Part 5 (1/2)

Existing regimes can block progressive adaptation at the level of transition, especially when change threatens established power relations. Marginalised actors can also be reluctant to undertake change when there is uncertainty over the outcomes of reform or where short-term transactions costs are high, compared to adapting through resilience. Where local adaptations are successful and open transitions, diffusion into the wider society is also challenging without government support. Fragmented transitions run the risk of exacerbating inequalities as successful adaptations not evenly applied across communities or sectors. External shocks that show the existing inst.i.tutional architecture wanting can potentially provide the impetus needed to generate political will for transition, and potentially also transformation. This is the opportunity that climate change brings.

5.

Adaptation as transformation.

Risk society, human security and the social contract.

Instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact subst.i.tutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right.

(Rousseau, 1973, original 1762:181).

For Rousseau, a just society is one where those with power are held to account over their ability to protect core and agreed-upon rights for citizens. As a normative theoretician, Rousseau argued that the ideal social contract, one that confers upon rulers the legitimacy to retain and exercise power, would ultimately be granted by the citizenry, not a.s.sumed or G.o.d-given: an agreement ratified at the level of culture as well as law, and one that can be transformed if either side fails in its part of the contract. But Rousseau also recognised that the social contract could be undemocratic, imposed with force or through the manipulated complicity of citizens themselves. When prevailing social relations are a root cause of vulnerability and a target for adaptation, this observation means that change will not be easy (Williams, 2007). The cla.s.sical formulation of the social contract, such as that offered by Rousseau, is also revealing for what it does not include. Rights are extended only to citizens. The globalised and teleconnected impacts of climate change and adaptation decisions require that future generations and those living beyond national boundaries also be considered, as well as the non-human.

This chapter builds on the preceding discussions around adaptation as resilience and transition. These introduced the notions of social learning, self-organisation, actors in regimes and pathways for socio-technological transition. The notions of risk society, the social contract and human security are offered as theoretical devises to help reveal the fault-lines of dominant society. These are by no means the only theoretical lenses that could be brought to help examine transformational adaptation. They have been selected because together they provide a continuum for transformational adaptation that stretches from conceptualisations of development under modernity to the application of policy for national and human security. In this way they provide a landscape of ideas to help position and understand adaptations that seek to address root causes and leverage transformation. Like resilience and transition, transformation can be seen as an intention or as an outcome of adaptation. It also operates at all scales, from the local to international, often simultaneously and in ways that are difficult to perceive. In identifying the a.s.sumptions that underlie modernity as a potential focus for adaptation transformation is also directed towards internal cognitive change; for example, through the production and reproduction of dominant cultural perspectives that emphasise and justify individualism and undermine social solidarity and collective action: a frequently identified key component of local adaptive capacity (Smith et al., 2003).

A vision of adaptation as transformation.

The notion of a social contract is not only abstract, it can help in the a.n.a.lysis of crises of legitimacy that precede political regime change, and potentially be used to avoid such crises. Disasters a.s.sociated with climate change triggers are but one driver of crisis, and do not guarantee transformational change (see Table 5.2). In such cases loss of legitimacy is to be expected when observed risk or losses exceed those that are socially acceptable. Beneath this the consequences of climate change are accepted as a play-off against other gains. Of course not everyone in society will hold the same tolerance to risk or loss and both will change over time as cultural contexts evolve. In this way the social contract is kept in a tension by risk and loss (as well as opportunity) a.s.sociated with climate change, and also by whose values are included in the social contract. In addition to the established social divisions along lines of cla.s.s, gender, cultural ident.i.ty, productive sector, geographical a.s.sociation and so on, climate change also requires the recognition of future generations and distant interests in local decision-framing (O'Brien et al., 2009). The inclusion or exclusion of these voices will determine the extent to which climate change is perceived to contribute to individual disasters or crises, and the points at which different actors are held responsible for the management of climate change and its consequences. This in turn shapes priorities for social responses to climate change risk and loss. That the interests of future generations or citizens of second countries should be allowed in this conversation fundamentally challenges established social organisation based upon the nation-state.

Can adapting to climate change incorporate this dynamic and be a mechanism for progressive and transformational change that s.h.i.+fts the balance of political or cultural power in society? Evidence for the potential of transformational change within national boundaries can be found in the slow and limited acceptance of international aid by the government of Myanmar following Hurricane Nargis. In large part this behaviour was a result of fear of the destabilising influences of international humanitarian and development actors on the regime, a policy that a.n.a.lysts have also attributed to the need for the ruling military elite to demonstrate its control over society especially at a time when the impacts of the hurricane meant its popular and international legitimacy was at crisis point; and the potential for usurping rich agricultural land from Karen ethnic minority farmers in the Irrawaddy delta where the hurricane made landfall (Klein, 2008). Distrust by the Myanmar regime of international and especially Western and civil society actors has had a byproduct of catalysing organisational reform at the regional level. The leaders.h.i.+p of the a.s.sociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional economic grouping, in responding to Hurricane Nargis has resulted in tighter regional cooperation for disaster response. This is an important regional adaptation, one based on a princ.i.p.al of political non-intervention and so a form of adaptation that adds resilience to the status quo. The durability of this position amidst calls for a more engaged approach of 'non-indifference' (Amador III, 2009) and its consequences for bottom-up transitional or transformational capacity are yet to be seen.

Where transitional adaptation is concerned with those actions that seek to exercise or claim rights existing within a regime, but that may not be routinely honoured (for example, the active partic.i.p.ation of local actors in decision-making), transformational adaptation describes those actions that can result in the over-turning of established rights systems and the imposition of new regimes. As with adaptation as resilience or transition, any evaluation of the outcome of transformational adaptation will be dependent on the viewpoint of the observer (Poovey, 1998). Efforts undertaken to contain or prevent scope for transformational adaptation are as important as the adaptive pathways themselves in understanding the relations.h.i.+ps between climate change a.s.sociated impacts and social change. For example, it is very common for the social instability that follows disaster events to be contained by state actors. This is achieved through the suppression of emergent social organisation and a.s.sociated values halting the growth of alternative narratives or practices that might challenge the status quo, and lead to transformation as part of post-event adaptation (Pelling and Dill, 2006).

The socio-ecological systems literature has less to say about transformation than resilience and transitional change. Nelson et al. (2007:397) describe transformation as 'a fundamental alteration of the nature of a system once the current ecological, social, or economic conditions become untenable or are undesirable'. But for many people, especially the poor majority population of many countries at the frontline of climate change impacts, everyday life is already undesirable and frequently often chronically untenable. Here we come to a central challenge for systems a.n.a.lysis which places the system itself as the object of a.n.a.lysis. Resistance in a social system can allow it to persist (be resilient) in the face of manifestly untenable or undesirable ecological, social or economic features for sub-system components. Theoretical work on nested systems allows some purchase on this (Adger et al., 2009a), but is very difficult to develop empirically. The points at which these failures lead to challenges for the overarching regime serve as tipping points for transformation. Tipping points that Nelson et al. (2007) point out can be driven by failures that are absolute (untenable) or relative (undesirable), so that cultural values play as much a role as thermodynamic, ecological or economic constraints on pus.h.i.+ng a system towards transformation.

There is scope for transformation to arise from the incremental change brought about by transitions (see Chapter 4). Subsequent claims on the existing system results in modifications at the subsystem level. Over time and in aggregate this forces an evolutionary transformation in the overarching system under a.n.a.lysis. It is this pathway to transformation which existing climate change literature has focused upon. With an interest in practical ways in which productive systems might transform under climate change, Nelson et al. (2007) describe this process as systems adjustment and include the implementation of new management decisions or the redesigning of the built environment as examples. This aspect is considered in Chapter 4.

Cla.s.sifying transformational adaptation is sharpened by identifying: (1) the unit of a.s.sessment sub-systems and overarching systems may be undergoing different kinds of adaptation, or none at all as well as their interactions; (2) the viewpoint of the observer, which can place a logic for a normative a.s.sessment of transformation; and (3) distinguis.h.i.+ng between intention, action and outcome. A single type of action, for example greater local actor partic.i.p.ation in risk management decision-making, can promote resilience, transition or transformation it is the outcome that counts, and outcomes cannot always be planned for. It is the fear of surprises and incremental change in social relations that encourages tight control of emergent social organisation for risk and impact management and forces many actions into the shadow system of informal relations and organisation.

Where should one look to reveal the challenges and potential directions for transformative elements of adaptation? Most practical work on adaptation focuses on addressing proximate causes (infrastructure planning, livelihood management and so on). Transformation, however, is concerned with the wider and less easily visible root causes of vulnerability. These lie in social, cultural, economic and political spheres, often overlapping and interacting. They are difficult to grasp, yet felt nonetheless. They may be so omnipresent that they become naturalised, a.s.sumed to be part of the way the world is. They include aspects of life that are globalised as well as those that are more locally configured. The former do not have identifiable sites of production and require individual and local as well as higher order scales of action to resolve (Castells, 1997). The latter are more amenable to action within national and local political s.p.a.ce. Table 5.1 identifies three a.n.a.lytical frames that each reveal different aspects of domination and the a.s.sociated production of vulnerability. Each points to specific indicators for transformation as part of adaptation.

The indicators of transformation identified in Table 5.1 require deep s.h.i.+fts in the ways people and organisations behave and organise values and perceive their place in the world. Together they help describe the features a sustainable and progressive social system might be expected to exhibit. They operate at the level of epistemology: the ways people understand the world. Surface transitional changes are already observable; for example, in the uptake of socio-ecological systems framing in adaptation and more widely in natural resource management. But transformation speaks to much broader processes of change that encompa.s.s individuals across societies, not only specific areas of professional practice, though such enclaves may yet prove to be the niches that lead to Table 5.1 Adaptation transforming worldviews a.n.a.lytical frame/thesis Root causes of vulnerability Indicators of transformation Risk society Modernity's fragmented worldview; dominant values and inst.i.tutions are coproduced at all scales from the global to the individual Holistic, integrated worldviews including strong sustainable development and socio-ecological systems framing of adaptation and development; adaptation that draws together the value systems of individuals with social inst.i.tutions Social contract Loss of accountability or unilateral imposition of authority in economic and political relations.h.i.+ps Local accountability of global capital and national governments, to include the marginalised and future generations and not be bound by nationalistic demarcations of citizens.h.i.+p Human security National interests dominate over human needs and rights Human-centred approach to safety, built on basic needs and human rights fulfilment, not on militarisation or the prioritising of security for interests in command of national level policy profound societal change (see Chapter 4). More tangibly, transformation that moves beyond intention also unfolds at the level of political regime. Here the root causes of vulnerability are made most visible when latent vulnerability is realised by disaster. The post-disaster period is an important one for understanding the interplay of dominant and alternative discourses and organisation for development and risk management and is examined below.

Following this initial discussion of the nature of transformational adaptation this chapter examines risk society, human security and the social contract as lenses to direct a.n.a.lysis of transformation within adaptation. The influence of disasters as moments in national political life that can catalyse regime change are then reviewed.

Modernity and risk society.

For Western science and policy discourse, fear of surprises from climate change has been predominantly interpreted through adaptation as requiring actions that can help to manage risk by greater control of the environment. This confounds proximate with root causes of climate change risk (Pelling, 2010). Environmental hazard under climate change is an outcome of the coevolution of human and bio-physical systems, not simply of external environmental systems acting upon human interests. In this context, perhaps the most profound act of transformation facing humanity as it comes to live with climate change requires a cultural s.h.i.+ft from seeing adaptation as managing the environment 'out there' to learning how to reorganise social and socio-ecological relations.h.i.+ps, procedures and underlying values 'in here'. This in turn demands a strong component of conceptual and social reorganisation. How far this might precipitate political and economic regime change is unclear.

Ulrich Beck has written extensively on the nexus of modernity, technology, the environment and human security in what he calls risk society (Beck, 1992). His theory of reflexive modernity posits that transformations in the nature of rationality are the basis for contemporary environmental and social challenges, and it is at this deep level that change must arise for risks to be avoided at root cause. Beck argues that modernity has produced a simplified model to understand the world, one that fragments and isolates different components. This approach has led to the application of sector specific technologies for development and risk management. There are undeniable successes with this approach but climate change impacts reveal the limits. The complexity of socio-ecological systems dynamism exemplified by climate change and adaptation cannot be captured by individual sectors or sciences. The influence of socio-ecological thinking and systems theory in the sciences is one response to this. Policy actors have been slower to respond with administrative structures and political regimes, sticking with increasingly inappropriate structures. These are structures in administrations including Ministries of the Environment, Civil Defence, Central Banks and Foreign Affairs that need to work together to adapt progressively to the risks of climate change. Beck's a.n.a.lysis is striking, suggesting that the isolated and fragmented nature of management and practical technologies created within this model of reality allow uncontrolled interactions inbetween. This results in unforeseen and catastrophic consequences including climate change. Moreover, due to the closed nature of the system, alternative trajectories are blocked: Risk society arises in the continuity of autonomous modernization processes, which are blind and deaf to their own effects and threats. c.u.mulatively and latently, the latter produce threats, which call into question and eventually destroy the foundations of industrial society. (Beck, 1992:56) While developed with rich, industrialised economies in mind, Beck's basic thesis is transferable to those poorer countries that have used industrialisation to drive agricultural and urban development (Leonard, 2009). Foreign direct investment and the conditionalities of aid that promote market led industrialisation from the outside broaden responsibility and perhaps undermine the reflexivity of local and even natioanl actors. But the root causes of the climate change challenge and the consequent need to situate adaptation (and mitigation) within development, not as technical adjucts to it, remains the same. Beck channels his hope for recovery in the formulation of a radically alternative model of modernity, but finds the tools and insights needed to challenge the socioeconomic policies that lead us towards disastrous outcomes within society. He believes that risk society is inherently reflexive and perceives the contradictions between its original premises (human advancement), and the outcomes (environmental disaster), but argues that radical change must come from socio-political interventions designed to transform development driven by industrialisation, going well beyond the risk management agenda, including that being a.s.sociated with climate change. Progress has been slow; five years after publis.h.i.+ng his thesis of the relations.h.i.+p between risk society and modernity, Beck observed that consumption had become a key driver alongside industrialisation in the production of hazards and vulnerabilities. This suggested that neoliberal economic policies are an increasing threat to human security reflexivity has not yet led to transformation but rather an acceleration of the root causes of crisis (Beck, 1999). In the succeeding decade little has changed beyond the increasing pace and intensity of consumption and a.s.sociated risk production, and the depth of inequality in risk at scales from the global to local. A slow but growing concensus for the reorganisation of technology and finance was given a brief and short lived stimulace by the 200810 global economic crisis.

In the existing policy landscape, the challenges of attaining a more holistic and reflexive approach to living with climate change and its impacts can be seen playing out in the disaster risk reduction community a critical component of adaptation. This community has long argued for the advantages of conceiving of environmental risk as embedded within development and of confronting development, not the environment, in seeking to reduce risk, but has a long way to go in embedding this within dominant policy frameworks. Some progress is being made and is reflected, for example, in sections of the guiding Hyogo Framework for Action 200515. This international agreement is non-legally binding but compels signatory states to work towards five areas of action. The first of these promotes inst.i.tution building and calls for the integration of disaster risk management within development frameworks such as poverty reduction strategies (see pact in society that determines responsibility for risk management as part of development. More than this, it helps to reveal the basis of legitimacy of this understanding and so the potential fragility of the existing status quo. This can be examined, for example, through exposing the balance of market, public and social pathways through which security is framed and mediated. Issues of responsibility and pathway are open for contestation as failures in the social contract are revealed during disaster and its aftermath (Pelling and Dill, 2006). Recently, for example, concerns have been raised about the increasing role of the international private sector in disaster reconstruction and subsequent loss of accountability to local actors at risk, and also to those citizens, often of second countries, who provide funds through tax payments of charitable donations (Klein, 2007).

The social contract is a product of Western liberal philosophy. However, the generic idea of collective understanding in which parties agree to cooperate with one another, seeding power according to a set of rules, is not. This can be seen in traditional human understandings of rules concerning socio-cultural and biological reproduction, exchange, reciprocity and respect (Osteen, 2002), recognising the parallels to the social contract operating at different scales and in contrasting cultures where the state is not the dominant actor opens useful scope. This can help in extending the focus of that aspect of social contract theory that explores the often tense and sometimes dynamic distribution of rights and responsibilities in society to other interactions than those between the nation state and its citizens.

In the tradition of Western political philosophy the notion of a social contract has not been built on observed customary practice but rather an abstract set of ideas about the nature of political authority and popular consent (Gierke, 1934; Buckle, 1993) stretching back to the work of Thomas Aquinas (circa 1250). Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke each developed versions of social contract theory. They shared some similarities in approach, drawing from the idea that each human is born into a state of nature and endowed with absolute equality, but with no protections whatsoever against the unregulated violence of anarchy existing where each human competes with all others. They theorised the social conditions under which people might engage as stakeholders in a political society to mediate the violence of an anarchic society. The social contract was the basis for the creation of political societies in which all could secure their basic needs, exercise creativity and enjoy individual autonomy in peaceful sociality. But since the trade-off involved ordinary people forfeiting all or some amount of their freedom/power to the dominant social actor (the state) in order to ensure personal security, the derivation of state authority (previously understood as divine right) was suddenly understood as originating in a consensus of the people. These were deeply radical ideas conceived during a period when absolutist governance and feudalism were destabilising in Europe. Social contract theory const.i.tuted the philosophical counterpart to the political and economic changes occurring during the transition to modernity in Europe.

These early theories of state and society paved the way for the creation of the liberal political tradition spearheaded by Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham. Ironically, it was the theoretical descendents of Hobbes rather than Locke that argued most forcefully for a restricted state. Jordan (1985) explains that like Hobbes, the Utilitarian branch of liberal thought viewed essential human nature as seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but the Hobbesian strong state (designed to ameliorate the conflicts that these motivations would inevitably provoke) was rejected. Instead, Bentham and James Mill subscribed to the view that since governments were made up of humans who would attempt to enrich themselves and seek to increase their power over their subjects, the power and reach of government had to be restrained.

Debate on the most appropriate balance of power between the state and civil society (including the market) continues to this day (van Rooy, 1998). In a precursor to post-modern thinking, Gramsci (1975) argued that the division between political society and civil society was artificial. Just as hegemony captures the state and civil society, and a.s.sociated fields of culture and education, so too the counter-narratives of belief systems can be found cross-cutting the divides of the market, state and civil society. Consequently, for Gramsci, while the benefits of the social contract extended only as far as the bourgeois periphery, its universalist language is produced and disseminated across all society so that those subservient to the social contract are also caught up in its reproduction. This accounts for some of the inertia in political regimes where inequality is made manifest through disaster and reconstruction yet where pressures for change in the social contract fail to attain popular support. Gramsci believed that by offering marginalised populations the tools of critical thinking, and the structure of organised groups to bring their distinctive cultures to bear in the production of counter-hegemonic discourse, transformational change could be achieved, at least at the level of discourse (Urbinati, 1998).

Habermas (1976) offers a second possibility for transformation through a crisis of legitimacy. This follows the failure of the dominant actor in the social contract to meet its own responsibilities. In this understanding new critical awareness is not required to make the failures of the social contract visible. But Habermas does argue (1985) that collective action is a necessary condition for realising social and political change once the failings of legitimacy are revealed. Both Gramsci and Habermas place great emphasis on the role of culture and ident.i.ty, and the influence of education on this, in demarcating the fault-lines along which the social contract is vulnerable to transformation, and also its resilience. Ident.i.ty that is ascribed to social markers such as race or ethnicity (Hite, 1996), but whose logic also extends to include ident.i.ty through a.s.sociation with place (Wagstaff, 2007) is significant for understanding the transformational possibility of environmental crisis which has the power of physical destruction. It is the potential for disaster to destroy social life (Hewitt, 1997) and the cultural meanings invested in the physical, as well as physical a.s.sets themselves, that in turn opens scope for new understandings of ident.i.ty and social organisation that offer an alternative to established structures in the social contract when legitimacy is lost (Pelling and Dill, 2010).

The application of social contract theory to questions of climate change resilience draws out the significance of s.h.i.+fting political and economic relations between nation states, citizens and private sector interests. O'Brien et al. (2009) show how the dominant global trend in liberalisation has generated new forms of vulnerability to climate change (and wider losses in human wellbeing) in Norway and New Zealand, where comprehensive public welfare provision has been retrenched. This same research also used social contract theory to help identify social groups that are currently marginalised from national political decision-making yet nonetheless impacted by it. This included Pacific Islanders in New Zealand displaced by climate change, food security for Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic and in Norway responsibility for future generations whose wellbeing is ever more closely linked to the legacy of Norway's oil economy of today.

Given its range of application it is not surprising that criticisms have been levelled at the social contract theory. Communitarians challenge its atomistic notion of humans; feminists and post-colonial scholars argue against its propensity to exclude; postmodernists dislike its reliance on abstract universals rather than the situated here and now (Hudson, 2003); and from resiliency theory comes the warning that climate change cannot be a.n.a.lysed at any one scale alone (O'Brien et al., 2009). Using social contract theory to frame studies of adaptation to climate change requires rights and responsibilities that can be clearly defined, and this is not always the case particularly for future generations and distant populations connected to local events and decisions through the globalised economy.

For climate change adaptation, the most important critique of social contract theory is arguably the difficulty with which current work can move from a state to a multi-scaled/multi-actor a.n.a.lytical perspective; one where dominant norms and their reinforcing inst.i.tutions are coproduced at all scales from the global through national to the individual and where power cuts across and works inside national administrative boundaries. In this sense social contract theory benefits from working alongside risk society as part of an a.n.a.lytical frame. If progressive adaptation is to address root causes as part of transformational adaptations then this is an essential area for theoretical and empirical research.

There has been some movement to extend social contract theory to the global political-economy and acknowledge global capital as the dominant centre of power through global corporate social responsibility as a contract between private sector and the consumer/producer (Zadeck, 2006). But more problematic are those growing cases where lines of influence and a.s.sociated responsibility are made increasingly indirect under economic globalisation (White, 2007). Here the social contract can offer a starting point and help characterise the nature of interrupted or unclear responsibility. But global consumers, unlike national citizens, have little capacity for attributing responsibility, ascribing legitimacy and retrieving power. Here dominant power is footloose, beyond the direct control of individual nation-states. The globalisation of civil society and collaboration between governments to regulate business at the regional or global scale provide some scope for action, but so far with limited effect (White, 2007).

Human security.

The social contract and risk society allow us to see adaptation to climate change as embedded within ongoing development struggles for rights and power. Human security provides a closer lens on our specific domain of interest: the play-offs to be made in balancing rights and risks between actors, and over s.p.a.ce and time in the shaping of security. That human security is a product of the underlying cultural a.s.sumptions of risk society and inst.i.tutional rules symbolised by the social contract is neatly indicated by the definition of human security used by the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) programme. This group has a special interest in the interactions of human security and global environmental change; they define human security 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 partic.i.p.ate in pursuing these options. (GECHS, 2009) Human security is then a counterpoint to national security as an objective for adaptation surrounding catastrophic events and climate change more generally. National and human security can be reinforcing, but as Ken Booth (1991) argues, states cannot be counted on to prioritise the security of their citizens. Some states maintain at least minimal levels of security for citizens to promote regime legitimacy, but are unmotivated to go further; others are financially or inst.i.tutionally incapable of providing even minimal standards; while still others are more than willing to subject entire sectors of society to high levels of insecurity for the economic and political benefit of others who then use their power to support the regime. Adaptation to climate change will be framed by such contexts and can offer both policy justification and practical vehicles for promoting the status quo, regressive or progressive change in human security and the rights and responsibilities in the social contract that it is built upon.

The UNDP's 1993 and 1994 Human Development Reports advanced human security as a person-centred rather than state- or even region-based approach to security. It presented a holistic and global version of human security as security from physical violence; security of income, food, health, environment, community/ ident.i.ty; and political freedoms (Gasper, 2005). According to Pinar Bilgin (2003) the UNDP's position was that the concept of security should be changed in two fundamental ways: (1) the stress put on territorial security should be s.h.i.+fted towards people's security, and (2) security should be sought not through armaments but through sustainable development. In 2003, the Commission on Human Security (CHS) developed this agenda through a basic needs approach. According to the senior researcher on the project: 'the goal of human security is not expansion of all capabilities in an open-ended fas.h.i.+on, but rather the provision of vital capabilities to all persons equally' (Alkire, 2003:36). Gasper (2005) a.s.serts that while the concept of human security elaborated by the CHS is essentially a widely conceived yet prioritised arrangement of basic needs fulfilment, the discourse that arises from the policy framework is embedded in the concept of human rights. He argues that the integration of the two previously disparate frameworks is the critical contribution of the human security perspective, with each framework supporting the other. The basic needs model is supported and enhanced by its a.s.sociation with a human rights framework as much of needs-based planning has in the past adopted money-metric approaches to aggregate across people (which can lead to perverse, unintended outcomes) whereas from a human rights perspective, no individual can be sacrificed (Gasper, 2005). Moreover, unlike basic needs approaches that focus on specific claims for and by the needy, human rights discourse and practice is geared towards generating duties and seeking accountability through legal structures. Conversely, the human rights framework is supported and enhanced by its a.s.sociation with a basic needs model. Drawing from the work of Johan Galtung (1994), Gasper reminds us that a human rights framework tends to direct our attention towards individuals rather than structures.

The drawing down of a.n.a.lytical and policy lenses from the state to individual through human security complements well the observed need for social contracts to work beyond the state as nation-states become arguably less powerful than the globalising international superstructure populated by private sector and civil society interests and unelected inter-governmental or super-national bodies. Many perceive the emerging global inst.i.tutional structure of governance to be as potentially threatening (or as potentially unresponsive) as the states it has so recently marginalised. As Duffield (2007) points out, the consolidation of supranational administrative bodies has not subsumed the power of metropolitan states, but rather aligned them alongside supranational powers in contraposition to the weak, underdeveloped and thus potentially dangerous states of the political periphery. From the perspective of global powers, the major threat to the security of the North is not from aggressive states, but from failed ones (Hoffmann, 2006). Thus the stage is set for unprecedented amounts of NorthSouth interventions.

Nevertheless, it is the depth of these interventions rather than the number that is worrying to some a.n.a.lysts. There is an a.s.sumption that new forms of governance are no longer primarily concerned with the disciplining of individual subjects as docile citizens of particular states (though that continues) but now are combined with unprecedented levels of coordination and penetration (from supranational organisations to village committees) to produce desperation-free zones, thereby diminis.h.i.+ng the threat of the South to the North. Human security is one of those frameworks. This is a serious warning, but in bringing together needs and rights approaches human security has the potential to bridge the public private dichotomy that under the global liberal consensus has seen a marginalising of the state in favour of private actors. The importance of regulating private behaviour and the need to build capacity in local and national government is supported by human security but held in constructive tension with the rights of individuals. As with the social contract, context, history and the viewpoint of those at risk are arguably the most significant features in judging legitimacy and determining whose security is being prioritised and at what cost through adaptation.