Failing States, Collapsing Systems ― Biophysical Triggers of Political Violence

This work executes a unique transdisciplinary methodology building on the author’s previous book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it (Pluto, 2010), which was the first peer-reviewed study to establish social science framework for the integrated analysis of crises across climate, energy, food, economic, terror and the police state. Since the 2008 financial crash, the world has witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of social unrest in every major continent. Beginning with the birth of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, the eruption of civil disorder continues to wreak havoc unpredictably from Greece to Ukraine, from China to Thailand, from Brazil to Turkey, and beyond. Yet while policymakers and media observers have raced to keep up with events, they have largely missed the biophysical triggers of this new age of unrest – the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels, and its multiplying consequences for the Earth’s climate, industrial food production, and economic growth. Contrary to widely reported claims across mainstream media of a new era of prosperity heralded by the shale boom, the proliferation of contemporary climate, food and economic crises have at their root the common denominator of a fundamental and permanent disruption in the energy basis of industrial civilization. This inevitable energy transition, which will be completed well before the close of this century, entails a paradigm shift in the organization of civilization. Yet for this shift to result in a viable new way of life will require a fundamental epistemological shift recognizing humanity’s embeddedness in the natural world. For this to be achieved, the stranglehold of conventional models achieved through the hegemony of establishment media reporting – dominated by fossil fuel interests – must be broken. Although the book offers a rigorous academic analysis, it is written in a clean, journalistic style to ensure readability and accessibility to a general audience. It will contain a large number of graphical illustrations concerning oil production data, population issues, the food price index, economic growth and debt, and other related issues to demonstrate the interconnections and correlations across key sectors.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an award-winning investigative journalist, bestselling author and noted international security scholar. He is listed in the Evening Standard's 2014 selection of the 'Power 1000' most globally influential Londoners.

A regular contributor to The Guardian on the geopolitics of interconnected environmental, energy and economic crises via his Earth Insight column, he has also written and reported for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, Raw Story, Asia Times, among many others.

Ahmed has twice won the Project Censored Award for his journalism, in 2014 for his story on the energy geopolitics behind the Ukraine crisis, and in 2013 for his article on food riots as a ‘new normal.’ The annual award is made by Sonoma State University for outstanding news reporting that is censored or suppressed by the US media.

Ahmed’s latest nonfiction book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (Pluto, 2010), was the first integrated peer-reviewed study of the intersection of climate change, energy depletion, food scarcity, economic instability, terrorism and state-militarisation. In 2010, he won the Routledge-GCP&S Essay Prize for his seminal paper presenting the social science framework for the book in the journal Global Change, Peace and Security, “The International Relations of Crisis and the Crisis of International Relations.”

Ahmed's previous books include The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006); The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Interlink, 2005); Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (New Society, 2003) and The War on Freedom: How & Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001 (Progressive, 2002). The latter is archived in the ‘9/11 Commission Materials’ Special Collection at the US National Archives in Washington DC – it was among 99 books made available to each 9/11 Commissioner of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to use during their investigations.

Nafeez's academic work revolves around the historical sociology and political ecology of mass violence in the context of civilizational systems, and focuses on bridging disciplinary divides across the natural and social sciences. He has taught international politics, contemporary history, empire and globalisation at the University of Sussex’s School of Global Studies (from where he obtained his PhD in International Relations and MA in Contemporary War & Peace Studies) and Brunel University’s Politics & History Unit, where in 2012 he was Visiting Lecturer in Globalisation & Current Affairs.

He has contributed to two major terrorism investigations in the US and UK, the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest, and has advised the Royal Military Academy Sandhust, British Foreign Office and US State Department, among other government agencies.