Description: Presenting human security perspectives on climate change, this volume raises issues of equity, ethics and environmental justice, as well as our capacity to respond to what is increasingly considered to be the greatest societal challenge for humankind. Written by international experts, it argues that climate change must be viewed as an issue of human security, and not an environmental problem that can be managed in isolation from larger questions concerning development trajectories, and ethical obligations towards the poor and to future generations. The concept of human security offers a new approach to the challenges of climate change, and the responses that could lead to a more equitable and sustainable future. Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security will be of interest to researchers, policy makers, and practitioners concerned with the human dimensions of climate change, as well as to upper-level students in the social sciences and humanities interested in climate change.
Brief description: Asunción Lera St. Clair is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen, Norway and Scientific Director of the Comparative Research Program on Poverty (CROP), one of the leading programs of the International Social Science Council (ISSC); co-leader (with Victoria Lawson) of the WUN Critical Global Poverty Studies Research group; Vice-President of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA); board member of the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights and member of the editorial boards of various international journals and other international organisations. Her work is primarily interdisciplinary, focusing on ethical issues related to development and poverty with a special focus on human rights, and attempting to provide alternative perspectives on global poverty. St. Clair has also focused attention on the challenges posed by climate change in relation to poverty and development studies, aiming to offer holistic ethically grounded perspectives on both challenges. She has recently published in the journals of Global Governance, Global Social Policy, Globalisations, and Global Ethics. Her most recent publications are Global Poverty, Ethics, and Human Rights: The Role of Multilateral Institutions (2009, co-authored with Desmond McNeill) and Development Ethics: a Reader (2010, co-edited with Des Gasper).