Urbanizing the global environmental change and human security agendas

Abstract

This paper contributes to nascent efforts to highlight the urban dimensions of global environmental change (GEC) and human security to reflect humankind's now predominantly urban locus. Following an overview of key issues and concerns within recent urban research relevant to human security, we draw attention to appropriate conceptual frameworks and methodological tools for understanding risk and vulnerability in the context of acute inequalities, poverty and the unsustainability of contemporary urbanism. This requires a combination of political, ecological and sustainable livelihoods analysis, linked to agendas of social and environmental justice. Key urban challenges for human security in the context of GEC relate to overall ecological footprints, maintaining institutional and infrastructural integrity, and safeguarding shelter, utilities, economic activities and livelihoods. These take on somewhat different complexions in coastal and inland urban areas. Although in wealthier parts of the world urbanization has generally stabilized or declined, it continues to increase in many poorer regions as a result of complex forces and processes. These increasingly include mobility to escape rural impoverishment and hunger through the adverse effects of GEC on rural livelihoods. The challenge of providing for large in-migrant populations in expanding cities with inadequate resourcing, while at the same time seeking to mitigate and adapt to the effects of GEC, is likely to create threats to political stability and human security in many contexts.