Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The nature of securitisation theory
- 2 A revised securitisation theory
- 3 The rise of US environmental security
- 4 The Clinton administrations and environmental security
- 5 The Bush administrations and environmental security
- 6 The moral evaluation of environmental security
- 7 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The moral evaluation of environmental security
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The nature of securitisation theory
- 2 A revised securitisation theory
- 3 The rise of US environmental security
- 4 The Clinton administrations and environmental security
- 5 The Bush administrations and environmental security
- 6 The moral evaluation of environmental security
- 7 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The Copenhagen School holds that securitisation and desecuritisation should be evaluated in terms of their outcomes. At the same time they think that the two processes will always lead to the same two outcomes, namely, de-democratisation or depoliticisation in the case of securitisation and politicisation in the case of desecuritisation, leaving them to suggest that securitisation is a morally wrong and desecuritisation a morally right process. The case studies of the US environmental security policies under the Clinton and Bush administrations, however, show (1) that not all securitisations are the same, but that securitisations differ in terms of who or what they benefit, ergo in their outcomes; and (2) that desecuritisation does not always lead to politicisation, but that it can lead to depoliticisation instead. If we take the Copenhagen School's assertion that securitisations and desecuritisations should be evaluated in terms of their outcomes seriously, then it matters that a certain process does not always have the same outcome. In other words, the Copenhagen School's evaluation of either process is incomplete, not to say flawed. In this chapter I seek to provide a moral evaluation of environmental security (this includes desecuritisation) that accounts for the varied outcomes of either process; indeed, I make the consequences of either process the hallmark of moral evaluation. In moral philosophy, any approach of this sort is known as a consequentialist approach to ethics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Security and the EnvironmentSecuritisation Theory and US Environmental Security Policy, pp. 174 - 187Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010