Environmental Politics - Essay Example

?Environmental Politics According to Benz, Dilts, Fisher, Leinberger & Miner-Voigt , the major environmental issues such as the exhaustion of resources, air and water pollution, climate changes, and biodiversity loss are relatively interconnected. And, all individuals on earth are partially responsible for the environmental damages caused by our irrational behaviours (ibid). The complexity of environmental problems relating to scope, interactions, biological processes call for a set of elite experts to mange them. Therefore, complexity of the problem requires technocratic and administrative rational response. Environmental politics is all about humanity being organised itself to comply with the nature. It encompasses matters of about how people are dealing with the planet and its life. It invades into other areas of political concern relating to society and human life. The main areas where political environment handles are poverty, social justice, international economy, foreign relations, and human rights, because whatever happens to these elements will effect the environment, and vice versa. Over the last 40year, environmental politics have constituted a great, vigorous, rapidly increasing, and diverse area for discovery and exploration. Many writers have already mentioned how the developing global world is encountering with the environmental crises varying from the exhausting resources to endangered human health due to catastrophic climate changes. The severity of the environmental problems shows the inevitability of the political responses to environmental crises. As Lenard and Finlayson (n.d.), point out, the anthropogenic impact on the environment has been in its full swing in the recent years, while the task of science has become increasingly significant in the public policy making. The complexity and uncertainty of the impacts has stimulated the need for a scientific expert research in the field of environmental politics. Humans have been using their ability to perceive and evaluate their impacts on the environment from both the global and local levels. The environmental politics ranges from risk analysis and cleanup guidelines to climate change policy. In this globalisation era, empirical data stimulated through the scientific methods has become the foremost justifiable basis for understanding and analysing the natural system and in turn our environment. Only a technocratic rational response can meet the terms of these issues. And therefore, the only suitable measure is the “advance analysis in environmental affairs by promoting critical comparative scrutiny of competing discourses of environmental concerns” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 20). The beginning of the environmental politics can be traced back to 1960s when environment was used as an entity for all issues relating to nature and humanity. Since then, the environmental literature has been efficiently coping up with the development of environmental concerns and has now extended to the globalisation process. Bartlett suggests that adequacy must be maintained to attempt to force bureaucracies to use science-like analysis as a basis for policies and decision in dealing with the environmental politics (cited in Dryzek and Schlosberg, 2005, pp. 93-103). To understand the rationale of the political element on environment, it must be evaluated on its success or failure by referencing to ecological rationality. The environmental politics today is incorporated with many serious debates relating to social, political and economic issues which cause severe ecological catastrophes and harms. These vital issues include toxic wastages, hazards of nuclear power, air and water pollution, energy shortage, over dosage of pesticides, and climate changes. It talks about the relationship that we must facilitate towards the natural system which sustains us. What is important and necessary is a political response to the environmental crises. The environmental movements must seek an alternative design and more sustainable political organization. It is at this point where the need for technocratic approach towards the environmental politics becomes relevant. The environment is a complex concern and we need elite experts to manage the issues related to the environmental politics. Policies and action connected with the natural system change with the time and takes the best suitable form in relevant to the issues. For an example, as Dryzek (2005, p. 5) reminds, a few decades back the whale was regarded as a source of food and the raw material for other products such as oil and baleen. The idea of considering the whale to be a sentient creature that has right to exist, was thought to be a laughable issue. However, today almost all countries in the world hold the view that whales must be protected from the human exploitation (ibid). It simply means that nature is ubiquitous but our basic perception about the environment can change quite dramatically over the passage of time. The major issues for the environmental consequences are politics and policies. The fact is that unlike the past, today we have politics of the environment. And so, now we have not only an environment but also its issues, often caused by the subject of politics and the public policy. This is the situation where we need experts to mold policies regarding environmental politics, to mold a humanity who are more sensitive and aware, and are willing to break away from the past misconceptions and ignorance. Complexity is one of the major elements that influences the decision making system. The causes for the issues behind the environmental politics can be attributed to the developments of technology that radically changed the planetary systems. As the humans are getting empowered, unintended changes are happening in the environment and in its elements such as in water, in soil, and among plants and animals. It also affects the relationship existing among these elements. The problem solving strategies must focus on the two types of discourses, namely, sustainable development and ecological modernisation. The method must include “imaginative attempts to dissolve the conflicts between environmental and economic values that energize the discourse of problem solving and limits” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 15). The disclosure must include diverse and ecologically-oriented political and social movements. The goals for project of environmental politics must be based on social ecology, bioregionalism eco-feminism, and environmental justice. Thus, environmental politics is concerned with ‘scientisation and depolitisation’ within policy making processes. The solutions for the environmental issues are largely framed within technical methodologies. Therefore, the environmental risk management requires the identification of hindrances in forming a new politics of environment, which needs a large amount of scientific expertise. References Benz, S, Dilts, AR, Fisher, R, Leinberger, A & Miner-Voigt, L 2010, ‘The Franklin sustainability report 2010’, pp. 3-51, Viewed 24 Aug 2011, Dryzek, JS 2005, The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, Oxford University Press, New York. Dryzek, JS & Schlosberg, D 2005, Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader, Oxford University Press, New York. Lenard, SR & Finlayson, IJ (n.d), ‘The role of the scientist in collaborative environmental policy making’, pp. 1-19, Viewed 24 Aug 2011, Read More