New phenomenon and Concepts in

International Relations
Unit 15.3: Green Politics & Cyber Security
 Green Politics
• Environmental issues have assumed greater significance in the study of IR today than ever
before because industrialization and technological progress have enhanced concerns for
environmental safety all over the world.
• Like globalization and IT revolution, environmental issues too have made states across world
highly interdependent today because carbon emissions from industrial plants in one part of
the globe may affect other parts

• Example:
A leakage in a nuclear power plant in one state of Europe, for instance, may create airborne ra-
dioactivity throughout the continent and even beyond, causing serious health hazards; shortage
of river water in a state of Africa may lead into a war with neighboring states.
 The Rise of Green Politics
• Although forms of environmental politics can be traced back to the industrialization of the 19th
century.
• Green Politics having always been, in a sense, a backlash against industrial society, the
environment did not become a significant national or international issue until the 1960s and
1970s.
• Influenced in particular by the idea of ecology the pioneering works of early green politics
included
a. Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring (1962), a critique of the damage done to wildlife and the
human world by the increased use of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.
b. Murray Bookchin’s Our Synthetic Environment ([1962] 1975) which examined how pesticides,
food additives and X-rays cause a range of human illnesses, including cancer.
• The period of the 1960s and 1970s also saw the birth of a new generation of activist NGOs
ranging from
• Green peace
• Friends of the earth
• Eco- warriors
• They campaigned on issues such as the dangers of pollution, the dwindling reserves of fossil fuels,
deforestation and animal experiments.

The environmental movement addresses two general problems. These are:

•Resource problems – attempts to conserve natural materials through reducing the use of non-renew-
able resources
(coal, oil, natural gas and so on), increasing the use of renewable resources (such as wind, wave and
tidal power),
and reducing population growth, thereby curtailing resource consumption.
• Sink problems – attempts to reduce the damage done by the waste products of economic activity,
through,
for example, reducing pollution levels, increasing recycling, and developing greener (less polluting)
technologies.
 Cyber Security
• The Internet has expanded rapidly since its commercialization in the mid-1990s. In the early
21st century, a third of the world’s population has access to the technology, with another 1.5
billion expected to gain access by 2020.

• Cyber security had risen to the pinnacle of world politics when US President Obama went in
front of television cameras in December 2014 to publicly accuse the North Korean government
of hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment.

• The “Internet of Things” will lead to an exponential number of devices being connected to the
network. As a result, the economic and political incentives to exploit the network for malicious
purposes have also increased, and cyber security has reached head-of-state-level attention.

• This concepts incorporate a wide range of cyber threats and cyber risks, including cyber war-
fare, cyber conflict, cyber terrorism, cyber crime, and cyber espionage.
 References
• Global Politics by Andrew Heywood (New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011), Chapter 21 “Global Future”.
• World Politics: Trends and Transformation by Charles W. Kegley Jr. &
Shannon L. Blanton (Boston: Wadsworth, 201) Chapter 17 “Looking
ahead at Global Trends and Transformation”.
• International Relations Today: Concepts and Applications by Aneek
Chatterjee (Pearson, 2010).