ABSTRACT
The Global Environmental Change and Human Security Programme (GECHS) defines human security as an integral concept, as a state that is achieved when and where individuals and communities have the options necessary to end, mitigate or adapt to threats to their human, environmental and social rights; have the capacity and freedom to exercise these options; and actively participate in pursuing these options (GECHS, 1999). As discussed in several chapters in this volume, this emphasis on agency, and on people’s and communities’ existing capacities to respond to any threats – whether social, human or environmental – presumes that there is no fundamental difference between threats and harms caused by entitlement failures or pervasive conditions of poverty, and threats and harms caused by environmental changes, including climate change. This focus on freedom to act and recognition of people’s own capacities to respond to structural and environmental conditions implies that poverty and environmental change are more than linked; they are both part of a single frame that includes both symptoms and results of unjust and unsustainable development pathways.
