Security, Environment and Globalisation
What the domain tests
This domain tests the widening of security beyond war, the politics of global environmental cooperation, and the gains and costs of globalisation.
Core rules and concepts
- Traditional security focuses on military threats to the state; non-traditional security includes terrorism, pandemics, cyberattacks, climate change, migration and resource scarcity.
- Globalisation means growing cross-border flows of goods, capital, people, information and culture; it is not only economic.
- WTO (1995) rules reduce tariffs and discipline trade barriers, but critics cite unequal bargaining and agricultural subsidies.
- Global commons such as the atmosphere and oceans require collective action; the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and Paris Agreement (2015) embody differentiated responsibilities.
- Globalisation can spread growth and technology while increasing inequality, job displacement and cultural homogenisation.
- Environmental security links drought, floods and crop failure to migration and conflict.
Worked example
How is climate change a security issue? Reasoning: prolonged drought reduces food output; rural livelihoods collapse; migration rises; weak states face unrest; military planners treat climate as a threat multiplier. The Paris Agreement addresses mitigation, but enforcement is weak.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating security with military defence alone.
- Treating globalisation as only trade liberalisation.
- Assuming environmental treaties are automatically enforced.
- Ignoring that globalisation creates winners and losers within states.