13, 15, 19, 20, 23, 33, 34, 36, 37, 40, 45, 48–50, 54, 59, 61, 62, 66, 69, 70, 72, 74, 77–79, 85, 88, 94, 98,

631 100–103, 116, 119, 125, 126, 137, 138, 142, 143, 146, 157, 163, 170, 172–174, 196–198, 201–203, 205, 206, 217, 220, 221, 227, 236, 238, 242, 257, 289, 297, 298, 299, 307, 316, 329, 333, 335–341, 342, 343, 345, 352–354, 357, 359, 361, 365–372, 374, 376, 378, 380, 382–387, 393–396, 400, 406–409, 416, 420, 421, 428, 437, 441, 442, 467, 472, 483, 488, 501, 503, 515, 518, 519, 523, 528, 533, 544–546, 553, 554, 557, 559, 569, 570, 579, 581, 590, 595, 603 Health impacts, 20, 116, 338, 339, 343, 366, 382, 383, 398, 407, 553 Heterosexism, 308 Hierarchy, 169, 283, 285, 296, 331, 586 Hothouse Earth, 334, 338, 579, 582, 583, 585, 587, 589, 595, 601, 609, 610 Household, 18, 80, 115, 116, 174, 179, 219, 221, 267, 282, 284, 286, 289, 297, 299, 300, 314, 336, 342–344, 354, 357, 359, 367, 381, 400, 405, 406, 438, 454, 455, 470, 480, 482, 505, 506, 512–514, 527, 533, 536, 554, 556, 580, 596, 603, 623 Human Development Index (HDI), 75, 76, 78, 81, 166, 238 Human, Gender and Environmental security (HUGE), 4, 8, 10, 18, 22, 24, 88, 93, 100, 130, 151, 174, 175, 181, 223, 228, 246, 256–259, 261, 264–272, 281, 331, 335, 367, 368, 385, 386, 551, 552, 554, 574, 610, 611 Human health, 9, 103, 125, 126, 206, 338, 339, 357, 366, 367, 370, 402, 467, 546, 569 Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-AIDS), 36, 482 Human interactions, 136 Humankind, 4–6, 8, 11, 17, 23–25, 30, 37, 38, 44, 45, 60, 86, 88, 93, 95, 105, 114, 124–127, 151, 167, 173, 176, 217, 222, 230, 245, 246, 259, 263, 264, 266, 272, 290, 291, 294, 296, 312, 315, 317, 318, 329, 331–334, 366, 367, 386, 395, 419–421, 460, 505, 509, 543, 557, 558, 560, 564, 565, 567, 570, 571, 573, 574, 579, 581–583, 587, 589, 592, 593, 595, 596, 600, 607, 610, 611 Human rights, 18, 35, 39, 41, 44, 49, 52, 69, 85, 88, 95, 99, 143, 157, 166, 167, 172, 173, 175, 178, 180–185, 205, 240, 241, 255, 268, 343, 344, 356, 357, 385, 400, 420, 453, 458, 474, 483, 485, 487, 488, 491, 528, 532, 535, 536, 558, 592, 595, 604

632 Human security, 6, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 38, 39, 62, 85–87, 89, 95–99, 120, 164, 166, 167, 172–174, 180, 196, 222, 227, 255–257, 259–261, 264, 266, 269, 283, 293, 311, 313, 315, 332, 335, 344, 352, 356–358, 361, 366, 368, 384, 386, 393, 408, 419, 420, 456, 460, 488, 499, 535, 544, 545, 547, 549, 553, 621, 623 Hunger, 9, 19, 32, 34, 36, 38, 44, 46, 51, 64, 70, 74, 75, 80, 83, 84, 86, 89, 166, 193, 199, 200, 207, 236, 243, 255, 260, 271, 358, 383, 393–397, 399–401, 405, 459, 545, 552, 564, 570, 574, 587, 590, 591 Hurricane, 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 64, 65, 100, 106, 125, 129, 158, 198–200, 303, 332, 336, 339–341, 374, 377, 381, 383, 384, 395, 407, 433, 453, 455, 457, 462, 466, 490, 499–501, 521, 588, 600 Hydrocarbons, 13, 115, 416, 421, 423, 428, 439, 461 Hydrodiplomacy, 130, 136–138, 143, 144, 146–148, 151, 152, 155, 158, 358 Hydrometeorological (extreme) event(s), 13, 64, 338, 342, 343, 382, 453, 455, 460, 463, 482, 490, 503, 519–521, 533, 587 I Identity, 11, 18, 23, 24, 37, 86, 100, 143, 155, 168, 169, 175, 217, 218, 222, 224, 226–234, 238, 241, 242, 261, 262, 265–269, 282, 293–295, 297, 340, 357, 396, 399, 489, 503, 506, 533, 534, 605, 609 Illegal, 31, 50, 151, 184, 205, 269, 293, 305, 308, 371, 372, 375, 384, 423–425, 438, 452, 453, 455, 458, 467, 471–475, 477, 480–485, 487–489, 491, 501–503, 511, 514, 519, 520, 524–527, 529–532, 534–536, 548, 551, 568, 592, 597 Immigrant, 11, 22, 83, 152, 222, 293, 379, 452, 471–473, 475, 479, 483, 484, 487, 534 Import, 34, 35, 76, 77, 83, 102, 120, 243, 340, 372, 404, 425–428, 437, 452, 545 Increase of Greenhouse Gases (GHG), 13, 113, 330, 398, 431, 461, 544, 579 Indebt, 76, 77, 258, 371 Independence, 31, 32, 35, 36, 87, 164, 177, 219, 268, 285, 430, 524, 584 Indigence, 194, 245 Industrialised countries, 6, 15, 38, 40, 45, 68, 69, 72, 82–84, 102, 106, 120, 164, 180, 197, 205–207, 221, 238, 265, 284, 299, 300, 330, 366, 369, 403, 407, 415, 431, 454, 554, 569, 589, 592

Index Industries, 30, 43, 63, 74, 75, 87, 139, 145, 146, 151, 152, 156, 157, 171, 235, 270, 284, 294, 376, 386, 402, 413, 418, 431, 437, 438, 442, 458, 463, 472, 483, 529, 548, 549, 581, 588, 589, 594, 599, 601, 602 Inequality, 8, 18, 54, 62, 70, 79, 80, 82, 84, 95, 98, 127, 149, 175, 183, 195, 206, 209, 218, 221, 224, 227, 245, 260, 265, 266, 268, 272, 283, 286, 288, 292, 293, 296, 297, 299, 300, 304–306, 309, 310, 315, 318, 331–334, 339, 343, 344, 359, 360, 365, 372, 393, 420, 429, 545, 550, 554, 557, 574, 586, 587, 590, 611 Inequity, 46, 49, 51, 54, 60, 70, 84, 95, 97, 206, 218, 226, 229, 234, 258, 260, 265, 271, 272, 299, 309, 379, 380 Infrastructure, 16, 21, 30, 45, 67, 84, 99, 116, 128, 151, 152, 156, 157, 164, 172, 194, 195, 356, 376, 402, 413, 414, 421, 438, 442, 479, 500, 507, 529, 534, 545, 573, 581 Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM), 151 Integrated Water River Management (IWRM), 570 Interactions, 63, 113, 114, 126, 149, 167, 181, 182, 224, 228, 232, 234, 261, 267, 270, 272, 304, 316, 333, 365, 367, 386, 441, 457, 459, 503, 515, 554, 558, 562, 564, 568, 570–573, 592, 593, 596, 607 Interconnections, 101, 170, 270, 332, 421, 454 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 6, 9, 13–16, 22, 23, 34, 60, 64, 85, 94, 95, 99, 100, 105, 123, 125, 127, 128, 158, 171, 180, 197–199, 238, 242–244, 255, 257, 259, 263, 271, 288, 290, 306, 307, 316, 329, 330, 332, 334, 340–344, 356, 357, 359, 361, 366, 377, 398, 403, 406, 420, 421, 431, 433, 442, 455, 458, 467, 500, 506, 507, 525, 544–548, 554, 560, 564, 570, 579, 580, 582, 587–589, 591, 595, 596, 598, 599, 601, 623 Intermittency, 440, 441 International Energy Agency (IEA), 6, 60, 93, 97, 155, 264, 414, 415, 419–421, 427, 428, 437, 439, 547, 599, 602 International Geosphere and Biosphere Programme (IGBP), 259 International Human Dimension Program (IHDP), 99 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 12, 35, 59, 72, 74, 77–79, 85, 163, 164, 193, 240,

Index 265, 297, 301, 302, 371, 422, 438, 440, 544, 597, 598 International Organisation on Migration (IOM), 451, 455, 488, 489 International Peace Research Association (IPRA), 8, 49, 182–185, 591, 617, 618, 621, 622 International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 264 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 124, 135, 204, 565, 566 Internet Technology (IT), 68, 284, 297, 544, 549 Intoxication, 365, 382, 526 Investments, 12, 32, 34, 36, 40, 63, 72, 73, 76, 84, 87, 89, 96, 106, 116, 117, 128, 135, 148, 149, 154, 156–158, 164, 193, 207, 269, 297, 336, 360, 370, 371, 403, 408, 414, 415, 419, 421, 425, 426, 428, 431, 434–437, 439–442, 454, 479, 480, 488, 517, 529, 545, 554, 569, 579, 599, 608 J Japan, 32, 34, 54, 64, 73, 78, 103, 140, 164, 173, 183, 184, 198, 299, 300, 342, 344, 461, 580, 619 Job(s), 12, 16, 24, 34, 40, 45, 47, 48, 50, 53, 60, 70, 71, 74, 81–83, 87–89, 102, 137, 141, 143, 154, 206, 208, 218, 224, 226, 232, 237, 239, 269, 287, 289, 300, 303, 314, 329, 356, 369, 379, 405, 421, 430, 451, 455, 458, 465, 466, 469, 471, 472, 477, 479, 480, 484, 488, 491, 503, 513, 524–529, 534–336, 554, 572, 594, 595, 598, 605 Justice, 6, 39, 40, 45, 46, 49, 54, 60, 86–88, 154, 172, 173, 177, 178, 184, 224, 255, 270, 271, 284, 294, 295, 304, 344, 361, 368, 423, 440, 485, 524, 586, 611 K Kidney, 11, 197, 339, 365, 395 Knowledge, 11, 14, 15, 20, 22, 40, 47, 48, 54, 63, 66, 87, 96, 100, 119, 126, 141, 158, 170, 176, 180, 184, 202, 204, 220, 222–225, 227, 232, 234, 237, 239, 241, 243, 285, 287, 293, 295, 296, 319, 361, 366, 367, 373, 385, 386, 407, 409, 440, 489, 499, 511, 529, 544, 558, 568, 584, 600, 605, 606, 617 Kyoto, 48, 64, 71, 96, 136, 148, 207, 353, 543, 580, 589, 619

633 L Labour, 7, 8, 33, 50, 88, 89, 142, 150, 168, 176–179, 209, 221, 235, 261, 269, 284, 285, 293, 298, 303, 304, 308, 309, 312, 318, 338, 339, 342, 343, 438, 453, 472, 473–475, 480, 487, 488, 491, 501, 526, 528, 535, 550, 598, 602, 608 Labour market, 164, 269, 298 La Cañada, 501, 503, 512, 514, 522, 525, 526, 534 Land use change, 4, 19, 69, 94, 95, 103, 114, 122, 124, 142, 264, 271, 315, 394, 408, 500, 505, 509, 511, 517, 518, 546, 547, 552, 554, 561, 564, 565, 567, 569, 571, 580, 593 Latin America, 4, 7, 17, 31, 34–38, 46, 47, 68, 74, 76, 79, 80, 82, 99, 120, 140–142, 153–158, 165, 166, 170, 181, 183, 194, 196, 197, 202–204, 223, 236, 239, 244, 245, 268, 269, 285, 287, 288, 306, 342, 401, 402, 405, 431, 439, 452, 464, 472, 486, 545, 550, 551, 554, 556, 560, 565, 567, 569, 581, 589, 597, 623 La Via Campesina (LVC), 397, 399, 404–407, 536, 597, 600 Leadership, 31, 39, 62, 106, 141, 144, 183, 234, 241, 242, 244, 268, 282, 295, 303, 314, 317, 330, 413, 519, 556, 605, 617 Leading by obeying, 604 Least Developing Countries (LDC), 164, 355, 356 Legalisation, 484, 487 Legitimacy, 88, 114, 177, 223, 242, 311 Limit(s), 13, 35, 44, 49, 51, 52, 69, 70, 75, 104, 105, 114, 119, 127, 128, 156, 163, 174, 180, 206, 225, 260, 306, 318, 329, 340, 341, 344, 359, 360, 365, 379, 383, 400, 403, 404, 409, 413, 415, 418, 430, 431, 437, 440, 461, 465, 484, 502, 511, 515, 520, 527, 536, 544, 561, 562, 565, 568, 573, 583, 584, 589, 594, 596, 598, 601 Livelihood, 4, 6, 7, 12–14, 16, 17, 19, 22–25, 29, 37–39, 54, 65, 83, 84, 86, 89, 94, 99, 101, 107, 127, 128, 137–139, 141–143, 152–156, 158, 167, 196, 199, 237, 257, 269, 270, 272, 297, 316, 319, 330, 335–337, 339, 340, 342, 354, 361, 366–368, 373, 378, 383, 397, 398, 400, 409, 415, 420, 451, 453, 454, 460, 487, 489–491, 499–501, 503, 504, 511, 512, 515, 519, 521, 525, 527, 529, 533–536, 551–554, 559, 561, 564, 569, 573, 574,

634 581–584, 586, 587, 589–591, 595, 606, 607 Living well, 13, 181, 551, 552, 556, 557, 603 Lorenzo Vázquez, 501, 512–514, 522, 523, 525, 527, 528, 530 M Mainstream, 10, 225, 292, 293, 295 Malnutrition, 19, 62, 78, 79, 81, 83, 163, 260, 340, 382, 384, 393–397, 399, 400, 402, 405–408, 459, 503, 518, 547, 570, 590 Marches, 269, 297, 353, 556 Masculinity, 218, 222, 226, 246, 257, 271, 283, 289, 303, 311, 319, 331, 505, 506, 555 Mediation, 38, 40, 41, 175, 184, 242, 454 Megalopolis, 117, 135–137, 156, 372, 374, 569 Membership, 30, 31, 234, 312, 380, 418 Methane, 64, 71, 199, 207, 431, 442, 580 Metropolitan Valley of Mexico City (MVMC), 500, 523, 525, 526, 529, 534 Mexico, 3, 5, 7, 8–12, 16, 35, 46–48, 65, 67, 74, 76, 79, 81, 83, 85, 117, 136, 137, 140, 144–146, 148–151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 183, 184, 195, 197, 198, 200–202, 204, 238, 243–245, 259, 262, 287, 299, 302, 316, 329, 335, 344, 352–354, 365–367, 371, 372, 374–386, 393, 401, 402, 405, 407, 413–416, 418, 422–431, 433–442, 451–489, 499–504, 507, 508, 511, 514, 515, 517, 519, 520, 524–528, 530, 532, 534–536, 543, 551, 569, 580, 581, 604, 605, 608 Middle East, 12, 30, 36, 61, 66, 76, 97, 120, 202, 256, 266, 288, 298, 311, 416, 417, 428, 545, 547, 591 Migration, 5, 12–15, 20–23, 32, 38, 39, 83, 84, 93, 102, 105, 135, 136, 143, 149, 150, 174, 175, 183, 195, 196, 236, 238, 261, 262, 265, 293, 303, 338, 342, 366, 367, 369, 383, 386, 396, 451–458, 461, 465–467, 469, 471–477, 480–491, 499–505, 509, 510, 513, 515, 519, 523, 525–530, 532–536, 545, 546, 554, 570, 583, 587, 591, 592, 599, 621–623 Military bases, 81, 93, 97, 165, 487 Mine(ing), 18, 32, 81, 141, 152, 157, 173, 245, 380, 480, 532, 543, 557, 565, 581 Mitigation, 14, 94, 96, 99, 101, 121, 128, 269, 334, 341, 359–361, 368, 372, 382–384, 398, 403, 408, 459, 506, 544, 545, 562, 572, 573, 579, 622 Monsoon, 64, 140, 141, 156, 199, 375–377, 463, 508, 517, 520, 521, 536

Index Montaña, 7, 501, 503, 513, 524, 527, 530–532, 534–536 Mother Earth, 13, 25, 98, 236, 266, 318, 557, 568, 584, 604, 609, 610 Mother(hood), 290, 300 Movemento Sem Terra : Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), 181, 244, 268 Multilateral organisations, 6, 163, 193, 227, 236 Multinational Enterprises (MNE), 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 24, 50, 60, 67, 75, 77, 85, 99, 154, 164, 171, 172, 175, 180, 193, 196, 207, 232, 234, 237, 240, 285, 286, 296, 305, 308, 318, 402, 438, 504, 511, 543, 549, 557, 568, 569, 582, 583, 589, 597, 600, 603, 604 Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), 302 N National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), 3, 183, 465, 504, 621, 623 National Determined Contributions (NDC), 106 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 15, 105, 106, 129, 199, 432, 548 Nation-State, 149, 172 Natural resources, 4, 6, 15, 32, 34, 35, 39, 45, 47–54, 60, 63, 66, 67, 70, 75, 76, 93–95, 97, 99, 103, 104, 114, 123, 124, 136, 138, 139, 142–145, 149, 151, 156, 164, 170, 171, 180, 184, 198, 201, 202, 206, 208, 209, 229, 236, 237, 245, 270, 285, 288, 290, 294, 306, 307, 309, 313, 315, 317, 318, 334, 343, 345, 356, 378, 380, 381, 387, 394, 395, 399, 404, 406, 408, 421, 430, 442, 453, 454, 459, 480, 490, 501–503, 509–511, 527, 543, 552, 558, 560, 574, 581, 583–585, 597, 607 Negative peace, 4, 291, 307, 312, 316 Negotiation, 8, 38–40, 71, 89, 95, 96, 98, 135–137, 141, 144, 147, 149–152, 178, 180, 201, 221, 229, 240, 270, 295, 307–309, 360, 386, 409, 421, 441, 461, 536, 596, 603, 621 Neoliberalism, 6, 12, 24, 195, 284, 285, 288, 290, 293, 318, 332, 556, 593, 594, 600, 603, 607 Networks, 11, 13, 22, 41, 75, 88, 95, 97, 103, 148, 184, 197, 231, 235, 237, 240, 294, 301, 337, 344, 345, 357, 382, 386, 421, 455, 458, 465, 470, 472, 473, 477, 591, 617

Index Nexus, 5, 6, 19, 70, 420, 545–547, 549–552, 557–561, 564, 570–574 Nicolás Zapata, 500, 503, 522, 525, 526 Nitrogen cycle, 563 Nongovernmental Organisation (NGO), 71, 147, 153, 154, 158, 182, 207, 235, 267, 315, 316, 386, 402, 483, 484, 547, 572, 597 North American Development Bank (NADB), 146, 148, 153 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 52, 81, 146, 148, 153, 239, 415, 428–430, 441, 452, 471, 527, 551, 604 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 31, 33, 37, 60, 193, 237, 256, 261, 301 Nutrition, 8, 120, 221, 243, 316, 385, 393–400, 402, 408, 523, 535, 536, 544, 552, 590, 591 O Obesity, 9, 271, 365, 380, 393, 397, 399, 401, 406, 503, 518, 535, 547, 551, 553 Objectification, 232, 241 Oil extraction, 33, 105, 229, 421, 425, 426, 431, 548, 557, 568 Oil prices, 19, 413–419, 421, 422, 425–427, 433, 434, 438, 441 Oligarch(s), 11, 23, 31, 40, 51, 193, 222, 241, 261, 268, 285, 287, 294, 305, 318, 319, 438, 548, 549, 557 Organisation, 4, 5, 7, 9, 30, 33, 35, 49, 52, 54, 66, 67, 78, 84, 85, 88, 94, 100, 127, 128, 135, 140, 147, 148, 150, 158, 167–170, 174, 176, 179, 181–184, 193, 203, 208, 219–221, 233, 235, 236, 241, 243, 244, 256, 258, 262, 266, 268, 269, 282, 286, 296, 299, 309, 311, 315–318, 334, 335, 337, 340, 344, 352, 358, 366, 367, 369–371, 386, 395, 397–399, 404–407, 418, 420, 421, 455, 459, 464, 485, 505, 519, 535, 536, 557, 562, 565, 572, 587, 591, 593, 597, 598, 602, 604, 609, 611 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 46, 140, 144, 197, 198, 234, 261, 287, 299, 303, 355, 418, 436, 451, 481, 502 Organised crime, 7, 11, 50, 81, 83, 86, 89, 102, 148, 269, 305, 308, 335, 413, 415, 419, 423–425, 453, 455, 458, 470, 471, 477, 480, 484–487, 502, 503, 505, 519, 524, 527, 530, 533, 535, 553, 592, 597, 602 Organization of American States (OAS), 35

635 P Paradigm, 13, 19, 24, 45–48, 60, 62, 70, 75, 78, 86, 123, 137, 164, 168, 176, 178, 180, 181, 193, 196, 205, 227, 237, 241, 242, 291–293, 306, 312, 316, 331, 335, 354, 359, 369, 386, 394, 405, 536, 556, 557, 562, 585, 596, 597, 607, 608, 610 Paris agreement, 96, 106, 148, 294, 334, 387, 430, 439, 544, 548, 572 Parts Per Million (PPM), 15, 104, 106, 548 Patriarchal practice, 262, 468, 582 Patrimonialism, 596 Peace, 3–8, 10, 12, 14, 16–18, 20, 29, 30, 34–41, 43–47, 49–54, 59, 60, 62, 63, 67, 70, 86–89, 98, 114, 130, 138, 144, 151, 163–165, 167, 170, 172, 173, 177, 182–184, 209, 219, 223, 228, 239, 241, 256, 258, 261, 267, 268, 270, 271, 281–283, 288, 291–296, 302–318, 334, 354, 361, 368, 386, 423, 440, 441, 481, 536, 543, 544, 553, 579, 583, 586, 587, 597, 604, 609–611 Peacebuilding, 138, 257 Peaceful, 8, 10, 20, 29, 30, 37, 38, 40, 44, 46, 51, 59, 60, 63, 87–89, 136, 138, 144, 145, 149, 165, 177, 183, 184, 268, 270, 272, 284, 293, 296, 311, 314, 382, 386, 491, 543, 596 Pendular migration, 526, 534 Persistent Organic Polluters (POPs), 197, 382 Perspective(s), 5, 8, 9, 12, 18, 37–39, 96–100, 127–129, 142, 158, 173, 182, 194, 219, 223–227, 237, 241, 246, 256, 258, 264, 266, 281, 282, 291, 292, 295, 296, 302–304, 306, 307, 312–314, 317, 318, 330, 334, 337, 341, 343, 344, 352, 356, 357, 368, 386, 395, 420, 429, 439, 442, 457, 487–489, 533, 545, 547, 551, 552, 554–556, 558, 571–573, 584, 585, 593, 609, 622, 623 Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), 413, 423 Photovoltaic, 434, 601 Pitfalls, 281, 311, 408 Policies, 9, 21, 22, 31, 39, 40, 45–47, 49, 51, 52, 60, 70, 71, 81, 83–85, 88, 100, 149, 154, 171, 196, 199, 206, 227, 237, 239, 241, 257, 264, 265, 270, 271, 282, 286, 295, 300, 302, 303, 305, 309, 311, 313, 314, 316, 317, 333, 338, 340, 354, 367–369, 373, 380, 384–386, 397, 398, 406, 418, 419, 430, 453, 456, 458, 471, 479, 480, 482, 484, 486–489, 500, 533, 536, 544, 545, 551, 573, 574, 589, 596, 600, 604, 622

636 Political alliance, 147, 169, 227, 237, 301, 428, 547 Population, 12, 14, 16, 21, 34, 36, 39, 40, 45–47, 50, 53, 62, 65–67, 69, 72, 75, 77–84, 87, 88, 95, 101–103, 105, 113, 114, 116, 117, 120, 122, 123, 135, 137, 145–148, 150, 151, 154–157, 167, 195–197, 200, 202, 203, 208, 221, 229, 238, 240, 241, 243, 246, 261, 264, 267, 271, 287, 289, 290, 297, 305, 306, 315, 341, 354–356, 369, 371, 373–376, 378–381, 383–385, 387, 393–396, 399, 400, 403, 405, 407, 420, 434, 437, 438, 454, 457, 459, 463, 465, 469, 472, 473, 475, 476, 479–481, 490, 491, 508–510, 518, 520, 522, 525, 543, 551, 554, 559–561, 569, 570, 574, 590, 592 Populist, 242, 303, 482, 554, 592 Positive peace, 241, 610 Potential, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 20, 22, 23, 31, 37–39, 47, 50, 53, 54, 62, 63, 66, 89, 93–95, 98, 99, 128, 135–137, 141, 142, 144, 151, 201, 202, 227, 231, 240, 257, 263, 264, 271, 281, 293, 294, 307, 308, 316, 318, 329, 333, 335, 345, 359, 360, 369, 371, 373, 374, 385, 398, 405, 406, 408, 415, 429–431, 433, 435–440, 442, 456, 484, 534, 536, 545, 553, 564, 571, 573, 579, 581, 583, 584, 594, 598, 604, 610 Poverty, 7, 12, 18, 21, 32, 34–36, 44, 47, 49, 51, 52, 54, 61, 62, 69, 70, 74, 77–84, 86, 88, 89, 94, 95, 103, 117, 128, 130, 163–167, 172, 174, 177, 184, 185, 193–195, 197, 205–207, 227, 237, 238, 240, 241, 245, 256, 262, 263, 268, 269, 271, 287, 288, 291, 294, 297, 305, 311, 336, 338, 353, 360, 371, 379, 380, 382–384, 393, 402, 408, 419, 421, 429, 438, 440, 442, 451, 454, 455, 457, 467, 469, 479, 482, 500–503, 513, 514, 518, 525, 535, 536, 545, 546, 550, 552, 553, 559, 587, 590, 596, 598, 621 Power exercise, 233, 234, 241, 246, 262, 581 Precipitation, 16, 38, 117, 120, 121, 125, 127, 139, 140, 146, 150, 151, 264, 338, 356, 366, 372, 374–378, 382, 460, 466, 515, 528, 551, 559, 561, 570, 572 Pre-industrial time, 106, 107 Pressure, Effect, Impact, Societal Outcome and Response model (PEISOR), 365, 366, 372–374, 451, 456, 457, 502, 503, 509, 519, 528 Privatisation, 11, 35, 74, 77, 156, 164, 172, 175, 180, 193, 195, 222, 236, 284, 356,

Index 383, 425, 438, 439, 488, 544, 545, 557, 603, 604 Production, 7, 9, 13, 16, 18–20, 23, 30, 39, 40, 47–52, 54, 63, 64, 67, 69, 71, 74–76, 83, 84, 94, 105, 106, 113, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 126, 139, 154, 156, 158, 171, 176, 180, 196–199, 201, 203–209, 220, 224, 226, 228, 229, 232, 236, 244, 246, 259, 262, 263, 269, 271, 282–284, 287, 289, 304–306, 310, 330, 332, 339–342, 356–359, 377, 379, 381–384, 393, 394, 397, 401, 402, 404–408, 414, 418, 421, 426–428, 431, 433–442, 457, 459, 467, 469, 470, 472, 502, 503, 507, 514, 517, 519, 520, 525, 526, 535, 543, 546, 547, 549, 550, 561, 564, 568, 570, 579, 583, 585, 594, 595, 601, 603, 606–608 Progressive taxes, 149 Pulmonary conditions, 365 Purchase Power Parity (PPP), 33, 34, 263, 554 R Racism, 4, 44, 59, 84, 88, 169, 170, 174, 240, 308, 453, 458, 491 Rainfall, 16, 100, 118, 147, 158, 220, 340, 351, 354, 374, 375, 386, 395, 407, 459, 460, 462, 463, 466, 467, 511, 512, 517, 526, 536, 564 Real estate, 102, 125, 136, 142 Recycling, 47, 48, 51, 60, 71, 97, 135, 151, 152, 196, 206–208, 313, 314, 342, 398, 406, 585, 586, 600 REDD+, 408 Reduction, 13, 34, 35, 44, 50, 51, 71, 72, 74, 77, 84, 89, 96, 106, 123, 125, 147, 148, 163, 164, 166, 167, 204, 206, 207, 218, 244, 245, 258, 263, 265, 270, 305, 313, 314, 332, 334, 340, 371, 381, 383, 385, 398, 404, 408, 418, 420, 431, 435, 438, 441, 452, 456, 460, 473, 474, 484, 505, 545, 549, 550, 554, 562, 569, 574, 587, 589, 591, 594, 600, 601, 604 Reference object, 11, 20, 222, 334, 352, 358, 419, 420, 460, 547, 558, 559, 564 Refugee, 3, 14, 31, 32, 36, 38, 45, 61, 62, 81, 166, 175, 183, 194, 222, 256, 268, 271, 335–338, 453, 454, 486, 592 Remittance, 148, 243, 381, 477–479, 482, 501, 530 Renewable, 19, 440, 581, 598, 600 Renewable energy, 22, 39, 40, 53, 70, 71, 89, 96, 97, 99, 106, 130, 206, 207, 236, 270, 313, 408, 414, 415, 418, 421, 423, 425, 427, 430, 431, 433–442, 461, 479, 480,

Index 506, 549, 551, 565, 570, 572–574, 581, 585, 589, 594, 595, 597, 600, 601 Resettlement, 142, 143, 155, 536 Resilience, 14, 16, 18, 22, 36–38, 86, 95, 98, 99, 101, 119, 127, 138, 165, 257, 259, 264, 265, 269, 270, 272, 332, 335, 339, 344, 360, 373, 384, 398, 404, 408, 458, 459, 464, 488, 490, 502, 504–507, 535, 552, 558, 571, 573, 574, 583, 584, 587, 601 Resilience building, 360, 373, 488 Resolution, 4, 5, 7, 10, 29, 38–40, 44, 49, 51–53, 59, 60, 87–89, 93, 94, 98, 104, 106, 130, 141, 148, 150, 153, 167, 173, 180, 181, 183, 184, 209, 242, 258, 265, 268, 269, 293, 307–309, 314, 334, 358, 483, 491, 604, 621 Respiratory, 85, 115, 197, 270, 339, 365, 369, 416, 519 Responsibility, 38, 40, 41, 52, 54, 71, 88, 128, 141, 156, 178, 184, 226, 232, 246, 317, 318, 338, 381, 461, 487, 506, 514, 530, 586, 601, 604 Return migration, 456, 473, 488, 501, 503, 504, 509, 510, 525, 526, 528, 533, 534 Reuse, 51, 71, 151, 156, 206, 343, 359, 395, 406, 546, 586 Revolutions, 9, 32, 36, 43, 53, 68, 123, 136, 170, 177–180, 196, 204, 220, 221, 224, 236, 243, 284, 292, 376, 386, 397, 402, 405, 416, 461, 468, 506, 511, 513, 523, 524, 532, 536, 588, 593 Rio Bravo, 358 Rio Colorado, 144 Rivers, 16, 66, 68, 86, 100, 117, 125, 126, 136, 144–148, 150–155, 157, 202, 203, 205, 290, 339, 342, 351, 356, 358, 359, 375, 376, 382, 408, 433, 453, 480, 499, 504, 505, 507, 508, 512, 515, 517, 520–522, 526, 529, 532, 534, 543, 552, 570, 595 Role, 4, 18, 30, 40, 54, 62, 88, 99, 127, 138, 140, 141, 168, 172, 181, 183, 217–221, 224, 227, 229, 231–233, 238, 245, 257, 261, 264, 267, 282, 285, 286, 295, 298, 303, 312, 329, 333, 337, 338, 341, 342, 355, 356, 370, 386, 402, 413, 419, 457, 468, 477, 482, 485, 506, 549, 554, 568, 573, 582, 586, 587, 608 S Safe consumption, 421 Sea level rise, 5, 14, 21, 23, 45, 106, 143, 158, 331, 332, 338, 340, 395, 407, 455, 466, 499

637 Sectorialisation, 8, 12, 15, 19, 20, 37, 100, 366 Securitization, 419 Security, 3–24, 29, 31, 33, 36–40, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 59–62, 64, 69, 70, 74, 75, 83–89, 93–101, 106, 120–122, 130, 137–140, 151, 163, 164, 166–168, 170, 172–176, 180, 181, 183, 184, 190, 193, 195, 196, 201, 205–209, 217, 218, 220–223, 227–229, 233, 236, 237, 239, 241, 242, 244–246, 255–272, 281, 283, 289, 293, 296, 302–307, 310, 311, 313, 315–318, 330–341, 344, 351–361, 365–387, 393, 394, 396, 397, 399, 400, 408, 413–430, 436–442, 453–458, 462, 464, 468, 469, 474–481, 483–485, 487–491, 499, 502, 508, 518, 532, 535, 536, 543–562, 564–567, 570, 572–574, 579, 581, 583, 591, 598–600, 607, 610, 611, 617 Self, 168, 230, 233, 234 Sexism, 169, 308 Sexuality, 224, 225, 227, 236 Shell, 430, 605 Shelter, 66, 126, 173, 200, 221, 465, 483, 525, 528, 564, 568 Skin, 365, 376, 383, 560 Slavery, 5, 170, 221, 257, 271, 284, 288, 338, 587, 592, 593 Small Islands (SIC), 106, 158, 165, 499, 592 Social class(es), 37, 39, 106, 127, 149, 163, 164, 179, 180, 226, 238, 260, 262, 287, 300, 332, 365, 586 Social cognition, 241 Social contract, 178 Social economy, 584, 606, 608 Social movement(s), 154, 170, 179, 182, 183, 219, 228, 236, 239–242, 245, 272, 315, 316, 386, 405, 491, 505, 572, 594, 597 Social organisation, 54, 94, 148, 174, 179, 219, 233, 241, 243, 258, 268, 282, 395, 404, 406, 459, 587, 593, 598 Social representation, 43, 217, 222, 226, 228, 230–234, 241, 242, 245, 257, 258, 261, 262, 264–267, 282, 285, 286, 288, 294, 300, 307, 308, 312, 319, 336, 337, 342, 357, 468, 503, 610 Social vulnerability, 39, 99, 101, 167, 260, 261, 332, 338, 366, 378, 379, 420, 458, 482, 488, 503, 512, 534, 544, 553, 554, 574, 621 Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), 512–514 Soil(s), 4–6, 9, 19, 20, 24, 33, 37, 38, 48, 50, 52, 53, 66–70, 84, 94, 100, 103, 105, 114, 115, 120–124, 126, 127, 130, 139, 141, 146, 149, 151, 157, 158, 167, 180,

638 196–198, 201, 205, 208, 229, 238, 239, 242, 245, 246, 260, 262, 264, 271, 285, 288–291, 307, 313, 314, 316, 319, 330, 338–342, 351, 352, 356, 359, 365, 366, 372, 373, 375, 378, 381, 382, 394, 395, 398, 399, 402–408, 422, 431, 436, 437, 440, 442, 451, 453, 454, 459, 460, 462, 464–467, 469, 470, 480, 489, 490, 500–505, 509–518, 522, 523, 528, 532, 543, 544, 546, 547, 549–552, 554, 556–574, 583, 584, 592, 595, 607 Soil security, 38, 121, 122, 352, 550, 560–562 Solar energy, 104, 461 Solar panel, 434, 435, 461 Solidarity, 37, 39–41, 48, 49, 51, 84, 86–89, 130, 148, 149, 165, 181, 182, 222, 235, 241, 242, 258, 259, 265, 268–270, 272, 294, 314, 316, 317, 319, 332, 345, 383, 386, 387, 481, 488, 503, 518, 525, 531, 537, 557, 584, 586, 596, 597, 600, 605–609 Sorority, 582–587, 597, 609 Sovereignty, 9, 11, 19, 21, 37, 84, 96, 123, 127, 130, 149, 166, 172, 177, 195, 201, 207, 209, 222, 236, 240, 241, 244, 258, 259, 269, 270, 311, 316, 331, 340, 357, 394, 395, 397–400, 402, 404, 405, 408, 419, 429, 440, 442, 467, 479, 536, 553, 562, 570, 573, 574, 582, 584, 603 Soviet Union (USSR), 17, 30, 31, 33, 60 Stakeholder(s), 96, 114, 144, 147, 150, 155, 156, 158, 165, 352, 360, 570 State-centred, 62, 96, 261, 356, 357, 367, 369, 370, 385, 549, 559 State of law, 95, 99, 167, 176, 177, 266, 269, 270, 316, 371 Status, 18, 168, 206, 218, 224, 234, 241, 337, 354, 379, 452, 471, 482, 562, 590, 592 Stereotypes, 218, 224, 232, 234, 267, 289, 337, 556 Stratification, 10, 176, 220, 262, 282, 303, 605 Strikes, 66, 69, 136, 200, 336, 524 Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), 35, 265 Structural transformation, 268 Stunt, 399, 400, 401, 591 Superpower, 30, 31, 36, 60, 63, 88, 164, 175, 176, 286, 287, 302, 581, 609 Support, 3, 4, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24, 29, 33–35, 38, 39, 41, 52, 54, 77, 83, 84, 86, 101, 106, 125, 126, 148, 149, 153, 154, 156, 163, 164, 177, 178, 195, 207, 209, 222, 230, 234, 244, 245, 255, 257, 264, 265, 270, 286, 293, 294, 296, 314, 330, 336, 339, 343, 345, 354, 356, 359, 361, 370–372,

Index 380–382, 384, 385, 397–399, 402, 405–409, 414, 428, 439, 440, 453–455, 459, 461, 465, 467, 470, 471, 477, 480, 485, 487, 489–491, 501–503, 505, 517, 518, 523–525, 527–532, 535, 536, 543, 548, 552, 557, 558, 562, 564, 565, 570, 572, 573, 586–588, 596–598, 600–602, 604, 607, 608 Supreme Court, 145, 153, 172, 484 Survival, 5, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22–24, 34, 38, 48, 49, 60, 81, 84, 86, 87, 104–106, 114, 115, 127, 128, 130, 139, 141, 156, 167, 180, 181, 219, 220, 222, 236, 238, 239, 243, 246, 255, 258, 259, 261, 263, 266, 269, 283, 284, 292, 294, 296, 302, 316–318, 331, 334, 335, 339, 340, 342, 343, 351, 353, 356, 365–367, 383, 393, 419, 453–455, 465, 466, 468, 470, 480, 483, 487, 489, 490, 501, 515, 517, 524, 533, 534, 544, 548, 554, 564, 569, 573, 581–584, 587, 590, 591, 593, 595, 596, 601, 607, 609, 610 Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDG2030), 165, 355, 585, 597–599, 601 Sustainable(ity), 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10–13, 18, 23, 30, 39, 40, 45–54, 59, 60, 62, 63, 67, 70, 71, 84–89, 93, 94, 97, 98, 100, 101, 104, 106, 120, 121, 123, 127, 128, 130, 138, 143, 145, 147–151, 156, 165, 167, 169, 171, 173, 174, 179–182, 184, 185, 194, 196, 206–209, 222, 227, 230, 236, 238–242, 246, 255, 259, 265, 266, 268–272, 281–283, 288, 291, 293, 294, 296, 303–307, 310–319, 329–332, 334, 340, 344, 352, 354–356, 358, 360, 361, 365–369, 385–387, 395, 398, 400, 404, 405, 407, 408, 415, 420–423, 430, 431, 438–442, 480, 510, 543, 544, 550–552, 557, 558, 560, 562, 564, 568, 570–574, 579, 583–587, 594, 595, 597, 601, 606, 608–611, 617, 618 T Tax heaven, 548 Temperature, 5, 16, 64, 72, 105, 106, 113, 117, 120, 122, 124, 125, 127, 129, 139, 155, 198, 199, 207, 264, 332, 338–342, 365, 366, 377, 378, 386, 398, 431, 433, 460, 462, 466, 467, 487, 512, 526, 559, 563, 564, 567, 569, 589, 595, 599 Terrorism, 5, 11, 12, 33, 37, 89, 144, 166, 172, 175, 180, 181, 193, 222, 230, 237, 302, 311, 335, 369, 419

Index Texas, 145, 150–152, 427, 472 Theft, 423–425 Theor-y (ies), 4, 5, 7, 10, 25, 34, 95, 96, 100, 168, 170, 183, 184, 219, 222–226, 230, 231, 233, 234, 236, 237, 261, 265, 267, 281, 292, 293, 295, 296, 304, 306, 308, 310, 312, 313, 335, 352, 404, 454, 457, 489 There are Many Alternatives (TAMA), 169, 237 There is an Alternative (TIAA), 169, 357 There is no Alternative (TINA), 169, 237, 609 Thermosolar, 433 Threatened, 10, 14, 15, 22, 24, 25, 34, 38, 51, 95, 96, 113, 117, 122, 141, 147, 149, 157, 176, 180, 202, 204, 220, 233, 266, 267, 270, 272, 294, 296, 302, 343, 354, 370, 377, 394, 398, 415, 419, 483, 500, 509, 517, 520, 529, 545, 547–549, 560, 564–567, 569, 573 Threats, 5, 9–11, 13–15, 17, 18, 20–23, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36–38, 62, 69, 86, 88, 93, 95, 96, 99, 101, 104, 106, 118, 124, 125, 127, 130, 139, 144, 150, 158, 164, 166–168, 174, 183, 184, 207, 217, 222, 225, 229, 232, 233, 242, 245, 246, 256, 259, 261–263, 266, 270, 272, 283, 284, 296, 302, 303, 311, 318, 319, 331, 334, 335, 338, 344, 345, 353, 355, 357, 366, 367, 369, 371, 372, 374, 376, 377, 383, 385, 386, 394, 400, 404, 409, 419–421, 428, 436, 452, 453, 455–467, 471, 477, 479, 482, 484, 487, 490, 491, 499, 501, 502, 515, 519, 525, 529, 534, 536, 544–546, 548, 552, 553, 557, 564, 565, 567, 570–573, 579, 581–585, 587, 593, 594, 596, 598, 601, 607, 610 Tipping points, 246, 263, 266, 271, 318, 332, 461, 548, 579, 581, 583, 594 Top-down, 24, 89, 127, 227, 257, 264, 367, 384, 405, 572, 583, 584, 597–599 Total Groundwater Stress (TGS), 119 Touris-t (m), 16, 340, 359, 383, 488, 543, 597 Training, 3, 4, 11, 18, 22, 24, 38, 61, 99, 100, 147–150, 158, 227, 313, 316, 317, 337, 338, 344, 379, 385, 401, 402, 413, 441, 484, 487, 520, 535, 536, 552, 598, 605 Transformative security, 271 Transition, 5, 6, 12, 23, 51, 52, 89, 104, 106, 128, 130, 183, 291, 307, 315, 319, 332, 408, 427, 431, 438, 440, 489, 552, 571, 581–585, 587, 594, 595, 623 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), 430 Tributary(ies), 144, 145, 150, 152, 507

639 Truth commission, 183 Typhoon, 200, 337 U UN Children´s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 44, 202, 255, 353 UN Convention on Biodiversity (UNCB), 384 UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 67–69, 342, 343, 544, 550, 560–562, 622 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), 95, 101, 103, 196, 197 Undernourishment, 12, 83, 242, 243, 339, 398–402, 503, 518, 524, 547, 564, 591, 621 Undocumented, 149, 451–453, 455, 456, 458, 467, 471–474, 483–491, 501, 503, 525, 527, 533, 534 UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia (UNESCAP), 264, 355 Unequal, 3, 31, 39, 52, 61, 73, 76, 81, 85, 178, 227, 272, 283, 285, 286, 297, 298, 304, 308, 316, 331, 340, 415, 429, 438, 463, 468, 469, 506, 544, 590 UNESCO, 40, 81, 94, 135, 163, 167, 261, 264, 308, 309, 311, 317, 338, 622 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 106, 148, 330, 384, 415, 430, 431, 434, 442, 536, 543, 550, 588, 589 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 6, 11, 17, 54, 61, 72, 74, 76, 78, 81, 82, 96, 98, 99, 163, 166, 167, 172, 198, 207, 256, 269, 286, 297, 298, 311, 315, 386, 415, 420, 438, 488, 547, 553, 554, 562 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 14, 36, 256, 454 United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), 255, 256 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 36, 245, 262–264, 271, 289, 291, 554 United Nations (UN), 5, 6, 11, 37, 38, 48, 128, 143, 166, 193, 196, 227, 255, 260, 262, 289, 309, 316, 415, 420, 430, 454, 499, 535, 548, 553, 561, 588 United Nations University on Environmental and Human Security (UNU-EHS), 14, 18, 99, 167, 260, 420, 499, 553 United States of North America (USA), 30–34, 101, 141, 145, 146, 153, 155, 164, 171, 182, 183, 201, 202, 204, 268, 284, 299,

640 303, 374, 383, 437, 451–456, 458, 461, 465, 466, 469–478, 480, 482–491, 501, 503, 517, 519, 523, 525–530, 533–535, 548, 549, 556 University Programme on Climate Change (PINCC), 470, 500, 623 UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), 39 Unpaid work, 18, 267, 300, 301, 343, 344, 596 Unrest, 94, 397, 545, 550, 590 UN Security Council (UNSC), 13, 17, 37, 166, 304, 454, 547–549 UN Statistic Division (UNSTAT), 137, 198 UN World Water Assessment Programme (UN-WWAP), 135 Uprisings, 136, 283, 574, 604, 605 Urbanization, 154 V Value(s), 10, 11, 14, 18, 22, 39, 43–45, 47–49, 51, 59, 73, 74, 86, 89, 100, 114, 125, 141, 143, 166–168, 175, 176, 180, 181, 203, 222–224, 227, 230–233, 259, 261, 266, 283, 284, 294, 302, 308, 309, 312, 313, 315, 317, 318, 331, 332, 334, 356, 358, 359, 369, 382, 386, 405, 416, 419, 420, 477, 547, 564, 586, 596, 606, 609, 617 Vector-borne, 202, 352, 370 Vector(s), 66, 197, 198, 202, 339, 352, 365, 370, 382, 408, 589 Violence, 3–5, 7–10, 12, 17, 18, 21, 24, 32, 37–40, 44, 45, 49, 50, 54, 60, 62, 70, 83–89, 95, 97, 101, 136, 137, 141, 152, 164, 168, 169, 174, 177, 180, 184, 194, 196, 197, 206, 218, 221, 226, 229–231, 234, 236, 237, 239, 244, 245, 255, 257, 262, 266, 268, 269, 271, 281–283, 285, 287–297, 304, 306–319, 329, 331–333, 335–338, 344, 370, 372, 379, 380, 399, 467, 469, 474, 476, 477, 481, 486, 488, 491, 504, 514, 519, 521, 531, 532, 535, 536, 546, 550, 553, 554, 582, 583, 586, 589, 590, 593, 607, 609, 623 Virtual water, 120, 121, 151, 156, 358, 397 Vulnerability, 14, 18, 21, 63, 65, 98, 100, 101, 143, 147, 172, 199, 207, 241, 257, 259, 260, 264, 337, 343, 344, 357, 360, 374, 408, 452, 459, 468, 481, 484, 489, 490, 506, 513, 514, 552, 553, 567, 570, 573, 574, 592, 623

Index W Warlord(s), 32, 164, 172 Wars, 3–5, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 21, 29–39, 45, 60–62, 66, 67, 69, 70, 81, 84, 86–89, 93, 97, 99, 136, 145, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 175, 177, 178, 180, 183, 185, 193, 194, 202, 205, 219, 221, 229, 230, 234, 240, 245, 261, 263, 266–268, 282–285, 291, 293–296, 301, 302, 304, 307, 309, 311, 313, 317, 330, 335, 344, 358, 370, 372, 380, 384, 396, 415–419, 454, 469, 477, 479, 481, 484–487, 504, 524, 530, 535–537, 544, 545, 547, 548, 550, 589 Waste, 9, 13, 17, 30, 44, 47–51, 53, 60, 67, 69, 82, 94, 95, 114, 115, 120, 125, 126, 128, 146, 149, 196–198, 202, 205, 209, 222, 259, 294, 314–316, 318, 330, 331, 341, 356, 359, 365, 382, 384, 394, 395, 398, 399, 401, 402, 404, 406, 407, 440, 442, 461, 505, 511, 514, 521, 528, 535, 536, 544, 546, 547, 554, 558, 563, 570, 581, 585, 600, 603, 606 Water, 3–6, 9–13, 15, 19–24, 30, 33, 37, 44–47, 50, 52, 54, 60, 62, 65–71, 79, 81, 82, 85, 94, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 114, 116–126, 128, 130, 135–158, 171, 172, 174, 183, 193, 195–198, 200–209, 221, 229, 235, 236, 238, 242, 245, 246, 260, 264, 266, 271, 285, 288, 290, 291, 294, 307, 311, 313, 314, 316, 319, 330, 332, 334, 335, 338–345, 351–361, 365–376, 378, 380–387, 393–395, 397–400, 402–404, 406–408, 414, 415, 420, 422, 423, 433, 435–437, 440, 442, 451, 452, 454, 457, 459, 460, 462–469, 480, 482, 489, 500, 504, 505, 507–509, 511–513, 517, 518, 520–523, 526, 528–530, 532, 533, 536, 543–547, 549–552, 554, 556–562, 564, 565, 568–574, 581, 583, 584, 594, 595, 598–600, 601, 603, 607, 611 Water security, 6, 11, 19, 20, 24, 99, 120, 332, 341, 351–361, 366–368, 372, 375, 376, 382–386, 420, 545, 558, 598, 599, 622, 623 Water, soil, food, biodiversity and energy nexus (WSFBE), 546, 547, 549–552, 561, 564, 570–574 Water storage, 561 Water stress, 117, 118, 120, 153, 154, 354, 355

Index Wealth, 12, 35, 40, 49, 51, 59, 63, 72–74, 85, 89, 95, 164, 166, 170, 174–176, 178, 193, 241, 265, 282, 283, 285–287, 294, 296, 297, 301, 305, 306, 311, 316, 318, 319, 330, 334, 344, 371, 393, 479, 488, 518, 548, 554, 556, 579, 583, 589, 590, 608 Welfare, 139, 174, 175, 178, 238, 241, 286, 343, 415, 439, 440, 464, 468, 606 Wellbeing, 235, 385, 394, 553 Widen(ing), 8, 11, 12, 15, 20, 21, 38, 46, 100, 172, 222, 261, 263, 264, 339, 366–369, 572 Wind energy, 433, 434 Wisdom, 22, 47, 63, 100, 126–128, 600, 606 Work, 9, 18, 25, 40, 45–50, 52, 65, 74, 82, 83, 84, 89, 128, 137, 148, 165, 168, 170, 176, 178, 179, 200, 208, 209, 221, 223, 229, 237, 260, 267, 271, 282–284, 286, 289, 293, 299–301, 310, 312–314, 318, 329, 330, 342–345, 337, 384, 386, 371, 380, 402, 409, 440, 453–455, 458, 468, 471, 473, 477, 480, 483, 485, 491, 505, 506, 523–526, 536, 555, 569, 596, 602, 603, 605–607, 609, 617 World Bank (WB), 4, 7, 9, 12, 35, 59, 72, 74, 76, 78–80, 85, 116, 163, 164, 166, 168, 171, 172, 193, 199, 237, 238, 240, 257, 262, 265, 284, 287, 291, 299, 301, 302, 316, 342, 370, 371, 401, 429, 469, 479, 544, 557, 567, 595, 597

641 World Conservation Monitoring Centre of the United Nation’s Environment Programme (UNEP-WCMC), 565 World Economic Forum (WEF), 6, 239, 263, 285–287, 298–302, 329, 338, 343, 344, 420, 545, 547, 550, 552, 559, 572, 579, 587 World Health Organisation (WHO), 6, 19, 66, 69, 80, 85, 115, 202, 203, 242, 341, 342, 352, 366, 369, 370, 385, 394, 397, 400, 402, 509, 546, 547, 554, 601 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 117, 461 World Resource Institute (WRI), 118, 124, 580, 581 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 32, 52, 78, 85, 154, 193, 235–237, 239, 240, 244, 301, 302, 369, 371, 569 World Water Council (WWC), 138, 140, 144 World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 306, 566, 567, 569 Y Yautepec, 499, 504, 505, 507, 508, 510, 511, 517, 521, 522 Z Zapatista, 239, 241, 266, 268, 604–606