Presentation of the Book "Environmental Security in the Anthropocene. Assessing Theory and Practice"

The work analyses the intellectual foundations, the evolution and different interpretations, strengths and potential of the link between environment and security, but also its weaknesses, incoherencies and distortions. To do so, it employs a critical environmental security studies analytical framework and uniquely places this analysis within the context of the Anthropocene. Furthermore, the book examines the practice–theory divide, and the political implementation of the environmental security concept in response to global environmental change and in relation to different actors. It pays significant attention to the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC), which is led by different programs of the United Nations, the OSCE and until recently by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), among others, and has largely been overlooked in the academic literature to date. The goal is to study how environmental security practice could inform and shape the environmental security theory, and also to explore how, conversely, new theoretical insights could contribute to the enhancement of environmental security activities.

Speaker

Judith Nora Hardt works as an associated Postdoctoral Researcher with the Research Group “Climate Change and Security” at the University of Hamburg. Her research is based on a critical-normative approach and aims to develop the conceptalizations of security, conflict, human well-being and justice via the new readings of human-nature relations in the Anthropocene. The forms and roles of agency, expertise, power and normative foundations within global governance are further constitutive elements of her research. Judith Hardt will be hosted by the College in the context of the partnership with the WZB.