Lembaga Kajian Hukum Aceh/Acehs Legal Studies, Indonesia

Green International Relations Theory

Danil Akbar Taqwadin1

Introduction
The 1960s marked the beginning of widespread public concern over environmental degradation
in the developed countries of the West. However, it took almost a decade of persistent political
agitation over such matters as pesticides, nuclear power plants, toxic waste dumps, large scale
industrial developments, and pollution before an environmental crisis was officially
recognized as a matter of local, national and international concern. The first Earth day
celebrations in 1970, the emergence of preventive mechanism of new environmental laws in
Western countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the development of interdisciplinary
environmental studies programs in higher education institutes, and the United Nations
Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, were all represent significant
landmarks of national and international recognition of environmental problems (Eckersley,
Environmentalism and Political Theory: Towards an Ecocentric Approach, 1992).
Environmental problems have never been central preoccupation in the discipline of International
Relations studies, which has traditionally focused on questions of high politics such as security
and interstate conflict. However, the escalation in trans-boundary environmental problems from
1970s onwards marked the emergenced of a sub-field of IR concerned with international
environmental cooperation. The study focused primarily on the management of common
resources such as major river systems, the oceans, and the atmosphere (Eckersley, Green Theory,
2006).
Moreover, this theory has growing widely since the increasing relations between global
economic and ecological interdependence, and the emergence of uniquely global ecological
problems; such as climate change, the thinning of ozone layer, and the erosion of the Earths
biodiversity. The complex problem of global warming gives an especially different illustration of
diverse ways in which real environmental problems are connect to one another through
different theoretical lenses in the discipline of IR. Eckersleys (2006) argue that, in the main
orthodox IR theory, realists typically dismiss the problem of environmental as peripheral of the
main game of international politics (low politics), unless the consequences of the problem itself
can be shown directly threatened the national security of the country. Neoliberals, in contrast, are
more likely to offer advice on how to adjust incentive structures in solving the global
environmental problems to stimulate inter-state cooperation (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006).

Background
Growth in the number and magnitude of harms human attitude towards environment and in our
awareness of those harms has produced many of theories on why international environmental
1

Member of LKHA (Lembaga Kajian Hukum Aceh/Acehs Institute of Legal Studies) & Lecturers Assistant at
FISIP Unsyiah (Faculty of Social Science & Politics, Syiah Kuala University, Aceh/Indonesia).
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problems are ubiquitous and increasing (Mitchell, 2002). Environmental degradation caused by
human activity has a long and complex history. However, until the period of European global
expansion and the industrial revolution, environmental degradation is generally remained uneven
and relatively localized (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006).
Utilization of the Earths natural resources can be looked back many centuries ago, but the
crucial turning point was the industrial revolution, which led to fundamental changes in
manufacturing activities and resulted in far greater stresses on the natural environment. Industrial
expansion were caused rapid investment, technological innovation, unprecedented population
growth and the large-scale movement of people from rural to urban areas and from towns to
cities (Garner, 1996).
The 1960s is taken to mark the birth of the modern environment movement as a widespread
and persistent social movement that has publicized and criticized the environmental sideeffects of the long economic boom following the WWII. Rapid economic growth, the
proliferation of new technologies, and rising population in this period generated increasing
energy and resources consumption, new sources and rising level of pollution and waste
production, and the rapid erosion of earths biodiversity (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006). The
United Nations Environment Assessment reported that in March 2005, found that approximately
60% of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth are being degraded or used
unsustainably (UNEP, 2005).
Unlike the military threats, which are deliberate, discrete, specific, and require an immediate
response, environmental problems are typically unintended, diffuse, transboundary, operate over
long time scales, implicate a wide range of actors, and require painstaking negotiation and
cooperation among the of many stakeholders. Yet, environmental problems sometimes described
as wicked problems because their complexity, variability, irreducibility, intractability, and
incidental character. Most of environmental risks have crept up, as it were, on rapidly
modernizing world as the unforeseen side-effects of otherwise acceptable practices (Eckersley,
Green Theory, 2006).

Green Theories
Philosophically, human duties in the natural world arise from both our ability to consider our
place in relation to nature and also from the fact that we can exercise enourmous amount of
power -whether for good or bad purpose- over it. First, we consume resources, we pollute the
environment with waste products, and we create landscape or reclaim land from the sea. And
also, it might be said that man has certainly won the contest between animal species in that is
only on his sufferance that any other species exist at all, amongst any species large enough to be
seen at any rate (James Connelly & Graham Smith, 2003). Second, human beings not only cause
environmental destruction, human also able to develop and implement solutions of destruction.
The ability to manipulate the natural world in accordance with our own ends goes together with
the ability to reason about our exercise of that power, but as it would appear that our ability to
reason about our responsibilities still lack behind our ability to manipulate nature, and we are

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currently facing with the challenge of generating an ethics suitable for our behavior (James
Connelly & Graham Smith, 2003).
The flourishing of environmental ethics in recent years had produced a wide range of moral
extensionist theories. These are generally intermediate perspectives, which accept Greater Value
Assumption that humans are only creature able to value, but that humans are not only bearers of
value (Carter, 2007).
As stated by Norton (1991), Introducing the idea that other species have intrinsic value, that
humans should be fair to all other species, provides no operationally recognizable constraints
on human behavior that are not already implicit in the generalized, cross-temporal obligations to
protect a healthy, complex, and autonomously functioning system for the benefit of future
generations of human beings.
As result, this kind of concern and problems was widely shared by both policy makers and
political theorist and made great development of green theories. Along with the growing tension
that developed between the demand for environmental reform, on the one hand, and
redistributive justice and economic security, on the other hand, has remained an enduring and
vexed issue in eco-political discussion (Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory:
Towards an Ecocentric Approach, 1992).
It was in the late 1980s that a distinctly green and political theory emerged to give voice to the
interrelated concerns of the new social movements (environment, peace, anti-nuclear, womens)
that have shaped green politics. These movements were also spearheaded of the wave of new
green parties in 1980s at the local, national and even regional level, such as European Union
(Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006).
These movements based on the four pillars of green politics: ecological responsibility, social
justice, non-violence, and grass roots of democracy. These pillars are common platform of green
parties around the world, including Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Indeed, green politics is the
only new global political discourse and practice to emerge in opposition to neoliberal
globalization (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006).
While the term green is often noted to refer environmental concerns, by the early 1990s green
political theory had gained recognition as a new political tradition of inquiry that emerged as an
ambitious challenger of two political traditions that have decisive influence on twentieth-century
politics (liberalism and socialism) (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006).
Like liberalism and socialism, green political theory has a normative branch (concerned with
questions of justice, rights, democracy, citizenship, the state, and the environment) (Talshir,
2004), and a political economy branch (concerned with understanding the relationship between
the state, the economy and the environment). The first wave of green political theory increase a
critique both of western capitalism and communism, both of which were regarded as essentially
two different versions of the same ideology of industrialism, despite their differences concerning
the roles of the state and the market. Both liberalism and marxism were shown to have developed
on the basic assumptions that the Earths natural resource base could support unbridled economic
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growth and technological advancement were both highly desirable and inevitable (Eckersley,
Green Theory, 2006). Both of these political traditions were shown to the share of optimism
about the benefits of science and technology, and either explicitly or implicitly accepted the idea
that the human manipulation and domination above the nature through the further refinement of
instrumental reason were necessary for human advancement.
Green political theorist have taken issue opposed both of these political traditions and
highlighted the ecological, social, and psychological costs of the modernization process. Green
theorist criticized that human posture as arrogant, self-serving, and foolhardy. Many of green
theorist have embraced a new ecology-centered or ecocentric ideas that seeks to respect all lifeforms in terms of their own distinctive modes of being, for their own sake, and not merely for
their instrumental value to humans. From ecocentric perspective, environmental governance
should be about protecting not only the health and wellbeing of existing human communities and
future generation but also the larger web of life (such as gene pools, populations, species and
ecosystems). This perspective also draws attention to limit the knowledge of human of the
natural world, arguing that the nature is not only more complex than we know, but possibly more
complex than we shall ever know (Carter, 2007). Major technological interventions in nature are
seen invariably producing major social and ecological costs. Green theorists therefore generally
counsel in favor of a more cautious and critical approach to the assessment of new development
proposals, new technologies, and practices of risk assessment in general.

1. Environmental Justice
It must be mentioned that the expression of otherness has already found in environmentalists
circles through the environmental justice movement. Over the past decades, it has become
increasingly clear that environmental degradation is shared unequally within and across
countries. The rich, politically advantaged can enjoy high quality resources and live in relatively
unpolluted areas, while the poor, politically disadvantaged tend to have less to natural resources
and live in areas with high levels of pollution (Wapner P. , 2002). There seems to be something
unjust, in other words, about the way of people experienced environmental harm. This injustice
takes on additional moral weight insofar as environmentalists, especially within the
industrialized world. The environmental justice movement is an attempt to expand the focus of
environmentalism to concerns about social well-being. In fact, given the steady growth of the
movement, it shows that environmentalism and social justice are quite compatible, especially its
international component (Wapner, Environmental Ethics and Global Governance: Engaging the
International Liberal Tradition, 1997).
Many of green theorists argue that, environmental injustices arise when unaccountable social
agents give the bad impact through the environmental costs of their decisions and practices to
innocent third parties in circumstances when the affected parties have no knowledge of, or input
in, the ecological risk-generating decisions and practices. Basically there are two quest of green
theory: to reduce ecological risks across the board, and to prevent their unfair externalization and
displacement, through space and time, onto innocent third parties. But at an even more basic
level, the concept of justice in the concept of justice in the South can be understood as ensuring
that basic needs for survival are satisfied. The needs that all people have access, for example, to

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shelter, clean water, food, are, in fact universal human rights, reflected in the International
Human Rights Covenants (Timothy Doyle & Doug McEachern, 2008).
However, environment justice demands:
1. Recognition of the expanded moral community that is affected by ecological risks, not
just all citizens, but all peoples, future generations, and non-human species
2. Participation and critical deliberation by citizens and representatives of the larger
community-at-risk in all environmental decision-making (policy-making, legislating and
treaty-making, administration, monitoring, enforcement, and adjudication)
3. A precautionary approach to ensure the minimization of risks in relation to the larger
community
4. A fair distribution of those risks that are reflectively acceptable via democratic processes
that include the standpoint of all affected parties and public interest advocacy groups
5. Redress and compensation for those parties who suffer the effects of ecological problems.

2. Environmental Security
Definitions of environmental security are as numerous as definitions of what constitute the
environment itself, and the issues involved are as diverse as biological and ecological security;
the greening of military operations; climate change; desertification; biodiversity; human
population and migration; fisheries; forests; energy; water; nutrition; shelter; and poverty
(Timothy Doyle & Doug McEachern, 2008).
The most common variation regarding the environmental security is concerned with the impact
on societies. In this manner, environmental security agendas are seek out the issues, if not
addressed, may provide the basis for increasing human conflict, viewing the environmental stress
as an additional threat to peace and stability; the securitization of the environment by nationstates. This is a negative understanding of environmental security. Within this framework, when
people are seen as part of an environmental security agenda, ambiguously they are not
perceived as part of the environment, but are simply users or, in the case of poor, as degraders
(Timothy Doyle & Doug McEachern, 2008).
A concept of environmental security which is more inclusive of the interests of the majority of
people in the world, is one that moves away from viewing environmental stress as an additional
threat within the traditional forms of threat, statist framework, to placing environmental change
at the centre of cooperative models of global security. Yet, to do this, there must be increased
understanding of the environment, not as an external enemy threat (Dyer, 1996), but as diverse
nature which inclusive of people; which a nature has the potential to provide secure areas to
individual citizens of all countries for basic nutrition; adequate access of healthy environments;
appropriate shelter; and a security to practice a diverse range of livelihoods which are both
culturally and ecologically determined (Timothy Doyle & Doug McEachern, 2008).

3. Environmental Citizenship

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Ecological citizenship involves a set of moral and political rights and responsibilities among
humans, as well as between humans and nature. Ecological citizens should be able to pursue
their own private interests but also keep in mind their obligations to the surrounding
environment. For some scholars, developing an ecological citizenship is considered necessary for
true sustainability, as it is by considering the environment as a fundamental ethical component of
citizenry, without the reliance on market-based incentives which are promoted by government at
present, that the environment will be fully integrated into the public sphere (Timothy Doyle &
Doug McEachern, 2008).

Green Theory and International Relations

Green IR theory shares many characteristics of the new other IR theories, which emerge in the
past few decades. Their scholars are generally critical, problem-oriented, interdisciplinary, and
above all unapologetic about their explicit normative orientation. Their mission to promote
global environmental justice, they also seek to get the concerns of many voices traditionally at
the margins of IR, ranging from environmental non-governmental organizations, green
consumers, ecological scientists, ecological economists, green political parties, indigenous
people, and broadly, all those seeking to transform patterns of global trade, aid, and debt to
promote more sustainable patterns of development in the north and south (Eckersley, Green
Theory, 2006).
Green IR theory may be usefully subdivided into an IPE wing, which offers an alternative
analysis of the global ecological problems to that of regime theory (Williams, 1996), and a
normative or green cosmopolitan wing that articulates new norms of environmental justice and
green democracy at all levels of governance (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006).

Case Study: Rationalist (Neo-Realism & Neo-Liberalism) and Green

Theory
The two main rationalists in IR (neorealism and neoliberalism) have tended to approach
environmental problem as a new issue area to be absorbed within their pre-existing theoretical
frameworks rather as something that presents a new analytical or normative challenge. Whereas
neo or structural realists have been mostly dismissed the issue of low politics of the
environment, neoliberalist have conducted extensive empirical work on framework dealing with
transboundary and global environmental problem (Eckersley, Green Theory, 2006). However, in
general, main rationalist approaches not explicitly engaged in normative theorizing, and even
neoliberals have openly acknowledged their problem-solving and reformist, rather than critical,
orientation.
Generally, neorealism is an ontological account in essence, embodies a set of basic theoretical
assumptions which it suggests give a reasonably accurate account of the way of the world is.
First, the world is concluded primarily of sovereign states, which can be treated as unitary actors.
Second, these states exist in a condition of anarchy, that is no exact power that tried to govern
them. Third, as consequence of this anarchy, these states must be always on guard against
neighbours or any states since they are always in potential danger of external threats. And fourth,
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as consequence of this possibility, states behave in such way as to maximize their power relative
to others or behavior based on the based on the motivation of interest defined as power. Thus,
neorealisms account of how outcomes in international politics are produced is simply that they
are generated by the distribution of power capabilities in the system (Paterson, 1996).
Although, the theory of neorealism have extended the approach from the traditional security
questions to the international political economy domain, yet some scholars still pessimistic about
the prospect for cooperation. They argue that international cooperation on world economic
dilemmas might be possible if a single actor with superior power exists and is willing to use its
power resources. This actor identified as a Hegemon, and the theory of hegemonic stability
theory predicts that the degree of international cooperation will be directly proportional to the
degree of international politics. Acting either benevolently or malevolently, the hegemonic
power has the resources to transform international structures so that coordinated policies can be
produce (Detlef Sprinz & Urs Luterbacher, 1996).
Applied to the environmental issues, an international relations realist or neorealist would look to
the distribution of power among the worlds states in order to assess future prospects. Given the
nature of the climate change issue, however, it is difficult to ascertain the most appropriate
measure of power. Certainly, the possession of military strength could still be relevant, such as,
one actor may be able to issue threats and persuade other states into changing its activities that
contribute to environmental problems. Indeed, war has often been use as a means to achieve
foreign policy goals related to natural resources issues. Similarly, power, defined in economic
terms, for example, one major actor might threaten to use trade sanctions against a climate
violator, and if it implemented, could deprive the target of country welfare (Detlef Sprinz & Urs
Luterbacher, 1996).
In contrary, according to Keohane (1989), he argued only one different assumption that
necessary to turn neorealism into neoliberal institutionalism perspectives. That is the assumption
about the state rationality and motivation. As noted above, neorealists assume that states act in
order to maximize their relative gains (interest defined as power). Neoliberals, on other hand,
assume that states act merely in order to maximize their absolute gains (they do not care about
the gains of other states except in so far as these gains interact or interfere with their own).
Although states remain the primary actors in international relations, and remain treated as unitary
actors, it assumed that neoliberal tended to maximize the absolute gains rather than relative
gains. Thus, the cooperation between states became a more endemic feature on international
relations.
This leads to what are called institutions, defined as persistent set of rules (formal and informal)
that prescribe behavioral roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations, and regarded as a
common and important feature of international political life, influencing and constraining, and
even generating state behavior toward global environmental problems (Paterson, 1996).
On the basic explanation about two main rationalists on world politics above, neoliberal
institutionalism produces the more satisfactory explanatory account of the international politics
of global environmental problems, rather than neorealism that rely so much of power capabilities
that is simply inadequate. Neoliberal institutionalisms focus on institutions allows more space to
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conduct many developments which ultimately produce the framework convention (Paterson,
1996).
But, although, realists (neo or structural) have been mostly underestimate and assume the low
politics of the environment, neoliberals have been conducted extensive work on dealing with
transboundary and global environmental problems.
The problem for neorealists, in particular, is that they allow no or little room for any diversity of
state international response of climate change, since all the states are interdependence,
neorealists cannot explain why 157 industrialized countries have agreed to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol, and pursue extensive negotiations to strengthen emissions reduction targets, despite the
USA defection and without extracting any binding commitments from developing countries.
Neoliberals are able to offer a more plausible account of the outcome to date based on their
analysis of relative state interests and capacities. However, in focusing their attention on the hard
bargaining among states over the distribution of benefits and burdens of adjustment, neoliberals
tend to sideline the larger ideational context that shapes and drives the negotiations (Kyoto
Protocol and other environmental convention).

Summary
The study of international relations and environment is conduct to improve global environmental
management. Scholars have generated theories and cases demonstrating why global
environmental problems are so common, such as, how they get raised to the international agenda,
why states form regimes for some but not others, what factors facilitate regime effectiveness, and
how evolution and learning occur (Mitchell, 2002). States actor and non-state actors appears by
using different amounts of influences to resolve problems and of policy formulation and
implementation more than agenda-setting.
Meanwhile, some disagreement concerns the wisdom of conceptualizing ecological problems as
security problems. Some scholars of ecological security maintain that environmental problems
(such as, global warming) should be considered as a growing source of insecurity. Even, some
scholars also argue that growing the natural resource scarcity due to environmental problems
such as, particularly water, environmental degradation, and increasing numbers of ecological
refugees are likely generate increasing conflict and violence both with and between states, and
that states should include an ecological in their national security strategies (Eckersley, Green
Theory, 2006).
Therefore, according to Deudney (1990) more skeptical green IR theorists have argued that
framing ecological problems as a security issue in order to raise their status to a matter of high
politics. Sceptics suggest that the new discourse of ecological security concerns and possibly
facilitating militarized solutions to sustainability challenge. However, conceptualizing ecological
problems as security problems also betrays the core green values of non-violence and antimilitarism and deflects attention away from the important task of promoting ecologically
sustainable developments.

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The internal debate over environmental security is indicates green IR theorys strong antimilitarist posture. This may explain why green IR theory has yet to develop a considered or clear
ethical position on a range of security-related debates, such as the appropriate relationship
between order and justice in world politics or the appropriate use of force for humanitarian
intervention or environmental protection.
Meanwhile, other green IR theories have emphasized the potential for shared ecological
problems to present peace-making opportunities by providing a basis for conducting
collaborative research, stimulating dialogue, building trust, and transcending differences by
working towards common environmental goals and strategies.
Finally, green theory has got through significant development in the last decade to the point
where it is recognized as significant new dimension of IR theory. The new green stresses of
environmental justice, sustainable development, reflexive modernization, and ecological
security, have not only influenced national boundaries but also international arena. It also tried to
recast the roles of state, economic actors, and citizens as environmental keepers rather than
territorial overlords, based on differing capacities and levels of environmental responsibility.
This recasting has important implications for the evolution of state sovereignty, and probably
they may be characterized as transnational states and citizens, rather than merely nation-states or
national citizens. But, of course, the society of states is a long way to achieve this ideal.
However, green theorists have brought this ideal into view and made it thinkable.

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