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The different ways that maps are framed by the media can lead to different emotional responses to the same information. Framing shapes the way in which information is presented, and frames are used by authors and designers to focus the reader's attention in order to lead them to a particular interpretation of the information being communicated. This framing thereby shapes attitudes. In maps, frames can be invoked through both the map's design and the text included within and surrounding the map. Framing is what allows communicators to focus their message and make particular aspects of information salient to their readers. Emotional framing, as a subset of all frames, involves conveying emotions through the message. These can have a positive or negative valence and may even convey a particular emotion. In the case of climate change, communication scholars argue that it is impossible to represent climate change information in a neutral manner without some sort of emotional framing. In addition, other risk communication literature shows that the emotional framing of a risk has impact on the behavioral response of those for whom the message is intended. This emotional framing has been noted by climate change communication researchers as being key to prompting behavioral changes like mitigation and adaptation. Little research has been done in the field of cartography to evaluate emotional responses to climate change maps and the framing of mapped climate change information. Cartographers and GIScientists have much to offer for communicating climate science to audiences. Cartographers are tasked with designing maps to make climate change understandable to lay audiences. Maps can illustrate the multidimensional causes and impacts of climate change using static and dynamic graphics that can be widely disseminated across the web to diverse audiences. It is unclear, however, how the framing of these maps affects how readers interpret the message of the map or how different frames might lead to different emotional responses and potentially, different behavioral responses. This study empirically evaluated emotional responses to climate change frames and maps to examine how different frames might lead to different emotional responses. Specifically, using emotion recognition software and Amazon Mechanical Turk, we answered three research questions: Is it possible to measure emotional responses to maps and their frames using facial emotion recognitionsoftware? What emotions are elicited by different maps and different framings? Do particular emotional responses lead to different behavior changes? In 2009, the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) submitted its report on climate change impacts in the United States to congressional lawmakers in Washington, D.C. This report contained scientific evidence of climate change impacts on the United States as a whole as well as specific impacts on regions within the United States. The report was compiled by 28 scientists at US universities, national labs, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) based on peer reviewed scientific articles. The report was edited by another three scientists and had input from 22 other scientists. In 2012, the CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, produced what they called an "Addendum" to the original report. The report was compiled by only five authors. Only two of the five authors were from universities while the rest of the authors were from think tanks that have known political biases. The report was edited by only one individual, an employee of the CATO Institute. The report clearly has a political leaning and has contradictory information including: 1) climate change denial, and 2) an acceptance that climate change is happening but that it can be reframed as a positive change for the American public and businesses. The CATO report uses many of the same figures and maps that appeared in the USGCRP Report. These maps are sometimes edited slightly to change their meaning, and the text surrounding the images often uses a different frame. Figure 1 exemplifies the difference between the two reports in their maps and their frames. The version that was produced for USGCRP report illustrates ski areas at risk, while the CATO report swaps colors in the map to show the potential for ski areas to become golf resorts in a warmer climate. To answer the research questions posed above, we are conducting a map reading study using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). During the study, participants turned on their webcam and recorded their facial expressions while reading the maps and taking the survey. Participants were divided randomly into one of two groups. The first read maps from the USGCRP report, and the second read maps from the CATO Institute report. Each group viewed three maps and read three news stories that used one of two different emotional frames. The USGCRP report portrays climate change with a negative frame, while the CATO Institute portrays climate change as a potential positive. The news reports were written by the researchers to invoke the emotional frames from each of the two reports when succinctly summarizing the message of each of the maps. After reading each of the stories, participants self-reported their emotional responses to the stories and maps by selecting from a list of emotions. After the participant viewed all of the news stories and maps, the participant answered demographic questions as well as provided information about their political ideology, and their views about climate change. Finally, at the end of the survey, participants were asked whether they would like to donate their MTurk earnings to an environmental organization from a short list, our behavioral response measure. At the end of the survey, the participant sent their webcam recording to the researchers for analysis with emotion recognition software. We analyzed the webcam footage to identify different types of emotional responses to the stories and maps using the Affectiva emotion recognition algorithm implemented in iMotions 7.1. Finally, we compared the emotion recognition results to the emotion self-reports, demographic information, and behavioral response measure. Preliminary results from analysis of five participants in this research indicate that emotional responses can be collected remotely by having participants turn on their webcam and upload their videos to be analysed using facial emotion recognition software.

The different ways that maps are framed by the media can lead to different emotional responses to the same information. Framing shapes the way in which information is presented, and frames are used by authors and designers to focus the reader's attention in order to lead them to a particular interpretation of the information being communicated. This framing thereby shapes attitudes. In maps, frames can be invoked through both the map's design and the text included within and surrounding the map. Framing is what allows communicators to focus their message and make particular aspects of information salient to their readers. Emotional framing, as a subset of all frames, involves conveying emotions through the message. These can have a positive or negative valence and may even convey a particular emotion. In the case of climate change, communication scholars argue that it is impossible to represent climate change information in a neutral manner without some sort of emotional framing. In addition, other risk communication literature shows that the emotional framing of a risk has impact on the behavioral response of those for whom the message is intended. This emotional framing has been noted by climate change communication researchers as being key to prompting behavioral changes like mitigation and adaptation. Little research has been done in the field of cartography to evaluate emotional responses to climate change maps and the framing of mapped climate change information. Cartographers and GIScientists have much to offer for communicating climate science to audiences. Cartographers are tasked with designing maps to make climate change understandable to lay audiences. Maps can illustrate the multidimensional causes and impacts of climate change using static and dynamic graphics that can be widely disseminated across the web to diverse audiences. It is unclear, however, how the framing of these maps affects how readers interpret the message of the map or how different frames might lead to different emotional responses and potentially, different behavioral responses. This study empirically evaluated emotional responses to climate change frames and maps to examine how different frames might lead to different emotional responses. Specifically, using emotion recognition software and Amazon Mechanical Turk, we answered three research questions: Is it possible to measure emotional responses to maps and their frames using facial emotion recognitionsoftware? What emotions are elicited by different maps and different framings? Do particular emotional responses lead to different behavior changes? In 2009, the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) submitted its report on climate change impacts in the United States to congressional lawmakers in Washington, D.C. This report contained scientific evidence of climate change impacts on the United States as a whole as well as specific impacts on regions within the United States. The report was compiled by 28 scientists at US universities, national labs, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) based on peer reviewed scientific articles. The report was edited by another three scientists and had input from 22 other scientists. In 2012, the CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, produced what they called an "Addendum" to the original report. The report was compiled by only five authors. Only two of the five authors were from universities while the rest of the authors were from think tanks that have known political biases. The report was edited by only one individual, an employee of the CATO Institute. The report clearly has a political leaning and has contradictory information including: 1) climate change denial, and 2) an acceptance that climate change is happening but that it can be reframed as a positive change for the American public and businesses. The CATO report uses many of the same figures and maps that appeared in the USGCRP Report. These maps are sometimes edited slightly to change their meaning, and the text surrounding the images often uses a different frame. Figure 1 exemplifies the difference between the two reports in their maps and their frames. The version that was produced for USGCRP report illustrates ski areas at risk, while the CATO report swaps colors in the map to show the potential for ski areas to become golf resorts in a warmer climate. To answer the research questions posed above, we are conducting a map reading study using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). During the study, participants turned on their webcam and recorded their facial expressions while reading the maps and taking the survey. Participants were divided randomly into one of two groups. The first read maps from the USGCRP report, and the second read maps from the CATO Institute report. Each group viewed three maps and read three news stories that used one of two different emotional frames. The USGCRP report portrays climate change with a negative frame, while the CATO Institute portrays climate change as a potential positive. The news reports were written by the researchers to invoke the emotional frames from each of the two reports when succinctly summarizing the message of each of the maps. After reading each of the stories, participants self-reported their emotional responses to the stories and maps by selecting from a list of emotions. After the participant viewed all of the news stories and maps, the participant answered demographic questions as well as provided information about their political ideology, and their views about climate change. Finally, at the end of the survey, participants were asked whether they would like to donate their MTurk earnings to an environmental organization from a short list, our behavioral response measure. At the end of the survey, the participant sent their webcam recording to the researchers for analysis with emotion recognition software. We analyzed the webcam footage to identify different types of emotional responses to the stories and maps using the Affectiva emotion recognition algorithm implemented in iMotions 7.1. Finally, we compared the emotion recognition results to the emotion self-reports, demographic information, and behavioral response measure. Preliminary results from analysis of five participants in this research indicate that emotional responses can be collected remotely by having participants turn on their webcam and upload their videos to be analysed using facial emotion recognition software.

Productivity in the agricultural sector is inherently dependent on weather, such as variations in rainfall and temperature. As a result, weather risk events can cause losses in yield and production that translate into economic losses for producers, as well as other sector stakeholders that depend on income from agricultural trade, transport, processing, or export. This document is a guide for development practitioners and strategically presents a variety of mapping techniques for agricultural risk management and illustrates the application of these techniques for informing public and private sector development strategies. The introduction places weather risk mapping within the broader context of agricultural risk, explaining how mapping can enable risk identification, assessment and management activities, and each chapter elaborates on one or more of the technical components. A basic definition of agro-meteorology is provided, along with a discussion of different mapping techniques. The guide presents the available remote (satellite) databases of agro-meteorological variables that can be used for the purpose of weather risk mapping, assessing the advantages and drawbacks of each database and their suitability for different purposes. The document reviews current risk mapping analyses based on historical weather observations, which are typically used for risk identification and assessment, including climatologies, hazard and risk maps, climate regionalizations and agro-ecological zones (AEZ). The document also reviews forward-looking mapping techniques, known as diagnostic and forecasting analyses, specific examples of which are drawn from the United States, the European Union, and Australia. Finally, the guide provides instruction on how and why to conduct agro-ecological zoning, a technique that can be used to assess land-use types, land resources, land suitability, and climatic and agro-climatic regionalizations, as well as to inform land use recommendations. The concluding chapter demonstrates a step-by-step application of agro-ecological zoning in a case study of Mozambique.

Premi extraordinari doctorat curs 2011-2012, àmbit d'Enginyeria Civil ; El impacto de la contaminación del aire es un tema crítico para el medioambiente y el clima. Una mala calidad del aire es un tema de importancia para la salud pública, especialmente en ambientes urbanos. El material particulado (PM), el ozono (O3) y el dióxido de nitrógeno (NO2) son los contaminantes más problemáticos en Europa y España. La Comisión Europea ha mostrado una gran preocupación por desarrollar técnicas que permitan incrementar el conocimiento sobre la dinámica de los contaminantes atmosféricos para asegurar el cumplimiento de la legislación y para informar a la población acerca de sus niveles. Además, la directiva europea 2008/50/CE establece la posibilidad de usar técnicas de modelización para informar sobre calidad del aire. Esta tesis doctoral está desarrollada en el marco de dos proyectos: El proyecto CALIOPE y el proyecto CICYT CGL2006-08903, ambos basados en la necesidad de desarrollar un sistema de calidad del aire que permita informar y entender los niveles de contaminación en Europa y España, con el objetivo de obtener un preciso pronóstico de la calidad del aire. Con ese propósito, el sistema de modelización CALIOPE se ha desarrollado con alta resolución espacial y temporal sobre Europa (12 km x 12 km y 15 capas, 1 hora), dominio madre, y España (4 km x 4 km y 15 capas, 1 hora), dominio anidado. CALIOPE consiste en un conjunto de modelos que tienen en cuenta la contaminación tanto antropogénica como natural. La disponibilidad del supercomputador MareNostrum, alojado en el Barcelona Supercomputer Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, ha permitido trabajar a tan alta resolución. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es aumentar la confianza científica en el sistema CALIOPE, identificando sus puntos fuertes y débiles con un nivel de detalle que contribuya a establecer necesidades de mejora en el proceso de modelización. Por tanto, el presente trabajo ha evaluado espacial y temporalmente las simulaciones de calidad del aire sobre Europa y España en términos de O3, NO2, SO2, PM2.5 y PM10 en superficie sobre el año completo 2004. Para identificar el origen de las incertidumbres en la modelización del PM, su composición química ha sido también evaluada en ambos dominios. Las evaluaciones han sido realizadas sobre más de 150 estaciones de calidad del aire (más de 2 millones de datos experimentales). Además, esta tesis ha usado el sistema CALIOPE para analizar los patrones de calidad del aire sobre 2004, identificando claramente las áreas de contaminación. Las ideas más importantes que se desprenden de esta tesis son tres. Primero, las condiciones de contorno químicas basadas en un modelo global, como el LMDz-INCA2, son esenciales para modelizar el O3 troposférico sobre los dominios de estudio. Segundo, para simular la concentración de PM en el sur de Europa, tanto a escala rural como urbana, la contribución de polvo procedente del desierto del Sahara deber ser considerada debido a la proximidad al continente africano. La contribución del polvo del desierto a través del modelo BSC-DREAM8b ayuda satisfactoriamente a modelizar los picos de PM10 observados. Tercero, para ser capaz de modelizar la calidad del aire a escala urbana sobre España es esencial (1) una alta resolución espacial y temporal que permita describir fenómenos mesoescalares en áreas de topografía compleja , (2) un modelo de emisiones altamente desagregado como HERMES; (3) unos modelos que representen el estado actual del conocimiento en meteorología y química atmosférica ; The impact of air pollution is a critical topic in environment and climate. Poor air quality is an important public health issue, especially in urban environments. Particulate matter (PM), tropospheric ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are the main problematic pollutants in Europe and Spain. The European Commission has shown a great concern for developing actions that allow increasing the knowledge on dynamics of atmospheric pollutants to assure the accomplishment of legislation and to inform the population about their levels. The European directive 2008/50/EC establishes the possibility of using modelling techniques to assess air quality. This Ph.D. thesis is developed in the framework of two projects: the CALIOPE project and the CGL2006-08903 CICYT project, both based on the necessity to develop an air quality modelling system that allows assessing and understanding the air pollution levels in Europe and Spain, with the aim of obtaining a precise air quality forecast. For that purpose, the CALIOPE air quality modelling system has been developed with high spatial and temporal resolution over Europe (12 km x 12 km, 1 h), as a mother domain; and Spain (4 km x 4 km, 1 h), as the nested domain. The CALIOPE system consists in a set of models that take into account both anthropogenic and natural pollution. The availability of the MareNostrum supercomputer, held in Barcelona Supercomputing Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, has allowed such configuration of the CALIOPE system. The main objective of the present Ph.D. thesis is to increase the scientific confidence on the CALIOPE system, identifying skills and weakness with a degree of detail that contributes to establish necessities of improvements in the modelling process. Therefore, the present work has spatially and temporally evaluated CALIOPE air quality simulations over Europe and Spain in terms of O3, NO2, SO2, PM2.5, PM10 concentrations over the full year 2004. In order to identify the origin of uncertainties in PM modelling, PM chemical composition has been also evaluated in both target domains. Evaluations have been performed across more than 150 air quality-monitoring stations and over more than 2 million of experimental data. Furthermore, this Ph.D. thesis has used the CALIOPE system to assess air quality pattern over the year 2004, identifying clearly the areas of air pollution. There are three major thrusts of the present Ph.D. thesis. First, chemical boundary condition based on a global model, such as LMDz-INCA2, becomes essential to model O3 background concentrations in the target domains. Second, to simulate PM concentration in southern Europe, both regional and urban scales, the contribution of dust from the Saharan desert should be taken into account, since that region is frequently affected by dust outbreaks due to its proximity to the African continent. The contribution of desert dust through the BSC-DREAM8b helps to satisfactory model the observed episodic PM10 concentration peaks. Even more, the contribution of sea-salt aerosol is especially important over coastal areas. Third, to be able to model the air quality in urban scale over Spain it is essential (1) a high spatial (4 km x 4 km and 15 layers) and temporal (1h) resolution that allows describing mesoscale phenomena in very complex terrains; (2) a high disaggregated emission model to describe the sources, such as HERMES; and (3) an state-of-the-science meteorological and chemical models. This Ph.D. thesis has demonstrated that CALIOPE system applied over Europe and Spain is a useful tool which may contribute to (1) forecast air pollution in urban/suburban areas with a pervasive influence of anthropogenic emissions on a local scale and over very complex terrains and meteorology patterns; (2) assess about air pollution, discriminating between anthropogenic and natural episodes; and (3) manage air pollution, by means of modification of urban strategies or requirements of the legislation. ; Award-winning ; Postprint (published version)

Premi extraordinari doctorat curs 2011-2012, àmbit d'Enginyeria Civil ; El impacto de la contaminación del aire es un tema crítico para el medioambiente y el clima. Una mala calidad del aire es un tema de importancia para la salud pública, especialmente en ambientes urbanos. El material particulado (PM), el ozono (O3) y el dióxido de nitrógeno (NO2) son los contaminantes más problemáticos en Europa y España. La Comisión Europea ha mostrado una gran preocupación por desarrollar técnicas que permitan incrementar el conocimiento sobre la dinámica de los contaminantes atmosféricos para asegurar el cumplimiento de la legislación y para informar a la población acerca de sus niveles. Además, la directiva europea 2008/50/CE establece la posibilidad de usar técnicas de modelización para informar sobre calidad del aire. Esta tesis doctoral está desarrollada en el marco de dos proyectos: El proyecto CALIOPE y el proyecto CICYT CGL2006-08903, ambos basados en la necesidad de desarrollar un sistema de calidad del aire que permita informar y entender los niveles de contaminación en Europa y España, con el objetivo de obtener un preciso pronóstico de la calidad del aire. Con ese propósito, el sistema de modelización CALIOPE se ha desarrollado con alta resolución espacial y temporal sobre Europa (12 km x 12 km y 15 capas, 1 hora), dominio madre, y España (4 km x 4 km y 15 capas, 1 hora), dominio anidado. CALIOPE consiste en un conjunto de modelos que tienen en cuenta la contaminación tanto antropogénica como natural. La disponibilidad del supercomputador MareNostrum, alojado en el Barcelona Supercomputer Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, ha permitido trabajar a tan alta resolución. El objetivo principal de esta tesis es aumentar la confianza científica en el sistema CALIOPE, identificando sus puntos fuertes y débiles con un nivel de detalle que contribuya a establecer necesidades de mejora en el proceso de modelización. Por tanto, el presente trabajo ha evaluado espacial y temporalmente las simulaciones de calidad del aire sobre Europa y España en términos de O3, NO2, SO2, PM2.5 y PM10 en superficie sobre el año completo 2004. Para identificar el origen de las incertidumbres en la modelización del PM, su composición química ha sido también evaluada en ambos dominios. Las evaluaciones han sido realizadas sobre más de 150 estaciones de calidad del aire (más de 2 millones de datos experimentales). Además, esta tesis ha usado el sistema CALIOPE para analizar los patrones de calidad del aire sobre 2004, identificando claramente las áreas de contaminación. Las ideas más importantes que se desprenden de esta tesis son tres. Primero, las condiciones de contorno químicas basadas en un modelo global, como el LMDz-INCA2, son esenciales para modelizar el O3 troposférico sobre los dominios de estudio. Segundo, para simular la concentración de PM en el sur de Europa, tanto a escala rural como urbana, la contribución de polvo procedente del desierto del Sahara deber ser considerada debido a la proximidad al continente africano. La contribución del polvo del desierto a través del modelo BSC-DREAM8b ayuda satisfactoriamente a modelizar los picos de PM10 observados. Tercero, para ser capaz de modelizar la calidad del aire a escala urbana sobre España es esencial (1) una alta resolución espacial y temporal que permita describir fenómenos mesoescalares en áreas de topografía compleja , (2) un modelo de emisiones altamente desagregado como HERMES; (3) unos modelos que representen el estado actual del conocimiento en meteorología y química atmosférica ; The impact of air pollution is a critical topic in environment and climate. Poor air quality is an important public health issue, especially in urban environments. Particulate matter (PM), tropospheric ozone (O3) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are the main problematic pollutants in Europe and Spain. The European Commission has shown a great concern for developing actions that allow increasing the knowledge on dynamics of atmospheric pollutants to assure the accomplishment of legislation and to inform the population about their levels. The European directive 2008/50/EC establishes the possibility of using modelling techniques to assess air quality. This Ph.D. thesis is developed in the framework of two projects: the CALIOPE project and the CGL2006-08903 CICYT project, both based on the necessity to develop an air quality modelling system that allows assessing and understanding the air pollution levels in Europe and Spain, with the aim of obtaining a precise air quality forecast. For that purpose, the CALIOPE air quality modelling system has been developed with high spatial and temporal resolution over Europe (12 km x 12 km, 1 h), as a mother domain; and Spain (4 km x 4 km, 1 h), as the nested domain. The CALIOPE system consists in a set of models that take into account both anthropogenic and natural pollution. The availability of the MareNostrum supercomputer, held in Barcelona Supercomputing Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación, has allowed such configuration of the CALIOPE system. The main objective of the present Ph.D. thesis is to increase the scientific confidence on the CALIOPE system, identifying skills and weakness with a degree of detail that contributes to establish necessities of improvements in the modelling process. Therefore, the present work has spatially and temporally evaluated CALIOPE air quality simulations over Europe and Spain in terms of O3, NO2, SO2, PM2.5, PM10 concentrations over the full year 2004. In order to identify the origin of uncertainties in PM modelling, PM chemical composition has been also evaluated in both target domains. Evaluations have been performed across more than 150 air quality-monitoring stations and over more than 2 million of experimental data. Furthermore, this Ph.D. thesis has used the CALIOPE system to assess air quality pattern over the year 2004, identifying clearly the areas of air pollution. There are three major thrusts of the present Ph.D. thesis. First, chemical boundary condition based on a global model, such as LMDz-INCA2, becomes essential to model O3 background concentrations in the target domains. Second, to simulate PM concentration in southern Europe, both regional and urban scales, the contribution of dust from the Saharan desert should be taken into account, since that region is frequently affected by dust outbreaks due to its proximity to the African continent. The contribution of desert dust through the BSC-DREAM8b helps to satisfactory model the observed episodic PM10 concentration peaks. Even more, the contribution of sea-salt aerosol is especially important over coastal areas. Third, to be able to model the air quality in urban scale over Spain it is essential (1) a high spatial (4 km x 4 km and 15 layers) and temporal (1h) resolution that allows describing mesoscale phenomena in very complex terrains; (2) a high disaggregated emission model to describe the sources, such as HERMES; and (3) an state-of-the-science meteorological and chemical models. This Ph.D. thesis has demonstrated that CALIOPE system applied over Europe and Spain is a useful tool which may contribute to (1) forecast air pollution in urban/suburban areas with a pervasive influence of anthropogenic emissions on a local scale and over very complex terrains and meteorology patterns; (2) assess about air pollution, discriminating between anthropogenic and natural episodes; and (3) manage air pollution, by means of modification of urban strategies or requirements of the legislation. ; Award-winning ; Postprint (published version)

Not Available ; Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed an honor for us to be here with you in the presence of our honorable host, Dr. Raghava Reddy, the Honorable Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Raghu Veera Reddy, Asian PGPR board members and the many other scientists and entrepreneurs who have come to participate in this Congress. It is our privilege to welcome all of you. To me, this is a very special and a spectacular way of coming to our mother land, particularly Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh to speak to you about PGPR technology. The initial idea of having the First Asian PGPR Congress in Hyderabad was sparked by Dr. Y. R. Sarma, when he visited me in Auburn, Alabama, USA, seven months ago. We wanted to have an outlet where we could have alternative workshops and congresses that could be more accessible to people in this region of the world, given that it is difficult for many people interested in PGPR research to attend every International Conference. From those ideas we arrive at this Congress in Hyderabad. The creation of biotechnologies, bio-businesses, biotechnopreneurs, bio-farmers, bio-students and bio-billionaires is the theme of this "ASIAN PGPR CONGRESS FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE". What is PPGR? Why Asian PGPR? Let's take a moment to discuss PGPR and its importance. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are root associated bacteria representing many different genera and species that colonize the rhizosphere, rhizoplane and improve plant growth when artificially introduced onto seeds, seedpieces, roots, or into soil. PGPR improve plant growth by one or more mechanisms: direct stimulation of plant growth; enhancement of nutrient uptake; suppression of plant pathogens; and/or induction of resistance in host plants against pathogens. The first PGPR Workshop was held in Canada in 1987 and since then the workshop has been held every three years at various locations around the world: Switzerland (1990), Australia (1994), Japan (1997), Argentina (2000), India (2003) and The Netherlands (2006). The 8th International PGPR Workshop was held very recently in the Portland, Oregon, USA (2009). xviii Plant Growth Promotion by Rhizobacteria for Sustaninable Agriculture In 2003, the PGPR workshop held in India achieved considerable recognition and was attended by more than 300 delegates. Since then, PGPR research has increased exponentially and has resulted in continued boosting of new companies in a growing industry for the production of PGPR related products in India. Asian PGPR Congress for Sustainable Agriculture aims to assemble any professional who want to gain and share their knowledge on PGPR under one roof and to present their views on the following themes: • Status of PGPR research • PGPR applications in crops • Biofertilizers and PGPR in integrated nutrient management • Mechanisms, signaling, plant responses, bioactive metabolites • Plant pathogen - PGPR interactions • Farmers – academia - industry interaction • Biogeography, genomics, bioinformatics • Rhizosphere interactions, climate change and new technologies • Round table discussion on research – industry - policy interfacing • Commercialization, regulatory issues, trade barriers in PGPR • Human resource development and transfer of technology Today, many economically important agricultural, horticultural and ornamental crop plants are attacked by various soil borne and foliar diseases, resulting in billions of dollars in crop losses. Currently, the most widely used disease management strategy is the use of chemical fungicides. However, the use of these fungicides has encountered problems, such as development of resistance by pathogen to fungicides and rapid degradation of the chemicals. Other factors leading to increased interest in alternatives include the increasing cost of soil fumigation, lack of suitable replacements for methyl bromide and public concerns over exposure to fungicides. Both the agriculture and agri-food sector are now expected to move toward environmentally sustainable development, while maintaining productivity. These concerns and expectations have led to renewed interest on the use of "biologically based pest management strategies". One approach to such biologically based strategies is the use of naturally occurring and environmentally safe products such as PGPR. It has long been known that many microorganisms in the soil root ecosystem are attracted by nutrients exuded by plant roots. This soil-root ecozone is called rhizosphere. Many bacteria from the rhizosphere can influence plant growth and plant health positively, and we refer to them as PGPR. The beneficial effect of these bacteria have been variously attributed to their ability to produce various compounds including phytohormones, organic acids and siderophores, fixation of atmospheric Preface xix nitrogen, phosphate solubilization, antibiotics that suppress deleterious rhizobacteria or to some other unidentified mechanisms. Worldwide, PGPR technology is being considered as the latest pursuit for expertise in knowledge intensive sectors. Currently, the global agriculture biotech industry is valued at an estimated US$ 45 billion and is expected to grow at 25% annually. Indian Ag biotechnology industry is currently valued at US$ 2.5 billion. Much of the credit for growth of the Indian Ag biotechnology industry goes to the government that created a separate department for biotechnology under the Ministry of Science and Technology. Our state governments are also equal contributors towards making India an emerging hub of Ag biotechnology. Today, we have the benefit of having both Central and State Governments partnering with us for this congress. I see similar capabilities in all participating Asian countries and we all inherently have the strengths, excellent networks of research laboratories, rich biodiversity, well-developed seed industries and most importantly highly skilled and trained pool of scientific manpower. Today, Asian countries are slowly but steadily preparing themselves for an emerging Ag biotechnology revolution. The success in this sector, however, depends on a number of enabling factors like facilitating venture capital funding, technology absorption and strengthening of links between the industry, academic and government institutions, not only within each country but amongst all Asian countries and our International partners. The green revolution of agriculture brought an enormous increase in food production. It not only made the world self sufficient in food but also gave the world's scientists and farmers an immense amount of selfrespect. Though the green revolution did increase food production, the productivity levels have remained low and increase was achieved at a cost of intensive use of water, fertilizer and other inputs which have caused problems of soil salinity, ground water pollution, nutrient imbalances, emergence of new pest and diseases and environmental degradation. To feed the ever increasing population globally and in Asia more and more food now has to be produced from less and less land, water and other natural resources. It is therefore apparent that we have to do things differently and doing more of what we did yesterday will not take us forward. With the advent of PGPR technology and its use on crops, we can achieve higher productivity, better quality, improved nutrition, improved storage properties, increased pests and disease resistance and achieve higher prices for farmers in the global market place. PGPR technology has the immense potential of eradicating rural poverty and fueling Asia's GDP growth. By exploiting our knowledge of PGPR technology we have the opportunity to make Asia the global center of bioresearch. The PGPR industry is a relatively new venture, just coming out of its infancy. Its potential is being tested, realized and used. The public xx Plant Growth Promotion by Rhizobacteria for Sustaninable Agriculture awareness and acceptance of PGPR will accelerate the process. Currently these are being supplemented by private individual entrepreneurs for developing PGPR products for local needs as well as for the export market. Technologies are flowing into the country due to the changed economic scenario. With continued support we can soon become global players in PGPR technology. I hope I have been able to impart upon you the great enthusiasm I feel about the future through the use of PGPR. We must bring about a massive collective global effort dedicated to funding new research in PGPR's. I encourage all of you here to bolster the spirit in your colleagues and yourselves as you now enable Asia to become a world leader in the application of PGPR technology to the betterment of our agriculture. I am confident that by working together we can overcome the obstacles and seize the opportunities in the PGPR technologies in the new millennium. I am taking this opportunity to call upon all stakeholders from the wide range of Asian countries to join hands and use PGPR to make our world a better place to live. Join me and let us see the future we can create with PGPR through this Congress. ; Not Available

Los altos niveles de contaminantes atmosféricos en el nordeste de la Península Ibérica tienen un fuerte impacto tanto en los ecosistemas como en la salud humana. Esta región es particularmente sensible a la contaminación por ozono (O3), debido a su compleja topografía, que induce una estructura del flujo que tiene importantes efectos en el transporte y la transformación de contaminantes fotoquímicos. A pesar de esta complejidad, la utilización de modelos de calidad del aire multiescala y anidados se ha revelado como una herramienta útil a la hora de evaluar fenómenos relacionados con la calidad del aire en terrenos muy complejos. El modelo de calidad de aire de tercera generación empleado para simular la problemática de contaminación atmosférica en el nordeste de la Península Ibérica es MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ, configurado con alta resolución espacial (1-2km) y temporal (1h). El modelo meteorológico de mesoescala MM5 fue aplicado para simular las circulaciones atmosféricas en una escala regional. EMICAT2000 fue desarrollado por el Dr. Parra dentro del Laboratorio de Modelización Ambiental, bajo la dirección del Dr. Baldasano, con el fin de estimar las emisiones de contaminantes primarios; y para proporcionar la información requerida por el modelo de transporte químico CMAQ. Este modelo ha sido configurado con diferentes parametrizaciones para analizar su influencia en los resultados de O3 troposférico. Tras desarrollar una metodología de comparación y selección de mecanismos fotoquímicos, el mecanismo CBM-IV fue implementado en CMAQ para representar la química en fase gas y heterogénea, puesto que este mecanismo presentó un comportamiento medio y representativo del actual estado de los conocimientos en este campo. El episodio de contaminación fotoquímica seleccionado tuvo lugar entre el 13 y el 16 de agosto del año 2000. Este episodio corresponde a una situación típica de verano de bajo gradiente bárico con altos niveles de O3 en toda la cuenca Mediterránea que sobrepasan el umbral de 180 g m-3 establecido en la Directiva 2002/3/CE. El dominio de estudio cubre un área de 272x272 km2 centrado en el nordeste de la Península Ibérica. Los problemas derivados de la inicialización del modelo y de la generación de condiciones de contorno para el dominio se solucionaron empleando una aproximación multiescala, realizando simulaciones para toda la Península Ibérica y suministrando la información al dominio del noreste peninsular a través de procedimientos de anidamiento unidireccionales. La influencia de las condiciones iniciales fue minimizada mediante un spin-up de 48 horas previo a las simulaciones reales, que reduce el impacto de las condiciones iniciales a un factor por debajo del 10% en el caso del O3. La aplicación de una alta resolución resulta esencial a la hora de describir los fenómenos mesoescalares en terrenos muy complejos. Ciertas particularidades de pequeña escala aparecen cuando se usa una resolución horizontal de 2km y 16 capas verticales. Con la resolución propuesta, el modelo MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ puede ser aplicado para usos regulatorios, ya que alcanza los criterios de exactitud establecidos tanto por la USEPA como por la Directiva 2002/3/CE. El origen de los altos niveles de contaminación atmosférica en el área de estudio está condicionado por la superposición de circulaciones de diferente escala que pueden ser descritos por la combinación de modelos globales y regionales, como ECHAM5/MESSy y MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ, respectivamente. La presencia de niveles altos de O3 es el resultado de las interacciones de diferentes procesos en los que domina la fotoquímica local y la deposición seca, fundamentalmente. El método de los indicadores fotoquímicos presentado proporciona un test para la evaluación de la sensibilidad del sistema O3-NOx-COVs, mostrando la correlación entre indicadores fotoquímicos y la química de NOx y COVs en terrenos muy complejos. Adicionalmente, MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ es una herramienta útil a la hora de establecer políticas de control de emisión de precursores de O3 y para analizar su comportamiento en áreas industriales muy complejas como es el caso de Tarragona, donde la química de O3 está fuertemente controlada por las emisiones industriales de COVs. Con el fin de estudiar el efecto fin de semana, se acopló a MM5-CMAQ un inventario de emisiones considerando diferencias entre los distintos días de la semana. Durante los fines de semana, las emisiones de vehículos pesados experimentan una reducción substancial. El retraso de 1-2 horas en los picos de las emisiones de precursores en los fines de semana produce que se genere O3 más eficientemente que con las emisiones de NOx durante los días de semana laborables. Debido a este comportamiento, un importante incremento en los niveles de O3 es simulado y observado en las zonas costeras urbanas. La mayor reducción proporcional de NOx durante los fines de semana hace que el potencial de formación de O3 sea más activo en los fines de semana comparado con los días laborables. Por último, cabe destacar que la aplicación de MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ a la descripción de la problemática de calidad del aire representa un instrumento que puede contribuir a establecer políticas de gestión ambiental y legislativas dentro del marco de la actual Directiva 2002/3/CE para O3 en aire ambiente. ; The high levels of air pollutants over the northeastern Iberian Peninsula in summer have a strong influence both on ecosystems and human health. The region is particularly sensitive to air pollution by ozone (O3), since its complex topography, that induces an extremely complicated structure of the flow that has important effects in the transport and transformation of pollutants. Despite of its complexity, the utilization of multiscale-nested air quality models has revealed as a useful tool to assess air quality issues in very complex terrains. The third generation air quality model MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ was used to simulate air quality issues in the domain of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula with high spatial (1-2km) and temporal (1h) resolution. The MM5 mesoscale meteorological model was applied to simulate regional-scale atmospheric circulations. EMICAT2000 was developed by Dr. Parra within the Environmental Modeling Laboratory headed by Dr. Baldasano, in order to estimate the emission of primary pollutants in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula; and to provide the basis for work in air quality modeling using chemical transport models. The CMAQ chemical transport model has been configured with different parameterizations in order to analyze their influence in O3 results. After developing a methodology for the comparison and selection of photochemical mechanisms, CBM-IV was implemented in CMAQ, coupling gas-phase and heterogeneous chemistry, since it reveals as the mechanism that presents a closer behavior to the average state-of-the-science. Modeling was conducted for the photochemical pollution event that took place from 13-16 August, 2000. This episode corresponds to a typical summertime low pressure gradient with high levels of O3 in the Iberian Peninsula that exceed the European threshold of 180 g m-3 established in Directive 2002/3/EC. The domain of study covers a squared area of 272x272 km2 centered the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. The problems concerning the initialization of the model and the generation of boundary conditions for the domain were solved by using a multiscale approach, performing simulations in the entire Iberian Peninsula to provide the necessary boundaries by one-way nesting procedures. The influence of initial conditions was minimized through a 48h spin-up prior to formal simulations that reduces their impact factor to lower than 10% for O3. High resolution becomes essential when describing mesoscale phenomena in very complex terrains. Some small-scale features in low-troposphere processes throughout the day appear when using a horizontal resolution of 2km and 16 vertical layers. With this resolution, the MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ model is suitable to be used for regulatory purposes since it meets the performance criteria established both by the USEPA and the Directive 2002/3/EC. The origin of the high levels of air pollutants in the area is conditioned by the superposition of circulations of different scale that may be described by the combination of global and regional models (ECHAM5/MESSy and MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ). The occurrence of high O3 levels is the result of an imbalance between high local chemical production rates and dry deposition, fundamentally. The method of photochemical indicators provides a test for sensitivity evaluation of O3-NOx-VOCs sensitivity, showing the correlation between photochemical indicators and simulated NOx-VOCs chemistry in very complex terrains. Furthermore, MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ provides a useful tool to set control policies for the emissions of O3 precursors and to analyze their behavior in very complex industrial areas, as the area of Tarragona, where the O3 chemistry is strongly controlled by the industrial emissions of VOCs. A day-specific hourly emissions inventory considering day-to-week variations in emissions has been coupled with MM5-CMAQ to conduct a study of the O3 weekend effect. On weekends, traffic from heavy-duty vehicles undergoes a substantial reduction. The shift of 1-2 hours in peaks of precursors emissions at weekends causes the midday emissions to produce O3 more efficiently compared with the NOx emitted on weekdays. Because of this behavior, a significant weekend increase in O3 weekend concentrations is simulated in coastal urban areas. The higher proportional reduction of NOx on weekends makes O3-forming photochemistry more active on weekends compared to weekdays. Last, it should be highlighted that the utilization of MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ applied to the description of air quality issues over the northeastern Iberian Peninsula represents a useful instrument that may contribute to the establishment of environmental managing policies and to regulatory purposes according to the actual Directive 2002/3/EC for O3 in ambient air. ; Postprint (published version)

Los altos niveles de contaminantes atmosféricos en el nordeste de la Península Ibérica tienen un fuerte impacto tanto en los ecosistemas como en la salud humana. Esta región es particularmente sensible a la contaminación por ozono (O3), debido a su compleja topografía, que induce una estructura del flujo que tiene importantes efectos en el transporte y la transformación de contaminantes fotoquímicos. A pesar de esta complejidad, la utilización de modelos de calidad del aire multiescala y anidados se ha revelado como una herramienta útil a la hora de evaluar fenómenos relacionados con la calidad del aire en terrenos muy complejos. El modelo de calidad de aire de tercera generación empleado para simular la problemática de contaminación atmosférica en el nordeste de la Península Ibérica es MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ, configurado con alta resolución espacial (1-2km) y temporal (1h). El modelo meteorológico de mesoescala MM5 fue aplicado para simular las circulaciones atmosféricas en una escala regional. EMICAT2000 fue desarrollado por el Dr. Parra dentro del Laboratorio de Modelización Ambiental, bajo la dirección del Dr. Baldasano, con el fin de estimar las emisiones de contaminantes primarios; y para proporcionar la información requerida por el modelo de transporte químico CMAQ. Este modelo ha sido configurado con diferentes parametrizaciones para analizar su influencia en los resultados de O3 troposférico. Tras desarrollar una metodología de comparación y selección de mecanismos fotoquímicos, el mecanismo CBM-IV fue implementado en CMAQ para representar la química en fase gas y heterogénea, puesto que este mecanismo presentó un comportamiento medio y representativo del actual estado de los conocimientos en este campo. El episodio de contaminación fotoquímica seleccionado tuvo lugar entre el 13 y el 16 de agosto del año 2000. Este episodio corresponde a una situación típica de verano de bajo gradiente bárico con altos niveles de O3 en toda la cuenca Mediterránea que sobrepasan el umbral de 180 g m-3 establecido en la Directiva 2002/3/CE. El dominio de estudio cubre un área de 272x272 km2 centrado en el nordeste de la Península Ibérica. Los problemas derivados de la inicialización del modelo y de la generación de condiciones de contorno para el dominio se solucionaron empleando una aproximación multiescala, realizando simulaciones para toda la Península Ibérica y suministrando la información al dominio del noreste peninsular a través de procedimientos de anidamiento unidireccionales. La influencia de las condiciones iniciales fue minimizada mediante un spin-up de 48 horas previo a las simulaciones reales, que reduce el impacto de las condiciones iniciales a un factor por debajo del 10% en el caso del O3. La aplicación de una alta resolución resulta esencial a la hora de describir los fenómenos mesoescalares en terrenos muy complejos. Ciertas particularidades de pequeña escala aparecen cuando se usa una resolución horizontal de 2km y 16 capas verticales. Con la resolución propuesta, el modelo MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ puede ser aplicado para usos regulatorios, ya que alcanza los criterios de exactitud establecidos tanto por la USEPA como por la Directiva 2002/3/CE. El origen de los altos niveles de contaminación atmosférica en el área de estudio está condicionado por la superposición de circulaciones de diferente escala que pueden ser descritos por la combinación de modelos globales y regionales, como ECHAM5/MESSy y MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ, respectivamente. La presencia de niveles altos de O3 es el resultado de las interacciones de diferentes procesos en los que domina la fotoquímica local y la deposición seca, fundamentalmente. El método de los indicadores fotoquímicos presentado proporciona un test para la evaluación de la sensibilidad del sistema O3-NOx-COVs, mostrando la correlación entre indicadores fotoquímicos y la química de NOx y COVs en terrenos muy complejos. Adicionalmente, MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ es una herramienta útil a la hora de establecer políticas de control de emisión de precursores de O3 y para analizar su comportamiento en áreas industriales muy complejas como es el caso de Tarragona, donde la química de O3 está fuertemente controlada por las emisiones industriales de COVs. Con el fin de estudiar el efecto fin de semana, se acopló a MM5-CMAQ un inventario de emisiones considerando diferencias entre los distintos días de la semana. Durante los fines de semana, las emisiones de vehículos pesados experimentan una reducción substancial. El retraso de 1-2 horas en los picos de las emisiones de precursores en los fines de semana produce que se genere O3 más eficientemente que con las emisiones de NOx durante los días de semana laborables. Debido a este comportamiento, un importante incremento en los niveles de O3 es simulado y observado en las zonas costeras urbanas. La mayor reducción proporcional de NOx durante los fines de semana hace que el potencial de formación de O3 sea más activo en los fines de semana comparado con los días laborables. Por último, cabe destacar que la aplicación de MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ a la descripción de la problemática de calidad del aire representa un instrumento que puede contribuir a establecer políticas de gestión ambiental y legislativas dentro del marco de la actual Directiva 2002/3/CE para O3 en aire ambiente. ; The high levels of air pollutants over the northeastern Iberian Peninsula in summer have a strong influence both on ecosystems and human health. The region is particularly sensitive to air pollution by ozone (O3), since its complex topography, that induces an extremely complicated structure of the flow that has important effects in the transport and transformation of pollutants. Despite of its complexity, the utilization of multiscale-nested air quality models has revealed as a useful tool to assess air quality issues in very complex terrains. The third generation air quality model MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ was used to simulate air quality issues in the domain of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula with high spatial (1-2km) and temporal (1h) resolution. The MM5 mesoscale meteorological model was applied to simulate regional-scale atmospheric circulations. EMICAT2000 was developed by Dr. Parra within the Environmental Modeling Laboratory headed by Dr. Baldasano, in order to estimate the emission of primary pollutants in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula; and to provide the basis for work in air quality modeling using chemical transport models. The CMAQ chemical transport model has been configured with different parameterizations in order to analyze their influence in O3 results. After developing a methodology for the comparison and selection of photochemical mechanisms, CBM-IV was implemented in CMAQ, coupling gas-phase and heterogeneous chemistry, since it reveals as the mechanism that presents a closer behavior to the average state-of-the-science. Modeling was conducted for the photochemical pollution event that took place from 13-16 August, 2000. This episode corresponds to a typical summertime low pressure gradient with high levels of O3 in the Iberian Peninsula that exceed the European threshold of 180 g m-3 established in Directive 2002/3/EC. The domain of study covers a squared area of 272x272 km2 centered the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. The problems concerning the initialization of the model and the generation of boundary conditions for the domain were solved by using a multiscale approach, performing simulations in the entire Iberian Peninsula to provide the necessary boundaries by one-way nesting procedures. The influence of initial conditions was minimized through a 48h spin-up prior to formal simulations that reduces their impact factor to lower than 10% for O3. High resolution becomes essential when describing mesoscale phenomena in very complex terrains. Some small-scale features in low-troposphere processes throughout the day appear when using a horizontal resolution of 2km and 16 vertical layers. With this resolution, the MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ model is suitable to be used for regulatory purposes since it meets the performance criteria established both by the USEPA and the Directive 2002/3/EC. The origin of the high levels of air pollutants in the area is conditioned by the superposition of circulations of different scale that may be described by the combination of global and regional models (ECHAM5/MESSy and MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ). The occurrence of high O3 levels is the result of an imbalance between high local chemical production rates and dry deposition, fundamentally. The method of photochemical indicators provides a test for sensitivity evaluation of O3-NOx-VOCs sensitivity, showing the correlation between photochemical indicators and simulated NOx-VOCs chemistry in very complex terrains. Furthermore, MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ provides a useful tool to set control policies for the emissions of O3 precursors and to analyze their behavior in very complex industrial areas, as the area of Tarragona, where the O3 chemistry is strongly controlled by the industrial emissions of VOCs. A day-specific hourly emissions inventory considering day-to-week variations in emissions has been coupled with MM5-CMAQ to conduct a study of the O3 weekend effect. On weekends, traffic from heavy-duty vehicles undergoes a substantial reduction. The shift of 1-2 hours in peaks of precursors emissions at weekends causes the midday emissions to produce O3 more efficiently compared with the NOx emitted on weekdays. Because of this behavior, a significant weekend increase in O3 weekend concentrations is simulated in coastal urban areas. The higher proportional reduction of NOx on weekends makes O3-forming photochemistry more active on weekends compared to weekdays. Last, it should be highlighted that the utilization of MM5-EMICAT2000-CMAQ applied to the description of air quality issues over the northeastern Iberian Peninsula represents a useful instrument that may contribute to the establishment of environmental managing policies and to regulatory purposes according to the actual Directive 2002/3/EC for O3 in ambient air. ; Postprint (published version)

Bangladesh is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. Situated in the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna (GBM) rivers, the country is exposed to a range of river and rainwater flood hazards due to climate variability, the timing, location, and extent of which depend on precipitation in the entire GBM basin. The Government of Bangladesh is fully committed to global climate-change advocacy and action, having already invested heavily in adaptation measures and policies. In recent decades, the government has invested more than US$10 billion to protect its population and assets in the floodplains. Given the uncertain magnitude and timing of the added risks from climate change, it is essential to identify the costs of climate proofing Bangladesh's critical infrastructure from intensified monsoon floods and cyclonic storm surges. Previously, few if any detailed studies have been developed on the costs of climate-proofing the country's infrastructure assets from inland monsoon floods and cyclones. Most analytical work to date has been confined to case studies, with relatively limited sets of locations, impacts, and adaptation measures. This study aims to fill that knowledge gap by providing detailed vulnerable population estimates and estimates of the incremental costs of asset adaptation out to the year 2050. It is part of a larger World Bank-supported study, entitled Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (EACC), funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Daniel Deudney on Mixed Ontology, Planetary Geopolitics, and Republican Greenpeace



This is the second in a series of Talks dedicated to the technopolitics of International Relations, linked to the forthcoming double volume 'The Global Politics of Science and Technology' edited by Maximilian Mayer, Mariana Carpes, and Ruth Knoblich 






World politics increasingly abrasions with the limits of state-centric thinking, faced as the world is with a set of issues that affect not only us collectively as mankind, but also the planet itself. While much of IR theorizing seems to shirk such realizations, the work of Daniel Deudney has consistently engaged with the complex problems engendered by the entanglements of nuclear weapons, the planetary environment, space exploration, and the kind of political associations that might help us to grapple with our fragile condition as humanity-in-the world. In this elaborate Talk, Deudney—amongst others—lays out his understanding of the fundamental forces that drive both planetary political progress and problems; discusses the kind of ontological position needed to appreciate these problems; and argues for the merits of a republican greenpeace model to political organization.





Print version of this Talk (pdf)







What is, according to you, the biggest challenge / principal debate in current IR? What is your position or answer to this challenge / in this debate?



The study of politics is the study of human politics and the human situation has been—and is being—radically altered by changes in the human relationships with the natural and material worlds. In my view, this means IR and related intellectual disciplines should focus on better understanding the emergence of the 'global' and the 'planetary,' their implications for the overall human world and its innumerable sub-worlds, and their relations with the realization of basic human needs. The global and the planetary certainly don't comprise all of the human situation, but the fact that the human situation has become global and planetary touches every other facet of the human situation, sometimes in fundamental ways. The simple story is that the human world is now 'global and planetary' due to the explosive transformation over the last several centuries of science-based technology occurring within the geophysical and biophysical features of planet Earth. The natural Earth and its relationship with humans have been massively altered by the vast amplifications in dispersed human agency produced by the emergence and spread of machine-based civilization. The overall result of these changes has been the emergence of a global- and planetary-scale material and social reality that is in some ways similar, but in other important ways radically different, from earlier times. Practices and structures inherited from the pre-global human worlds have not adequately been adjusted to take the new human planetary situation into account and their persistence casts a long and partially dark shadow over the human prospect.



A global and planetary focus is also justified—urgently—by the fact that the overall human prospect on this planet, and the fate of much additional life on this planet, is increasingly dependent on the development and employment of new social arrangements for interacting with these novel configurations of material and natural possibilities and limits. Human agency is now situated, and is making vastly fateful choices—for better or worse—in a sprawling, vastly complex aggregation of human-machine-nature assemblies which is our world. The 'fate of the earth' now partly hinges on human choices, and helping to make sure these choices are appropriate ones should be the paramount objective of political scientific and theoretical efforts. However, no one discipline or approach is sufficient to grapple successfully with this topic. All disciplines are necessary. But there are good reasons to believe that 'IR' and related disciplines have a particularly important possible practical role to play. (I am also among those who prefer 'global studies' as a label for the enterprise of answering questions that cut across and significantly subsume both the 'international' and the 'domestic.')



My approach to grappling with this topic is situated—like the work of now vast numbers of other IR theorists and researchers of many disciplines—in the study of 'globalization.' The now widely held starting point for this intellectual effort is the realization that globalization has been the dominant pattern or phenomenon, the story of stories, over at least the last five centuries. Globalization has been occurring in military, ecological, cultural, and economic affairs. And I emphasize—like many, but not all, analysts of globalization—that the processes of globalization are essentially dependent on new machines, apparatuses, and technologies which humans have fabricated and deployed. Our world is global because of the astounding capabilities of machine civilization. This startling transformation of human choice by technological advance is centrally about politics because it is centrally about changes in power. Part of this power story has been about changes in the scope and forms of domination. Globalization has been, to state the point mildly, 'uneven,' marked by amplifications of violence and domination and predation on larger and wider scales. Another part of the story of the power transformation has been the creation of a world marked by high degrees of interdependence, interaction, speed, and complexity. These processes of globalization and the transformation of machine capabilities are not stopping or slowing down but are accelerating. Thus, I argue that 'bounding power'—the growth, at times by breathtaking leaps, of human capabilities to do things—is now a fundamental feature of the human world, and understanding its implications should, in my view, be a central activity for IR scholars.



In addressing the topic of machine civilization and its globalization on Earth, my thinking has been centered first around the developing of 'geopolitical' lines argument to construct a theory of 'planetary geopolitics'. 'Geopolitics' is the study of geography, ecology, technology, and the earth, and space and place, and their interaction with politics. The starting point for geopolitical analysis is accurate mapping. Not too many IR scholars think of themselves as doing 'geography' in any form. In part this results from of the unfortunate segregation of 'geography' into a separate academic discipline, very little of which is concerned with politics. Many also mistake the overall project of 'geopolitics' with the ideas, and egregious mistakes and political limitations, of many self-described 'geopoliticans' who are typically arch-realists, strong nationalists, and imperialists. Everyone pays general lip service to the importance of technology, but little interaction occurs between IR and 'technology studies' and most IR scholars are happy to treat such matters as 'technical' or non-political in character. Despite this general theoretical neglect, many geographic and technological factors routinely pop into arguments in political science and political theory, and play important roles in them.



Thinking about the global and planetary through the lens of a fuller geopolitics is appealing to me because it is the human relationship with the material world and the Earth that has been changed with the human world's globalization. Furthermore, much of the actual agendas of movements for peace, arms control, and sustainability are essentially about alternative ways of ordering the material world and our relations with it. Given this, I find an approach that thinks systematically about the relations between patterns of materiality and different political forms is particularly well-suited to provide insights of practical value for these efforts.



The other key focus of my research has been around extending a variety of broadly 'republican' political insights for a cluster of contemporary practical projects for peace, arms control, and environmental stewardship ('greenpeace'). Even more than 'geopolitics,' 'republicanism' is a term with too many associations and meanings. By republics I mean political associations based on popular sovereignty and marked by mutual limitations, that is, by 'bounding power'—the restraint of power, particularly violent power—in the interests of the people generally. Assuming that security from the application of violence to bodies is a primary (but not sole) task of political association, how do republican political arrangements achieve this end? I argue that the character and scope of power restraint arrangements that actually serve the fundamental security interests of its popular sovereign varies in significant ways in different material contexts.



Republicanism is first and foremost a domestic form, centered upon the successive spatial expansion of domestic-like realms, and the pursuit of a constant political project of maximally feasible ordered freedom in changed spatial and material circumstances. I find thinking about our global and planetary human situation from the perspective of republicanism appealing because the human global and planetary situation has traits—most notably high levels of interdependence, interaction, practical speed, and complexity—that make it resemble our historical experience of 'domestic' and 'municipal' realms. Thinking with a geopolitically grounded republicanism offers insights about global governance very different from the insights generated within the political conceptual universe of hierarchical, imperial, and state-centered political forms. Thus planetary geopolitics and republicanism offers a perspective on what it means to 'Think Globally and Act Locally.' If we think of, or rather recognize, the planet as our locality, and then act as if the Earth is our locality, then we are likely to end up doing various approximations of the best-practice republican forms that we have successfully developed in our historically smaller domestic localities.





How did you arrive at where you currently are in IR?



Like anybody else, the formative events in my intellectual development have been shaped by the thick particularities of time and place. 'The boy is the father of the man,' as it is said. The first and most direction-setting stage in the formation of my 'green peace' research interests was when I was in 'grade school,' roughly the years from age 6-13. During these years my family lived in an extraordinary place, St Simons Island, a largely undeveloped barrier island off the coast of southern Georgia. This was an extremely cool place to be a kid. It had extensive beaches, and marshes, as well as amazing trees of gargantuan proportions. My friends and I spent much time exploring, fishing, camping out, climbing trees, and building tree houses. Many of these nature-immersion activities were spontaneous, others were in Boy Scouts. This extraordinary natural environment and the attachments I formed to it, shaped my strong tendency to see the fates of humans and nature as inescapably intertwined. But the Boy Scouts also instilled me with a sense of 'virtue ethics'. A line from the Boy Scout Handbook captures this well: 'Take a walk around your neighborhood. Make a list of what is right and wrong about it. Make a plan to fix what is not right.' This is a demotic version of Weber's political 'ethic of responsibility.' This is very different from the ethics of self-realization and self-expression that have recently gained such ground in America and elsewhere. It is now very 'politically incorrect' to think favorably of the Boy Scouts, but I believe that if the Scouting experience was universally accessible, the world would be a much improved place.



My kid-in-nature life may sound very Tom Sawyer, but it was also very Tom Swift. My friends and I spent much of our waking time reading about the technological future, and imaginatively play-acting in future worlds. This imaginative world was richly fertilized by science fiction comic books, television shows, movies, and books. Me and my friends—juvenile technological futurists and techno-nerds in a decidedly anti-intellectual culture—were avid readers of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein, and each new issue of Analog was eagerly awaited. While we knew we were Americans, my friends and I had strong inclinations to think of ourselves most essentially as 'earthlings.' We fervently discussed extraterrestrial life and UFOs, and we eagerly awaited the day, soon to occur, we were sure, in which we made 'first contact.' We wanted to become, if not astronauts, then designers and builders of spaceships. We built tree houses, but we filled them with discarded electronics and they became starships. We rode bicycles, but we lugged about attaché cases filled with toy ray guns, transistor radios, firecrackers, and homemade incendiary devices. We built and fired off rockets, painstaking assembled plastic kit models of famous airplanes and ships, and then we would blow them apart with our explosives. The future belonged to technology, and we fancied ourselves its avant garde.



Yet the prospect of nuclear Armageddon seemed very real. We did 'duck and cover' drills at school, and sat for two terrifying weeks through the Cuban Missile Crisis. My friends and I had copies of the Atomic Energy Commission manuals on 'nuclear effects,' complete with a slide-rule like gadget that enabled us to calculate just what would happen if near-by military bases were obliterated by nuclear explosions. Few doubted that we were, in the words of a pop song, 'on the eve of destruction.' These years were also the dawning of 'the space age' in which humans were finally leaving the Earth and starting what promised to be an epic trek, utterly transformative in its effects, to the stars. My father worked for a number of these years for a large aerospace military-industrial firm, then working for NASA to build the very large rockets needed to launch men and machines to the moon and back. My friends and I debated fantastical topics, such as the pros and cons of emigrating to Mars, and how rapidly a crisis-driven exodus from the earth could be organized.



Two events that later occurred in the area where I spent my childhood served as culminating catalytic events for my greenpeace thinking. First, some years after my family moved away, the industrial facility to mix rocket fuel that had been built by the company my father worked for, and that he had helped put into operation, was struck by an extremely violent 'industrial accident,' which reduced, in one titanic flash, multi-story concrete and steel buildings filled with specialized heavy industrial machinery (and everyone in them) into a grey powdery gravel ash, no piece of which was larger than a fist. Second, during the late 1970s, the US Navy acquired a large tract of largely undeveloped marsh and land behind another barrier island (Cumberland), an area 10-15 miles from where I had lived, a place where I had camped, fished, and hunted deer. The Navy dredged and filled what was one of the most biologically fertile temperate zone estuaries on the planet. There they built the east coast base for the new fleet of Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarines, the single most potent violence machine ever built, thus turning what was for me the wildest part of my wild-encircled childhood home into one of the largest nuclear weapons complexes on earth. These events catalyzed for me the realization that there was a great struggle going on, for the Earth and for the future, and I knew firmly which side I was on.



My approach to thinking about problems was also strongly shaped by high school debate, where I learned the importance of 'looking at questions from both sides,' and from this stems my tendency to look at questions as debates between competing answers, and to focus on decisively engaging, defeating, and replacing the strongest and most influential opposing positions. As an undergraduate at Yale College, I started doing Political Theory. I am sure that I was a very vexing student in some ways, because (the debater again) I asked Marxist questions to my liberal and conservative professors, and liberal and conservative ones to my Marxist professors. Late in my sophomore year, I had my epiphany, my direction-defining moment, that my vocation would be an attempt to do the political theory of the global and the technological. Since then, the only decisions have been ones of priority and execution within this project.



Wanting to learn something about cutting-edge global and technological and issues, I next went to Washington D.C. for seven years. I worked on Capitol Hill for three and a half years as a policy aide, working on energy and conservation and renewable energy and nuclear power. I spent the other three and a half years as a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, a small environmental and global issues think tank that was founded and headed by Lester Brown, a well-known and far-sighted globalist. I co-authored a book about renewable energy and transitions to global sustainability and wrote a study on space and space weapons. At the time I published Whole Earth Security: a Geopolitics of Peace (1983), in which my basic notions of planetary geopolitics and republicanism were first laid out. During these seven years in Washington, I also was a part-time student, earning a Master's degree in Science, Technology and Public Policy at George Washington University.



In all, these Washington experiences have been extremely valuable for my thinking. Many political scientists view public service as a low or corrupting activity, but this is, I think, very wrong-headed. The reason that the democratic world works as well as it does is because of the distributive social intelligence. But social intelligence is neither as distributed nor as intelligent as it needs to be to deal with many pressing problems. My experience as a Congressional aide taught me that most of the problems that confront my democracy are rooted in various limits and corruptions of the people. I have come to have little patience with those who say, for example, rising inequality is inherent in capital C capitalism, when the more proximate explanation is that the Reagan Republican Party was so successful in gutting the progressive tax system previously in place in the United States. Similarly, I see little value in claims, to take a very contemporary example, that 'the NSA is out of control' when this agency is doing more or less what the elected officials, responding to public pressures to provide 'national security' loudly demanded. In democracies, the people are ultimately responsible.



As I was immersed in the world of arms control and environmental activism I was impressed by the truth of Keynes's oft quoted line, about the great practical influence of the ideas of some long-dead 'academic scribbler.' This is true in varying degrees in every issue area, but in some much more than others. This reinforced my sense that great potential practical consequence of successfully innovating in the various conceptual frameworks that underpinned so many important activities. For nuclear weapons, it became clear to me that the problem was rooted in the statist and realist frames that people so automatically brought to a security question of this magnitude.



Despite the many appeals of a career in DC politics and policy, this was all for me an extended research field-trip, and so I left Washington to do a PhD—a move that mystified many of my NGO and activist friends, and seemed like utter folly to my political friends. At Princeton University, I concentrated on IR, Political Theory, and Military History and Politics, taking courses with Robert Gilpin, Richard Falk, Barry Posen, Sheldon Wolin and others. In my dissertation—entitled Global Orders: Geopolitical and Materialist Theories of the Global-Industrial Era, 1890-1945—I explored IR and related thinking about the impacts of the industrial revolution as a debate between different world order alternatives, and made arguments about the superiority of liberalist, internationalist, and globalist arguments—most notably from H.G. Wells and John Dewey—to the strong realist and imperialist ideas most commonly associated with the geopolitical writers of this period.



I also continued engaging in activist policy affiliated to the Program on Nuclear Policy Alternatives at the Center for Energy andEnvironmental Studies (CEES), which was then headed by Frank von Hippel, a physicist turned 'public interest scientist', and a towering figure in the global nuclear arms control movement. I was a Post Doc at CEES during the Gorbachev era and I went on several amazing and eye-opening trips to the Soviet Union. Continuing my space activism, I was able to organize workshops in Moscow and Washington on large-scale space cooperation, gathering together many of the key space players on both sides. While Princeton was fabulously stimulating intellectually, it was also a stressful pressure-cooker, and I maintained my sanity by making short trips, two of three weekends, over six years, to Manhattan, where I spent the days working in the main reading room of the New York Public Library and the nights partying and relaxing in a world completely detached from academic life.



When it comes to my intellectual development in terms of reading theory, the positive project I wanted to pursue was partially defined by approaches I came to reject. Perhaps most centrally, I came to reject an approach that was very intellectually powerful, even intoxicating, and which retains great sway over many, that of metaphysical politics. The politics of the metaphysicians played a central role in my coming to reject the politics of metaphysics. The fact that some metaphysical ideas and the some of the deep thinkers who advanced them, such as Heidegger, and many Marxists, were so intimately connected with really disastrous politics seemed a really damning fact for me, particularly given that these thinkers insisted so strongly on the link between their metaphysics and their politics. I was initially drawn to Nietzsche's writing (what twenty-year old isn't) but his model of the philosopher founder or law-giver—that is, of a spiritually gifted but alienated guy (and it always is a guy) with a particularly strong but frustrated 'will to power' going into the wilderness, having a deep spiritual revelation, and then returning to the mundane corrupt world with new 'tablets of value,' along with a plan to take over and run things right—seemed more comic than politically relevant, unless the prophet is armed, in which case it becomes a frightful menace. The concluding scene in Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi (sometimes translated as The Glass Bead Game) summarized by overall view of the 'high theory' project. After years of intense training by the greatest teachers the most spiritually and intellectually gifted youths finally graduate. To celebrate, they go to lake, dive in, and, having not learned how to swim, drown.



I was more attracted to Aristotle, Hume, Montesquieu, Dewey and other political theorists with less lofty and comprehensive views of what theory might accomplish; weary of actions; based on dogmatic or totalistic thinking; an eye to the messy and compromised world; with a political commitment to liberty and the interests of the many; a preference for peace over war; an aversion to despotism and empire; and an affinity for tolerance and plurality. I also liked some of those thinkers because of their emphasis on material contexts. Montesquieu seeks to analyze the interaction of material contexts and republican political forms; Madison and his contemporaries attempt to extend the spatial scope of republican political association by recombining in novel ways various earlier power restraint arrangements. I was tremendously influenced by Dewey, studying intensively his slender volume The Public and its Problems (1927)—which I think is the most important book in twentieth century political thought. By the 'public' Dewey means essentially a stakeholder group, and his main point is that the material transformations produced by the industrial revolution has created new publics, and that the political task is to conceptualize and realize forms of community and government appropriate to solving the problems that confront these new publics.



One can say my overall project became to apply and extend their concepts to the contemporary planetary situation. Concomitantly reading IR literature on nuclear weapons, I was struck by fact that the central role that material realities played in these arguments was very ad hoc, and that many of the leading arguments on nuclear politics were very unconvincing. It was clear that while Waltz (Theory Talk #40) had brilliantly developed some key ideas about anarchy made by Hobbes and Rousseau, he had also left something really important out. These sorts of deficiencies led me to develop the arguments contained in Bounding Power. I think it is highly unlikely that I would have had these doubts, or come to make the arguments I made without having worked in political theory and in policy.



I read many works that greatly influenced my thinking in this area, among them works by Lewis Mumford, Langdon Winner's Autonomous Technology, James Lovelock's Gaia, Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents (read a related article here, pdf), Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth and The Abolition, William Ophul's Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity... I was particularly stuck by a line in Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (pdf), that we live in a 'spaceship' like closed highly interconnected system, but lack an 'operating manual' to guide intelligently our actions. It was also during this period that I read key works by H.G. Wells, most notably his book, Anticipations, and his essay The Idea of a League of Nations, both of which greatly influenced my thinking.



This aside, the greatest contribution to my thinking has come from conversations sustained over many years with some really extraordinary individuals. To mention those that I have been arguing with, and learning from, for at least ten years, there is John O'Looney, Wesley Warren, Bob Gooding-Williams, Alyn McAuly, Henry Nau, Richard Falk, Michael Doyle (Theory Talk #1), Richard Mathew, Paul Wapner, Bron Taylor, Ron Deibert, John Ikenberry, Bill Wohlforth, Frank von Hippel, Ethan Nadelmann, Fritz Kratochwil, Barry Buzan (Theory Talk #35), Ole Waever, John Agnew (Theory Talk #4), Barry Posen, Alex Wendt (Theory Talk #3), James der Derian, David Hendrickson, Nadivah Greenberg, Tim Luke, Campbell Craig, Bill Connolly, Steven David, Jane Bennett, Daniel Levine (TheoryTalk #58), and Jairus Grove. My only regret is that I have not spoken even more with them, and with the much larger number of people I have learned from on a less sustained basis along the way.

                                    



What would a student need to become a specialist in IR or understand the world in a global way?



I have thought a great deal about what sort of answers to this question can be generally valuable. For me, the most important insight is that success in intellectual life and academia is determined by more or less the same combination of factors that determines success more generally. This list is obvious: character, talent, perseverance and hard work, good judgment, good 'people skills,' and luck. Not everyone has a talent to do this kind of work, but the number of people who do have the talent to do this kind of work is much larger than the number of people who are successful in doing it. I think in academia as elsewhere, the people most likely to really succeed are those whose attitude toward the activity is vocational. A vocation is something one is called to do by an inner voice that one cannot resist. People with vocations never really work in one sense, because they are doing something that they would be doing even if they were not paid or required. Of course, in another sense people with vocations never stop working, being so consumed with their path that everything else matters very little. People with jobs and professions largely stop working when they when the lottery, but people with vocations are empowered to work more and better. When your vocation overlaps with your job, you should wake up and say 'wow, I cannot believe I am being paid to do this!' Rather obviously, the great danger in the life paths of people with vocations is imbalance and burn-out. To avoid these perils it is beneficial to sustain strong personal relationships, know when and how to 'take off' effectively, and sustain the ability to see things as an unfolding comedy and to laugh.



Academic life also involves living and working in a profession. Compared to the oppressions that so many thinkers and researchers have historically suffered from, contemporary professional academic life is a utopia. But academic life has several aspects unfortunate aspects, and coping successfully with them is vital. Academic life is full of 'odd balls' and the loose structure of universities and organization, combined with the tenure system, licenses an often florid display of dubious behavior. A fair number of academics have really primitive and incompetent social skills. Others are thin skinned-ego maniacs. Some are pompous hypocrites. Some are ruthlessly self-aggrandizing and underhanded. Some are relentless shirkers and free-riders. Also, academic life is, particularly relative to the costs of obtaining the years of education necessary to obtain it, not very well paid. Corruptions of clique, ideological factionalism, and nepotism occur. If not kept in proper perspective, and approached in appropriate ways, academic department life can become stupidly consuming of time, energy, and most dangerously, intellectual attention. The basic step for healthy departmental life is to approach it as a professional role.



The other big dimension of academic life is teaching. Teaching is one of the two 'deliverables' that academic organizations provide in return for the vast resources they consume. Shirking on teaching is a dereliction of responsibility, but also is the foregoing of a great opportunity. Teaching is actually one of the most assuredly consequential things academics do. The key to great teaching is, I think, very simple: inspire and convey enthusiasm. Once inspired, students learn. Once students take questions as their own, they become avid seekers of answers. Teachers of things political also have a responsibility to remain even-handed in what they teach, to make sure that they do not teach just or mainly their views, to make sure that the best and strongest versions of opposing sides are heard. Teaching seeks to produce informed and critically thinking students, not converts. Beyond the key roles of inspiration and even-handedness, the rest is the standard package of tasks relevant in any professional role: good preparation, good organization, hard work, and clarity of presentation.





Your main book, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (2007), is a mix of intellectual history, political theory and IR theory, and is targeted largely at realism. How does a reading and interpretation of a large number of old books tell us something new about realism, and the contemporary global?



Bounding Power attempts to dispel some very large claims made by realists about their self-proclaimed 'tradition,' a lineage of thought in which they place many of the leading Western thinkers about political order, such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and the 'global geopoliticans' from the years around the beginning of the twentieth century. In the book I argue that the actual main axis of western thinking about political order (and its absence) is largely the work of 'republican' thinkers from the small number of 'republics', and that many of the key ideas that realists call realist and liberals call liberal are actually fragments of a larger, more encompassing set of arguments that were primarily in the idioms of republicanism. This entails dispelling the widely held view that the liberal and proto-liberal republican thought and practice are marked by 'idealism'—and therefore both inferior in their grasp of the problem of security-from violence and valuable only when confined to the 'domestic.' I demonstrate that this line of republican security thinkers had a robust set of claims both about material contextual factors, about the 'geopolitics of freedom', and a fuller understanding of security-from-violence. The book shows how perhaps the most important insights of this earlier cluster of arguments has oddly been dropped by both realists (particularly neorealists) and liberal international theorists. And, finally, it is an attempt to provide an understanding that posits the project of exiting anarchy on a global scale as something essentially unprecedented, and as something that the best of our inherited theory leaves us unable to say much about.



The main argument is contained in my formulation of what I think are the actual the two main sets of issues of Western structural-materialist security theory, two problematiques formulated in republican and naturalist-materialist conceptual vocabularies. The first problematique concerns the relationship between material context, the scope of tolerable anarchy, and necessary-for-security government. The second problematic concerns the relative security-viability of two main different forms of government—hierarchical and republican.



This formulation of the first problematic concerning anarchy differs from the main line of contemporary Realist argument in that it poses the question as one about the spatial scope of tolerable anarchy. The primary variable in my reconstruction of the material-contextual component of these arguments is what I term violence interdependence (absent, weak, strong, and intense). The main substantive claim of Western structural-materialist security theory is that situations of anarchy combined with intense violence interdependence are incompatible with security and require substantive government. Situations of strong and weak violence interdependence constitute a tolerable (if at times 'nasty and brutish') second ('state-of-war') anarchy not requiring substantive government. Early formulations of 'state of nature' arguments, explicitly or implicitly hinge upon this material contextual variable, and the overall narrative structure of the development of republican security theory and practice has concerned natural geographic variations and technologically caused changes in the material context, and thus the scope of security tolerable/intolerable anarchy and needed substantive government. This argument was present in early realist versions of anarchy arguments, but has been dropped by neorealists. Conversely, contemporary liberal international theorists analyze interdependence, but have little to say about violence. The result is that the realists talk about violence and security, and the liberals talk about interdependence not relating to violence, producing the great lacuna of contemporary theory: analysis of violence interdependence.



The second main problematique, concerning the relative security viability of hierarchical and republican forms, has also largely been lost sight of, in large measure by the realist insistence that governments are by definition hierarchical, and the liberal avoidance of system structural theory in favor of process, ideational, and economic variables. (For neoliberals, cooperation is seen as (possibly) occurring in anarchy, without altering or replacing anarchy.) The main claim here is that republican and proto-liberal theorists have a more complete grasp of the security political problem than realists because of their realization that both the extremes of hierarchy and anarchy are incompatible with security. In order to register this lost component of structural theory I refer to republican forms at both the unit and the system-level as being characterized by an ordering principle which I refer to as negarchy. Such political arrangements are characterized by the simultaneous negation of both hierarchy and anarchy. The vocabulary of political structures should thus be conceived as a triad-triangle of anarchy, hierarchy, and negarchy, rather than a spectrum stretching from pure anarchy to pure hierarchy. Using this framework, Bounding Power traces various formulations of the key arguments of security republicans from the Greeks through the nuclear era as arguments about the simultaneous avoidance of hierarchy and anarchy on expanding spatial scales driven by variations and changes in the material context. If we recognize the main axis of our thinking in this way, we can stand on a view of our past that is remarkable in its potential relevance to thinking and dealing with the contemporary 'global village' like a human situation.





Nuclear weapons play a key role in the argument of Bounding Power about the present, as well as elsewhere in your work. But are nuclear weapons are still important as hey were during the Cold War to understand global politics?



Since their arrival on the world scene in the middle years of the twentieth century, there has been pretty much universal agreement that nuclear weapons are in some fundamental way 'revolutionary' in their implications for security-from-violence and world politics. The fact that the Cold War is over does not alter, and even stems from, this fact. Despite this wide agreement on the importance of nuclear weapons, theorists, policy makers, and popular arms control/disarmament movements have fundamental disagreements about which political forms are compatible with the avoidance of nuclear war. I have attempted to provide a somewhat new answer to this 'nuclear-political question', and to explain why strong forms of interstate arms control are necessary for security in the nuclear age. I argue that achieving the necessary levels of arms control entails somehow exiting interstate anarchy—not toward a world government as a world state, but toward a world order that is a type of compound republican union (marked by, to put it in terms of above discussion, a nearly completely negarchical structure).



This argument attempts to close what I term the 'arms control gap', the discrepancy between the value arms control is assigned by academic theorists of nuclear weapons and their importance in the actual provision of security in the nuclear era. During the Cold War, thinking among IR theorists about nuclear weapons tended to fall into three broad schools—war strategists, deterrence statists, and arms controllers. Where the first two only seem to differ about the amount of nuclear weapons necessary for states seeking security (the first think many, the second less), the third advocates that states do what they have very rarely done before the nuclear age, reciprocal restraints on arms.



But this Cold War triad of arguments is significantly incomplete as a list of the important schools of thought about the nuclear-political question. There are four additional schools, and a combination of their arguments constitutes, I argue, a superior answer to the nuclear-political question. First are the nuclear one worlders, a view that flourished during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and held that the simple answer to the nuclear political question is to establish a world government, as some sort of state. Second are the populist anti-nuclearists, who indict state apparatuses of acting contrary to the global public's security interests. Third are the deep arms controllers, such as Jonathan Schell, who argue that nuclear weapons need to be abolished. Fourth are the theorists of omniviolence, who theorize situations produced by the leakage of nuclear weapons into the hands of non-state actors who cannot be readily deterred from using nuclear weapons. What all of these schools have in common is that they open up the state and make arguments about how various forms of political freedom—and the institutions that make it possible—are at issue in answering the nuclear-political question.

                                                                                                                

Yet one key feature all seven schools share is that they all make arguments about how particular combinations and configurations of material realities provide the basis for thinking that their answer to the nuclear-political question is correct. Unfortunately, their understandings of how material factors shape, or should shape, actual political arrangements is very ad hoc. Yet the material factors—starting with sheer physical destructiveness—are so pivotal that they merit a more central role in theories of nuclear power. I think we need to have a model that allows us to grasp how variations in material contexts condition the functionality of 'modes of protection', that is, distinct and recurring security practices (and their attendant political structures).



For instance, one mode of protection—what I term the real-state mode of protection—attempts to achieve security through the concentration, mobilization, and employment of violence capability. This is the overall, universal, context-independent strategy of realists. Bringing into view material factors, I argue, shows that this mode of protection is functional not universally but specifically—and only—in material contexts that are marked by violence-poverty and slowness. This mode of protection is dysfunctional in nuclear material contexts marked by violence abundance and high violence velocities. In contrast, a republican federal mode of protection is a bundle of practices that aim for the demobilization and deceleration of violence capacity, and that the practices associated with this mode of protection are security functional in the nuclear material context.



What emerges from such an approach to ideas about the relation between nuclear power and security from violence is that the epistemological foundations for any of the major positions about nuclear weapons are actually much weaker than we should be comfortable with. People often say the two most important questions about the nuclear age are: what is the probability that nuclear weapons will be used? And then, what will happen when they are used? The sobering truth is that we really do not have good grounds for confidently answering either of those two questions. But every choice made about nuclear weapons depends on risk calculations that depend on how we answer these questions.





You have also written extensively on space, a topic that has not recently attracted much attention from many IR scholars. How does your thinking on this relate to your overall thinking about the global and planetary situation?

                                                                                                          

The first human steps into outer space during the middle years of the twentieth century have been among the most spectacular and potentially consequential events in the globalization of machine civilization on Earth. Over the course of what many call 'the space age,' thinking about space activities, space futures, and the consequences of space activities has been dominated by an elaborately developed body of 'space expansionist' thought that makes ambitious and captivating claims about both the feasibility and the desirability of human expansion into outer space. Such views of space permeate popular culture, and at times appear to be quite influential in actual space policy. Space expansionists hold that outer space is a limitless frontier and that humans should make concerted efforts to explore and colonize and extend their military activities into space. They claim the pursuit of their ambitious projects will have many positive, even transformative, effects upon the human situation on Earth, by escaping global closure, protecting the earth's habitability, preserving political plurality, and enhancing species survival. Claims about the Earth, its historical patterns and its contemporary problems, permeate space expansionist thinking.



While the feasibility, both technological and economic, of space expansionist projects has been extensively assessed, arguments for their desirability have not been accorded anything approaching a systematic assessment. In part, such arguments about the desirability of space expansion are difficult to assess because they incorporate claims that are very diverse in character, including claims about the Earth (past, present, and future), about the ways in which material contexts made up of space 'geography' and technologies produce or heavily favor particular political outcomes, and about basic worldview assumptions regarding nature, science, technology, and life.



By breaking these space expansionist arguments down into their parts, and systematically assessing their plausibility, a very different picture of the space prospect emerges. I think there are strong reasons to think that the consequences of the human pursuit of space expansion have been, and could be, very undesirable, even catastrophic. The actual militarization of that core space technology ('the rocket') and the construction of a planetary-scope 'delivery' and support system for nuclear war-fighting has been the most important consequence of actual space activities, but these developments have been curiously been left out of accounts of the space age and assessments of its impacts. Similarly, much of actually existing 'nuclear arms control' has centered on restraining and dismantling space weapons, not nuclear weapons. Thus the most consequential space activity—the acceleration of nuclear delivery capabilities—has been curiously rendered almost invisible in accounts of space and assessments of its impacts. This is an 'unknown known' of the 'space age'. Looking ahead, the creation of large orbital infrastructures will either presuppose or produce world government, potentially of a very hierarchical sort.  There are also good reasons to think that space colonies are more likely to be micro-totalitarian than free. And extensive human movement off the planet could in a variety of ways increase the vulnerability of life on Earth, and even jeopardize the survival of the human species.



Finally, I think much of space expansionist (and popular) thinking about space and the consequences of humans space activities has been marked by basic errors in practical geography. Most notably, there is the widespread failure to realize that the expansion of human activities into Earth's orbital space has enhanced global closure, because the effective distances in Earth's space make it very small. And because of the formidable natural barriers to human space activity, space is a planetary 'lid, not a 'frontier'. So one can say that the most important practical discovery of the 'space age' has been an improved understanding of the Earth. These lines of thinking, I find, would suggest the outlines of a more modest and Earth-centered space program, appropriate for the current Earth age. Overall, the fact that we can't readily expand into space is part of why we are in a new 'earth age' rather than a 'space age'.





You've argued against making the environment into a national security issue twenty years ago. Do the same now, considering that making the environment a bigger priority by making it into a national security issue might be the only way to prevent total environmental destruction?



When I started writing about the relationships between environment and security twenty years ago, not a great deal of work had been done on this topic. But several leading environmental thinkers were making the case that framing environmental issues as security issues, or what came to be called 'securitizing the environment', was not only a good strategy to get action on environmental problems, but also was useful analytically to think about these two domains. Unlike the subsequent criticisms of 'environmental security' made by Realists and scholars of conventional 'security studies', my criticism starts with the environmentalist premise that environmental deterioration is a paramount problem for contemporary humanity as a whole.



Those who want to 'securitize the environment' are attempting to do what William James a century ago proposed as a general strategy for social problem solving. Can we find, in James' language, 'a moral equivalent of war?' (Note the unfortunately acronym: MEOW). War and the threat of war, James observed, often lead to rapid and extensive mobilizations of effort. Can we somehow transfer these vast social energies to deal with other sets of problems? This is an enduring hope, particularly in the United States, where we have a 'war on drugs', a 'war on cancer', and a 'war on poverty'. But doing this for the environment, by 'securitizing the environment,' is unlikely to be very successful. And I fear that bringing 'security' orientations, institutions, and mindsets into environmental problem-solving will also bring in statist, nationalist, and militarist approaches. This will make environmental problem-solving more difficult, not easier, and have many baneful side-effects.



Another key point I think is important, is that the environment—and the various values and ends associated with habitat and the protection of habitat—are actually much more powerful and encompassing than those of security and violence. Instead of 'securitizing the environment' it is more promising is to 'environmentalize security'. Not many people think about the linkages between the environment and security-from-violence in this way, but I think there is a major case of it 'hiding in plain sight' in the trajectory of how the state-system and nuclear weapons have interacted.



When nuclear weapons were invented and first used in the 1940s, scientists were ignorant about many aspects of their effects. As scientists learned about these effects, and as this knowledge became public, many people started thinking and acting in different ways about nuclear choices. The fact that a ground burst of a nuclear weapon would produce substantial radioactive 'fall-out' was not appreciated until the first hydrogen bomb tests in the early 1950s. It was only then that scientists started to study what happened to radioactive materials dispersed widely in the environment. Evidence began to accumulate that some radioactive isotopes would be 'bio-focused', or concentrated by biological process. Public interest scientists began effectively publicizing this information, and mothers were alerted to the fact that their children's teeth were become radioactive. This new scientific knowledge about the environmental effects of nuclear explosions, and the public mobilizations it produced, played a key role in the first substantial nuclear arms control treaty, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in the ocean, and in space. Thus, the old ways of providing security were circumscribed by new knowledge and new stakeholders of environmental health effects. The environment was not securitized, security was partially environmentalized.



Thus, while some accounts by arms control theorists emphasize the importance of 'social learning' in altering US-Soviet relations, an important part of this learning was not about the nature of social and political interactions, but about the environmental consequences of nuclear weapons. The learning that was most important in motivating so many actors (both within states and in mass publics) to seek changes in politics was 'natural learning,' or more specifically learning about the interaction of natural and technological systems.



An even more consequential case of the environmentalization of security occurred in the 1970's and 1980's. A key text here is Jonathan Schell's book, The Fate of the Earth. Schell's book, combining very high-quality journalism with first rate political theoretical reflections, lays out in measured terms the new discoveries of ecologists and atmospheric scientists about the broader planetary consequences of an extensive nuclear war. Not only would hundreds of millions of people be immediately killed and much of the planet's built infrastructure destroyed, but the planet earth's natural systems would be so altered that the extinction of complex life forms, among them homo sapiens, might result. The detonation of numerous nuclear weapons and the resultant burning of cities would probably dramatically alter the earth's atmosphere, depleting the ozone layer that protects life from lethal solar radiations, and filling the atmosphere with sufficient dust to cause a 'nuclear winter.' At stake in nuclear war, scientists had learned, was not just the fate of nations, but of the earth as a life support system. Conventional accounts of the nuclear age and of the end of the Cold War are loath to admit it, but it I believe it is clear that spreading awareness of these new natural-technological possibilities played a significant role in ending the Cold War and the central role that nuclear arms control occupies in the settlement of the Cold War. Again, traditional ways of achieving security-from-violence were altered by new knowledges about their environmental consequences—security practices and arrangements were partly environmentalized.



Even more radically, I think we can also turn this into a positive project. As I wrote two decades ago, environmental restoration would probably generate political externalities that would dampen tendencies towards violence. In other words, if we address the problem of the environment, then we will be drawn to do various things that will make various types of violent conflict less likely.





Your work is permeated by references to 'material factors'. This makes it different from branches of contemporary IR—like constructivism or postmodernism—which seem to be underpinned by a profound commitment to focus solely one side of the Cartesian divide. What is your take on the pervasiveness and implications of this 'social bias'?



Postmodernism and constructivism are really the most extreme manifestations of a broad trend over the last two centuries toward what I refer to as 'social-social science' and the decline—but hardly the end—of 'natural-social science'. Much of western thought prior to this turn was 'naturalist' and thus tended to downplay both human agency and ideas. At the beginning of the nineteenth century—partly because of the influence of German idealism, partly because of the great liberationist projects that promised to give better consequence to the activities and aspirations of the larger body of human populations (previously sunk in various forms of seemingly natural bondages), and partly because of the great expansion of human choice brought about by the science-based technologies of the Industrial Revolution—there was a widespread tendency to move towards 'social-social science,' the project of attempting to explain the human world solely by reference to the human world, to explain social outcomes with reference to social causes. While this was the dominant tendency, and a vastly productive one in many ways, it existed alongside and in interaction with what is really a modernized version of the earlier 'natural-social science.' Much of my work has sought to 'bring back in' and extend these 'natural-social' lines of argument—found in figures such as Dewey and H.G. Wells—into our thinking about the planetary situation.



In many parts of both European and American IR and related areas, Postmodern and constructivist theories have significantly contributed to IR theorists by enhancing our appreciation of ideas, language, and identities in politics. As a response to the limits and blindnesses of certain types of rationalist, structuralist, and functional theories, this renewed interest in the ideational is an important advance. Unfortunately, both postmodernism and constructivism have been marked by a strong tendency to go too far in their emphasis of the ideational. Postmodernism and constructivism have also helped make theorists much more conscious of the implicit—and often severely limiting—ontological assumptions that underlay, inform, and bound their investigations. This is also a major contribution to the study of world politics in all its aspects.



Unfortunately, this turn to ontology has also had intellectually limiting effects by going too far, in the search for a pure or nearly pure social ontology. With the growth in these two approaches, there has indeed been a decided decline in theorizing about the material. But elsewhere in the diverse world of theorizing about IR and the global, theorizing about the material never came anything close to disappearing or being eclipsed. For anyone thinking about the relationships between politics and nuclear weapons, space, and the environment, theorizing about the material has remained at the center, and it would be difficult to even conceive of how theorizing about the material could largely disappear. The recent 're-discovery of the material' associated with various self-styled 'new materialists' is a welcome, if belated, re-discovery for postmodernists and constructivists. For most of the rest of us, the material had never been largely dropped out.



A very visible example of the ways in which the decline in appropriate attention to the material, an excessive turn to the ideational, and the quest for a nearly pure social ontology, can lead theorizing astray is the core argument in Alexander Wendt's main book, Social Theory of International Politics, one of the widely recognized landmarks of constructivist IR theory. The first part of the book advances a very carefully wrought and sophisticated argument for a nearly pure ideational social ontology. The material is explicitly displaced into a residue or rump of unimportance. But then, to the reader's surprise, the material, in the form of 'common fate' produced by nuclear weapons, and climate change, reappears and is deployed to play a really crucial role in understanding contemporary change in world politics. 



My solution is to employ a mixed ontology. By this I mean that I think several ontologically incommensurate and very different realities are inescapable parts the human world. These 'unlikes' are inescapable parts of any argument, and must somehow be combined. There are a vast number of ways in which they can be combined, and on close examination, virtually all arguments in the social sciences are actually employing some version of a mixed ontology, however implicitly and under-acknowledged.



But not all combinations are equally useful in addressing all questions. In my version of mixed ontology—which I call 'practical naturalism'—human social agency is understood to be occurring 'between two natures': on the one hand the largely fixed nature of humans, and on the other the changing nature composed of the material world, a shifting amalgam of actual non-human material nature of geography and ecology, along with human artifacts and infrastructures. Within this frame, I posit as rooted in human biological nature, a set of 'natural needs,' most notably for security-from-violence and habitat services. Then I pose questions of functionality, by which I mean: which combinations of material practices, political structures, ideas and identities are needed to achieve these ends in different material contexts? Answering this question requires the formulation of various 'historical materialist' propositions, which in turn entails the systematic formulation of typologies and variation in both the practices, structures and ideas, and in material contexts. These arguments are not centered on explaining what has or what will happen. Instead they are practical in the sense that they are attempting to answer the question of 'what is to be done' given the fixed ends and given changing material contexts. I think this is what advocates of arms control and environmental sustainability are actually doing when they claim that one set of material practices and their attendant political structures, identities and ideas must be replaced with another if basic human needs are to going to continue to be meet in the contemporary planetary material situation created by the globalization of machine civilization on earth.

                                  

Since this set of arguments is framed within a mixed ontology, ideas and identities are a vital part of the research agenda. Much of the energy of postmodern and many varieties of critical theory have focused on 'deconstructing' various identities and ideas. This critical activity has produced and continues to produce many insights of theorizing about politics. But I think there is an un-tapped potential for theorists who are interested in ideas and identities, and who want their work to make a positive contribution to practical problem-solving in the contemporary planetary human situation in what might be termed a 'constructive constructivism'. This concerns a large practical theory agenda—and an urgent one at that, given the rapid increase in planetary problems—revolving around the task of figuring out which ideas and identities are appropriate for the planetary world, and in figuring out how they can be rapidly disseminated. Furthermore, thinking about how to achieve consciousness change of this sort is not something ancillary to the greenpeace project but vital to it. My thinking on how this should and might be done centers the construction of a new social narrative, centered not on humanity but on the earth.





Is it easy to plug your mixed ontology and interests beyond the narrow confines of IR or even the walls of the ivory tower into processes of collective knowledge proliferation in IR—a discipline increasingly characterized by compartimentalization and specialization?



The great plurality of approaches in IR today is indispensible and a welcome change. The professionalization of IR and the organization of intellectual life has some corruptions and pitfalls that are best avoided. The explosion of 'isms' and of different perspectives has been valuable and necessary in many ways, but it has also helped to foster and empower sectarian tendencies that confound the advance of knowledge. Some of the adherents of some sects and isms boast openly of establishing 'citation cartels' to favor themselves and their friends. Some theorists also have an unfortunate tendency to assume that because they have adopted a label that what they actually do is the actually the realization of the label. Thus we have 'realists' with limited grasp on realities, 'critical theorists' who repeat rather than criticize the views of other 'critical theorists,' and anti-neoliberals who are ruthless Ayn Rand-like self aggrandizers. The only way to fully address these tendencies is to talk to people you disagree with, and find and communicate with people in other disciplines.



Another consequence of this sectarianism is visible in the erosion of scholarly standards of citation. The system of academic incentives is configured to reward publication, and the publication of ideas that are new. This has a curiously perverse impact on the achievement of cumulativity. One seemingly easy and attractive path to saying something new is to say something old in new language, to say something said in another sect or field in the language of your sect or field, or easiest of all, simply ignore what other people have said if it is too much like what you are trying to say. George Santyana is wide quoted in saying that 'those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.' For academics it can unfortunately be said, 'those who can successfully forget what past academics said are free to say it again, and thus advance toward tenure.' When rampant sectarianism and decline in standards of citation is combined with a broader cultural tendency to valorize self-expression and authenticity, academic work can become an exercise in abstract self expressionism.



Confining one's intellectual life within one 'ism' or sect is sure to be self-limiting. Many of the most important and interesting questions arise between and across the sects and schools. Also, there are great opportunities in learning from people who do not fully share your assumptions and approaches. Seriously engaging the work and ideas of scholars in other sects can be very very valuable. Scholars in different sects and schools are also often really taking positions that are not so different as their labels would suggest. Perhaps because my research agenda fits uncomfortably within any of the established schools and isms, I have found particularly great value in seeking out and talking on a sustained basis with people with very different approaches.





My final question is about normativity and the way that normativity is perceived: In Europe and the United States, liberal Internationalism is increasingly considered as hollowed out, as a discursive cover for a tendency to attempt to control and regulate the world—or as an unguided idealistic missile. Doesn't adapting to a post-hegemonic world require dropping such ambitions?



American foreign policy has never been entirely liberal internationalist. Many other ideas and ideologies and approaches have often played important roles in shaping US foreign policy. But the United States, for a variety of reasons, has pursued liberal internationalist foreign policy agendas more extensively, and successfully, than any other major state in the modern state system, and the world, I think, has been made better off in very important ways by these efforts.



The net impact of the United States and of American grand strategy and particularly those parts of American brand strategy that have been more liberal internationalist in their character, has been enormously positive for the world. It has produced not a utopia by any means, but has brought about an era with more peace and security, prosperity, and freedom for more people than ever before in history.



Both American foreign policy and liberal internationalism have been subject to strong attacks from a variety of perspectives. Recently some have characterized liberal internationalism as a type of American imperialism, or as a cloak for US imperialism. Virtually every aspect of American foreign policy has been contested within the United States. Liberal internationalists have been strong enemies of imperialism and military adventurism, whether American or from other states. This started with the Whig's opposition to the War with Mexico and the Progressive's opposition to the Spanish-American War, and continued with liberal opposition to the War in Vietnam.



The claim that liberal internationalism leads to or supports American imperialism has also been recently voiced by many American realists, perhaps most notably John Mearsheimer (Theory Talk #49). He and others argue that liberal internationalism played a significant role in bringing about the War on Iraq waged by the W. Bush administration. This was indeed one of the great debacles of US foreign policy. But the War in Iraq was actually a war waged by American realists for reasons grounded in realist foreign policy thinking. It is true, as Mearsheimer emphasizes, that many academic realists criticized the Bush administration's plans and efforts in the invasion in Iraq. Some self-described American liberal internationalists in the policy world supported the war, but almost all academic American liberal internationalists were strongly opposed, and much of the public opposition to the war was on grounds related to liberal internationalist ideas.



It is patently inaccurate to say that main actors in the US government that instigated the War on Iraq were liberal internationalists. The main initiators of the war were Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Whatever can be said about those two individuals, they are not liberal internationalists. They initiated the war because they thought that the Saddam Hussein regime was a threat to American interests—basically related to oil. The Saddam regime was seen as a threat to American-centered regional hegemony in the Middle East, an order whose its paramount purpose has been the protection of oil, and the protection of the regional American allies that posses oil. Saddam Hussein was furthermore a demonstrated regional revisionist likely to seek nuclear weapons, which would greatly compromise American military abilities in the region. Everything else the Bush Administration's public propaganda machine said to justify the war was essentially window dressing for this agenda. Far from being motivated by a liberal internationalist agenda the key figures in the Bush Administration viewed the collateral damage to international institutions produced by the war as a further benefit, not a cost, of the war. It is particularly ironic that John Mearsheimer would be a critic of this war, which seems in many ways a 'text book' application of a central claim of his 'offensive realism,' that powerful states can be expected, in the pursuit of their security and interests, to seek to become and remain regional hegemons.



Of course, liberal internationalism, quite aside from dealing with these gross mischaracterizations propagated by realists, must also look to the future. The liberal internationalism that is needed for today and tomorrow is going to be in some ways different from the liberal internationalism of the twentieth century. This is a large topic that many people, but not enough, are thinking about. In a recent working paper for the Council on Foreign Relations, John Ikenberry and I have laid out some ways in which we think American liberal internationalism should proceed. The starting point is the recognition that the United States is not as 'exceptional' in its precocious liberal-democratic character, not as 'indispensible' for the protection of the balance of power or the advance of freedom, or as easily 'hegemonic' as it has been historically. But the world is now also much more democratic than ever before, with democracies old and new, north and south, former colonizers and former colonies, and in every civilizational flavor. The democracies also face an array of difficult domestic problems, are thickly enmeshed with one another in many ways, and have a vital role to play in solving global problems. We suggest that the next liberal internationalism in American foreign policy should focus on American learning from the successes of other democracies in solving problems, focus on 'leading by example of successful problem-solving' and less with 'carrots and sticks,' make sustained efforts to moderate the inequalities and externalities produced by de-regulated capitalism, devote more attention to building community among the democracies, and make sustained efforts to 'recast global bargains' and the distribution of authority in global institutions to better incorporate the interests of 'rising powers.'





Daniel Deudney is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He has published widely in political theory and international relations, on substantive issues such as nuclear weapons, the environment as a security issue, liberal and realist international relations theory, and geopolitics.





Related links



Deudney's Faculty Profile at Johns Hopkins
Read Deudney & Ikenberry's Democratic Internationalism: An American Grand Strategy for a Post-exceptionalist Era (Council on Foreign Relations Working Paper, 2012) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney et al's Global Shift: How the West Should Respond to the Rise of China (2011 Transatlantic Academy report) here (pdf) 
Read the introduction of Deudney's Bounding Power (2007) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney's Bringing Nature Back In: Geopolitical Theory from the Greeks to the Global Era (1999 book chapter) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney & Ikenberry's Who Won the Cold War? (Foreign Policy, 1992) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney's The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security (Millennium, 1990) here (pdf) 
Read Deudney's Rivers of Energy: The Hydropower Potential (WorldWatch Institute Paper, 1981) here (pdf) 









Print version of this Talk (pdf)

The blue economy can be a driver of sustainable economic development, but it is both subject and a contributor to climate change and environmental degradation.Ocean health starts with freshwater health, but freshwater and ocean policies are disconnected, and water security is a blind spot in blue economy strategies.Subnational governments are competent in policy areas that can improve water quality, such as water and sanitation, waste management and land use; and their investment responsibilities in grey and green infrastructure can foster resilience to growing water risks.1. Understanding the blue economyThere is no single definition of blue, ocean or marine economy, which are often used. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines the ocean economy as "the sum of the economic activities of ocean-based industries, together with the assets, goods and services provided by marine ecosystems" (OECD, 2016), and divides ocean-based into "established" and "emerging" sectors. The classification of sectors differs from one framework to another: the EC and UN-World Bank propose a synthesised classification of 14 and 15 sectors respectively, while the OECD has a more detailed classification of 21 sectors (see table 1).Considering only established sectors, the OECD conservatively valued the ocean economy at USD 1.5 trillion annually in 2010, accounting for around 2.5% of global GDP and 30 million direct job. In a business-as-usual scenario, in 2030, these sectors are anticipated to employ over 40 million people and to grow to more than USD 3 trillion, maintaining its share of 2.5% of total global GVA (Gross Value Added). Across almost all sectors, employment would grow faster than average for the world economy.Economic growth and employment in many countries, regions and cities hinge upon water and ocean-based economic activities. For instance, Cambodia's blue economy has been valued at USD 2.4 billion in 2015, accounting for around 16% of the country's GDP and 2.4 million jobs (World Bank, 2023). In the state of California (United States), 1 in 9 jobs connects to port-related activity; in the state of Louisiana, the inland Port of South Louisiana ranks first in the country in terms of dry bulk cargo handled. In Barcelona (Spain), 15 000 people are employed in the blue economy, while in the region of Andalusia,the ocean economy accounts for around 10% of workers and 10.5% of GDP. However, given the range of differing definitions of the blue economy or ocean economy across countries, regions and cities, these estimates are challenging to compare – even within the same jurisdiction. For instance, the blue economy strategy of the city of Barcelona (Spain) highlights that estimates of the value of the blue economy are not comparable between the city, the region and the central government, as all three levels of government have different definitions of its scope. The blue economy also includes the ecosystem services or non-market benefits provided by freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems (e.g. natural river systems, wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs), such as carbon storage, flood protection, food provision and cultural values. Globally, ecosystem services are worth 1.5 times total GDP (OECD, 2021). In the European Union, an average EUR 400 billion of ecosystem services are generated on a 10km coastal zone (European Commission, 2023). Coral ecosystems alone contribute an estimated USD 172 billion per year to the world economy with benefits such as food and raw materials, water purification, recreation and biodiversity (OECD, 2022). Mangroves across several Indonesian regions provide valuable ecosystem services (e.g., coastal protection, climate regulation, raw materials provision) that contribute to human wellbeing, providing on average USD 15 000 and 50 000 per hectare per year in benefits in Java and Bali respectively (WWF, 2022). Investing in natural assets such as mangroves and coral reefs can be beneficial for tourism as well as flood protection, carbon capture and biodiversity. For instance, investing USD 1 in mangrove conservation and restoration can generate a financial, environmental and health benefit of USD 3-17 over a 30-year period (Ocean Panel, 2020).The blue economy holds some of the keys to unlocking the energy transition. Water-based renewable energy (e.g. offshore wind power, floating solar panels or tidal energy) can power the clean energy transition; aquaculture solutions (e.g. oyster reefs) can mitigate coastal flood risks; and blue bioeconomy and biotechnology (e.g. seaweed farming) can capture carbon and nutrient pollution. The number of global ocean renewable energy inventions grew 7% annually on average between 2000 and 2019 (OECD, 2023). Offshore wind provided just 0.3% of global electricity supply in 2018, but it has the potential to generate more than 420 000 terawatt-hours per year worldwide, which represents 18 times current global electricity demand (OECD, 2022).However, the blue economy can be an important source of carbon emissions, pollution and other environmental stressors. Maritime transport alone accounted for almost 3% of global CO2 emissions in 2018, and pollution from shipping (e.g. noise, untreated sewage and oil spills) affects both freshwater and marine habitats and biodiversity. Moreover, ghost fishing gear contributes to around 10% of plastic pollution in the ocean (Greenpeace, 2019), and resource-intensive activities such as tourism and coastal development can be large water abstractors and waste generators. For example, coastal tourism in Greece leads to a 26% increase in plastic waste influx, contributing to the 11 500 tonnes of plastic leaking into the Mediterranean every year, 28% of which stems from sea-based sources such as ghost fishing equipment (WWF, 2019). An international review of water use in tourism suggested that direct water use in tourism varied between 80 to 2000 litres per tourist per day, depending on the geographic location and the type of hotel (Gössling et al., 2012), significantly above the average consumption of 124 litres per day in Europe (EurEau, 2021).Several blue economy strategies consider the importance of "greening" the blue economy (e.g. through decarbonisation or pollution mitigation) and preserving ocean and coastal ecosystems. For instance, Portugal's National Ocean Strategy (2021-20230) has 9 strategic goals including decarbonisation, supporting the country's efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 while improving the health of marine and coastal ecosystems. At subnational level, the state of Washington's (US) Maritime Blue Strategy (2022) aims to accelerate the decarbonisation of its maritime industry through technological innovations, infrastructure, and incentives to facilitate local, coastal, and international maritime operations (e.g. modernisation of state and regional ferries and shore-side infrastructure with cleaner low-carbon fuels). Similarly, the Port of Vigo's (Spain) Blue Growth Plan (2021-2027) has set a target to become a carbon sink by 2030 by increasing renewable energy use in port operations and business activities, using cleaner alternative fuels such as hydrogen on ships, and fostering seabed regeneration and CO2 sequestration through artificial reefs, for instance.Recognising the potential of the blue economy for sustainable economic development and the need to protect coastal and marine ecosystems, a growing number of international declarations and frameworks aim to boost its contribution to sustainable development agendas. Against the backdrop of the Paris Agreement on climate, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (2015) and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030), the blue economy discussion has seen:• Statements of intent making the blue economy a priority for sustainable economic development at global and regional levels, with the Nairobi Statement of Intent on Advancing the Global Sustainable Blue Economy (2018), the Jakarta Declaration on Blue Economy (2017) and the Communication on a new approach for a sustainable blue economy in the European Union (2021). • Guiding principles for a sustainable blue economy including the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 14 – Life below water), UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEPFI) Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles and the Chennai High-Level Principles on Sustainable and Resilient Blue/Ocean-based Economy (2023) adopted by members of the G20. • International treaties aiming to protect the ocean from existing and emerging stressors, such as the ongoing meetings of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee established to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (2022-2024), and the Treaty on the High Seas adopted by the UN General Assembly's Intergovernmental Conference on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (2023).• However, few of these national strategies, declarations and frameworks recognise subnational governments' crucial role in marine and freshwater conservation, water-related risk prevention and the blue economy. Recognising that subnational governments have a key but often underexploited role to play in unleashing the potential of a sustainable blue economy, the OECD programme on Cities and Regions for a Blue Economy aims to shed light on how a territorial approach to the blue economy can leverage place-based policies and subnational government competences to accelerate efforts towards sustainable blue economies.2. Water security as a condition for thriving blue economiesShedding light on the link between the blue economy and water securityClimate change magnifies water risks, which the OECD (n.d.) defines as "the risk of too much, too little, too polluted water and disruption to freshwater systems", by affecting the water cycle: more than 90% of natural disasters are related to water (UNEP, n.d.). Achieving water security means maintaining acceptable levels of these four water risks (OECD, 2013). Rooted in seas, coasts, rivers or lakes, blue economy sectors are particularly vulnerable to water-related risks in freshwater, coastal and marine environments, which are inextricably linked to one another. For instance, 72% of fish and invertebrate species representing 77% of total catch are estimated to be linked to river flows at some point in their life cycle (Broadley et al., 2022).Water risks can have severe economic impacts, especially in cities, which generate around 60% of GDP and employment in OECD countries. For example, a drought can cost up to 6% of GDP per annum by 2050 (World Bank, 2016), reduce a city's economic growth by up to 12% (Zaveri et al., 2021) and damage buildings and infrastructure due to the expansion and retraction of soils and land subsidence. Droughts, floods, and storms could wipe USD 5.6 trillion from global GDP between 2022 and 2050 (Aquanomics, 2023). "Too little" water can make rivers too shallow for fluvial transport or energy generation, with ripple effects beyond the blue economy. Shipping on the Rhine river was down 27% in 2018 due to low water levels, leading German industrial production to fall by 1.5%, and the production of chemicals and pharmaceuticals to drop by 10% for three months (OECD, 2023). Since mid-August, the persistent drought in the Panama Canal region has compelled authorities to impose traffic restrictions, resulting in a bottleneck of more than 100 large vessels transporting commodities thought to be worth billions of dollars (Earth.org, 2023). The Panama Canal anticipates a reduction of approximately USD 200 million in revenue during its upcoming fiscal year due to these crossing restrictions (Reuters, 2023).Floods, sea level rise and coastal erosion can disrupt marine and freshwater ecosystems while damaging waterfront infrastructure and assets such as ports and shipyards. With almost 11% of the global population living in Low Elevation Coastal Zones in 2020 (IPCC, 2022), sea level rise is projected to affect 800 million people living in one of the 570 cities exposed to sea level rise of at least 0.5 metre (C40 Cities, 2018). In the state of California (US), which has the largest ocean economy in the country valued at over USD 44 billion annually, USD 8-10 billion of existing property value is likely to be underwater by 2050, and an additional USD 6-10 billion to be at risk during high tides. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, 104 000 existing jobs and the creation of 85 000 new jobs could be threatened by sea-level rise in the next 40-100 years (Ocean & Climate Platform, 2023).Water pollution from land-based sources can wreak havoc on both freshwater and marine ecosystems. Currently, about 60% of plastic marine debris is estimated to originate from urban centres, and around 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based sources such as untreated sewage (UNEP, 2021). The cost of water pollution exceeds billions of US dollars annually in OECD countries (OECD, 2017): for instance, in the US, the loss in lakefront property values due to nutrient pollution, which causes eutrophication and can trigger toxic algal blooms, has been estimated to cost between USD 300 million and USD 2.8 billion. Plastic pollution affects rivers and oceans alike: to date, 30 mega tonnes (Mt) of plastics have accumulated oceans, but more than triple that amount – 109 Mt – has piled up in rivers (OECD, 2022). Plastic pollution alone costs fisheries in the Gulf of Thailand USD 23 million per year (IUCN, 2020) and around EUR 13 million per year to the Scottish fishing industry (KIMO, 2010).Exacerbated by climate change, phenomena such as acidification, freshwater and marine heatwaves adversely impact fisheries, tourism and the ecosystem services provided by waterbodies (e.g. recreation, carbon capture and water purification). Marine heatwaves, whose frequency has doubled since the 1980s, can cause long-lasting or irreversible damage to many marine species, leading to mass mortality events and ultimately threating food security (OCP, 2023). Ocean warming and acidification cause damage to coral reefs (e.g. bleaching), which increases coastal flood risk and dampens reef-related tourism. In the state of Queensland (Australia), for example, the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef could cause the loss of 1 million visitors to the region each year, equivalent to at least AUD 1 billion in tourism spending and 10 000 jobs (Australian Climate Council, 2017). In the state of Florida (US), coral reef degradation could increase the coastal flood risk to more than 7 300 people, costing an additional USD 823 million every year (Storlazzi et al., 2023).Water security in blue economy policyDespite the intrinsic link between water resilience and economic resilience, water security is generally a blind spot of national and subnational blue economy strategies, which tend to focus on boosting blue economy growth. Nevertheless, some blue economy strategies make the connection between the blue economy and water security. For instance, the US Blue Economy Strategic Plan (2021) piloted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aims to increase the resilience of the country's coasts and oceans as well as the Great Lakes communities. The Blue Economy Vision for Scotland (2022) insists that the country's marine and inter-linked freshwater and coastal environments need to be sustainably managed, restored and resilient to climate change.Protecting and restoring the coastal and marine environment is considered in some strategies, but the resilience of coastal and marine environments and related economic activities is not often linked to freshwater resilience. This may be due to most blue economy strategies being led by government departments responsible for economic development or oceans, and freshwater and oceans often belonging to separate departments. Globally, government entities responsible for ocean health are often not the decision-makers or regulators of many of the activities that threaten its well-being in freshwater and on land (SIWI, 2020). The IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (2019) highlights that water-related governance arrangements (e.g., marine protected areas, spatial plans and water management systems) are often too fragmented across administrative boundaries and sectors to provide integrated responses to the increasing and cascading risks from climate-related changes in the ocean and/or cryosphere. A counter-example is the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, a newly created government entity responsible for protecting, restoring and ensuring the sustainable use of freshwater and marine resources, including fisheries management. Similarly, one of the departmental mandates of Fisheries and Oceans Canada is to protect oceans, freshwater and aquatic ecosystems through science, in collaboration with indigenous communities.3. The case for resilient, inclusive, sustainable and circular (RISC-proof) blue economies: a comprehensive frameworkThe blue economy has both a direct (e.g. pollution) and indirect (e.g. climate change) impact on freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems. The literature reveals the dual dynamics at play. On the one hand, the blue economy is increasingly vulnerable to climate change, which mainly manifests through disruptions to the water cycle. This underscores the need for a blue economy that is resilient to climate change and inclusive of local communities adversely affected by water-related risks. On the other hand, as a potentially significant source of carbon emissions and pollution, blue economies should embrace sustainability by striking a balance between economic growth and environmental preservation while integrating circularity to minimise waste and promote resource efficiency.The OECD programme on Cities and Regions for a Blue Economy therefore suggests a framework encapsulating four dimensions that national and subnational governments ought to consider in the context of the blue economy: resilience, inclusiveness, sustainability and circularity (Figure 1). The Programme suggests that governments should aim for a blue economy that is:• Resilient to water-related risks exacerbated by climate change by using tools to ensure water security (e.g. disaster risk reduction, nature-based solutions, water pollution prevention, etc.). For example, in the French overseas archipelago of Guadeloupe, 400 companies in the fields of commerce, services and fishing experienced a combined revenue loss of nearly EUR 5 million in the first half of 2015 alone as a result of sargassum proliferation (CCI-IG, 2016). To tackle this issue, Guadeloupe joined the Sargassum Algae Cooperation Programme, which aims to strengthen the resilience of Caribbean territories by facilitating knowledge-sharing for sargassum management and valuation (e.g. to decontaminate agricultural soils loaded with pesticides).• Inclusive of local communities and stakeholders through engagement, employment opportunities in the blue economy and the protection of the most vulnerable (e.g. those living in informal settlements or sub-standard housing) from water risks. For example, the 2018 Maritime Strategy of Catalonia (Spain) prioritises community-led fishing management structures based on co-management, where each stakeholder interested in achieving sustainable fishing can participate with equal decision-making power and take on shared responsibilities in the co-management process. The strategy also aims to increase the share of women employed in fisheries and aquaculture, as they currently make up just 2.6% of the Catalan workforce in the sector. The Seine-Normandie Water Agency (France) organised Water Stakeholder Forums in 2022 to discuss the implementation of the Water Development and Management Plan (SDAGE) for 2022-2027 with around 900 local stakeholders. The Plan includes measures to protect and restore wetlands while limiting new coastal developments; collect and treat wastewater discharges from ports, boats, and campsites; and anticipate the need for drinking water in areas of demographic and tourist development to control water abstraction and prevent saline intrusion.• Sustainable environmentally, by limiting greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from blue economy sectors, sustainably managing coastal, marine and freshwater resources (e.g. fish and minerals) and conserving freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems (e.g. wetlands). To promote sustainability, the Port of Seattle's (US) Smith Cove Blue Carbon Pilot Project is restoring underwater habitats and biodiversity, particularly with oysters, to sequester carbon, filter water and mitigate flood risk. In the port of Valencia (Spain), CO2 emissions dropped 30% between 2008 and 2019 despite activity growing 42%, due to initiatives such as fleet replacement with hybrid and electric vehicles, the adoption of cleaner fuels like liquid natural gas (LNG) and hydrogen, and the upgrade of lighting systems in port areas.• Circular, to foster resource efficiency and reduce waste, by using resources efficiently and keeping resources in use for as long as possible, preventing waste and transforming waste and/or by-products into resources. As part of a circular economy, the city of Rotterdam, Netherlands has created Blue City in 2019, a platform and accelerator for circular entrepreneurs that contribute to reducing waste and pollution by reusing existing products and materials. The nautical and naval industries of the region of New Aquitaine (France) and the state of Washington (US) carry out repair activities to maintain existing commercial and recreational vessels, thus keeping existing resources in use for as long as possible.To foster resilient, inclusive, sustainable and circular blue economies, the preliminary results of the OECD Programme on Cities and Regions for a Blue Economy point to three emerging priorities.First, better explore the role of subnational governments. Few of the mounting international declarations and agreements and national strategies related to oceans and the blue economy recognise the importance of a localised approach that leverages the role of place-based solutions, even though many of the most powerful tools for water security – land use, spatial planning, waste and water management – are in the hands of subnational governments. Cities and regions can also invest in infrastructure and nature-based solutions to mitigate flood risk and improve the resilience of local economies. They are also guardians of local culture and traditions linked to water-related economic activities, which can help ensure that solutions win the approval and active support of local communities. More broadly, cities and regions are crucial to achieving the SDGs: at least 105 of the 169 SDG targets will not be achieved without proper engagement and co-ordination with local and regional governments (OECD, 2020).Second, foster policy coherence across oceans, freshwater and land. Ocean and freshwater decision-making are often disconnected from one another, even though healthy oceans start with healthy freshwater. If freshwater and land do not have a seat at the ocean decision-making table, the ocean's main environmental stressors risk being overlooked. Similarly, coastal and inland cities cannot be disconnected from the basins they sit in. Basin organisations, which are set up by political authorities, or in response to stakeholder demands, deal with water resource management issues in river basins, lake basins, or across important aquifers. They can help cities and regions tackle the risks of "too much", "too little" and "too polluted" water and unlock the potential of the blue economy through engaging stakeholders across catchments, planning, coordination, data collection and monitoring.Third, create the right enabling environment. For a resilient, inclusive, sustainable and circular blue economy to thrive in cities and regions, technical solutions are not enough. Subnational governments need to find new funding mechanisms to support marine and freshwater protection; set sound incentives and frameworks to catalyse investments; develop partnerships with private actors, community organisations, cooperatives, think tanks and research institutes and stimulate blue entrepreneurship; create synergies across policies such as spatial planning, waste, energy, transport that affect the quantity and quality of water; and foster dialogue between scientists and policy makers, amongst others. These solutions are outlined in the Multi-Stakeholder Pledge on Localising the Blue Economy developed by the OECD in partnership with Atlantic Cities, International Association of Cities and Ports (AIVP), ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, International Network of Basin Organisations (INBO), Ocean & Climate Platform, Resilient Cities Network, and United Cities and Local Governments Africa (UCLG-Africa).4. ConclusionThe blue economy is gaining traction as a means of combining economic growth with environmental protection, health and wellbeing. Considered as the sum of economic activities taking places in oceans, coasts, rivers and lakes, the blue economy can be a powerful driver of sustainable development in coastal and inland cities, regions and countries. However, the blue economy is both subject and a contributor to climate change, water risks and environmental degradation. This raises the need for a blue economy that is resilient to climate change; inclusive of local communities; sustainable, by balancing economic growth with environmental preservation; and circular, to minimise waste and promote resource efficiency. A review of the existing literature, including international declarations and agreements, national and subnational strategies related to the ocean and blue economy, reveals that water security and subnational governments are often absent from considerations. Further research may focus on:• Elucidating the link between freshwater and marine ecosystems and the blue economy;• Highlighting how the blue economy can both magnify water risks (e.g. through unsustainable fishing practices and coastal development) and mitigate them (e.g. through sustainable aquaculture and ecosystem-based approaches to coastal management);• Documenting how "territorialising" the blue economy, i.e. tailoring blue economy strategies and policies to local and regional needs, marine and freshwater ecosystems, cultural practices and economic priorities, can make measures more effective and integrated, with co-benefits for other policy areas (e.g. climate mitigation, climate adaptation and water security);• Better understanding roles and responsibilities across levels of government in managing ocean, coastal and freshwater resources based on institutional frameworks, capacities and priorities.Authors: Oriana Romano, Head of Unit, Water Governance, Blue and Circular Economy, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE)Juliette Lassman, Policy Analyst, Water Governance, Blue and Circular Economy, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE)Georges Laimé, Junior Policy Analyst, Water Governance, Blue and Circular Economy, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE)