Non-Human Nature in World Politics

Over the past decade, notions of the non-human have become established in a range of disciplines—for example, archaeology, human geography, anthropology, and architecture. However, their impact on politics and international relations has been restricted. In this chapter, we consider the reasons for this, identifying what we term ‘normal politics’ as the dominant form of anthropocentric discourse that prevents non-humans from taking their proper place in the political realm. In contrast, we propose a form of assemblage politics that is better placed to accommodate notions of the non-human, whilst also offering fresh perspectives on politics and international relations. We develop and illustrate our notion of assemblage politics using three examples: car use, Brexit and the climate crisis.

Debates about democracy and ecology invariably lead to the question of the representation and membership of non-human animals, ecosystems and the biosphere in world politics. This chapter responds by interweaving two lines of inquiry. One considers the fundamental political theory that could generate an adequate account of how to give representation to the non-human in the polity. Key theoretical interventions will be considered alongside a posthumanist, new materialist account of the material agency of ecosystems. The second considers the dilemmas involved in designing ecological democratic institutions that could include the non-human in communicative systems of membership and accountability. We propose two new enabling structures for ecological inclusion and governance: 15 regional ecosystem assemblies to cover the Earth’s major biomes, and an Earth System Council to coordinate integrated action, both of which include and channel representation from states, indigenous communities, and proxy guardians for the non-human. Such institutions require a deep commitment to the complexity and vitality of the biosphere, reflexivity and humility in proposing Earth system repair, and a constant awareness of the aporetic quality of political representation as such, in support of new forms of interspecies politics and governance that might work for and with the biosphere as a whole.

The Anthropocene is marked as a paradigm shift in Earth history and politics. This has simultaneously led to two competing characterizations of the new epoch: as an age of “rupture” from the past and as a reflection of “entanglement” between the human and the non-human. In this chapter, I assess how the logics of rupture and entanglement create different, often competing understandings of the Anthropocene within the academic field of International Relations (IR). I conclude by challenging IR scholars to more closely engage with quantum social theory in light of the profound “spookiness” of the Anthropocene.

Mountain governance has emerged as new node of planetary management of non-human nature. Referencing the common ecological fates suffered by mountains around the world because of climate change, it aims to fuse ecological, political, and cultural perspectives together in a new political object. One of its central organizing categories is the sacred landscape, which is neither a purely natural object nor a socially valuable one, but rather, an exceptional sacred one to be protected, conserved, and/or developed. This chapter enquires into the production of global mountains by secular governance regimes. Against a number of accounts of environmental governance, it first argues that mountains are multiple objects, not singular natural ones. It then suggests that sacredness is a particularly problematic way of rendering these multiple mountains as singular, in ways that undermine the very ends of mountain governance. Instead, in the service of finding a more politically plural, but also more multinatural, planetary politics, the chapter proposes an analytic and political focus on routes and routing, which better show the multiple mountains that are in play in these regions, drawing on the transboundary region surrounding Mt. Kailash in the Himalayas as a case study.

Ecomodernism offers a progressive and humanist vision of the Anthropocene, one in which publicly funded innovation has made possible both universal prosperity and planetary-scale rewilding. However, given the present primitive state of technology, ecomodernism is surely guilty of fabulism as its realisation would depend on technologies that may not be available for many decades. Despite this, ecomodernists argue that there is an overriding moral imperative to accelerate the transition to a fully integrated high-energy planet even if this accentuates the short-term need for solar radiation management. The aim of this chapter is to review the debate between ecomodernists and traditional environmentalists in relation to these conflicting temporalities. It is suggested that science may be of surprisingly little help in settling the underlying macro-political disputes.

Civilization faces the challenge of reconciling growth with biophysical limits, whilst avoiding devastating geo-political conflict. Radical demands for ‘degrowth’ are often juxtaposed with realist ‘eco-modernist’ scenarios. Elias’s theory of civilizing processes and his concept of the triad of controls provide an invaluable framework for evaluating the reality-congruence of both trajectories. An Eliasian understanding of ecological conscience formation is synthesized with insights from Ernest Gellner (on exo-education), Walter Ong (on literacy and individuation) and Owen Barfield (on the history of consciousness). Successful navigation of the politics of the Anthropocene implies societal solutions and arrangements that exist in the barely conceivable ‘adjacent possible.’ Eliasian concepts are invaluable in the exploration of such possibilities, but his rationalism and commitment to greater ‘detachment’ make him blind to the simultaneous requirement for selectively higher degrees of ‘involvement’ in the process of both ecological conscience formation and the consolidation of ‘imagined community’. Adam Seligman’s theory of ritual and sincerity provides a complement to Elias’s rationalism. Elias underplays the possibility that more detached scientific and economistic processes of model making and orientation might co-exist with patterns of conscious, creative, cognitive dissonance: modalities of ‘paradox’, enchantment and participation associated with more relational and reciprocal forms of ‘livelihood’ economy.

Critics argue that the Chinese rhetorical concept of ecological civilization has been used to justify an increasingly authoritarian government without substantial improvements in China’s environmental footprint. Far from instituting an ecologically responsible socialism, China appears to be continuing on a path of rapid industrialization, growing economic inequality, and repression of individual rights. However, the concept of ecological civilization has played a significant projective, polemical, and appropriative rhetorical role in the Chinese context. An analysis of the function of ecological civilization in Chinese policy shows that it has contributed to a national self-identity based on environmental responsibility by projecting a fictionalized image of itself as an alternative to Western capitalism. The rhetoric of ecological civilization has not always translated into improved environmental policy, nor is its vision for a holistic, socialist society likely to be translated into an objective reality. Still, the concept remains a useful rhetorical tool both for the government and for Chinese citizens attempting to hold the government accountable to its stated ideals. Rather than discounting ecological civilization because of its rhetorical function, its rhetorical effects should be analyzed on its own terms. On the whole, ecological civilization as a rhetorical concept has produced positive political effects with respect to climate change and should be encouraged as a potential tool for environmental progress in China, whether it is used by the Chinese government, Chinese citizens and activists, or international environmentalists.

Just when the world’s leaders needed to unite to halt the runaway effects of global climate change, the U.S., the largest historic contributor to greenhouse gases, elected a president in 2016 who vowed to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and to roll back all of the limited environmental regulations that had been put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Donald Trump was elected by a minority of the American people through a peculiarity in the American political system known as the Electoral College. Defying every tradition of democratic rule, and with the assistance of a compliant Republican majority in the Senate, a base of hardcore public supporters and a right-wing media, he has managed to assert his particular brand of authoritarian nationalism on policymaking. Through the use of a variety of sources—U.S. government documents, U.N. reports, the reports of environmental watchdog groups, scholarly and news articles, this qualitative case study lays out the historical context in which Trump’s attacks on the environment arose, examines his actions thus far to roll back progress on climate change, and demonstrates that sub-state and non-state actors have become new protagonists in the national and global effort to prevent dangerous climate change. While these efforts are important, much depends on whether Trump can be replaced by a Democratic congress and presidency backed by strong public pressure.

A global movement to give legal rights to nature is slowly gaining momentum in the face of the ongoing biodiversity crisis that is hitting our planet. At its core, the concept of rights of nature presupposes a novel template for ecological governance, which is aimed at prioritizing nature’s right to exist and to flourish through a societal and legal reform. This chapter makes two separate arguments. First, it argues that rights of nature constitutes a powerful new paradigm for ecological governance. Second, it demonstrates the difficulties and opportunities encountered when operationalizing this emerging concept within the existing legal order through a case study on the interplay between nature’s rights and the existing EU legal order. In spite of the identified alignment between a more rights-based approach to nature protection and the existing EU environmental law, several long-standing defects of the existing EU legal order seem to block a further operationalization of rights of nature. Against the backdrop of the relatively strict case law at EU level with respect to standing in environmental cases before EU courts and the persisting anthropocentric nature of many EU environmental directives, this chapter concludes that the recognition of rights of nature at the national level, either through strategic litigation or legislative amendments, is to be approached as the most realistic pathway to the short-term operationalization of ecocentrism in the EU.

The perception of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGO), particularly environmentally focused ones, is mixed throughout the North and the Arctic. In the North American North and Arctic, the legacy of the anti-sealing campaign has left an indelible mark that reinforces local views that protection of non-human nature is the environmental INGO priority. This chapter explores the questions: how do you develop a trusted reputation as an INGO operating in the North and how does perceived trustworthiness influence organisational capacity? It argues that balancing the human and non-human aspects of the Arctic and North is central to INGO ability to be trusted and seen as trustworthy in those parts of the world. The ability of an INGO to demonstrate that it accounts for both dimensions is reinforced by its brand. Lying at the heart of the brand, and trust in it, are organisational legacy and networks. Using the case study of the World Wide Fund for Nature/World Wildlife Fund (WWF), this chapter demonstrates that legacy and networks, with the access they can provide, are essential to INGOs ability to demonstrate to different audiences in the North and Arctic that they can work with them. The primary audience for INGO work used in this piece is the Arctic states and their representatives to the Arctic Council, the Arctic region’s pre-eminent forum for environmental protection and sustainable development discourse.

Direct Action (DA) is a sometimes confrontational strategy employed by those seeking to bring about the change they would like to see in the world. It is typically applied within the boundaries of states, however, the high seas provide an ideal theatre for the use of DA at the international level. The most prolific practitioners of DA at the international level are marine conservation organizations. In recent years, there has been increased diversity of DA strategies. This chapter develops a typology of DA at sea, using the categories of traditional DA, service provision, monitoring/surveillance, deterrence and compellence. The latter three categories of the typology eschew the moral framing traditionally invoked by activists, in favour of legalistic framing. These forms of ‘Direct Enforcement’ (DE) frame ecologically harmful activity as criminal in nature, and propose DA as a form of law enforcement. In so doing, practitioners expand the role of non-state actors into a territory traditionally reserved for the state. While this expansion has the potential to put activists and governments into conflict, this is not exclusively the case. Several activist-state relationships are identified: acquiescence, antipathy, concurrence and collaboration.

Conceptions of nature and of humanity’s place within it, we argue, are the best arena to finally confront and resolve the fundamental epistemological and ontological divide that stands in the way of transformative change. We develop this idea focusing on the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), whose goal is ‘strengthening the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services’. In 2015, the IPBES created a Conceptual Framework to support policy-makers, and different stakeholders, in their assessment of complex interactions between the natural world and human societies. One of the main goals of the Framework is to allow plurality, bringing together different knowledge systems, and its particular representations of humans-nature relations. In this chapter, we explore the epistemological and ontological assumptions that lay behind the Framework’s endeavour, aiming to contribute to strengthen its ability to achieve such a goal. First, we set out the theoretical context and the analytical tools for a critical review the IPBES Framework; second, we expose limitations and hidden assumptions that risk undermining the Framework’s pursuit of plurality of knowledge; finally, we identify and discuss the conditions to create the space that allows for effective dialogue across paradigms and knowledge systems. We conclude arguing for the need to transcend paradigms and to embrace integral approaches (re)connecting biodiversity conservation and humans and nature.