Description
In this issue of Policy Matters, CEESP/IUCN highlights new findings and hopes on a very old dilemma: are we condemned for ever to facing destructive conflicts over natural resources? Is there a chance to replace such conflicts with security and mutual cooperation among the actors advancing entitlements and claims? Environment and Security is an emerging field with great promise. For too long fresh thinking on the issues has been stifled by social Darwinists engaged in the misinterpretation of the master natural historian about “survival of the fittest” being the driving force of evolution. Their views served well the values and spirit of the dog-eat-dog free enterprise but did not serve the cause of knowledge. More enlightened natural historians and social scientists have well explained that capacity for mutual aid and co-operation, human ingenuity, not to mention good old chance, may be far more powerful shapers of our destiny as species and communities. In other words, far from being condemned to fight with tooth, nail and warplanes for every inch of space and ounce of natural resources, we can think, learn, talk, negotiate, agree and collaborate. Security and environmental care are, indeed, coupled. They are in our reach.
Information
- Author(s)
- M. Taghi Farvar, et. al.
- Publisher
- IUCN - World Conservation Union
- Place published
- Geneva
- Date / journal vol no.
- Policy Matters, Newsletter of the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy, Issue No. 9, May 2002
- Pages
- 36 pages
