Let us take inspiration from the solutions we see around us and from the transformations that we know are possible. Let us prove to future generations that we had the vision to see where we needed to go, and the wisdom to get there.
(UN Secretary Ban-Ki Moon Remarks to UNFCCC COP18, Doha, December 4, 2012)
Introduction
As the biophysical environment of the twenty-first century is changing all around us, so too is the social environment in flux. We live in a period where multiple transformative changes are already underway; while global environmental change is taking place at unprecedented rates, the axis of global geopolitical powers is shifting, global economies are in crisis, and in the midst of it all a new generation is emerging with new ideas about the future. In light of the social and environmental transformations that current greenhouse gas emissions trajectories imply, the ultimate question may not be whether or not transformations are indeed coming, but rather whether and to what extent humanity will mobilize its collective agency to actively participate in, rather than passively endure, transformations (Raskin et al., 2002; Anderson and Bows, 2011; WGBU, 2011; PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2012). As the above quote by Ban-Ki Moon reminds us, transformations to alternative futures call for both vision and wisdom. Within this context, human security is without a doubt more important than ever.
Human security in a changing world
Human security is both a choice and an imperative. The choice is about what kind of future is desirable, which values are important, and who eventually decides. The imperative emerges from the scope and intensity of the planetary challenges that are melting the boundaries between more and less vulnerable people and places. It is about decisions that are made here and now, rather than somewhere else and in the future. Just as future sustainability can be considered a mirage if it is not connected to the deep needs of the present (Foster, 2008), so is human security in a changing environment spurious if it is not connected to decisions and actions that are taken today. If current trajectories continue, the effects of environmental change will be profound everywhere, and they will change everything. In order to work towards human security in this context, we need to accept that humans are responsible for the changes taking place, challenge assumptions and paradigms, and explicitly engage with the experiential and subjective aspects of environmental change. Equally important, we need to take actions that create the conditions for human security, recognizing that the latter is part of a process, rather than a simple outcome.
This book has discussed the reality of human security in a changing environment, demonstrating that we ourselves are now responsible for many of the outcomes, and for creating deliberate transformations that promote individual and collective human security. The breakthrough conditions that we describe are important in realizing transformative change, and may be considered a missing component of a more holistic, integrated approach. A number of chapters in this book demonstrate the importance of engaging with multiple perspectives, including connections across scales, as this is a prerequisite for understanding what truly is at stake for people and communities around the world – from their point of view – and to begin to envision what a desirable future looks like. Questioning dominant framings and paradigms is a necessity in order to move from reworking existing approaches towards transforming them. Explicitly recognizing the role of individual and collective agency through empowerment can not only help avoid repeating past mistakes, including technological and policy responses that enhance existing power gradients, but also refocus the efforts that must now transpire into humanity’s collective hands. Without inspiring collaboration and harnessing the power of the collective there is arguably little chance of accomplishing what is required to mitigate global environmental change. Finally, integrating knowledge and action is a paramount challenge that requires different approaches to knowledge generation, as well as different types of actions.
Transforming knowledge
Past and indeed much of current understandings of environmental change have fallen far short of delivering the insights needed to trigger the transformative changes necessary to halt and reverse current trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and other negative indicators of sustainability. This shortcoming is as much a symptom of the approaches taken to global change research, as it is evidence that policy making is often not based on or informed by current scientific understandings of human-environment systems. The approaches taken to illuminate our understanding of environmental change have been dominated by piecemeal attempts to use objective measures to estimate changes or impacts, e.g. to assess vulnerability in a specific context through case studies, to describe some of the objective impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods, or to suggest avenues to ameliorate these impacts through policies often targeting the a priori vulnerable through technical interventions. This piecemeal approach has left significant blind spots that are rarely if ever considered in the objective calculus of human-environment interactions. One blind spot concerns the experiential, subjective dimensions of changes as they are experienced by people, rather than as measured and assessed by researchers. They include the meaning people attach to places, livelihoods, and identity, the goals they pursue in making their lives work, and therefore how changes they perceive in the environment affect their own perception of their lives and security (Wolf et al., in press). These subjective dimensions cannot be explained by models, impact studies or vulnerability assessments because they are underpinned by values, worldviews and the goals to which people aspire (O’Brien and Wolf, 2010). One result of these blind spots is that much of the existing literature on environmental change and human security targets a reality that exists in and indeed is created from the perspective of science and scientists (Hackmann and St. Clair, 2012). Of course, resulting recommendations for policy then can only address this singular “flat” version of what may be better described as a multidimensional reality with many distinct and seemingly irreconcilable perspectives. Therefore, new approaches to understanding environmental change and human security must consider not only such multiple subjective realities but their underpinning values, worldviews and goals.
Academic disciplines have provided the foundations for our present understanding of environmental change and human security, with each discipline highlighting its distinct viewpoints. Yet, one of the key barriers to transforming this disciplinary approach is the lack of overt, active, and direct support of transdisciplinary science in academic environments. Future research that will help transform existing approaches will necessarily be inter- or transdisciplinary in order to fill the blind spots left by what is largely still disciplinary or multidisciplinary science (O’Brien et al., 2013). According to the findings demonstrated in this book, inter- and transdisciplinary research has the greatest capacity to explain hitherto ignored and misunderstood aspects of the relationship between humans and the environment. Such research will be needed at a large scale in order to move beyond a reworking of current approaches and toward a transformation to collective human security.
Transforming policy
The future cannot be extrapolated from the past, and policies need to become much more flexible, innovative, and visionary if they are to facilitate effective, equitable and legitimate responses to environmental change. Current policy institutions largely represent an inheritance from the past that has less relevance in the complexity of today’s world. As a result, transforming the ways in which knowledge and policy interact and inform each other is a must. Recent conceptualizations of this interaction already go beyond the “speaking truth to power” model of decisionist and technocratic approaches to science-policy interactions and explicitly recognize that co-production of knowledge and policy already takes place (Millstone, 2005; Hulme, 2009). Such a transformation necessarily involves a conscious harnessing of inclusive, participatory mechanisms that can lead to knowledge-policy co-production by providing a voice to those affected by both environmental change and the policies developed to address them. To this effect, the scientific community has to embrace methods and approaches that enable participation and inclusion in research.
A critical thread emerging from this volume is that the dominant structures and institutions currently shaping human lives are constraining the collective human capabilities in responding to environmental change. Where such structures are fundamentally changed through social reform, collective action, or creative innovation, evidence suggests that a redistribution of power can lead to the empowerment of previously excluded groups. But even then both changes in mindsets and changes in institutional structures are needed for transformation. Transformation therefore hinges on both elements that together facilitate a transition from a mere reworking of current ways, toward new approaches.
Much research suggests that a specific element in the transformation of policy on environmental change is flexibility – a trait that is clearly lacking in current environmental decision making. The rigidity of existing decision-making processes and outcomes acts as a barrier to developing responsive policy systems. Recent thinking on social ecological resilience has pointed to a need for inherently adaptable institutions, rules and regulations that can accommodate and respond effectively and equitably to sudden shifts in social and ecological systems (Olsson et al., 2006).
Existing environmental policy making – especially but not exclusively at the global level – is surprisingly devoid of any vision of the future. Given the scope of the challenge, this is a major deficiency. Long-term vision may certainly be encumbered by the sometimes limited human ability to think forward, but the absence of creative visions in environmental decisions can no longer be justified given the grand challenges we face. Here too, the role of knowledge co-production cannot be underestimated; scientific knowledge that focuses on objective, measurable and quantifiable elements of environmental change has little to say about visions for the future, for it is mostly extrapolating expectations from the past (Miller, 2007). Transforming policy then also means engaging the collective human imagination to envision what a desirable future might look like, and this requires collaborative, transdisciplinary efforts that draw on the social sciences, fine arts and the humanities.
Transforming action
Contrary to current calls for radical behavior and value change, we suggest that it cannot be the objective of research or policy to attempt to alter values, nor to manufacture a new or improved set of values in order to meet environmental or social goals, as important as they might be. Attempts to manipulate beliefs in particular phenomena, deities, or ideas have in the not too distant past had disastrous effects, as evident in some of the legacies of colonialism that still influence the lives of many contemporaries. Therefore, any undertaking in research, policy, or practice, in which the goal is improve lives and livelihoods in the face of environmental change must not only be based on and informed critically by the voices of those whose lives are affected, but ought to be shaped by them. Such engagement, for example, through citizen science, participatory research, and co-production of knowledge and policy, will be a crucial necessity of any future attempts to understand environmental change and human security. This is not to underplay the importance of science and research, as this has helped us to understand the complex challenges that we are now facing, but rather to call for a different type of science for responding to these challenges – a transdisciplinary science that integrates many more perspectives, including those from the social sciences (O’Brien et al., 2010).
One of the many hopeful avenues to work effectively, equitably and legitimately towards a sustainable future lies in global citizenship. Current lives are inextricably connected in a web of interactions and interdependencies around the globe. At the heart of global citizenship lies a realization that due to many aspects of the contemporary world, lives are interconnected through systems and networks that span the earth and through the collective impacts of decisions made by individuals and groups in nearly all locations (Dobson, 2003). In order to shape a global citizenry that is aware of these interconnections and interdependencies, new approaches to primary, secondary and post-secondary education is needed. As Sterling notes, these changes in education do not call for “doing more of the same, but better,” but rather for re-thinking systems by “seeing things differently” (Sterling, 2001: 28).
It is simultaneously tragic and symptomatic that the involvement and the power of youth have been all but ignored in global environmental change research and policy. While there is significant theorizing on intergenerational equity, painfully little of it has informed policy and policy-led practice to date. Emerging, however in spite of or perhaps precisely because of this, is a youth movement around the globe that, if enabled, may well be a key factor in transforming how global environmental change and human security are approached. With significant, even ultimate, stakes in the outcomes of past and current decisions, youth not only deserve but represent an absolutely crucial voice in research and policy. Drawing on social media, citizen advocacy, and a sense of connectedness, a new generation is taking ownership over exactly those issues from which they have been systematically excluded. Unified by the significant and specific challenges they face, including unprecedented and dangerous environmental change, weakening democracies, growing social inequality, and a global economy marked by unprecedented youth unemployment and unsustainable resource extraction (Hayward, 2012), youth are attempting to claim their role in shaping a future worth living. The time is ripe to invite and embrace their participation in research, policy and practice that will have a profound effect on their lives.
Perhaps most fundamentally, these elements point to a need for a new type of leadership. Such leadership is more likely emergent than existing now, and includes both decision-making powers as well as collective, networked social agency. A new type of leadership may therefore include non-traditional actors who collectively bring about social movements as well as leaders in decision-making positions. This new leadership distinguishes itself because it openly acknowledges and takes on the responsibility to change the systems and structures that inhibit diverse participation and encumber agency of those affected by environmental change. It is adaptive leadership, in that it calls for helping people to move through critical times while recognizing that old habits, identities, loyalties and beliefs may no longer function in a changing environment (Heifetz et al., 2009). Most importantly, however, new leadership conveys with heart both vision and hope for the future, making explicit rather than ignoring the rising emotional stakes.
Facing a collective challenge
We live in a time where we risk falling into an inevitability trap, believing that environmental change can no longer be addressed, or that human insecurity is an inevitable “fact of life.” There is, however, much evidence of an emerging capacity to deliberately transform that which has traditionally been thought of as the responsibility of others. Fostering collective capacities to take responsibility for the future is perhaps the best news for humans and the planet. In the story we have presented in the book, humans are the protagonists of change, able to create human security as a choice, and able to thrive in a changing world.
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