ABSTRACT
The question of who acts in international politics has been a defining question of the subject. All discussions about the ‘international’ contain some notion of who the actor or actors may be, and candidates have included states, international organisation, transnational corporations and individuals. So far, however, the possibility that nature might be an actor in international politics has received little consideration. Questions related to the environment have been pondered by the main streams of thought within the discipline, though this has been as an ‘add on’ to their main concerns, whether this be international conflict, the possibilities for cooperation or the workings of the global economy.
This chapter, by contrast, makes the claim that not only is nature an actor in international politics, it is the actor. We can only understand human activity as embedded and constituted by the rest of nature. Such a stance is in opposition to the duality that has emerged, particularly in Western thought, which divides human beings from the rest of nature. Despite various challenges, in particular Darwin’s theory of evolution, anthropocentric (or human-centred) thinking persists across the social sciences, but is particularly notable in International Politics. In making a claim about nature as the actor in international politics this chapter challenges that dichotomy.
The chapter is divided into three sections. Firstly it examines the ways in which environmental issues have been analysed in three of the central approaches to thinking about International Politics: Realism, Liberalism and Marxism. The chapter shows that while all three have engaged with environmental concerns, for all three thinking about nature has been a supplement to their main focus.
The chapter then seeks to challenge this relatively marginal focus. To do this the chapter turns to a consideration of ‘big history’. Big history is literally that – a history of the universe since the big bang. The purpose of adopting such an approach is to decentre the human. Looked at in the timescale of the universe, human existence appears as an ephemeral blip, dependent on a conjunction of relatively benign cosmic and global circumstances. The implications of a decentring of the human suggests the need for considering ways of incorporating thinking about humanity within the context of the rest of nature. One way of approaching this has been the recent call for the development of a ‘post-human international relations’. The third section of the chapter discusses what such an approach might comprise.
The chapter concludes that, at a time of apparent global environmental crisis, typified by climate crisis, international politics provides the best starting point for thinking about the politics of our relations with the rest of nature. However, a positive contribution to thinking about these issues will require a rethinking of much of the discipline, and a change of focus away from the purely human to the human constituted by and embedded in the rest of nature.
