Insecurity Within and Outside the State: The Regional and Local Dynamics of Environmental Insecurity in the Mekong

Abstract

Environmental security is perhaps the most prominent of the seven aspects of human security conceived by the United Nations Development Program in 1994. This chapter examines the extra-regional and intraregional dynamics of environment insecurity in the Mekong region. The core argument is that the concept needs to be subject to deeper critical analysis and scholars and practitioners need to be more cognizant of the political dynamics underpinning environmental insecurity and the possibilities of addressing it. Four challenges are identified. First, closer analyses of which forms of environmental insecurity are acted upon and which are marginalized suggests that certain environmental issues have more visibility than others. Second, environmental insecurity can have transnational origins but is experienced locally, requiring a contextually driven understanding. Thirdly, politicizing and addressing environmental insecurity depends upon a range of actors and the state should not necessarily be prioritized. Lastly, politicizing environmental insecurity is vital, but there is little attention given to the complex configurations within which different actors, particularly non-state actors, operate in making the diverse experiences of environmental insecurity visible.