Úrsula Oswald Spring

Political Geoecology for the Anthropocene

This chapter argues that a fundamental change in earth history is under way which requires a rethinking of the relationship between humankind and nature, including the political realm and international relations, that makes geopolitical approaches in the Hobbesian tradition obsolete. The Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen coined for this new period of earth history the term ‘Anthropocene’ (Crutzen 2002 and preface essay).

Coping with Global Environmental Change – Sustainability Revolution and Sustainable Peace

In the Anthropocene era of earth and human history we are confronted with opposite : Business-as-usual in a Hobbesian world where economic and strategic interests and behaviour prevail leading to a major crisis of humankind, in inter-state relations and destroying the Earth as the habitat for humans and ecosystems putting the survival of the vulnerable at risk (see the ‘market first’ and ‘security first’ scenarios of UNEP 2007). The need for a transformation of global cultural, environmental, economic (productive and consumptive patterns) and political (with regard to human and interstate) relations (see the ‘sustainability first’ scenario of UNEP 2007).

Introduction: Coping with Global Environmental Change in the Anthropocene

This third volume of the Global Environmental and Human Security Handbook for the Anthropocene (GEHSHA) focuses on issues of Coping with Global Environmental Change that are contributing to a reconceptualization of security in the 21st century that has evolved since the end of the Cold War and has significantly been influenced by the globalization process.

DUAL VULNERABILITY AMONG FEMALE HOUSEHOLD HEADS

This article investigates the impact of women’s double vulnerability, the social and environmental vulnerability that makes them household heads, and the processes that enable them to overcome vulnerability and empower themselves at the local level. An empirical study conducted in the Yautepec river basin in the state of Morelos in Mexico explores the impacts of climate change and socio-environmental migration on this rural population. The study combined quantitative and qualitative methods. In the context of the concept of dual vulnerability, environmental and social, the research analysed the relationship between environmental degradation and adverse social conditions, and an Index of Social Vulnerability was developed. The research results showed that when families are faced with a survival dilemma, men migrate, leaving women overburdened with a workload which leads to illness and malaise. At the same time, having assumed the role of household head with all its productive, caring and educational activities, women become empowered. They become involved in local public activities and are able to break up existing corrupt male chiefdoms. In conclusion, the study found that the feminization of agriculture and local public services had allowed women to recover eroded land thanks to organic farming, and to improve public services in their communities.

Social Vulnerability, Discrimination, and Resilience-building in Disaster Risk Reduction

Discrimination represents a harmful as well as an unfair treatment of a person or a group, based on prejudice. Therefore it is related to a ‘rejection process’ of the other, emphasizing critical attributes such as race, sex, age, gender, social and marital status, class and caste, migrant or refugee status, religion, incapacity or handicap. These attributes are socially constructed and are results of the complexity of daily life and of existing power structures. Discrimination induces people to simplify their behaviour by identifying themselves with the ideology of the group and to reject the other. This often creates stereotypes of how to think, to believe, and to act. Thus, a system of values, ideas, beliefs, and practices influences discrimination, and often oversimplifies complex life situations.

Hydro-Diplomacy: Opportunities for Learning from an Interregional Process

Abstract: Comparative studies on water-scarce regions show structural simi-larities and differences on water cooperation through agreements among Israel, Jordan, and Palestine, as well as for the USA and Mexico. Both regions experience an increasing water stress due to demographic pressure, global environmental and climate change, competition between different water uses (agriculture and domestic vs. industrial and services), pollution. Both regions consist of a mili-tarily, socially, and technically powerful upstream partner and unstable border conditions. However, if water can be separated from other parts of regional conflict and negotiation can be implemented, progress can be made. Global geopolitical concerns will dominate over the management of natural resources. Within this framework, a hydro-diplomatic negotiation process is proposed, which operates simultaneously at the international, national, regional, and local level, offering the parameters of negotiation and financial support. The other levels could bring processes of capacitating, rationalization, coop-eration, common investment, and management of water, aquifer, and ecosystem restorations, wastewater collection, rainwater harvesting, sewage, new water deve-lopment, and practices of reduction, but also reuse of treated water. Besides a top- down approach by governments and technicians, the bottom-up process induces a different culture of water, stimulates the local water market, the reduction and

Expanding Peace Ecology: Peace, Security, Sustainability, Equity, and Gender

This introductory chapter reviews the conceptualization of peace and ecology and the efforts in the scientific literature to link both areas. The authors expand upon the conceptualization of peace since the 1980s and the widening of the ecology concept from the natural to the social sciences, and then discuss linkages between peace and different ecological approaches of deep, human, social, geographic and political geoecology and ecofeminism. They then contextualize from a peace research perspective the expansion of the ecology concept to a ‘political geoecology’ and a ‘civic ecology’, linking security, equity, sustainability, gender and peace. They conclude with an overview of the subsequent eight chapters in this volume.

Environmentally-Forced Migration in Rural Areas: Security Risks and Threats in Mexico

This chapter deals with international migration and its geopolitical repercussions between Mexico and the USA. Climate-induced migration (CIM) or environmentally- forced migration (EFM) is not a new phenomenon, but the different sociopolitical conditions may pose security risks for both countries; the USA and Mexico share the longest border between a highly industrialized and a developing country.

Development with Sustainable-Engendered Peace: A Challenge during the Anthropocene

This chapter examines the evolution of the peace concept from its understanding as a negative concept towards a positive, structural, sustainable, and engendered peace. The concept of a ‘sustainable-engendered peace’ refers to the structural factors related to long-term violence, deeply embedded in the patriarchal system and characterized by authoritarianism, exclusion, discrimination, exploitation and violence. This dominant social structure affects values such as equity, equality and justice, and often even threatens the survival of individuals and social groups. Further, this dominant system has also concentrated the wealth of earth within a small group of oligarchs who manage multinational enterprises. The sources of threats have been consolidated over thousands of years by patriarchal institutions, religious controls, self-identified beliefs and social representations, and totalitarian exercise of power, and have also affected natural resources. Faced with these global threats, the chapter explores the potential of the concept of a sustainable-engendered peace, and attempts to reach an understanding of the deeply anchored links to patriarchy and its war system that are related to the physical, social and cultural threats of the dominant values and behaviour in the Anthropocene. The text also explores the potential for a concept of holistic and cosmopolitan peace that can challenge the root causes of violence and destruction, and it discusses the goal of just and equal power structures for human beings and nature.

Water security and national water law in Mexico

BackgroundThis article develop analyses water security in Mexico, a country where global environmental change requires social, political and economic actors to protect natural resources and ecosystem services in order to reduce the tension between anthropogenic demands and natural availability. The paper asks: How can overexploitation and inequality in the access and control of water be assessed using an integrated model of water management and how could the existing water resources in each river basin and aquifer be sustainably distributed by a new National Water Law that would encourage participation in order to overcome the conflicts over access to and control of water?MethodsWith a model of integrated water management the article reviews the current use of water among different social and production sectors.ResultsAgriculture still consumes 77 per cent of the water, especially in the arid north, an area greatly affected by climate change (CC). Industry uses ten per cent and domestic users thirteen per cent of water. The growing megacities are also overexploiting their aquifers, producing subsidence and water pollution together with changes in land use, thus reducing water infiltration into the aquifers during the monsoon. Regional and temporal water stress is further aggravated by unsustainable production processes, where mining and agribusiness hog the water needed by indigenous people and small farmers, forcing them to migrate to the urban centres or illegally to the US.ConclusionsWithin this arena of conflict in the field of water management, the article offers several guidelines for a sustainable and participative National Water Law. Food security, including dignified life conditions for the small-scale farmers in rain-fed regions affected by CC, could be achieved with small scale irrigation system in the Southeast of Mexico, where water is available for a second crop. Their sustainable agriculture and preventive management of water pollution by organic agriculture are central activity for conserving and restoring the natural condition of water infiltration. Without an integrated water management, reduction of soil erosion, early warning and resilience-building among the exposed people, Mexico will not reduce the existing and future threats related to global environmental change and particularly to CC.