Book Launch

Facing Global Environmental Change

Paola Tejada Lalinde

Eight specialists presented their innovative ideas on policy-making as well as global and multidisciplinary security during the April 29 2009 launch of Facing Global Environmental Change. The launch of this book was a part of the IHDP Open Meeting 2009, “The Social Challenges of Global Change”, which brought 938 participants to Bonn from 26-30 April 2009. In 100 chapters, 132 authors from 49 countries address new security threats of the 21st century posed by climate change, desertification, water stress, population growth and urbanisation.

These security dangers and concerns lead to migration, crises and conflicts and are thus on the agendas of the UN, OECD, OSCE, NATO and EU.

This ambitious book also analyses the global debate on environmental, human, gender, energy, food, livelihood, health and water security concepts and policy problems. Through the book’s 10 sections, the authors discuss the securitisation of both global environmental change and of extreme natural and societal outcomes.

The authors suggest a new research programme to move from knowledge to action and from reactive to proactive policies so as to explore the opportunities of environmental cooperation for a new peace policy. Facing Global Environmental Change includes forewords written by internationally recognisned global change researchers such as R.K. Pachauri, Chairman, IPCC; Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UNEP; Joy Ogwu, former Foreign Minister of Nigeria; and Stavros Dimas, EU Commissioner for Environment. The book’s prefaces were also written by top researchers and practitioners such as Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary, UNCCD Secretariat; Sálvano Briceño, Director, Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction; Michael Zammit Cutajar, former Secretary General, Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; Vandana Shiva, Alternative Nobel Prize. During the book launch, water and gender security were raised as two very important issues in facing global security challenges. Three billion people deal with water problems, let it be sewage or drinking water, and the most at risk are women. In the words of Dr. Ursula Oswald Spring, one of the editors, “Poverty has a woman’s face.”

The Director of the United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), Professor Janos Bogardi, underlined the plural voices reflected in the book and reminded the audience that “as we know, there is no single solution, and [in the book] all the opinions are represented.” Prof. Dr. P. S. Ramakrishnan, Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, highlighted the key role of “biodiversity when dealing with environmental uncertainties.”

For Prof. (em.) Dr. Eckart Ehlers, Department of Geography, University of Bonn; Center for Development Research (ZEF), Bonn, “the book is a heavy weight in terms of content and research findings. It has an innovative approach with its sectoralisation of security. It is comprehensive, well-written and urges [society] to proceed from knowledge to action. It is not retrospective but looks forward. ”

All the authors contributed to the book on a voluntary, unpaid basis. Geographical balance was guaranteed in order to offer a diversity of perspectives from the North and South and all chapters were anonymously peer reviewed.