7.5.3: Theories and Concepts - Geopolitics, Energy Security, and Climate Justice

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explore the relationship between energy, geopolitics, and energy security
• Recognize the importance of climate justice in ongoing efforts toward a global energy transition

Geopolitics and energy security

The distribution of different energy sources across the planet has significant geopolitical consequences. Geopolitics refers to the ways in which geography – including endowments of minerals and resources – shapes the power of states and other influential actors in global affairs. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and corporations such as Exxon Mobil rose to global prominence in the Twentieth Century as the oil transition unfolded. The Middle East remains a strategically important region because of global dependence on oil, which is likely to last for decades.

In the present and medium term, countries with significant endowments of the materials needed for key energy-related technologies, including batteries and solar panels, are seeing more demand for their natural resources. All of this has the potential to increase their prominence in international affairs. In one closely watched example, China has come to dominate global production of solar panels (solar PV) and has significant control over source materials as well as the solar PV production chain. This includes control of over 80 percent of manufacturing capacity for cells and wafers, which are the building blocks for arrays of solar panels. If solar is one of the central renewables of our current energy transition, China has locked in early advantages that it can parlay into political and economic leverage when bargaining with others. However, it is important not to see geography in overly deterministic terms. Natural resource endowments are fixed in a sense, but demand for them is subject to shifts in technology, discovery, competition, and myriad other factors.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Solar PV manufacturing capacity and demand by country and region, 2010-2021 (CC-BY 4.0; International Energy Agency Special Report on Solar PV Global Supply Chains, pg. 18)

Related to the resource endowment of a given country is the concept of energy security. Energy security refers to whether a country has access to uninterrupted and affordable energy. This factor depends on the availability of domestic sources of energy as well as the robustness of infrastructure for conveying that energy to users. If a country must import its energy, the stability of trading relationships can affect energy security. North America, as described previously, has healthy endowments of fossil fuels and growing stocks of renewable energy sources – and all of this is supported by a robust regional free trade agreement. Because of these factors, North American countries tend to enjoy relatively high energy security. An additional consideration is whether energy sources are resilient. This can include resilience in the face of natural disasters or war (including cyber and physical forms of militarized force). Building this resilience has become more urgent with the increasing frequency and intensification of natural disasters along with revolutions in disruptive technologies in cyberspace.

Scholars have also debated whether natural resource wealth is the boon for national development and prosperity that it might seem at first look. One theory which has shaped understanding of the political consequences of mineral wealth is the resource curse. Even though a country may have an abundance of minerals, such as oil, when this abundance is associated with a repressive government or, even worse, deteriorating standards of living for the majority of a country’s population, is it really a positive. Contemporary Nigeria and Venezuela are examples of this. One explanation for the resource curse is that political and economic elites gain control of the natural resource as well as associated revenue streams, and they do not have to be accountable to the larger public through traditional mechanisms such as taxation. Furthermore, focus on natural resource extraction and export prevents the development of a more diversified and robust economy.

Yet there are important counterexamples to the resource curse. Countries with significant natural resources, especially in oil and natural gas, can nonetheless be wealthy, democratic, and exhibit relatively lower levels of income inequality. We see this with contemporary Norway and Canada. It may be the case that the resource curse tends to affect countries which are overly dependent on revenue from resource exports, while resource abundance can be beneficial overall. In other words, the problem stems from the combination of resource abundance and resource dependence, while just having the former can lead to more positive outcomes (Lashitew & Werker, 2020).

Figure 10.3.2: Nigerian environmental activist Kenule Beeson “Ken” Saro-Wiwa used nonviolent tactics to protest degradation of the land by the Nigerian government and global oil companies. He was a member of the Ogoni ethnic minority, whose traditional homeland is in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Saro-Wiwa was tried and executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. (CC BY-NC 2.0; Thomas Hawk via Flickr)

Fighting Climate Change for Climate Justice

While there is great urgency surrounding the need to turn the corner on a global energy transition, justice considerations deserve equal, if not more, weight (Ankit et al., 2021). Many in the global climate change social movement have included language such as climate justice to capture this concept. Climate justice focuses on the ways in which climate change touches on a range of human rights issues. These span time and space. The populations and groups most impacted by climate change have been, are, and will continue to be those who contributed least to the problem, raising questions of fairness. Highly impacted groups tend to be historically marginalized and lack access to resources, raising questions of equity. The climate justice movement seeks to ensure that the concerns and needs of disproportionately impacted, under-resourced groups are addressed in the fight against climate change.

The needs are many and varied. The world has been experiencing rising numbers of climate migrants, and within-country migration is projected to increase to over 200 million by 2050 (Clement et al., 2021). People will be pushed from their land due to rising sea levels and more intense weather events, combined with decreases in availability of potable water and productivity of the land. The World Bank estimates that in the worst-hit areas, nearly 3 percent of the populations of Africa south of the Sahara, South Asia, and Latin America will become climate migrants. Additionally, the state of infectious diseases around the world will worsen due to climate change, and these shifts will outpace the ability of societies to adapt (Mora et al., 2022). All of this stems from the root problem of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, so devising energy reforms based on justice remains a foundational task to stave off the worst of these projections.