Chapter 13

Green Theory

• Green IR theory has undergone significant development in the last decade to the point where it is recognised as a significant new stream of IR theory.

• Green scholarship has grown apace with increasing global economic and ecological interdependence and the emergence of uniquely global ecological problems, such as climate change, the thinning of the ozone layer and the erosion of the Earth’s biodiversity.

• Green theory emerged in the social sciences and humanities. The first wave of green political theory sought to highlight the ecological irrationality of core social institutions such as the market and the state as presented by both liberalism and orthodox Marxism.

• Green political theorists have called into question anthropocentrism or human chauvinism − the idea that humans are the apex of evolution, the centre of value and meaning in the world and the only beings that possess moral worth. Many green theorists have embraced a new ecology-centred or ‘ecocentric’ philosophy that seeks to respect all life-forms in terms of their own distinctive modes of being, for their own sake, and not merely for their instrumental value to humans.

• The second wave of green political theory has become more transnational and cosmopolitan in its orientation through its exploration of the relationship between environmental justice and environmental democracy.

• Environmental injustices arise when unaccountable social agents ‘externalize’ the environmental costs of their decisions and practices to innocent third parties in circumstances when the affected parties (or their representatives) have no knowledge of, or input in, the ecological risk-generating decisions and practices. They also arise when privileged social classes and nations appropriate more than their ‘fair share’ of the environment, and leave behind oversized ‘ecological footprints’ (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996).

• The basic quest of green theory is both to reduce ecological risks across the board, and to prevent their unfair externalisation and displacement, through space and time, onto innocent third parties.

• Green IR theory shares many of the characteristics of the new IR theories emerging out of the so-called ‘third debate’ (also sometimes referred to as the ‘fourth debate’, see chapter 1): they are generally critical, problem-oriented, interdisciplinary and above all unapologetic about their explicit normative orientation.

• Green IR theory may be usefully subdivided into an IPE wing, which offers an alternative analysis of global ecological problems to that of regime theory, and a normative or ‘green cosmopolitan’ wing that articulates new norms of environmental justice and green democracy at all levels of governance.

• Both the political economy and normative wings of green IR theory have challenged the dominant rationalist approaches of neorealism and neoliberalism on four levels.

• First, green critics have directed critical attention to the normative purposes that are served by rationalist approaches by exposing the problematic environmental assumptions and ethical values that are implicit in neorealist and neoliberal analyses.

• Second, green IR theorists have added their weight to the critique of rationalist approaches pioneered by critical theorists and constructivists, who have exposed the limitations in the analytical frameworks and explanatory power of ‘positivist’ IR theories.

• Third, green IR theorists have directed their critical attention to the social agents and social structures that have systematically blocked the negotiation of more ecologically enlightened regimes. One prominent concern of green IR theorists is that international economic regimes, such as the global trading regime, tend to overshadow and undermine many international environmental regimes.

• Finally, green IR theorists have explored the role of non-state forms of ‘deterritorialized’ governance, ranging from the transnational initiatives of environmental NGOs to the private governance practices of industrial and financial corporations, including the insurance industry.

• Green IR theory has self-consciously sought to transcend the state-centric framework of traditional IR theory and offer new analytical and normative insights into global environmental change.

• Case Study. The problem of human-induced climate change represents one of the most challenging environmental problems confronting humankind. In response to the alarming predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) First Assessment Report in 1990, the international community negotiated the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was signed at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

• Case Study continued. Neorealists cannot explain why 157 industrialized countries have agreed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and pursue a second round of negotiations to strengthen emissions reduction targets, despite the US’s defection and without extracting any binding commitments from developing countries. Neoliberals, in focusing their attention on the hard bargaining among states over the distribution of benefits and burdens of adjustment, have tended to sideline the larger ideational context that shapes and drives the negotiations.

• Case Study continued. Green IR theorists give prominence to the role of justice norms in their analysis. This normative framework is essential to understanding why a majority of states have ratified the Protocol and agreed to a further round of negotiations to pursue further emissions reductions. The idea that high consumption societies should be the first to move away from a carbon-based economy has been central to the environmental justice arguments of green theorists.

• There are however internal disputes within green theory, in terms of the role of the state (to be anti-statist or to explore how states and the state system might become more responsive to ecological problems), the benefits of enhancing place-based identity as opposed to the more abstract idea of global citizenship or cosmopolitan democracy, and the wisdom of conceptualizing ecological problems as security problems.

• Nonetheless, the new green discourses of environmental justice, sustainable development, reflexive modernisation, and ecological security have not only influenced national and international policy debates. Taken together, they have also recast the roles of both state, economic actors and citizens as environmental stewards rather than territorial overlords, with asymmetrical international obligations based on differing capacities and levels of environmental responsibility.

• Green IR theorists have brought into view the ideal of increased state and citizen accountability to communities and environments beyond their own borders and made it thinkable.

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Chapter 13

Green Theory