International Political Intervention and Environmental Security: A Synchronic Analysis of Successes, Failures and Lessons in the Global-South
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/MC524Keywords:
Environmental Security, Political Intervention, Global-SouthAbstract
The dynamics and multidimensionality of frameworks, policies, regimes and institutions created by domestic governments and the United Nations for environmental security interventions have been made complex and fragmented by states pursuance of hegemonic status in the context of national security in the international system without much attention paid to issues of environmental depletion in the Global-South. This study interrogated international political intervention and environmental security with emphasis on the synchronic occurrences of environmental intervention successes, failures and lessons in the Global-South. The objectives of the study included an autopsy and interrogation of extenuating factors which account for poor implementation of policy objectives that impedes interventions on environmental security in the Southern regions. For this to be achieved, the study adopted theory triangulation within the frameworks of Neorealism link to Liberal Institutionalism of (Ruggie, 1998; Hurrell, 1995), the Post Structuralism of Walker (1997) and the Environmental Structural Scarcity and Conflict of Homer-Dixon (1999). The major assumptions of the theories view international intervention on environmental security as a myth in view of the continued exploitation of the environments of the Global-South by MNCs from the Global-North. The study generated data from secondary sources such as Textbooks, UN, UNDEP, UNE, Academic Search Engine and Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP) fact files. Historicized and descriptive design forms the methodology of the study while qualitative technique was adopted for data collection. With content analysis, the study exhumed mute evidence and cold facts to argue that, the character and focus of several UN frameworks, governance systems and regimes for environmental protection, rehabilitation and resource management are not only inadequate, they are equally influenced by the predatory nature of the State, Multinational Corporations and the politics of intervention to which the vulnerability and economic strangulation of the Global-South runs on a continuum from excellent to poor. The study therefore, recommends that new environmental legislation of individual state in the Global South that will be jurisdiction flexible and legally adjustable to recognize and punish transboundary environmental crimes is necessary as it is urgent. And that international multilateral intervention agreements for environmental protection or rehabilitation in the Global-South should be structured in a manner that will make international or local environmental financing not to be supply-driven and fragmented. This will avoid a situation where the donor agencies infrequently aligned with the affected country’s national systems in budgeting, project planning, execution and monitoring.
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