Watts argues that political ecology is one of the approaches to thinking about the political economy of the environment, which caused the degradation of our environment based on the ideas of power dynamics in the state and capitalism. He asserts that Capitalist economy has triggered the economic marginalization of the certain class in society – who became more vulnerable – through its contribution to the unequal distribution of resources. These aspects of his arguments made me to think about the possibility that the government uses this climate change, one of the factors causing human insecurity, as a tool to control and threaten people.
Maas’ arguments of environmental peacebuilding, built upon the South Caucasus case and aimed to create “durable peace”, were relatively realistic to me. He asserts that peace-building would not work if the two parties are not willing to participate due to their incompatible views while admitting that environmental problems cannot inevitably become apolitical or neutral issues. He believes that in order to achieve environmental peacebuilding, “awareness and an authentic interest” towards the environment, which could be expressed through emphasizing and focusing on long-term issues and structural causes of conflict such as environmental degradation, are required.
All of this week’s reading assignments mainly concentrate on global climate change. Through these readings, my ideas and beliefs about climate change, such as its catastrophic effects to the planet and its direct consequences to human beings, are strengthened. Although I had expected their lacking movements and functions prior to the readings, I was little depressed when the authors actually touch the realities in which security industry, such as states and organizations, is not prepared to face their approach to threats and hesitant to accept the consequences created from their activities and moreover state-driven cooperation might be inadequate to work on conflicts. Overall, I felt once again the importance of cooperative and collaborative actions between states and individuals to achieve the human security and environmental security against the global climate change, so that everyone’s interests can be protected.