Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
How do we understand environmental issues as contributing to risk or security? This question is important because it draws our attention to ways in which environmental themes are selectively distinguished from or connected to human activity. My proposed book project engages with the enduring question of how humans interpret their place in the world with a particular focus on ways in which environmental features are brought into discussions, attributed with agency, or portrayed to support interests. The author provides an analytical approach that assesses environmental risk and threat, which is important if we want to decide, for example, how science is used to make political arguments, how environmental features are viewed as threat multipliers from a military perspective, and how consumers are encouraged to make choices. The author makes connections and critiques that will offer insightful perspectives on current events as well as on the way our society understands and conceptualizes environmental risk, security, and stability. Making connections and critiques that will offer insightful perspectives on current events, the book illuminates the way our society understands and conceptualizes environmental risk, security, and stability.
Synopsis
This thought-provoking and clearly argued text provides a critical geopolitical lens for understanding global environment politics. Shannon O'Lear challenges accepted assumptions about human-environment relationships and demonstrates how we can generate more just and creative approaches to assessing risk and security.
Synopsis
This thought-provoking and clearly argued text provides a critical geopolitical lens for understanding global environment politics. A subfield of political geography, environmental geopolitics examines how environmental themes are used to support geopolitical arguments and physical realities of power and place. Shannon O'Lear considers common, problematic traits of such familiar but widely misunderstood narratives about human-environment relationships. Mainstream themes about human-environment relationships include narratives about presumed connections between human population trends and resource scarcity; ways in which conflict and violence are linked to resource use or environmental degradation; climate security; and the application of science to solve environmental problems. O'Lear questions these narratives, arguing that the role or meaning of the environment is rarely specified, humans' role in these situations tends to be considered selectively, and little attention is paid to spatial dimensions of human-environment relationships. She shows that how we tend to think about environmental concerns often obscure value judgments and constrain more dynamic approaches to human-environment relationships. Environmental geopolitics demonstrates how we can question familiar assumptions to generate more just and creative approaches to our many relationships with the environment.