Global environmental security, energy resources and planning: A framework and application

Abstract

This article divides the study of global environmental security into four interrelated analytic categories: ecosystem health and threats from human activity; decision-making patterns (risk and interest calculations); the normative context (conceptions of related rights); and the effects of/on the international system on/of the above (especially, challenges to and from the transforming but stubborn institution of state sovereignty). The article uses this framework to discuss what is certainly one of the most important issues of our time: energy resources and planning in an age when sustainable development is imperative. Although the international system limits our ability to deal with this issue in a long-term fashion, attempts to do so may also transform that system itself.