Science can only tell us a part of what we need to know about the risks of climate change. We also need to make judgements about politics, technology, and international security. To tell truth to power, we need to bring these fields of knowledge together.

The eighteenth century saw a series of reforms in judicial structures and practices, including the creation of the Acordada and the division of the capital city into cuarteles. These reforms may have contributed to more draconian approaches to justice in New Spain, as evidenced by an increasing number of corporal punishment sentences in the late 1780s and a peak in executions in 1790. This year also represents a watershed in the history of the Novohispanic judiciary due to the creation of Mexico’s first salaried corps of nightwatchmen. Arguably, the shock of the Dongo massacre motivated Revillagigedo to create this new institution.

Zimbabwe’s longest election season span from the February 2000 referendum to the 2002 presidential election. In 2002, voters became wary and weary of violent elections. Politically motivated violence continued as Mugabe and Tsvangirai had their moment of reckoning as to who should be president of Zimbabwe. Over time, Mugabe become ever more dependent on violence and dictatorial methods, and less and less interested in the welfare of his people, treating Zimbabwe’s wealth and resources as rewards for loyal Zanu PF supporters, boasting that there was no vacancy at State House. A closer study of the incidence of election violence shows voter resilience amidst cyclical bouts of state-sponsored udlakela. Voter resilience in the ruling party and opposition showed the potential and capability of the electorate to recover from crises and shocks. Zimbabwe voter resilience revealed that no matter the number of violent disturbances Zimbabweans absorbed over time, they remained within a relatively similar political state domain without imploding. Voters in Zimbabwe were remarkably resilient, displaying abilities of self-organization under extreme periodic election stresses. They built capacity and adaptation in the face of election adversities without resorting to civil war.

On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe’s ninth poll took place. Zanu PF felt insecure being in power, legitimised by only 47 and 19.5 per cent in the 2005 parliamentary and senate election, respectively. Following changes to the Constitution of Zimbabwe in September 2007, the electorate was asked to vote for a set of four political representatives for: president, parliament, senate and local government council. The 2008 socio-economic contexts showed that the electoral playing field and election processes and outcomes echoed excesses of previous flawed elections. The 29 March and 27 June 2008 elections were critical watershed moments in that while the March elections were the most peaceful (and even enjoyable) since the genesis of Zimbabwe’s mega-crisis in 2000, the June run-off will go down in history as the bloodiest since independence. The pre-poll arena for the harmonised elections had hallmarks of a rigged election, especially the use of state-financed patronage, poor voter education, the decrepit state of the voters’ roll and the violent pronouncements by members of the military-security sector, all of which skewed the playing field in favour of the incumbent regime.

Talk of decentralization in Iraq is usually dominated by attempts to define the extent and geographical reach of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, including the question of natural resources. The primary challenge for the state has been how to accommodate a nationalistic ethnic group that has throughout its existence expressed a stalwart desire for self-rule if not independence. This chapter examines Iraq’s decentralization “moments” in 1970, between 1991 and 2003, and in the 2005 Constitution. It then explores the challenges of implementing Kurdish regional autonomy after 2005, focusing on governance and natural resources. It argues that despite a brief experience with independence, self-rule or enhanced autonomy has been held hostage to several variables, namely: Kurdish disunity, the strength of the central government, and concerns in Turkey and Iran about the potential impact of Kurdish self-government in Iraq on their own Kurdish minority populations.

The U.S.–Latin American relationship has never been easy. A combination of wars, invasions, occupations, mutual suspicion (and occasionally open dislike and insults), dictatorships, and/or differences in ideology represents a consistent obstacle to strong national friendships. However, relations have not always been negative. Periodically, Latin American political leaders have worked closely with the U.S. government in a spirit of partnership, and the United States has also periodically offered new initiatives and shown a willingness to establish a positive and friendly relationship. How, then, can we make sense of it all? This book has three intertwined purposes, focusing on theory, political history, and research. It examines four prominent approaches to international relations: realism, dependency theory, autonomy, and liberal institutionalism. However, there is no perfect theory, and the strengths and weaknesses of each are discussed. Students are strongly encouraged to engage different theories of international relations in the light of empirical evidence. Resources are also offered for further study of chapter topics.

It is clear from the sources that under some emperors, the Roman imperial court could be a social space characterized by violence. This chapter offers a general framework for understanding the key dimensions of court violence – its aetiology, its impact on the court’s image, and the institutions and ideologies restraining it. Drawing on insights into human violence offered by evolutionary psychology, the chapter argues that the latent human capacity for violence was triggered by a court environment with high levels of physical danger, status consciousness, and competition for resources. But in almost all societies, culture and institutions serve to restrain interpersonal violence, to a greater or lesser degree. The second part of the chapter therefore examines the limits placed on court violence by the emperor’s guard forces (the praetorians, the Germani corporis custodes, and the equites singulares), by Roman legal culture, and by Graeco-Roman political theory and ideology.

This chapter introduces and develops an initial critique of ‘eco-determinist’ thought on climate, water and environmental security. The chapter shows, against this tradition, that the tension between local geographical constraints and demographic pressures is not the central cause of contemporary water-related insecurities, and that there are good structural reasons for this, rooted in the logics of global capitalism. The chapter demonstrates that eco-determinist thinking is both substantively misleading and normatively questionable. And it argues, on these grounds, that climate change–induced scarcities are in and of themselves unlikely to become a major source of conflict. These arguments are advanced both theoretically and via empirical analysis of, among other things, the patterns of water stress and scarcity across the book's ‘divided environments’, claims about 'water wars' on the Euphrates, Jordan and Nile Rivers and evidence on the current and likely future impacts of climate change on water resources. Overall, the chapter shows that what Robert Kaplan has called a ‘revenge of geography’ is unlikely, even under conditions of accelerating human-induced climate change.

This chapter explores the consequences of war for water security and insecurity. It maps out and analyses four main ways in which war matters for water: through infrastructure destruction; through population displacement; through the expropriation of resources and infrastructures; and through war’s profound if mostly indirect ramifications for state-building and development. Empirically, the chapter draws on evidence from across the divided environments considered in this book, including the ongoing wars in South Sudan, Syria and Lake Chad, the 2003–5 Darfur war, recent Israeli wars on Gaza and key historical conflagrations such as the 1948–9 Arab-Israeli war. The chapter argues through all of this that war is deeply contradictory, being simultaneously highly destructive and highly productive in its water security consequences. And it argues that this is likely to remain the case in an era of climate disruption: while, for some, war is likely is have sharply negative climate vulnerability consequences, it is nonetheless also the case, the chapter shows, that adaptive capacities are often founded on infrastructures and hierarchies of political violence.

This concluding chapter summarises and synthesises the book's main arguments on four levels: in relation to its five ‘divided environments’; with regard to what these cases, and the similarities and differences between them, suggest about the relations between water and (in)security; with reference to the broader significance of the analysis for understanding ecological politics and the study thereof; and on what, by extension, all this might tell us about the likely future conflict and security implications of climate change. Neither the eco-determinist nor liberal traditions, the book as a whole shows, are adequate to understanding water security and insecurity today, or to grasping the wide-ranging conflict and security implications of climate change; political ecology–informed premises are required instead. But what does this tell us about the coming landscape of climate change and conflict? The book closes by offering a series of tentative predictions.

This full-length chapter introduces the book’s central themes and approach to analysing them. It starts by summarising the current public and policy ‘common sense’ on climate security, and by showing that the evidence base for this orthodoxy is weak or, at best, contested: this establishes the book’s primary research puzzle. With this set out, the remainder of the chapter details the book’s approach to exploring this crucial but contested issue. It does this first with regard to epistemology and method – critiquing extant environment-centric, quantitative and discourse-centric approaches, and via that articulating an alternative ‘international political ecology’ framework for the analysis of environment–security relations. It does it, second, in substantive terms, explaining the book’s focus on water as a key variable in, and analogue for understanding, climate–security linkages. And it does it, third, with regard to cases, introducing the book’s empirical focus on the five ‘divided environments’ of Cyprus, Israel–Palestine, Sudan–South Sudan, Syria and the Lake Chad basin. The chapter concludes by briefly explaining how the remainder of the book is organised.