Simon Dalby

Wilfrid Laurier University, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Emeritus

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I research geopolitics, environment and security with a focus most recently on climate change and the Anthropocene.

My online profile at the Balsillie School is here: https://www.balsillieschool.ca/people/simon-dalby
Address: Balsillie School of International Affairs
67 Erb Street West
Waterloo, ON N2L 6C2
Canada

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Books by Simon Dalby

Contextualising Anthropocene Geopolitics

Handbook on the Geopolitics of Sustainability, 2026

The Anthropocene specifies the new context of an increasingly altered earth caused primarily by f... more The Anthropocene specifies the new context of an increasingly altered earth caused primarily by fossil fuelled industrial activities. Geopolitics has long been about rivalries over space and access to resources by so-called great powers. Based on assumptions of separate spaces and inevitable power struggles, these formulations take for granted a relatively stable earth as a given context. In contrast, discussions of a single fragile earth, epitomized by the formulation of “only one earth” at the Stockholm conference on the human environment in 1972, and subsequent discussions of sustainable development, start from a very different contextualization, one of ecological vulnerability because of the rapidly growing technosphere within the earth system. Shaping a future with an economy not based on fossil fuels is now a key requirement if Anthropocene geopolitics is to be sustainable and avoid disastrous climate disruptions in future.

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Pyromania: Fire and Geopolitics in a Climate Disrupted World

Fire is a key physical process on earth, one that humans alone have worked out how to partly cont... more Fire is a key physical process on earth, one that humans alone have worked out how to partly control. In using it a novel factor has entered earth’s history. The power to use fire has transformed human societies and propelled us to the role of the dominant species in the biosphere. Now as the products of the combustion of fossil fuels are accumulating in the atmosphere the climate is changing rapidly. The success of our use of fire has radically changed human circumstances, and unless we work out how to constrain this firepower in the next while, our enormous success with combustion threatens to undo what we have made. We now know how dangerous it is to go on setting fire to fossil fuels but key parts of humanity have become pyromaniacs in their enthusiasm for combustion. Curing this socially disastrous activity is our collective task. Humanity must build a new economy for life after fossil fuels if a liveable earth is to be made for future generations.

Rethinking Environmental Security

Edward Elgar Publishers , 2022

This thought-provoking book explores how the global ecological crisis profoundly challenges conve... more This thought-provoking book explores how the global ecological crisis profoundly challenges conventional meanings of environmental security and raises important questions about how states and other institutions now face the future.

Simon Dalby provides unique insights into the traditional search for security in terms of using firepower to dominate states and environments, and how this is now endangering people across the globe. Whereas earlier concerns about nuclear firepower focused on the security dilemmas it posed, Dalby offers a new perspective into the existential threats to civilization presented by the combustion of fossil fuels. Propounding that the constraint of firepower in both senses is now key to a flourishing human future, the book calls for international relations scholars to rethink many of the central premises in the field and formulate new policies that focus on the necessity of ecological flourishing to provide meaningful security in a climate disrupted world.

Visionary and inspiring, Rethinking Environmental Security will be a critical read for scholars and students of international relations, climate change, environmental governance and regulation, and political geography and geopolitics. Its novel ideas will also be beneficial for policy makers and practitioners in these fields.

Anthropocene Geopolitics

We now find ourselves in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The climate is changing and spec... more We now find ourselves in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The climate is changing and species are disappearing at a rate not seen since Earth’s major extinctions. The rapid, large-scale changes caused by fossil-fuel powered globalization increasingly threaten societies in new, unforeseen ways. But most security policies continue to be built on notions that look back- ward to a time when geopolitical threats derived mainly from the rivalries of states with fixed boundaries. Instead, Anthropocene Geopolitics shows that security policy must look forward to quickly shape a sustainable world no longer dependent on fossil fuels.

A future of long-term peace and geopolitical security depends on keeping the earth in conditions roughly similar to those we have known throughout history. Minimizing disruptions that would further put civilization at risk of extinction urgently requires policies that reflect new Anthropocene “planetary boundaries.”

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

This book draws on the expertise of faculty and colleagues at the Balsillie School of Internation... more This book draws on the expertise of faculty and colleagues at the Balsillie School of International Affairs to both locate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a contribution to the development of global government and to examine the political-institutional and financial challenges posed by the SDGs.

The contributors are experts in global governance issues in a broad variety of fields ranging from health, food systems, social policy, migration and climate change. An introductory chapter sets out the broad context of the governance challenges involved, and how individual chapters contribute to the analysis. The book begins by focusing on individual SDGs, examining briefly the background to the particular goal and evaluating the opportunities and challenges (particularly governance challenges) in achieving the goal, as well as discussing how this goal relates to other SDGs. The book goes on to address the broader issues of achieving the set of goals overall, examining the novel financing mechanisms required for an enterprise of this nature, the trade-offs involved (particularly between the urgent climate agenda and the social/economic goals), the institutional arrangements designed to enable the achievement of the goals and offering a critical perspective on the enterprise as a whole.

Reframing Climate Change: Towards Ecological Geopolitics

by Simon Dalby and Shannon O'Lear

"Change the system, not the climate" is a common slogan of climate change activists. Yet when thi... more "Change the system, not the climate" is a common slogan of climate change activists. Yet when this idea comes into the academic and policy realm, it is easy to see how climate change discourse frequently asks the wrong questions. Reframing Climate Change encourages social scientists, policy-makers, and graduate students to critically consider how climate change is framed in scientific, social, and political spheres. It proposes ecological geopolitics as a framework for understanding the extent to which climate change is a meaningful analytical focus, as well as the ways in which it can be detrimental, detracting attention from more productive lines of thought, research, and action.

The volume draws from multiple perspectives and disciplines to cover a broad scope of climate change. Chapter topics range from climate science and security to climate justice and literacy. Although these familiar concepts are widely used by scholars and policy-makers, they are discussed here as frequently problematic when used as lenses through which to study climate change. Beyond merely reviewing current trends within these different approaches to climate change, the collection offers a thoughtful assessment of these approaches with an eye towards an overarching reconsideration of the current understanding of our relationship to climate change.

Reframing Climate Change is an essential resource for students, policy-makers, and anyone interested in understanding more about this important topic. Who decides what the priorities are? Who benefits from these priorities, and what kinds of systems or actions are justified or hindered? The key contribution of the book is the outlining of ecological geopolitics as a different way of understanding human–environment relationships including and beyond climate change issues.

Creating the Second Cold War (London Pinter 1990) Reissued by Bloomsbury in 2016: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/creating-the-second-cold-war-9781474291255/

Environmental Security (University of Minnesota Press 2002)

Security and Environmental Change (Polity 2009)

Rethinking Geopolitics (Coeditor with Gearóid Ó Tuathail) Routledge 1998

Papers by Simon Dalby

Politics and Geology in Anthropocene Geopolitics

Rethinking Politics, Policy and Polity in the Anthropocene: Multidisciplinary Perspectives , 2025

The Anthropocene concept requires an extension of thinking well beyond traditional environmental ... more The Anthropocene concept requires an extension of thinking well beyond traditional environmental formulations to recontexualise humanity as a major earth system force that is transforming the biosphere. This new context requires moving beyond conventional social science assumptions that the planet is a stable stage for human rivalries and engaging with the world making implications of understanding humanity as a geological actor. If humanity is to shape the future so that life operates in conditions loosely analogous to the last dozen millennia then a 'planet politics' that focuses on production processes that transcends the systems of fossil fueled capitalism of the last couple of centuries is essential. The task for social scientists is to facilitate such transitions, and the Anthropocene concept, if it is used carefully is a key formulation to facilitate transitions to more sustainable futures.

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Reframing climate security: The "planetary" as policy context

Geoforum , 2024

Much of the discussion under the label of "climate security" focuses on potential conflicts and d... more Much of the discussion under the label of "climate security" focuses on potential conflicts and disruptions in peripheral locations in the global south putatively triggered by climate change. If, however the analysis starts with climate, and the earth system as the point of departure for analysis, then things look very different. The speed and scale of climate disruptions is accelerating. Earth system science suggests that urgent action is needed to deal with climate change; waiting too long may make the issue impossible to address. Framing matters in terms of a planetary condition and focusing on climate rather than national security as the starting point for analysis suggests very different policy priorities. Reframing climate security to grapple with the planetary condition requires policies that first, facilitate adaptation, second work to make sustainable habitats for humanity and third, work to drastically constrain the use of fossil fuels urgently. Here, proposals for fossil fuel nonproliferation treaties and similar measures analogous with earlier arms control agreements. This provides the security sector with a much-needed direct engagement with the causes of climate change and its resultant disruptions while simultaneously reframing climate as a matter of planetary rather than national security. Tackling climate change is a matter of urgency, and failure to so effectively in the short run my derail needed efforts later, simply because the resources to do so are no longer available.

format_quoteHumanity faces immediate climate threats, transitioning from a stable Holocene to an increasingly unstable 'hothouse world.'format_quote

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Rethinking Firepower and Security in the Era of Climate Change

Canadian Military Journal , 2024

Firepower is usually understood in military terms as the ability to exert force in combat. But fi... more Firepower is usually understood in military terms as the ability to exert force in combat. But fire also gives power to modern societies. Combustion is at the heart of fossil fuels' danger to the climate; emissions come from burning fuel. Too much firepower in both senses now endanger human security in many ways, causing both military threats and now the rising dangers of climate disruptions. No longer can the planetary system be taken for granted as the backdrop for human affairs; the amount of firepower now loose in the biosphere endangers human societies in numerous ways and requires a paradigm shift in how security is understood and policies crafted in the new era of the Anthropocene. Non proliferation of fossil fuel production is a new way of drawing linkes between traditional notions of arms control and the new threats of climate change.

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Climate and wartalk: Metaphors, imagination, transformation

Elem Sci Anth, 2018

Fossil fuel divestment activists re-imagine how the war metaphor can be used in climate change ac... more Fossil fuel divestment activists re-imagine how the war metaphor can be used in climate change action to transform thinking around what will lead to a sustainable society. Through the naming of a clear enemy and an end goal, the overused war metaphor is renewed. By casting the fossil fuel industry in the role of enemy, fossil fuel divestment activists move to a re-imagining of the climate change problem as one that is located in the here and now with known villains who must be challenged and defeated. In this scenario, climate activists move away from the climate and national security framing to a climate and human security way of thinking.

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Peace, Violence and Inequality in a Climate-Disrupted World

Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security, 2022

The relatively new scholarly focus on the interactions of globalization and environmental change ... more The relatively new scholarly focus on the interactions of globalization and environmental change in the discussion of the Anthropocene highlight the new context for both human conflicts and peacemaking. They pose daunting questions for scholarly disciplines that can no longer take the geographical situation of their research for granted. In particular rapid change is now both a matter of economic development and climate disruptions and their interrelatedness. The big question for security scholars has been, &quot; Will climate change cause conflict? &quot; but this now needs to be superseded by a focus on a broader series of questions about institutions and adaptation that get beyond simple notions of resilience as the ability to bounce back after disruptions. In the climate disrupted world we are making, more profound questions of how to peacefully transition to a post-carbon fueled civilization need urgent attention. This research cannot avoid tackling the huge economic discrepancies that globalization has wrought, but has to do so sensitive to the specific ways these play out in diverse but interconnected locales.

Climate change, security, and sustainability

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, 2019

Anthropocene Discourse: Geopolitics After Environment

Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 2019

Much more than has been the case with environmental politics for the last half century, the Anthr... more Much more than has been the case with environmental politics for the last half century, the Anthropocene formulation focuses on the planetary scale transformations currently underway. Only most obviously these are phenomena under the label of climate change and the reduction of biodiversity in the sixth planetary extinction event. While environmental discourse has largely been about protecting a supposedly fairly stable external context from the depredations of ‘development’, the Anthropocene suggests much more clearly that the rich and powerful parts of humanity are reshaping the planetary system in processes that are about production much more than environmental protection. Holocene biomes have been so thoroughly changed that terrestrial biota and the human systems they support are being reconfigured in novel anthrome geographies in an increasingly artificial biosphere. This reassembling of living and artificial components is making the future Anthropocene one shaped by political decisions about investment, infrastructure and new forms of urban life and rural resource extraction. Whether this is a relatively benign future for most of humanity, or a violent one involving forcible control by the rich and powerful over the remains of a rapidly degrading biosphere and its peoples, is now the overarching question of geological politics.

Unsustainable Borders: Globalization in a Climate-Disrupted World

Borders in Globalization Review, 2021

Climate change and the responses to it reveal starkly different assumptions about borders, sec... more Climate change and the responses to it reveal starkly different assumptions about borders, security and the ethical communities for whom politicians and activists speak. Starting with the contrasting perspectives of international activist Greta Thunberg and United States President Donald Trump on climate change this essay highlights the diverse political assumptions implicit in debates about contemporary globalization. Rapidly rising greenhouse gas emissions and increasingly severe climate change impacts and accelerating extinctions are the new context for scholarly work in the Anthropocene. Incorporating insights from earth system sciences and the emerging perspectives of planetary politics suggests a novel contextualization for contemporary social science which now needs to take non-stationarity and mobility as the appropriate context for investigating contemporary transformations. The challenge for social scientists and borders scholars is to think through how to link politics...

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Güvenlik ve Çevre Bağlantılarına Yeniden Bakmak

Guvenlik ve cevre baglantisiyla ilgili tartisma, 1980’lerden beri gelismistir. Bu baglantidan sup... more Guvenlik ve cevre baglantisiyla ilgili tartisma, 1980’lerden beri gelismistir. Bu baglantidan suphe duyanlar ve baglantiyi destekleyenler, kavramsal, siyasi ve metodolojik zeminlerde tartismayi surdururken, tartismanin baglami da jeopolitik olaylarin gelisimi ve iklim degisimi ile ilgili arastirmalarin ilerlemesiyle kendiliginden degismistir. Makale, tartismanin farkli asamalarindaki temel varsayimlari ve 21. yuzyilda dusunce yapisinda ortaya cikan yenilikleri arastirmaktadir. Erken donem literaturunun ise, birey guvenligi ve hassasiyetleri ile kaynak savaslarinin farkli sonuclarina odaklandigini gostermektedir. Ayrica cevresel hassasiyetlerin, insanligin ortak yasam alanini korumak ve dunyanin marjinallesmis alanlarindaki fakir halklarin yasamda kalmasini saglamak amaciyla siyasallara dahil edilmesinin onemi de vurgulanmaktadir.

Global Ecology, Social Nature, and Governance

Global Insecurity, 2017

The sheer scale of human changes to the global biosphere now requires that discussions of governa... more The sheer scale of human changes to the global biosphere now requires that discussions of governance move beyond traditional notions of environmental protection, parks, pollution, and population. Globalisation isn’t just a matter of economic, political, and cultural boundary crossings, but now has to be understood as a matter of material transformation. The environment is no longer ‘out there’ as the given context for humanity; globalisation has changed that both conceptually and in terms of how governance now needs to operate to shape the future conditions for human life in an interconnected and rapidly changing biosphere. Globalisation has, among other things, substantially rearranged the species mix in most of the fertile parts of the terrestrial biosphere, dramatically changed ocean ecosystems through industrial scale fishing and is now setting in motion disruptive climate changes too. While sustainability and resilience have become the new terms for conceptualising environmental governance, the debates surrounding them have, as yet, not really begun to grapple with the big questions of who should decide what the immensely productive industrial systems of the global economy should actually produce, and how ecosystems are to be reconstructed to provide a more stable backdrop for the new forms of urban human life that globalisation is constructing.

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