1.3: The Future of Human Security

In the light of the daunting challenges posed by the Anthropocene, some analysts openly question humanity’s chances of surviving the 21^st century at all (McKibben, 2010). Some allow that humanity is likely to survive in some form but only after passing some rigorous challenges and trials by mid-century, including a reduction of its population size. Those challenges will require rigorous reforms towards mitigation and adaptation (Pelling, 2010; Bendell, 2011). Others prefer to ignore the entire problem and pretend that business as usual is likely to continue, with our greatest challenges amounting to no more than what we have encountered so far. We suggest that the information presented in the foregoing introduction on the whole supports the former views.

Let us begin with the prospect of survival. The spectrum of possible combinations of different population sizes, consumption levels, and technological impacts illustrates the multiplicity of choices by which a society determines its mode of survival. The spectrum of choices was aptly described by Potter (1988) as five distinct modes of human survival:

1. Mere survival: As it occurs in a gatherer-hunter culture; this mode has proven sustainability for low population densities.
2. Miserable survival: Lower in quality than mere survival; epidemics, scarcities, great susceptibility to the aggravated consequences of ‘natural’ disasters;
3. Idealistic survival: Surviving without the most nasty of biological control mechanisms; this requires deliberate and universal fertility control or a constant supply of extraterrestrial resources.
4. Irresponsible survival: The opposite of idealistic, without collective regard for the ecological requirements; only the most powerful survive acceptably, the vast majority miserably or not at all.
5. Acceptable survival: Everybody surviving with an acceptable modicum of comfort, according to models suggested by Lester Brown (2003) and others; this requires enforced equity and moderate population size.

Potter intended those modes to describe the survival of humanity at the global level but the modes apply to regional populations as well. In the Anthropocene those modes become a function of population size, with miserable survival becoming the most likely mode for an overly large population and acceptable survival remaining an option only for relatively small populations, as in OECD countries (Royal Society, 2012). Each mode is characterised by a corresponding state of public health (Butler, 2016; McMichael, 2001). Given the central importance of human well-being and of principles of justice in popular formulations of human security, sustainable human security on a global scale would manifest as the acceptable survival of humanity.

In order to build on those rather sweeping projections, analysts have devised models that allow the characterisation and forecasting of more specific scenarios. They make it possible to identify specific threats or sources of insecurity which provides targets for proactive mitigation. As all forecasting begins with the status quo and current trends, the quantitation of human security and well-being provides the essential basis. Up until the 1990s the quantitative measurement of human well-being rested almost entirely on outdated economic models, particularly on the dynamics of GDP. From 1990 a series of Human Development Reports, commissioned by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) arose from the sentiment that economics alone gives inadequate pictures of human security and well-being, nor can it suggest an adequate range of goals for development. To account for the human element and the UNDP’s central dictum “people are the real wealth of a nation” (UNDP, 2011), the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) combines statistics on life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living at the national level and below (UNDP, 2019). It is commonly used to classify a country as ‘developed’ or ‘developing’. A high HDI is still biased towards high national consumption and is therefore only sustainable if the country’s footprint does not exceed its biocapacity (WWF, 2012).

The Human Security Index (HSI) combines indicators of economics, education, social welfare, and some environmental considerations, reflecting the still popular ‘triple bottom line’ approach. It attempts to quantify a person’s security in a more culture-neutral way than does the HDI by maintaining a balance along the dimensions of global-local, individual-society, regional biases, diverse metrics and definitions of human security, and the diversity of human communities (Hastings 2011). It can be used as a criterion to assess the performance of local government.^[11] The greatest weakness of both HDI and HSI is their disregard for regional overshoot and ecological footprints. In addition, the HDI reflects conventional assumptions about ‘progress’ and ‘development’ and underlying value priorities that remain largely unquestioned in the associated literature.

The first global assessment of status quo global environmental security was the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (UNEP-MAB, 2005), followed by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).^[12] The assessment took into account changes in biodiversity, desertification trends, population pressures, deterioration of watersheds and environmental determinants of public health (sometimes misleadingly referred to as ‘environmental health’). Unlike other assessments, this one acknowledged overshoot —it was entitled Living Beyond Our Means—even though it fell short of discussing the hard implications. In contrast, the regular SDG Assessment Reports (e.g. UN, 2019) have largely avoided the topic of environmental security.

Questions about the future have now moved to the forefront of human security agenda. The reasons are that global and local change is accelerating, the ever greater numbers of affected people tend to amplify even crises that used to be classified as minor, and tipping points in global environmental changes may be close at hand or even behind us. Out of those concerns, various methodologies have been developed to proceed from a picture of the status quo towards the projection of probable future scenarios. Beginning in the 1970s, pioneering work in that direction was done by Dennis Meadows and coworkers from the Club of Rome (updated in Meadows et al., 2004). More recent projects include the quantitative International Futures forecasting system, which incorporates statistics on demography, economics, energy, agriculture, human capital (education and health), the sociopolitical situation (domestic and international), as well as physical capital (including infrastructure, environment and technology) (Hughes et al., 2012). Other systems include additional significant variables such as environmental trends and human impact, and they variously balance quantitative with qualitative approaches. What these forecasting methodologies have in common is an assessment of the status quo as their starting base; the analysis and modeling of trends; and they recognise as four major factors for change intergovernmental organisations, transnational corporations, civil society (acting through NGOs and spiritual communities), and public awareness of the need for change and the spread of new values. Confounding those forecasting efforts are three factors – ignorance, surprise, and volition (Raskin et al., 2002). This refers to the inevitable fact that information is always incomplete, the turbulent and unpredictable behaviour of complex systems and emergent phenomena (discussed further in Chapter 10), and the consequences of human choice (discussed in Chapter 11).

One scenario study that excels in its broad scope of possible futures and its insightful survey of relevant variables coined the concept of the Great Transition (Raskin, 2016). It recognises as driving forces demographics, economics, social issues, culture, technology, environment, and governance. Table 1.1, adapted from that source, summarises its six scenarios and their major characteristics. The six scenarios are classified into three groups that differ in their underlying premises and values. The ‘Conventional Worlds’ pair of scenarios is based on the assumption of continuity in the current global ‘business as usual’ approach. The ‘barbarisation’ pair of scenarios represents an antithesis: they assume that the current social, economic and environmental problems are indicative of overshoot and that they render social decline inevitable. The ‘Great Transitions’ pair rounds off the range of possibilities by again recognising overshoot but assuming that a resolution through fundamental social transformation will be achieved in time to prevent barbarisation.

Table 1.1 Three pairs of scenarios represent the scope of possible futures for human security. The variation between pairs shows differences in major historical trends. Variation within pairs describes the extents of centrally coordinated intervention (Data source: Raskin, 2016).

SCENARIO		CHARACTERISTICS	UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHIES
Conventional Worlds	Market Forces	Continuing economic growth & development for brief time	Market optimism; hidden & enlightened hands; laissez-faire
	Policy Reform	Adjustment through enlightened governance	Controlled economies; environmental stewardship attempted
Barbarisation	Breakdown	Ecological & economic collapse, anarchy;	Overshoot causes a population/resource catastrophe;
	Fortress World	Sustainable dictatorships, anarchic hinterlands, global apartheid; gross inequities	Social chaos; tragedy of the commons; atomistic and unconscionable traits dominate social behaviour.
Great Transitions	Eco-communalism	Bioregional self-governance & stewardship	Pastoral self-sufficiency; rejection of large-scale industrialism; low population density;
	New Sustainability Paradigm	Global governance, sustainable living by consensus	Sustainability through progressive global social evolution

Within each pair, the scenarios differ by the extent in which governance succeeds in imposing order and coordination on what would otherwise deteriorate into a more disordered, anarchic situation. In conventional worlds that involves the regulation and management of market forces by traditional power structures. In barbarisation the order manifests as a global police state or regime that perpetuates extreme inequity and imposes violent sanctions on any local transgressions. In Great Transitions the order takes the form of a transformed global civilisation that coordinates the activities of what would otherwise remain a random conglomerate of regional sustainable societies. This latter pair of scenarios represents the attempt to combine liberatory, humanistic, and ecological goals into post-industrial models of sustainable living. In terms of human security it represents the most desirable and plausible of futures, given that the negation of overshoot in Conventional Worlds renders that pair unrealistic. According to the World Scientists’ Warning (Ripple et al., 2017) this would require the timely transition to renewable energy sources, eliminating pollutants, protection and restoration of ecosystems, sustainable plant based food production, zero-growth economic goals and a timely reduction of population. Plans for sustainable global food security (Willett et al., 2019) and health security (Butler, 2016; Chen et al., 2004) have been published.

The emphasis on long-term sustainability in the Great Transformation indicates an important point. The majority of current development schemes and political assessments in the mainstream adhere to the conventional development paradigm and thus favour Conventional Worlds scenarios, tacitly assuming continuity and denying the imperatives of overshoot. This includes the SDGs as well as most of the assessment methodologies and reviews on human security (e.g. McIntosh & Hunter, 2010). It renders them unjustifiably optimistic (both environmentally and socially), and utopian. In contrast to that overwhelming majority espousing the ‘conventional development paradigm’, most of the authors of this text recommend ‘Great Transitions’ type of solutions.

The reason why the conventional development paradigm with its Conventional Worlds type projections cannot realistically inform sustainable solutions lies in ecological overshoot. Its ramifications will extend beyond the energy sector and result in shortages of food (Schanbacher, 2010; Brown, 2003; Willett et al., 2019) and numerous other consumer goods and services. ‘Peak everything’ (Heinberg, 2007) will lower the standards of living, economic activity, and hence public expenditures. Human labour will be cheap, human welfare dear. With global trade diminishing, regional trade will pick up. In the absence of compensation through global trade, regional overshoot will finally show its effects. Paralleling the case of fossil fuel, the demand for potable fresh water also increases while its availability declines. ‘Problem areas’ will become sealed off from their neighbouring countries and the inhabitants left to their own devices.^[13] Countries rich in resources and low in population (such as Canada) will dominate and countries with well-developed infrastructures can be expected to get along reasonably well. The rest will not be so fortunate. Large countries are likely to fragment. Climate change will be the unpredictable wild card; it has been identified as an important, and increasingly powerful, determinant for armed conflict (Mach et al., 2019). All this suggests that Conventional Worlds scenarios are neither probable nor desirable, whether they be interpreted as brief and risky transition solutions or as a cornucopian utopia. Realistically, the remaining choices will lead to scenarios of the ‘barbarisation’ and ‘Great Transitions’ type.

In the light of continuous economic decline, whatever technological advances might be achieved in the next decades will be diluted, perhaps drowned, in a teeming ocean of humanity, most of it struggling to merely survive with some modicum of dignity. The imperative, then, will be not to make human lives more convenient or pleasurable but to follow the principles of distributive justice and to combat suffering by facilitating the speedy attrition of the global human population as much as seems ethically justifiable.^[14] When we consider the cumulative harm caused by overpopulation we end up with quite a different assessment of our probable future compared to the majority of development reports. If even the more conservative estimates of future population growth become reality, the challenges to human security will be daunting indeed—and that is without considering climate change!

What, then, are the remaining options? The most effective and morally desirable strategies to meet those challenges and to maximise human security will aim towards Great Transitions type scenarios. This follows, on the one hand, from the lack of feasibility and of sustainability in ‘Conventional Worlds’ scenarios as argued above. On the other hand, barbarisation scenarios appear to include inordinate amounts of suffering and injustice that warrant all-out efforts to avoid them. Moreover, entrenched injustice renders any system of governance socially unsustainable. Nevertheless, many possible futures involve a succession of several of the six scenarios.

To conclude – in order to achieve a maximum likelihood of being sustainable, the eventual end stage of such successions should nevertheless be of the Great Transitions type. It is to achieve the four goals of peace, freedom, material well-being, and a healthy environment (Raskin et al., 2002) through the means of efficiency, restraint, adaptation and structural reform (Lautensach, 2010). Specific directions and strategies by which that development could be achieved are discussed in several chapters. What the Concerned World Scientists should also have said in their warnings is this: The longer we wait, the less attention can be paid to human rights in the transition. In 2018, an analysis (O’Neill et al., 2018) of 145 countries indicated that not a single one met the criteria of living within the sustainable limits of Raworth’s Donut Model (Raworth, 2017).

Chapter 3 deals with the overriding urgency to promote environmental security and offers some explanations based on the evolutionary history of the human species. Environmental themes are continued from Chapter 9 to Chapter 12. The origins of human behaviour towards ‘nature’ are covered in Chapter 11, leading into a haunting collection of ‘letters from the front’ in humanity’s ‘war against nature’. Chapter 5 addresses the threat of interhuman warfare and other forms of violent conflict. The protection of individuals in conflict situations through international humanitarian law is discussed in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 that line of reasoning is extended into threats to individual security during peacetime through national and transnational crime, displacement, terrorism, and human trafficking. The special challenges to human security emanating from failed states are addressed in Chapter 7. Globalisation in its manifold manifestations and interpretations can promote as well as endanger human security; those possibilities are examined in Chapter 8 and Chapter 14. The complex challenges associated with human rights violations are discussed in Chapter 15.

Although most of those chapters analyse problems and challenges as well as offer possible solutions, the last section of this text focuses more directly on solutions. Chapter 14 addresses how human rights violations can be addressed and prevented, with a particular view on the situation in Africa. The complex issue of governance for sustainability is addressed first at the national level in Chapter 16, and in Chapter 20 at the global level. Health security and the particular challenges concerning its equitable achievement is the focus of Chapter 17. Possibilities for achieving human security at the global level are the focus of the last chapters in the book; Chapter 18 addresses the reduction of armed conflict, and in Chapter 19 strategies for peace building are discussed.

As with all revolutionary movements, major obstacles towards a sustainable and secure world emerge not so much from embattled traditional elites but from the inertia of the multitudes of the “unaware, unconcerned and unconvinced” (Raskin et al., 2002, p. 19). Communities make policy decisions according to Thompson’s (1997) four modes of social solidarity (individualist, hierarchical, egalitarian and fatalistic). Inertia hinders the development of consensus along those four lines. Another obvious obstacle is presented by ideologies – counterproductive beliefs, ideals, priorities among values, and attitudes. For example, the dominant conventional development paradigm (CDP), the “tacit ideology of influential international institutions, politicians and thinkers” (Raskin et al., 2002, p. 29) is informed by cornucopian delusions and a relentless insistence on a narrow modernist interpretation of progress (Lautensach, 2010). Other counterproductive ideologies (e.g. human-nature separation, anthropocentrism) are discussed in several chapters, particularly Chapter 11. Additional variation is contributed by cultural diversity (Lautensach, 2020). All those factors determine the extent to which individuals and groups are capable of adaptive learning for the sake of their survival.

How can those obstacles be addressed? As we announced in the preface, recognising and explicating ideological content in public discourse is one of the major goals of this textbook. The literature on human security does not always measure up to that requirement. It abounds with expertly written reviews and analyses of the subject, as exemplified by the works listed below under “General Reading,” works that contrast favourably against more popularised books about development and ‘progress’ that sometimes include attempts at greenwashing or brownlashing. Yet even the casual reader will notice that some of that literature still appears hampered by a unidisciplinary focus and ideological blinkers; a ubiquitous example, now thankfully declining in frequency, are economic analyses that focus exclusively on GDP, externalise ecological costs, discount future costs, and rest on implicit beliefs in endless growth (see Chapter 12 for a critique). Some of the literature discussing ‘sustainable development’ still suffers from similar unfounded beliefs and thus focuses on ‘Conventional Worlds’ type scenarios. Well known examples include the literature surrounding the SDGs and UNESCO’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), continued under SDG #4. In contrast, contributions such as Richard Heinberg’s and David Lerch’s Post-Carbon Reader (2010) explicitly avoid that fallacy. They also address educational imperatives arising from the various challenges to human security, imperatives amounting to empower learners to become survivors.

Also relatively recently, the human security literature expanded to include ethics as a topic of discussion, mainly in the form of specifying particular implications arising from humanitarian forms of utilitarianism. The field would benefit from a further expansion to transcend Western-Eurocentric ethical paradigms and to counteract the historical marginalisation of dissident cultural views such as holistic, land based environmental ethics, as well as lifeboat ethics as Garrett Hardin (1980) advocated. One ethical limitation of human security is that by virtue of its own conceptual focus it cannot transcend anthropocentrism. In Chapter 11, Ronnie Hawkins explicates the historical roots of the conventional ethics underlying human security discourse, and she explores the boundaries and benefits associated with a move towards a more holistic ethic that values nature for itself