ABSTRACT
Whilst the end of the Cold War and the rise of sustainable development can be seen to have globalized environmental politics, the scale of political urgency ascribed to such problems varies considerably across both International Relations and international relations (i.e. academia and ‘real-world’ politics). For some thinkers and statesmen many issues of environmental change are not merely political matters, they are matters of security. This broader approach to conceptualizing global security gained ground in the 1990s when the ending of the Cold War seemed, to many statesmen, academics and members of the general public, to herald a new era of international politics. In this ‘New World Order’ the threat of global nuclear Armageddon had subsided, allowing previously marginalized issues, such as environmental degradation, to emerge from the shadow of superpower rivalry and register on the international political agenda.
