environmental security essay

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How climate change will impact national security

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Belfer Center research director examines recent assessment from entire U.S. intelligence community

Rising temperatures and intensifying weather due to climate change, along with the unlikelihood of meeting the 2030 emissions goals of the Paris Agreement, will exacerbate geopolitical tensions, social instability, and the need for humanitarian aid, according to a joint report by the U.S intelligence community last month. The National Intelligence Estimate lays out the likely security implications over the next two decades of the mounting climate crisis. Calder Walton is assistant director for research at the Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project , which organized Harvard Kennedy School’s first conference on climate change and national security last spring. He spoke to the Gazette about the report and the important role the intelligence community should play in addressing the crisis. Interview is edited for clarity and length.

Calder Walton

GAZETTE: We hear about the threats posed by climate change from an environmental standpoint, but rarely about the risks and threats it poses to national security. How does the U.S. intelligence community view climate change, and is this a new domain?

WALTON: The purpose of the U.S. intelligence community, established after the Second World War in the wake of Pearl Harbor, was to provide policymakers with decision advantage and forewarning of threats to national security. If the primary purpose is to give decision advantages about national security threats, obviously, by definition, the U.S. intelligence community has to have a role giving key decision-makers their assessments about the greatest existential threat in human civilization: climate change. What is going to be the impact of changing climate on national security, economic society, civil society? And this isn’t just national security; this is international, globalized security. If we look at it like that, clearly, the U.S. intelligence community has to have a role. And they’re very, very late to the game.

GAZETTE: How are other intelligence services responding to climate change? Is any country leading the way?

WALTON: I don’t think anyone is a shining star in terms of taking this seriously. I have yet to find an example of a country that has an intelligence bureaucracy set up to really deal with this and to provide assessments about the national security implications of climate change to policy leaders in a sufficient way.

The overwhelming focus of intelligence communities across the globe is still on post-Cold War structures — stealing other people’s secrets. And we are now in an age of globalized challenges, the primary one being climate change, but also the bio revolution and biosecurity, cyber, and disinformation. Climate change and pandemics are linked; climate change will, scientists tell us, create more new disease outbreaks. And then, add in synthesized biology; we have cyber, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. These are globalized challenges that will affect societies across the world.

We are really at an inflection point in terms of the way that we understand intelligence and national security. U.S. national security and intelligence were built up to deal with blocs of states, first the fascist states and then Soviet communism. Nine-eleven was the first wake-up call about non-state actors, but the U.S. intelligence community still used the same framework of established bureaucracies built up in postwar years to deal with non-state actors. And now, with a pandemic and climate change, we’re seeing truly globalized challenges. It seems to me that we need to rethink how we understand intelligence to deal with it, geared to sharing global intelligence to deal with global challenges we face.

“Scarce resources leading to political violence, terrorism — that’s the kind of secondary threat progression that the U.S. intelligence community will be looking at.” Calder Walton

GAZETTE: What are the most important takeaways from this report?

WALTON: Let’s start with the basics: that climate change does pose a threat to U.S. national security. The National Intelligence Estimate is a joint assessment produced by the entire U.S. intelligence community, 18 agencies. That’s significant. There are no naysayers; there’s no doubt. So that’s a breakthrough. In this extraordinarily polarized and politicized environment, that is a big milestone itself.

There is a series of direct and indirect security threats that the report lays out. First and foremost, it says that it is likely that the temperature will rise by 1.5 degrees by 2030, which is the Paris Agreement target. So, we are unlikely to stop that from happening. And then, the report reveals the direct and indirect consequences of climate change: raising temperature and the inability of, as they see it, our decarbonization efforts to prevent that temperature rise in the U.S. Direct consequences relate to territorial integrity. The U.S. military’s been talking about rising sea levels on bases since the 1970s, if not earlier. Rising sea level, which is affecting how we’re undertaking military operations. And then, the secondary knock-on effects of population displacement, of civil disorder as key essentials become scarce, damage to crops, and economic realignment. Also, refugee crises or population displacement, and radicalization of people angry with their own government or willing to take action against countries that they regard as the big polluters. Scarce resources leading to political violence, terrorism — that’s the kind of secondary threat progression that the U.S. intelligence community will be looking at.

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GAZETTE: China accounts for 30 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, followed by the U.S. Are the risks from climate change multiplying the existing concerns U.S. intelligence has about China, and does it change their approach?

WALTON: It is. What we’re witnessing is the combination of these global challenges to international security — biosecurity, natural and synthesized biology and pandemics, climate change, disinformation — being fused with great power, geopolitical conflicts. There’s this idea that we can either deal with the international security threats of climate change or China. But in reality, they are not mutually exclusive; they’re all interwoven. Climate change is now fused with geopolitics.

How is the U.S. intelligence community thinking about China and these issues? This is an area firmly within the traditional wheelhouse of what the U.S. intelligence community can do. The absolutely important information will be verification and attribution: whether China is adhering to its public statements about its carbon reduction. Is it being truthful or is it not being truthful? That’s where intelligence collection — human intelligence, signals intelligence, imagery intelligence from satellite, overhead reconnaissance, and open-source intelligence — is going to be absolutely key. Senior policymakers in Washington will say, “I need to know whether China is adhering to what they profess to be doing in terms of decarbonization.” So that will be a requirement set to the U.S. Intelligence Committee, to steal those secrets. That is not that different from what we’ve done in the past, and will be increasingly important.

There is a significant role the U.S. intelligence community could play and really, in my view, must play going forward. It’s disseminating its assessments, particularly from overhead satellite mapping, what the U.S. intelligence community is observing both on the territorial integrity of countries and population displacement. During the Ebola crisis, the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence agency, through its satellite platforms, collected and then publicly disseminated via its website information about the spread of Ebola in West Africa. That is exactly the direction that we need to go in with climate change.

GAZETTE: What comes after this report? Is there a next step?

WALTON: The next step is for the U.S. intelligence community to say, “This is what we can deliver. We know what we need; we know what policymakers need to know; we know what the public needs to know; and this is how we can contribute to assessments and messaging and help shape public policy.” The worst thing they could do would be to set up a new bureaucracy within a particular agency and say, “We’re now doing climate change.” It’s time for some bold thinking. This is a profound existential crisis for the way we live our lives, and it’s time for profound thinking about intelligence to inform decision-making. Instead of the traditional focus of intelligence agencies to retain information because it is classified, it seems to me that when it comes to climate change the emphasis should be about publicly disseminating that intelligence. In other words, a reversal of tradition.

It’s incumbent for assessments to be as widely read as possible so that we understand this, so that members of the public can hold policymakers’ feet to the coals about making changes. There’s no good if we find out in 50 years’ time, they were being briefed on this. The stakes are too high for that.

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How Does Environmental Security Affect Sustainable Development? Essay

Introduction, the concept of environmental security, the notion of sustainable development, environmental security’s requirements for achieving the sustainable development, possible limitations and solutions, reference list.

Sustainable development is an important notion that implies addressing environmental, economic, and societal issues to maintain the provision of resources upon which the existence of the society depends. This paper scrutinizes the influence of environmental security on sustainable development, namely, the requirements the former sets to achieve the latter. It is also argued that these requirements are crucial for human society. The concepts of environmental security and sustainable development are explained; the mentioned requirements are exposed, and their importance is shown; and, finally, possible limitations related to the two concepts in question are considered, and a way to deal with these limitations is offered.

Environmental security is an interdisciplinary issue concerned with researching the natural environment and human activity in order to find out what hazards the latter creates for the former and what threats nature might pose to human security as a result and averting these hazards and threats (Khagram, Clark & Raad 2003 p. 291). Here, human security includes the possibility to have a reasonable life expectancy, to live without experiencing poverty, to be able to satisfy basic material needs, to take part in the life of one’s community, and to have freedom from want or fear (Khagram, Clark & Raad 2003, p. 292).

It is important to point out that environmental issues are capable of causing various social problems and even lead to violent conflicts. These may result not only from the scarcity of natural resources but also from numerous effects of the human’s influence on the natural world, such as climate change. For instance, the global heating results in polar ice caps melting, which leads to the sea level rise (Riebeek 2010). If the rise is significant, many lowlands might be flooded permanently, which would cause people to seek new places to live; it is clear that violent actions and surges of xeno- and migrantophobia are quite probable to follow. They can be exacerbated by the lack of food due to desertification of formerly fertile lands, overpopulation, unequal resource access, etc. Such migrations would also cause further harm to the environment due to the increase in population density, resource conflict, and so on.

On the other hand, the preservation of natural environment can have multiple benefits to the humanity (Khagram, Clark & Raad 2003, p. 294). For instance, the proper usage and management of water resources are crucial for keeping and facilitating the stable supply of fresh, drinkable water to the areas where it is scarce.

Therefore, the maintenance of environmental security is essential. We need to preserve the natural world in order to keep a stable supply of freshwater, clean air, food, as well as minerals, medication, energy, etc., for they are crucial for the existence of the life-supporting systems necessary for the human (Institute for Environmental Security n.d.; Hecker 2011, p. 12).

The umbrella term “sustainable development” is usually used to denote the type of human activity that allows for satisfaction of human needs, at the same time jeopardizing neither the natural world nor human society. It includes three main areas: ecological, economic, and societal (Giddings, Hopwood & O’Brien 2002). It is a multidimensional way of considering the issues of sustaining human life systems. For this goal, it is necessary to preserve natural resources and ecosystems, the diversity of species, as well as cultural traditions and values. This sustaining is to be followed by economic development, as well as the progression of social institutions and organizations for “participation and deliberation, negotiation and conflict resolution, policy formulation and implementation,” etc. (Khagram, Clark & Raad 2003, p. 296-297).

Sustainable development includes, but is not limited to, the “issues of population, climate, economic prosperity, energy, natural resource use, waste management, biodiversity, watershed protection, technology, agriculture, safe water supplies, international security, politics, green building… human values,” etc. ( What is sustainable development? n.d.). Sustainable communities possess the following characteristics ( What is sustainable development? n.d.):

economic security: a flexible and diverse economy that takes into account the needs of society and ecological limitations, and can satisfy both the needs of the current community and future generations;
ecological integrity: preserves the natural world a) to be able to obtain the sufficient amounts of natural resources and supplies and maintain their availability, b) to enable waste processing, c) for the sake of nature’s beauty and the environment’s livability;
social equality and well-being: includes the absence of dire economic inequity, as well as the respect for each other, the freedom from want and fear, the provision of education and medical services, etc.;
cultural health: the preservation of cultural heritage and promotion of culture;
civic participation and responsibility: the ability of the community’s members to take part in decision-making and influence the situation of their community;
institutional efficacy: effective and efficient governance, social institutions, non-profit organizations, etc.

Redclift (2002, p. 33) points out that the very term of sustainable development implies that ecological considerations ought to be taken into account and implemented into economic and social processes. It is easy to see that at least items 1- 4 from the previous subsection have a certain degree of dependence upon the natural world. As the ecological issues are global, they should be regarded while shaping both national and international policies.

Because sustainable development includes environmental aspects, an important part of it is the general goal of realizing environmental security. The latter includes many issues that must be addressed. We will discuss some of them.

Natural resources

First of all, environmental security considerations demand that we do not overuse natural resources. The reckless usage and exploitation of natural resources, followed by large amounts of pollution, and done with lacking investments into human capital, is a sign of unsustainable development (eds Matthew et al. 2010, p. 263). Renewable natural resources should be used at a pace that does not exceed the rate at which nature can regenerate these resources. Besides, the usage of non-renewable natural resources should be maximally decreased. The implementation of alternative technologies could significantly lower the number of used fossil fuels (Riddell et al. n.d.). The amounts of natural resources used can be controlled by utilizing various tools, e.g., certain taxation policies (Greiner & Semmler 2008).

Quantities of production

Careful and sustainable utilization of natural resources means that the amount of produced goods needs to be limited. The volume of products manufactured ought to be consistent with the needs of society. On the other hand, overproduction leads not only to ecological disaster but also to social and economic crises. The latter is due to the fact that, when the quantity of goods in the market significantly exceeds the total spending power in a society, the lack of sales leads to the downtime and to the inability of companies to provide jobs for the population, which further exacerbates the economic situation (Marx 2004). If we combine this with the extremely harmful effect of overproduction on the environment, it becomes clear that the amounts of production should be kept within reasonable limits. This can be achieved in many ways, for instance, by utilizing the taxation tools mentioned in the previous subsection.

The usage of efficient, environmentally friendly technologies

This is needed for both natural resource preservation and the reduction of greenhouse and noxious gas emissions and other discharges that pollute the environment (Riddell et al. n.d.). It is important to note that efficient technologies should be used not only in the industry but also in everyday life.

The preservation of landscapes

It is also paramount to strive for protection and preservation of natural landscapes, because their destruction (due to e.g., surface mining or agricultural land use) leads to deterioration of natural habitats of species and, therefore, poses a grave threat to biological diversity; the latter is also crucial for sustainable development of human society. This threat is further exacerbated by climate change. If not controlled, landscape destruction might lead to unforeseen and dire consequences. Travis (2003) argues that there usually exists a threshold of landscape deterioration; if it is exceeded, species begin to die out rapidly. The landscapes are also of immense value due to their cultural and aesthetical significance. Any industrial activities which ruin natural landscapes must be limited and kept within the bounds of the threshold, and measures for the renovation of the lost landscapes should be taken.

Waste management

Minimization and proper disposal of waste are of essence for the natural world preservation, as well as for the health of the human population. If properly recycled, waste can also serve as a significant source of materials or energy. This issue must be taken into account on all the levels of society: by local and national governments, organizations, and households (Vaughn 2009).

Armed conflicts

Armed conflicts are extremely devastating phenomena that take the lives of many people and ruin social institutions, exacerbate poverty and social inequity, etc. Armed conflicts also cause immeasurable damage to the environment and further harm communities that depend on natural resources. Needless to say that these conflicts are inconsistent with sustainable development and that they should be avoided at all costs. It is important that international law for environment protection applies during armed conflicts, and that the infliction of environmental damage which exacerbates these conflicts is considered a crime according to the international law (United Nations Environment Programme 2009).

As we were able to see, the need for environmental security aimed at sustainable development demands us to take steps in a wide variety of issues. The introduction of these steps may require the implementation of policies that might cause controversy. For instance, we have already mentioned the need to limit the amounts of manufactured products. It is possible to use certain taxation policies to do this (Greiner & Semmler 2008); on the other hand, Moore (2015) claims that in some cases (namely, tax targeting), such policies would prove ineffective. Moreover, Viñuales (2013, p. 9) notes that sometimes environmental protection might lead to certain constraints on fundamental freedoms. In our opinion, it is rather tolerable to reduce the volumes of manufacturing (which would, of course, require the implementation of some social or welfare policies to compensate for lowered employment rates). On the other hand, the restriction of social freedoms of people is not acceptable, and it is necessary to ensure that they are not limited.

Viñuales (2013, p. 3) stresses that the notion of sustainable development is rather broad; it comprises numerous disparate elements, which makes it quite a vague concept. Viñuales (2013) argues that this notion was quite effective in the 1980-1990s and proved instrumental in creating a body of international law concerned with environmental protection; on the other hand, the author concludes, this concept is too broad to set clear priorities and implement the necessary changes, which is paramount nowadays.

To solve this problem, the scientist offers to focus on four issues: participation (the need to increase the role of social forces, such as civil activists and non-profit organizations, in shaping and implementing sustainable policies and making sure they do not restrict fundamental freedoms), differentiation (distribution of international obligations between concrete actors and executives), decarbonization (transfer to alternative sources of energy from fossil fuels), and innovation and technology diffusion (technological innovation is instrumental in shifting from fossil fuels; diffusion, or enabling access to innovative technologies for those who are not quite able to afford it, is an economic and a legal issue). Viñuales (2013, p. 11) emphasizes that these issues are “broad frontlines within which another area- or issue-specific frontlines would have to be open”; nevertheless, they provide a scale to assess the degree of implementation of proper global environmental management, which is necessary for sustainable development.

As we have seen, sustainable development is crucial for human society; it comprises environmental, economic, and societal aspects. The issue of environmental security sets some requirements that must be met if sustainable development is to be achieved. Complying with these requirements is of utmost importance. However, the concept of sustainable development remains somewhat vague, which hinders the implementation of its principles in practice. To overcome this weakness, it is necessary to specify the ways these principles can be realized.

Giddings, B, Hopwood, B & O’Brien, G 2002, “Environment, economy and society: fitting them together into sustainable development”, Sustainable Development , vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 187-196. Web.

Greiner, A & Semmler, W 2008, The global environment, natural resources, and economic growth , Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Hecker, JH 2011, Peace and sustainable development through environmental security . Web.

Institute for Environmental Security n.d., What is Environmental Security? . Web.

Khagram, S, Clark, VC & Raad, DV 2003, ‘From the environment and human security to sustainable security and development’, Journal of Human Development , vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 289-313. Web.

Marx, K 2004, Capital: a critique of political economy, volume 1 , Penguin, London, UK.

Matthew, RA, Barnett, J, McDonald, B & O’Brien, KL (eds) 2010, Global environmental change and human security , The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Moore, M 2015, The sustainable development goals – reject tax targeting . Web.

Redclift, M 2002, Sustainable development: exploring the contradictions , Routledge, London, UK.

Riddell, A, Ronson, S, Counts, G, & Spenser, K n.d., Towards sustainable energy: the current fossil fuel problem and the prospects of geothermal and nuclear power . Web.

Riebeek, H 2010, Global warming . Web.

Travis, JMJ 2003, ‘Climate change and habitat destruction: a deadly anthropogenic cocktail’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London , vol. 270, pp. 467-473, viewed 27 August 2015, via JSTOR database.

United Nations Environment Programme 2009, Protecting the environment during armed conflict: an inventory and analysis of international law , Web.

Vaughn, J 2009, Waste management: a reference handbook , ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, CA.

Viñuales, JE 2013, ‘The rise and fall of sustainable development’, Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law , vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 3-13, via EBSCOhost database.

What is sustainable development? n.d., Web.

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Essay: Environmental security

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BACKDROP OF PHENOMENON National security is a state-centric approach, and human security focused on securing its nationals is considered complimenting each other in some respect. By virtue of its characteristic, a nation is a large group of people with strong bonds of identity – an “imagined community,” a tribe on a grand scale. Thus, security of the nation cannot be confined merely from the invading states but from all the threats that a nation may confront, including environment hazards for this matter. Environmental security emphasize that unsustainable human activities have resulted in environmental tribulations threatening life on Earth in various ways. These unsustainable activities have endangered availability of critical resources, renewable as well as nonrenewable. This concept is termed as “scarcity”. For the sake of argument, let us consider three different scenarios that scarcity could possibly culminate into. First, it could trigger war for the control of inadequate resources resulting in ‘resource capture’ by few at the expense of “ecological marginalization” of many. Secondly, it could provoke mass migration because of environmental suffering. Environmental refugees’ adaptation in their new favorable habitation becomes very challenging, particularly in case of resistance from the host communities culminating in identity and or ethnic crises. And lastly, it could deteriorate socio-political institutions resulting in crisis of authority or civil disobedience. UUNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES A long term change in average weather conditions including average temperature, rainfall, precipitation and wind is termed as ecological or climatic change. According to the projections of United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), our climate is undergoing significant variations as the direct result of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activity. By definition, GHG’s are the atmospheric gases that surround the earth thereby entrapping heat inside. This is commonly referred to as the “greenhouse effect”. The most significant GHG released by human activities is Carbon dioxide (CO2) that is mostly produced by burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. There are five other major contributing gasses whose production is pledged to be reduced by the countries participating in The Kyoto Protocol, an international accord on emission reduction. These gasses are Methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE With ramification on, fresh water supply, food production, natural ecosystem and health etc, climate change has become one of the major ecological challenges facing environmental security around the globe. Climate change is globally manifesting itself in drastic results of storms, cyclones, droughts, floods and other extreme weather events, even more frequently and intensely. Rapidly melting glaciers resulting in water scarcity, endangered coastlines, low agriculture yields leading to food insecurity, and massive population displacement are few of the visible environmental challenges that are contributing to the crises of states authority and identity. According to the Climate Risk Index 2015 prepared by German watch between 1994 and 2013, more than 530,000 people have died worldwide and losses worth $2.17 trillion were inflicted as a direct result of over 15,000 extreme weather events. As projected by Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, generally termed IPCC, the average global temperature may rise between 1.4 to 5.8 Co before this century ends. Water scarcity may also worsen up the prevailing intrastate trust-deficit to invigorate the conflict. In context of these multidimensional aspects of the looming environmental problems it is inevitable to look beyond the conventional national security parameters and consolidate the environmentalist version of “security”. RELEVANCE TO PAKISTAN NATIONAL SECURITY Since its inception, Pakistan has primarily been focused on its national security due to a hostile environment imposed by the neighboring India from one side & uneasy bystander Afghanistan on the other. Indian aggression on borders, an intractable territorial dispute on Kashmir, and infective intervention within the state coupled with the volatile nature of relationship with the unsettled Afghanistan has shaped a predefined dimension for Pakistan’s security understanding which is the main driver for its reactive foreign policy. However, in the backdrop of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine and the resultant peace maintained by the two nuclear weapon states, external security concerns seem less ominous to the ravaging damages and causalities caused by various catastrophes in the recent past. Despite the internal and external challenges, Pakistan is a hard country with immense buoyancy; however, more susceptible to “ecological changes” than internal insurgency or external enemies. VULNERABILITY FOR PAKISTAN Since the latitudinal extent of the country stretches from the Arabian Sea in the south to the Himalayan Mountains in north, the country is hemmed-in by the Himalayas, the mountain ranges of Suleman in the east, and the low land plains of the Indus River in the south and coastal areas in the west. Sixty percent (60%) of the total watershed area of the Indus basin lies within Pakistan’s territory. It is located in sub-tropics and partly in temperate region. Climate change subjects these areas to risks of glacial retreat, sea level rise, more frequent floods and droughts, irregular rainfall, and upraised temperature. Since more than half of its land area is arid and semi-arid, predicted changes in rainfall and temperature patterns in the future could impinge upon its food security and the welfare of millions of its people. The groundwork studies indicate that Pakistan’s 22.8 percent area and 49.6 percent population is at risk due to the impact of climate change. Being the second largest South-Asian country with gigantic debt dearth, feeble infrastructure, poor governance, prevalent corruption, unbridled poverty and substantial defense expenditure, Pakistan shares the problems and concerns of South Asia. Global climate change & subsequent catastrophic disaster is one of the major threats that concern the global community, including southern countries & especially Pakistan for the subject matter. Pakistan witnessed devastating floods & deluges in the past decade especially those in years 2010 and 2011 that nearly paralyzed country’s infrastructure and unleashed her vulnerabilities. Endangered coastlines, rapidly melting glaciers & subsequent water scarcity, low agricultural production leading to food insecurity, and population displacement are the challenges contributing to the dilemma of identity and authority of the country. COASTAL PARADIGM Karachi, with 20% of the total GDP ratio, largest stock exchange, and conduit to 95% of the international trade, is extremely significant in terms of climate change. Implications could be rising sea level with increased salinity, reduced arable lands, and enhanced number of storms and cyclones which would significantly undermine the resources of Karachi and limit the opportunities for its inhabitants and lead to intense and violent struggle, specifically, in terms of real estate control. Moreover, since the coastline city is home to large population, huge built infrastructure and hub of massive economic activities & opportunities, climate variations could change ethnic composition and political map of Karachi because of forced migrants coupled with constrained living standards in the city. Dismally, rising sea level in Karachi on one hand and water scarce “thirsty Sindh” on the other would make life impossible in Sindh in the long run. This population displacement and unemployment could forms the basis for violent struggle & exploitation in this extremely volatile and violence ridden city and would undermine state security with losses in infrastructure, reduced fertility and crop yields. It can be safely assumed that destabilization in Karachi could seriously damage social, economic and political fabric of Pakistan. WATER SCARCITY AND INTERSTATE CONFLICT Resort to war & hostility for acquisition of non-renewable natural resources like oil & minerals is often observed within a state and between the states. Yet another reason for such conflict could arise for freshwater resources. Since water is fundamental to existence that is irreplaceable and distributed inequitably, it becomes a strategic objective for a state. States geographically located upstream could exploit water as weapon by diverting, limiting, and polluting water share or overflowing it through dams. In South Asia, water share is a major reason of rifts and disputes between the populous states like Pakistan, India. As Kashmir possesses important water resources, crucial to Pakistan’s agriculture, Water sharing occupies major part of Pakistan’s inveterate Kashmir dispute. Existence of dispute and mutual fear of each other’s water system, if not leading to war, could certainly result in troubled peace with huge drain on economies of both states. Potential climate changes affecting water sharing and availability would intensify a conflict that could culminate into limited war between states or serious crises of authority within states. NATIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY According to a report published in Express Tribune December 14, 2015, Pakistan has produced 0.2 million metric tons of CO2. Although Pakistan has produced a lower amount of greenhouse gases, yet it has been one of the worst affected countries due to global warming. Even after having been consistently affected by climate emergencies year after year, its response to solve the issue has remained lackluster. Nevertheless, to cope with the threats of climate change through adaptation and mitigation measures, Pakistan launched its first National Climate Change Policy in February 2012. Recognizing the significance of the problem of climate change, Ministry of Climate Change launched Framework for implementation of National Climate Change Policy (2014-2030) in November 2013. However, in a report published by Daily The Nation on October 14, 2015, it was reported as an unfortunate matter of concern that Pakistan could not implement its first ever National Climate Change Policy 2012 due to the lack of political will. INTENDED NATIONALLY DETERMINED CONTRIBUTIONS (INDC) By Oct 2, 2015 some 146 countries, contributing almost 87% of global greenhouse gas emissions, had submitted their intended national climate action plans to the United Nations ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, held in December. The document from Pakistan – titled the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) – outlined Pakistan’s contribution to the global fight against climate change carried significance for three reasons. Firstly, it gives country a chance to outline its climate actions. Secondly, adding up targets in documents makes it possible for the world to track progress towards achieving the collective goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels. Finally, The INDCs also give developing countries, like Pakistan, an opportunity to outline their adaptation efforts. Despite all the documentations in this regard, no immediate impacts could be seen on ground as far as practical implementation of the policy is concerned. CONCLUSION Climate change is much latent for compromising Pakistan’s national security. Despite being the least responsible country for climate change with its negligible contribution of 0.8% emission, Pakistan is yet among the top ten states most vulnerable to its drastic impacts. Climate variations could change ethnic composition and political map because of forced migrants coupled with constrained living standards and unemployment could forms the basis for violent struggle in the various regions of the country. Potential water shortage resulted by climate change could result in food and energy insecurity that could further disrupt social cohesion and weaken state institutions. Moreover, domination over water resources & subsequent conflict could culminate into limited war between states or serious crises of authority within states. With least public awareness, conspicuous absence in manifesto of political parties and lacking complete action plan, despite presence of a policy, clearly reveals that climate change is least prioritized as a threat. Pakistan is a hard country with immense buoyancy; however, more susceptible to “ecological changes” than internal insurgency or external enemies that is evident from the inflicted damages of previous catastrophic events. RECOMMENDATIONS The first step that could be crossed is the immediate realization of climate risk and environmental security as an issue of critical concern remains absent from the policy implementation landscape. As explained already, climate change is a matter of national security. So, just as we act aggressively on information from the national security intelligence community, we must also act on the scientific evidence from our nation’s best climate scientists. In context of international objectives of emission control, Pakistan must clearly demarcate that which activities will fall under unconditional contribution and which activities can happen if Pakistan is provided external support. In this framework several countries, multilateral development banks and multilateral climate funds have pledged heavy amounts for climate financing. Developing new institutions or modifying existing ones to promote adaptation to climate change. It would also involve modifying climate-receptive infrastructures already planned or implemented or other long-term decisions that are susceptible to climate. Adapting and promoting renewable resources e.g. solar power, improving energy efficiency and adding to forest cover are crucial steps that can be taken to protect its environment. In this framework, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government’s Billion Tree Tsunami program needs appreciation as an effort towards protecting forest cover and should motivate other provincial governments to take concerted efforts in protecting their forests. Improved Weather forecasting systems are need of the hour. Implement reforms on land-use planning and adaptation of new techniques for confident projection of regional climate change and its variability, including extreme events. Most importantly, it is vital to materialize National Climate Change Policy into productive actions. Since the policy aims to transform various economic sectors and conventional methods of using natural resources, it may encounter resistance from the national and international groups having vested interests. Therefore, a visionary, resolute, service-oriented and mature political leadership with an understanding of climate change as a security threat to Pakistan’s existence could take firm stance of enhancing its adaptation capacity.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Environmental Security

Introduction, general overviews.

Environmental Security and Human Security
Environmental Cooperation, Conflict and Refugees
Water Security
Energy Security
Food Security
Emerging Trends—Climate Security

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Environmental Security by Christopher A. Scott , Bhuwan Thapa LAST REVIEWED: 29 April 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 15 January 2015 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199363445-0012

Environmental security, as a subset of broader concerns over human security, is addressed from the disciplinary perspectives of international relations, political science, geography, development studies, and environmental studies. The concept of environmental security views ecological processes and natural resources as sources or catalysts of conflict, barriers or limits to human well-being, or conversely, as the means to mitigate or resolve insecurity. Security over natural resources—particularly energy and increasingly water—seen in terms of territorial control, treaty arrangements, and trade agreements (including the application of economic instruments) over production and conveyance of resources to demand locations, has tended to frame the analysis in international relations and political science. While spatial and transboundary concerns over resources continue to occupy geographers, attention in the field of geography is drawn increasingly to social equity and environmental justice dimensions of resource use and outcomes. Development studies focused on emerging economies and societies in rapid transition addresses environmental security in terms of differential national or regional access to resources and impacts, e.g., associated with pollution, deprivation, etc. And among other points of concern, environmental studies addresses environmental security in terms of local, intra-household, and gender-differentiated access to water, energy, and food as well as outcomes such as public health, nutrition, and quality of life. While the term environmental security has existed since at least the 1980s, its prominence in academic and political circles rose significantly after the 1994 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme, which formulated the broadly accepted concept of human security. This report identified environmental security together with economic, food, health, personal, community, and political security as core components of human security. Since the 1990s, the definition and scope of environmental security have broadened to include multiple subsets, including food security, energy security, and water security, as well as emerging notions of adaptation and resilience to hazards, e.g., climate security, and all of these are referred to in this article. No attempt is made to treat the broad and ever-widening field of environmental security exhaustively. The principal aims are to trace the evolution of security discourses, consider securitization of the environment and natural resources, and assess new conceptions of environmental security in the context of global change. This work is funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a charitable foundation helping to protect life and property by supporting engineering-related education, public engagement, and the application of research.

After the end of the Cold War in 1990, the term security was expanded to include economic, environmental, and human securities, which can affect state stability but more broadly are determinants of human well-being. An early, influential piece, Ullman 1983 distinguishes human security (as access to, and enjoying the benefits of, quality of life) from state security (as strategic control over threats—real or perceived—as well as resources). Allenby 2000 , Rwabizambuga 2007 , and Swanström 2010 demonstrate that security had conventionally been associated with military and state power to ensure sovereignty, stability, and peace as well as to pursue armed conflict. As noted in the introduction, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 1994 has been instrumental in advancing the human dimensions of security. In its broadened conceptualization, environmental security views ecological processes (anthropogenically influenced or not) as well as natural resources (water, land, forests, fisheries, etc.) as direct or contributing factors that cause or induce conflict and insecurity. Detraz 2009 discusses three linkages between environment and security: (1) environmental degradation directly or collaterally inducing conflict, (2) environmental degradation exerting negative impacts on human security, and (3) ecological security, in which human activities pose negative impacts on the environment. Trombetta 2008 and Graeger 1996 provide an overview of different perspectives on environmental security. These articles discuss seminal work on environmental conflict, military and environmental security, environmental cooperation, a human-security approach to environmental security, and climate security.

Allenby, Braden R. 2000. Environmental security: Concept and implementation. International Political Science Review 21.1: 5–21.

DOI: 10.1177/0192512100211001

Allenby develops an analytical framework to support the evolution of the environmental security concept into operational programs by separating environmental security into four components: resource, energy, environmental, and biological securities.

Detraz, Nicole. 2009. Environmental security and gender: Necessary shifts in an evolving debate. Security Studies 18.2: 345–369.

DOI: 10.1080/09636410902899933

Exploring the linkages between environmental security and gender, Detraz explains three components that link environment and security: environmental conflict, environmental security, and ecological security. The paper focuses on linkages between environmental security and gender and provides concrete examples of gender roles in resource management.

Graeger, Nina. 1996. Environmental security? Journal of Peace Research 109–116.

DOI: 10.1177/0022343396033001008

Graeger studies the conceptual and methodological value of the “environmental security” concept. The paper analyzes the concept of “securitizing” environment through military measure and its trans-nationalization role through international treaties.

Rwabizambuga, Alexis. 2007. Environmental security and development. Conflict, Security & Development 7.1: 201–225.

DOI: 10.1080/14678800601176618

Rwabizambuga argues that the linkage between human and environmental securities and development is strong in developing countries where human security is closely tied to natural resources. The author supports this theory with examples of resource management in African countries.

Swanström, Niklas. 2010. Traditional and non-traditional security threats in central Asia: Connecting the new and the old . China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly 8.2: 35–51.

The study analyzes the interaction between traditional threats (military conflict, terrorism) and nontraditional ones (illicit drug trade) in Central Asia. It also provides a historical evaluation of how nontraditional security, such as environmental, food, and economic securities, has influenced national security in the region.

Trombetta, Maria Julia. 2008. Environmental security and climate change: Analysing the discourse. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 21.4: 585–602.

DOI: 10.1080/09557570802452920

The paper provides a useful overview of different schools of thought on environmental security and how these discourses evolved over time in different disciplines. The author discusses the theory of securitization, which emphasizes the logic of war applied to sectors from which it has been excluded. Concerning securitization of the environment, the debate shifts from the traditional logic of security, which is based on emergency and contingency, to a logic of prevention and management.

Ullman, Richard H. 1983. Redefining security. International Security 8.1: 129–153.

DOI: 10.2307/2538489

The paper attempts to broaden the concept of national security to include nonmilitary forms of security, such as the environment. Advanced countries could face nonmilitary threats due to socioeconomic and political disruptions in developing countries or changes in demand and supply of natural resources in developing regions induced by population and economic growth.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 1994. Human development report 1994 . New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

The seminal report proposes a new paradigm for sustainable development through a framework of human security, which emphasizes the safety of human beings from chronic threats, such as hunger, lack of sanitation, and diseases, and from sudden and harmful disruptions in patterns of life. The report identifies environmental security, which is concerned with minimizing environmental threats posed by water scarcity, air pollution, natural disasters, and deforestation, as one of the seven categories of human security.

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Reconsidering the Environment-Security Relationship

Under What Circumstances Should Environmental Change be Considered a Security Issue?

The global environmental crisis has forced us to rethink many fundamental assumptions about international relations, especially regarding security. In recent years, there has been an attempt to include environmental change within the broader security agenda, particularly evident in attempts to define security as ‘human security’. This essay will examine the circumstances under which environmental change should be regarded as a security issue, drawing upon previous attempts to widen the security agenda. By comparing the Copenhagen School’s concept of securitization with the more traditional security approach of realism, this essay will examine the conflicting implications of framing environmental change as a security threat, whilst engaging previous literature on the topic.

For the purposes of this essay, the definition of security will be adopted from the Commission on Human Security, focusing on a critical standpoint towards security (human security). The Commission states that human security is “the protection of the vital core of all human lives from critical and pervasive threats” (CHS 2003). It will also take into consideration that the environment was one of the seven key facets in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report in 1994, and will contrast the four essential characteristics the Report outlines on human security with environmental security. The advantage of using the Commission’s definition of human security is that it differentiates between security and general well-being, by outlining the types of threats (critical or pervasive) that constitute as a security concern.

Throughout this essay, the term ‘environmental change’ will be used to describe anthropogenic climate change and its accompanying effects. Climate change is understood to be a security issue because of the effect it has on people’s abilities to survive and their livelihoods. In order to successfully include the environment as a security issue, it is paramount to determine what is meant by ‘the environment’. It is necessary to differentiate between environmental change and access to natural resources (McDonald 2010). As has been argued, this broad understanding is analytically weak, especially if the term ‘environmental security’ is seen only as the need to continue exploitation of non-renewable natural resources (see McDonald 2010; Tennberg 1995; Westing 1989). Climate change is a global issue with global implications (McDonald 2005:216). It is an issue that crosses borders, with no regard for social norms and structures such as state sovereignty.

In the post-Cold War period, there were debates surrounding the inclusion of non-military threats such as poverty, migration and the environment within the security agenda, with environmental change being the most contentious. Environmental issues first began to appear in political discourses in the 1970s, and there were a number of publications regarding their security implications (Falk 1971; Brown 1977). However, it was not until 1987 that the term ‘environmental security’ was used. The World Commission on Environment and Development published a report entitled Our Common Future (1987) in which it used the phrase for the first time and entered notions of environmental security into international political debate. The intention of including environmental security was to increase the relevance of debate within a political agenda (Trombetta 2008: 586) and to ‘alarm traditional security analysts about the issues that “really” matter’ (deWilde 2008: 2). The concept of environmental security was welcomed by some actors, as it challenged the “values traditionally associated with the nation-state – identity, territoriality, sovereignty – and implies a different set of values” (Dyer 2001:68). The emergence of the environmental security agenda linked the environment with notions of vulnerability, and associated these with the possibilities of conflict.

Much literature has suggested that we will see the emergence of conflicts caused by changes in the physical environment, including resource scarcity and so-called ‘water wars’ (see Starr 1990; 1991, Homer-Dixon 1991, Bulloch and Darwish 1993, Gleick 1993). Although the debate subsided through the 1990s, the relationship has re-emergenced in light of natural disasters fuelled by climate change, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the persisting drought in areas of Australia and sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change was brought to the political stage most prominently in 2005, with the entrance of the Kyoto Protocol on the global level. However, whether or not environmental change should be considered a security threat is still under heavy debate.

The Copenhagen School of security studies, characterised by the work of Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan, is recognized for its attempts to conceptualise the theory of securitization. This theory challenges traditional realist viewpoints of security, and identifies the inherently politicized process of ‘achieving’ security. This theory of securitization introduces a social-constructivist perspective that attempts to conceptualise how issues are framed as security threats (Trombetta 2008: 591). There are three key facets of the concept of securitization within the Copenhagen School: security as a ‘speech act’, its inter-subjective nature, and the “specific rhetorical structure” (Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998:26). The School identifies five sectors for analysis, in which issues can be securitized. These sectors are military, political, economic, societal and environmental. The School’s research projects began in 1985, with a double strategy to avoid an overstretching of the concept of security. This strategy involved empirical analyses, based upon specific historical situations, rather than focusing on speculative threats.

Realism, by contrast, is framed around notions of state sovereignty, territorial integrity and state-centrism. It argues that the state is both the referent object of security, and the key protector of security, primarily through the use of force. The main concern for realists is security for the state, from external military threats. The preservation of the state is the key goal, in which the principle of non-intervention is paramount. The move to include environmental change within the security agenda has not been approved by realists. As realists assume a view of state-centrism, environmental change, being a a non-military threat, does not necessarily constitute a credible threat to security.. Realists consider issues regarding the environment as an aspect of the realm of ‘low’ politics, rather than ‘high’ politics, such as issues of security (Trombetta 2008:589).

However, environmental change is a global issue that holds no regard for state borders or sovereignty, nor does it differentiate between developed and developing nations: all are affected; it is merely a question of adaptation and mitigation. However, there have been attempts to frame environmental security as a national security issue. Thomas Homer-Dixon, writing in the New York Times in 2007, argues that ‘climate stress may well represent a challenge to international security just as dangerous – and more intractable – than the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War or the proliferation of nuclear weapons among rogue states today’ (Homer-Dixon 2007).

The debate surrounding the inclusion of environmental change in the security agenda is multi-faceted and is not easily reconcilable. Essentially, the circumstances under which environmental change should be considered a security issue, is dependent on the definition of security. As this essay is using the Commission on Human Security’s definition of human security, with the notion of a ‘vital core’ of all human lives, the primary circumstance under which an issue is securitized is any issue that threatens this ‘vital core’. The advantage of this definition is that it maintains the broad nature of the human security agenda, whilst differentiating between security and other general concepts such as development. The definition implies that security is subjective, and therefore has different meaning to each individual, dependent on their personal situation. It also remains true to the four key characteristics of human security, as outlined in the UNDP’s Human Development Report. These characteristics are: the universal nature of concern for human security; the components of human security are interdependent; human security is easier to ‘ensure through early prevention than later intervention’; and people-centred (UNDP 1994:23). These four characteristics also apply to environmental change, particularly its relationship with security.

Robert Kaplan, in his landmark essay, The Coming Anarchy, illustrates the linkages between environmental degradation and security. He argues that it is time to “understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century” (Kaplan 1994:55). As Kaplan argues, we are seeing the image of a bifurcated world more prominently with the increasing severity of climate change. He illustrates the disparities between the North and South by referring to the various states of humankind and the inequalities between them. He argues that one part of the globe is inhabited by Fukuyama’s ‘Last Man’; healthy, democratized and surrounded by technological luxuries, whereas the other (majority) of the planet is inhabited by Hobbes’ ‘First Man’; nasty, uncivilized and ‘backward’ in nature (Kaplan 1994:60). The Last Man has the capabilities to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as they have the infrastructure and financial and political institutions to cope, generally at the expense of the ‘First Man’. Kaplan makes a convincing argument about the linkages between environmental degradation and security, and argues that “environmental scarcity will inflame existing hatreds and affect power relationships” (Kaplan 1994:60). Unfortunately, however, he lacks empirical evidence to support his claims.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report of 1994 identified the environment as a threat to security. However, this attempt to include environmental change in the security agenda has its limitations. The Report set out to redefine security, challenging traditional thoughts of security. Rather than trying to redefine security, or broaden the agenda to include environmental change, analyses of the relationship between the environment and security must be made, and linkages made clear, especially when referring to the relationship between the environment and conflict. Furthermore, rather than redefining security overall, the notion that environmental change is a credible threat to state security must be examined. This requires a slightly different approach than realists traditionally subscribe to; the threats of violence or civil unrest that environmental change poses are generally intra-state, which have the potential to have a spill-over effect and cross borders. This can be seen in instances of mass migrations and the destabilizing of regions, especially when a nation is landlocked. These non-military aspects threaten and can undermine state sovereignty, especially in instances where a state is already ‘weak’ or ‘failing’, which can potentially lead to the emergence of ‘hard’ regimes (see Homer-Dixon 1998:358-9). This is particularly problematic for realists, as they prescribe the use of force as a solution to security issues. But, as evidence suggests, the “goal of national security as traditionally conceived … presents problems that are becoming increasingly resistant to military solutions” (Sprout and Sprout 1971:406). However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to substantiate claims of violence erupting purely over environmental degradation. It has been argued that in conflicts such as Rwanda and Haiti, resource scarcity, land degradation and water scarcity have contributed to conflict, but we are yet to see a conflict that is entirely environmentally-motivated.

In recent years, there has been an argument that the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan is the first ‘climate conflict’ we have seen, and that the war has been caused by water scarcity and desertification (Sachs 2007:24). However, the United Nations Environment Programme’s report, Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment, challenges the view that Darfur is primarily an environmentally motivated conflict. It does, however, acknowledge the role of the environment, and states that climate change, desertification and land degradation are indeed major factors in the conflict. It does, however, comment that they are “generally contributing factors only, not the sole cause for tension” (UNEP 2007:77). The report also identifies the conditions necessary for sustainable peace in the region, which is only possible if the environmental stresses are resolved.

The inclusion of environmental change in the security agenda is controversial, and fraught with implications. The main implication of securitization, in general, is that the ‘importance’ of an issue need not be the primary condition under which an issue is securitized. If all issues of importance were included in the security agenda, security becomes ‘everything and nothing’ (Walt 1990). There are also questions of the threshold of issues; when an issue surpasses a ‘threshold’ to be classified as a security issue (Owen 2008). There are also contending views regarding the referent object of security, despite attempts to redefine security based around notions of the protection and rights of the individual, rather than the state.

Essentially, when determining whether an issue should be included in a security agenda, there are many contending views. Securitization is entirely dependent on the definition of security itself, and the context in which the issue is to be securitized. In the instance of environmental change, it has contributed to both a broadening and a deepening of the security agenda, however it has not received the attention that it deserves. A critical approach to the environment-security relationship is paramount to successfully conceptualizing environmental change in world politics. A critical approach forces us to rethink key questions surrounding security, such as what is security, what is the environment and who is the referent object of security. Different theories of security explain different aspects of securitization, and it is necessary to position the environment-security relationship between these, rather than redefining security itself. Based upon the Commission on Human Security’s definition, the primary circumstance under which any issue should be considered a security issue is one that threatens the ‘vital core’ of all human life. Climate change poses threats that are largely uncertain, and difficult to quantify, however have the potential to be catastrophic. This speculative nature of climate change forces institutions, especially governments, to consider the long-term implications of the environment-security relationship, and facilitate the change to a more sustainable way of life.

Environmental change challenges people’s capacities to survive, through water scarcity, natural disasters and sea level rise, among others. There is potential for this to lead to mass migrations, and the emergence of environmental refugees, particularly in the Asia Pacific regions, where scientific evidence has already shown accelerated rates of submerging islands. To reach a consensus on the securitization of the environment, there needs to be a focus on the relationship between the environment and pre-existing conceptions of security, on analytical, empirical and normative grounds, rather than attempting to redefine security as a whole.

Reference List

Bulloch, John and Darwish, Adel. 1993. Water Wars: Coming Conflicts in the Middle East. (London: Victor Gollancz)

Buzan, Barry, Wæver, Ole and de Wilde, Jaap. 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner)

Commission on Human Security. 2003. Human Security Now: Final Report. New York: Commission on Human Security

De Wilde, Jaap (2008) ‘Environmental security deconstructed’ in Hans G Brauch (ed) Globalization and environmental challenges: reconceptualizing security in the 21st century, Berlin: Springer. 595–602

Dyer, Hugh (2001) ‘Theoretical aspects of environmental security’ in Eileen Petzold-Bradley, Alexander Carius and Arpa´d Vincze (eds) Responding to Environmental Conflicts: Implications for Theory and Practice (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer), 67–81

Falk, Richard A (1971) This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (NewYork: Random House)

Gleick, Peter, ‘Water and Conflict: Freshwater Resources and International Security’, International Security, 18:1 (1993) pp.79-112

Homer-Dixon, Thomas, ‘On the Threshold: Environmental Change as Causes of Acute Conflict’, International Security, 16:2 (1991) pp.76-116

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F., 2007. ‘Terror in the Weather Forecast’, New York Times , 24 April.

Kaplan, Robert, ‘The Coming Anarchy’, Atlantic Monthly, 273:2 (1994) pp.44-76

McDonald, Matt. 2005. Fair weather friend?: Ethics and Australia’s Approach to Global Climate Change. Australian Journal of Politics and History 51(2), June 2005 216-234.

McDonald, Matt. 2010. ‘Environment and Security: A Critical Approach’. Presented at the Conflict and Security Research Group Seminar Series, 5 th March 2010 at the University of Queensland

Owen, Taylor. ‘The Uncertain Future of Human Security in the UN’, International Social Science Journal 59:1 (2008) pp.113-127

Sachs, Jeffrey D. ‘Poverty and environmental stress fuel Darfur Crisis’ Nature 449:24 (2007)

Sprout, H. And Sprout, M. 1971. Towards a Politics of Planet Earth. (New York: Von Norstrand Reinhold)

Starr, Joyce, ‘Water Wars’, Foreign Policy, 81 (Winter 1990-1) pp. 17-36

Tennberg, Monica, ‘Risking Business: Defining the Concept of Environmental Security’, Cooperation and Conflict, 30:3 (1995) pp.239-58

Trombetta, Maria Julia, ‘Environmental Security and Climate Change: Analysing the Discourse’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21:4 (2008) pp.585-602

UNDP (United Nations Development Program) 1994. Human Development Report 1994 (New York: Oxford University Press)

UNEP, Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment (2007). Available at: http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.php?prog=sudan .

Westing, Arthur. 1986. ‘An expanded concept of international security’, in Westing (ed.), Global Resources and International Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Written by: Ashleigh Croucher Written at: University of Queensland Written for: Dr Matt McDonald Date written: June 2010

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32 Environmental Security

Joshua Busby is Associate Professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin.

Published: 05 April 2018
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This chapter assesses the connections between the environment and security by reviewing two waves of scholarship, the first mostly qualitative literature from the 1990s on the general links between environmental problems and conflict and the second generation of scholarship from the 2000s, much of it quantitative, on climate change and security. In the process, the chapter interrogates the meaning of the terms “the environment” and “security,” including efforts to broaden the meaning of security to include concepts such as human security. Where the earlier literature provided important insights on the causal mechanisms linking environmental change and conflict, it was limited in its generalizability and specification of scope conditions. The second generation of climate security research has more generalizability but has yet to tease out the causal pathways between climate change-related processes and security outcomes.

What is the link between the environment and security? The answer depends on the meaning of “security” and the research methods used. Focused mainly on case studies, the first major wave of scholarship on environmental change and violence emerged just as advocates and scholars sought to redefine security in the late 1980s. A second wave starting in the mid-2000s zeroed in on whether climate change was associated with conflict and was joined by quantitative social scientists employing big data and innovative research designs. As this chapter shows, along the way aspirations for a transformation in how we conceive of security narrowed to more tractable research questions about violence.

The trajectory is understandable but unfortunate. With climate change and unprecedented pressures on the natural world, environmental degradation may pose an existential challenge for some places and key ecosystem services and systems like carbon dioxide storage, coral reefs, and more. A security agenda that solely looks at violence is impoverished, transforming global problems into largely local affairs. Since many environmental problems, including but not limited to climate change, emanate from external forces and intersect with trade, aid, and alliances, the challenge is how to study problems of unknowable gravity where past patterns offer limited guidance. To imagine how the future could be different, however, we need to understand the intellectual history. 1

32.1 The First Debate: The Opening

The traditional meaning of national security has “meant protection from organized violence caused by armed foreigners” ( Del Rosso 1995 : 183). Though it historically referred to protecting the state’s territorial integrity, it has a broader meaning than state survival. Countries have interests beyond their borders for which they may be willing to fight. These “vital interests” may be tied to the country’s “way of life,” its access to critical natural resources, and be considered so important that a challenge would threaten national security ( Art 2003 : 3).

Moves to link environmental issues to security date back to the mid-1980s when scholars and advocates sought to widen the concept to encompass environmental concerns, health, human rights, and development. In 1983, Richard Ullman wrote that defining security in military terms “causes states to concentrate on military threats and to ignore other and perhaps even more harmful dangers” ( Ullman 1983 : 129). He called for a different approach based on harms that could (1) quickly and drastically cause a degradation in the quality of life of a people; and (2) threaten to narrow the options governments and other actors had to respond. With this definition in hand, “natural” disasters such as droughts and floods or epidemics could rise to the level of concern long occupied by interstate war to internal violence ( Ullman 1983 : 133).

With the Cold War winding down, this demand gained more traction. There was considerable optimism that the environment could finally get the attention it deserved. Jessica Mathews (1989: 177) captured this perspective: “Man is still utterly dependent on the natural world but now has for the first time the ability to alter it, rapidly and on a global scale.” The dystopian underpinning of environmental threats loomed large in this assessment. Journalist Robert Kaplan captured the zeitgeist in his 1994 essay “The Coming Anarchy” in which he suggested the environment would be the defining national security issue of the early twenty-first century ( Kaplan 1994 ).

That essay helped bring Canadian scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon to the forefront. He and his collaborators delivered an ambitious and complex portrait of the links between the environment and conflict, drawing on case studies of Rwanda, South Africa, and other places (Homer-Dixon 1991 , 1994 , 1999 ; Homer-Dixon and Blitt 1998 ; Percival and Homer-Dixon 1998 ). Alongside Kaplan’s cruder version, Homer-Dixon’s scholarship helped catapult environmental security onto the agenda of the Clinton administration ( Peluso and Watts 2001 : 4).

Homer-Dixon foresaw a future of environmentally-driven scarcity potentially leading to violence, particularly within developing countries ( Homer-Dixon 1991 : 78). While inspired by the eighteenth-century cleric Thomas Malthus, Homer-Dixon sought to avoid criticism of being seen as an “environmental determinist.” 2 He wrote that environmental factors were neither necessary nor sufficient for conflict ( Homer-Dixon 1999 : 7). Moreover, understanding the environmental contribution to conflict was complicated given a tangled chain of causation, interactions between environmental and social causes, effects that only occur above certain thresholds, and feedback loops ( Homer-Dixon 1991 : 86, 107, 1999: 105–6, 174). While he despaired of assessing the relative causal importance of environmental factors, Homer-Dixon argued that some conflicts cannot be understood without including environmental scarcity ( Homer-Dixon 1999 : 7–9).

He distinguished three different kinds of environmental scarcity that could, when coupled with social and political factors, lead to conflict. The first was supply-induced scarcity due to environmental degradation, the second demand-induced scarcity due to population growth, and the third unequal resource-based distribution or structural scarcity (Homer-Dixon 1994 , 1999 : 15). Whether situations lead to violence depends on the capacity for societies to innovate and overcome scarcity (Homer-Dixon 1994 , 1999 ). Significantly, Homer-Dixon focused on renewable resources, such as fisheries and timber or processes like the hydrological cycle and the climate. Non-renewable resources like oil and minerals, which scholars think of as important drivers of conflict, are not part of his framework.

Homer-Dixon generated three hypotheses of conflict types: (1) simple scarcity between states; (2) group identity-based conflicts within states affected by internal migration; and (3) relative deprivation conflicts where economic decline disrupts social institutions and leads to domestic strife. He found little support for the first hypothesis but stronger support for the other two ( Homer-Dixon 1994 : 18–25). Needless to say, Homer-Dixon’s was not the only research effort; other major initiatives, also largely case-study based, generated broadly similar results (e.g. Baechler 1998 , 1999 ,).

While Homer-Dixon narrowed the focus to violent conflict, others sought to broaden the agenda under the umbrella concept of “human security” ( UNDP 1994 ; Barnett et al. 2010 ). Efforts to promote this agenda culminated in a chapter on human security in the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ( Adger et al. 2014 ; see also Dalby 2009 ). There, human security was defined “as a condition that exists when the vital core of human lives is protected.” The “vital core” of human security extends beyond material well-being to include “culturally specific” non-material factors that people require to fulfill their interests ( Adger et al. 2014 : 759). This broad definition of security has its detractors. As Roland Paris argued, “human security seems to encompass everything from substance abuse to genocide” ( Paris 2004 : 371). Moreover, the definition makes causal analysis challenging since factors that could cause human security are part of the definition ( Paris 2004 : 371). While I largely agree that human security may conceptually stretch the concept of security too far, the attention to individual well-being has some salutary properties, emphasizing the safety and well-being of individuals and not just the territorial integrity of states.

Despite these efforts, the narrower research agenda on the environment and violence has dominated and been the primary focus of criticism. Dan Deudney’s critique has continued resonance. He saw efforts to securitize the environment—that is to label the environment as a security issue—as a strategic ploy by advocates to generate more attention. While national security issues typically command higher priority and resources, securitizing the issue has risks, including the tendency for countries to interpret responses to security problems in terms of national self-interest rather than the collective good ( Deudney 1990 : 467).

Homer-Dixon’s methodology also came in for criticism. Instead of selecting only cases of violence, Marc Levy (1995: 57) counseled that it would be better “to compare societies facing similar environmental problems but exhibiting different levels of violent conflict. That would permit some precision in identifying the conditions under which environmental degradation generates violent conflict and when it does not.” Objections such as these (e.g. Gleditsch 1998 ) underlay efforts to leverage quantitative methods (for a defense, see Homer-Dixon and Levy 1995 ; Schwartz et al. 2001 ). But those studies faced a new set of challenges and generated mixed results. With rough estimates of environmental scarcity, Hauge and Ellingsen found that forest loss and freshwater availability were more highly correlated with lower-level armed conflicts than civil wars, though land degradation was significant for both. They conclude regime type and economic development are more important drivers of conflict ( Hauge and Ellingsen 2001 ). 3 For his part, de Soysa brought in debates about whether greed or grievance is a more significant motivation for violence. He found that natural capital, including both renewable and non-renewable resources, is unrelated to the incidence of internal conflict but that mineral wealth on its own was so related ( de Soysa 2000 ). While providing some support for greed-based theories, de Soysa’s aggregate measure of natural capital is even cruder than Hauge and Ellingsen’s indicators. 4 The US-government supported State Failure Task Force provided a third quantitative assessment but did not find any statistically significant direct relationship between environmental variables and state failure. They did, however, find environmental factors affected infant mortality, a strong predictor of state failure ( Esty et al. 1999 ).

Beyond the critiques and efforts by quantitative scholars, criticism also emerged from political ecologists Nancy Peluso, Michael Watts, and their collaborators. Informed by Marxist approaches to political economy, they argued that Homer-Dixon perpetuated “automatic, simplistic linkages” between scarcity and conflict and gave insufficient attention to regime type ( Peluso and Watts 2001 : 5, 18). As Colin Kahl notes Peluso and Watts “focus mainly on questions of distribution without fairly considering the ways in which rapid population growth and environmental degradation exacerbate conditions of inequality” ( Kahl, 2002a : 138). 5 Kahl’s own work is something of a bridge to these arguments. He sought to understand under what conditions demographic and environmental stress (DES) could lead to conflict. Kahl focuses on state exploitation , where elites “capitalize on scarcities of natural resources and related social grievances to advance their parochial interests” ( Kahl 1998 : 82). Kahl argued states with exclusive institutions and stark cleavages (what he calls “groupness”) are more vulnerable to environmental scarcity-related conflicts (Kahl 1998 , 2002b , 2006 ).

32.2 The Second Debate: Climate Change and Security

A new literature on climate and security emerged in the mid-2000s and is awash with data, in terms of the variety of environmental indicators, their temporal coverage, and the degree of geographic disaggregation made possible by improved satellite and geo-referenced coverage. 6 This revolution facilitated statistical tests of connections between proxies for climate change impacts (i.e. droughts, temperature change, and rainfall volatility) and security outcomes, namely the onset and incidence of violent conflict within states.

After nearly a decade, however, this research has produced mixed findings. As the 2014 IPCC chapter on human security concluded: “The evidence on the effect of climate change and variability on violence is contested. Although there is little agreement about direct causality, low per capita incomes, economic contraction, and inconsistent state institutions are associated with the incidence of violence” ( Adger et al. 2014 : 758; for summaries of the state of the literature, see also Nordås and Gleditsch 2007 ; Gleditsch 2012 ; Scheffran et al. 2012 ; Salehyan 2014 ). Where there are reasonably robust correlations between climate hazards and conflict, such as for temperature, there needs to be more development of causal mechanisms and the selection of paired cases (some with and some without conflict) to demonstrate the scope conditions for when climate factors lead to violence. To understand this assessment, it helps to walk through a number of studies.

The climate–conflict debate has largely, though not exclusively, been between quantitative scholars aligned with Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and California-based scholars Edward Miguel, Marshall Burke, and Solomon Hsiang (e.g. Hsiang et al. 2013 ). While Miguel and co-authors have found strong correlations between climate-related variables and conflict, PRIO scholars for the most part have not. At the risk of over-simplification, their disputes have largely become ones of model specification and differences over methodology. Other prominent scholars among many include Marc Levy (Levy et al. 2005 , 2008 ; Levy 2014 ) and John O’Loughlin (O’Loughlin et al. 2014a , 2014b , 2012 ). Three special issues—a 2007 issue of Political Geography , 7 a 2012 issue of the Journal of Peace Research , 8 and a 2014 Political Geography 9 —included many other leading figures.

The connections between climate and security contemporaneously emerged in the mid-2000s in the policy community. Nigel Purvis and I wrote a study for the United Nations, where we emphasized climate-driven humanitarian emergencies as the most proximate concern ( Purvis and Busby 2004 ). Debates accelerated after the release of several US think-tank reports around 2007, including one by the CNA Corporation, a joint CNAS-CSIS effort, and my paper for the Council on Foreign Relations ( CNA Corporation 2007 ; Campbell et al. 2007 ). 10 These reports emphasized the potential role of climate change as a threat multiplier in the exacerbation of security problems, with a particular focus on US national security. Other countries like Germany and the UK also carried out similar efforts ( WBGU 2007 ; Mabey 2008 ). Discussions culminated in high-level attention to climate and security by the US government and the United Nations Security Council ( Busby 2016 ).

The policy literature often chooses high-profile conflicts and tries to surface a climate signal as a key driver. For example, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon identified climate change as an important cause of the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, though scholars debated the relative importance of environmental versus political factors. 11 Similarly, think-tank scholars have suggested drought helped give rise to the Arab Spring through the impact on food prices and riots ( Werrell and Femia 2013 ). The role played by drought in the lead up to the Syrian civil war has also received particular attention. 12 One troubling issue is that individual case studies that only examine instances of conflict suffer from the selection problem that faced Homer-Dixon. This is particularly true if advocates shoehorn prominent examples into the environmental conflict box. In some accounts, the causal pathways between environmental change and conflict are dealt with by assertion rather than detailed process tracing.

A parallel academic discussion emerged contemporaneously to the policy debates ( Barnett 2003 ; Barnett and Adger 2007 ). This research focused largely on whether proxies for climate change were correlated with conflict, with Africa receiving particular attention. Early studies found promising results. In 2004, Edward Miguel and collaborators tested the relationship between economic growth and civil conflict in Africa ( Miguel et al. 2004 ). Given reverse causality between violence and economic growth, they used rainfall variation as an instrumental variable: rainfall could affect conflict through economic growth but could not itself be affected by conflict. They found that negative growth shocks of 5 percent increase the likelihood of civil conflict by more than 12 percent in the following year. They argued that lower economic growth would both increase individual incentives to engage in conflict and undermine state capacity to repress violence ( Miguel et al. 2004 ). 13

In 2005, Marc Levy and collaborators took advantage of disaggregated subnational data to assess the connections between rainfall anomalies and conflict outbreak for the world. They found rainfall anomalies were correlated with high-intensity civil conflicts but not low-intensity ones. They argue that rainfall variability affects the economy and state capacity to manage conflicts ( Levy et al. 2005 ).

Cullen Hendrix and Sarah Glaser in their paper on Africa also focused on civil conflict ( Hendrix and Glaser 2007 ). They examined the contribution of long-term trends (including a location’s climate suitability for agriculture and freshwater availability) to conflict onset. They also assessed the contribution of inter-annual deviations from normal rainfall to trigger the onset of conflicts. They found that higher than normal rains and land suitable for agriculture were negatively correlated with conflict, but only when controlling for other social, political, and economic factors. Good rains in a single year reduce the incentives for engaging in conflict because farming is more attractive. At the same time, areas that are amenable to agriculture over the long term have higher economic returns, also diminishing the likelihood of conflict ( Hendrix and Glaser 2007 ).

Some scholars used temperature rather than rainfall measures as their climate variable. A 2009 paper by Burke and colleagues found for every 1 degree increase in Celsius, there was a 4.5 percent increase in the incidence of violent conflict ( Burke et al. 2009 ). Buhaug found the results did not hold up when one included additional data, used alternative model specifications, or included other variables such as political exclusion ( Buhaug 2010 ). Other studies also found limited effects for different kinds of climate-related phenomena, with stronger evidence that political institutions and population density were more important drivers of conflict ( Raleigh and Urdal 2007 ). PRIO affiliated researchers found no association between drought and civil wars in Africa; marginalized ethnic groups were correlated with conflict onset, providing further support for the political exclusion argument ( Theisen et al. 2012 ).

In Theisen’s study of Kenya, water scarcity was actually correlated with reduced conflict ( Theisen 2012 ). In other articles, it appeared that abundance might be a more potent mechanism triggering conflict as groups have more reason to clash in times of plenty. Better rains might give raiding parties engaged in communal conflict more cover to conceal attacks. 14 Raleigh and Kniveton (2012) found this pattern of rainfall abundance accentuating communal conflict (such as between herders and farmers) while anomalously dry conditions enhanced rebel conflict. 15

Other studies emphasized political variables over environmental ones. Gates and Butler in their assessment of range wars between pastoralists and farmers in East Africa argued that asymmetric property rights rather than resources per se fuel banditry by poorer parties ( Butler and Gates 2012 ). Similarly, Benjaminsen and colleagues in their examination of similar conflicts in the Sahel attributed the violence to agricultural encroachment that impeded mobility by pastoralists, opportunism in rural areas with the decline of the state, and rent-seeking behavior by elites ( Benjaminsen et al. 2012 ).

A 2013 meta-analysis by Solomon Hsiang and co-authors fueled the debate further. They estimated the average effects of a variety of climate indicators (temperature increases, positive deviations in rainfall, negative deviations in rainfall) on violence across 60 different studies, examining both “personal violence” (which included studies of baseball pitchers beaning more batters on hot days) as well as “inter-group” violence (which included studies of state collapse, civil wars, and other measures). Their provocative claim was that every standard deviation of climate indicators increased the frequency of interpersonal violence by 4 percent and inter-group conflict by 14 percent ( Hsiang et al. 2013 ). Buhaug and co-authors raised various objections—about model specification, choice of control variables, and other arcana—that resulted in a back and forth with Hsiang and his collaborators ( Buhaug 2014 ; Buhaug et al. 2014 ; Hsiang and Meng 2014 ). The 2013 Hsiang et al. piece included studies of ancient Egypt and fifteenth-century China whose relevance to the contemporary period is questionable. In addition, as opposed to average effects, the field has been moving toward identifying discrete causal pathways between specific climate phenomena (such as too much rain) and particular kinds of conflict (such as communal violence).

Thus far, most studies have tested direct relationships between physical hazards and conflict rather than indirect pathways through economic growth or food prices. Recent contributions from Koubi et al. (2013) and Smith (2014) addresss these lacunae. Where Koubi et al. did not find a connection between rainfall and conflict through economic growth, Smith found rainfall shocks increased protests and other forms of social conflict through effects on local food prices in Africa. 16

Other recent studies have taken advantage of refined data sources. For example, von Uexkull and colleagues found that negative rainfall anomalies during the growing season in Asia and Africa influenced conflict likelihood under certain conditions, namely when groups are highly dependent on agriculture and politically excluded from power ( von Uexkull 2014 ). Another paper in this vein by Maystadt and Ecker connected drought to civil conflict in Somalia through the effects on livestock prices ( Maystadt and Ecker 2014 ).

Some papers have tried to nail down pathways to violence through the effects on migration and disasters. Again, here the evidence is mixed. There is strong evidence migrants can increase the potential for conflict as groups struggle for access to resources ( Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006 ). Reuveny argued climate-related migration could lead to inter-ethnic conflict over resources, distrust, and rivalry between socio-economic groups ( Reuveny 2007 ; see also Reuveny and Moore 2009 ). However, other studies suggested movements related to climate might be temporary and less likely to trigger conflict ( Gleditsch et al. 2007 ; Raleigh et al. 2008 ).

A different literature has examined the effects of natural disasters on conflict. Some studies have posited that disasters make conflict less likely by inducing cooperation between the state and rebels; others suggest really severe disasters can deprive rebels of the resources to continue the fight ( Kelman 2006 ; see also Schaffer 2011 ; Walch 2014 ). Nel and Righarts showed the effects of disasters on conflict to be the most severe in low- and medium-income countries with high inequality, low economic growth, and mixed political regimes (either partially democratic or partially authoritarian). While the effects were stronger for earthquakes and volcanoes, the results held up for climate-related disasters ( Nel and Righarts 2008 ). However, Slettebak found climate-related disasters actually made conflict less likely ( Slettebak 2012 ; for similar results, see Bergholt and Lujala 2012 ). Other studies have examined connections between disasters and regime survival ( Flores and Smith 2010 ; Quiroz Flores 2015 ).

An understudied area is the role played by institutions in dampening the potential for conflict in the face of climate shocks and competition over resources. One reason interstate disputes over water have thus far rarely resulted in armed conflict is because of transboundary institutions to manage river basins. Studies by Stefano et al. and Tir and Stinnett found the robustness of these institutions was correlated with lower incidence and risk of conflict ( Stefano et al. 2012 ; Tir and Stinnett 2012 ).

Nearly all these studies use datasets and cases from the past to say something about the future. However, the geographic distribution and intensity of weather events in the future (of rainfall, temperature) may not resemble past patterns ( Busby et al. 2012a ). The policy community is less constrained by data and can posit possible future scenarios. Thus, we see more efforts by the policy community to explore the security significance of unfolding events such as Arctic sea ice melt and interstate rivalry over access to resources ( Borgerson 2008 ). However, as Gleditsch argued, the future is not evidence for political scientists. He is generally dismissive of forecasting as akin to fortune telling ( Gleditsch 1998 ). That said, some studies, including Hendrix and Glaser and Burke et al. have exploited climate projections to inform estimates of future conflict ( Burke et al. 2009 ; Hendrix and Glaser 2007 ). Another study estimated potential conflict risk under different scenarios of future economic growth and various climate mitigation efforts ( Hegre et al. 2016 ). I have used both historic data on physical exposure and projections of future climate change to identify likely climate security hot spots in Africa (Busby et al. 2012a , 2012b , 2013 , 2014a , 2014b ).

32.3 Concluding Thoughts

We have some directions for where the field is and ought to be headed. There is rightfully more emphasis on indirect causal pathways between climate hazards and conflict through economic growth, migration, and disasters, with particular attention to food prices and agricultural production. Scholars have exploited better geo-referenced datasets to examine subnational conflict patterns and a variety of kinds of conflict. We are also seeing scholarship on regions other than Africa, including Asia and the Middle East. The best work seeks to specify the conditions under which climate-related hazards lead to particular kinds of conflict, distinguishing between kinds of states (such as between exclusive and inclusive institutions, states with stark group cleavages), kinds of contexts (such as between urban and rural areas), and kinds of hazards (such as swift onset versus slow onset). 17

As Hendrix (2016) suggests, it also time to revisit the earlier debate on the circumstances under which demographic and environmental stress lead to mass atrocities and other security outcomes. Since other forms of resource pressures such as poaching of wildlife and deforestation continue on a large scale, scholars of environment and security should also broaden their research beyond climate change.

Going forward, as responses to climate change take shape, there is the potential that measures to mitigate emissions and adapt to the consequences of climate change themselves may become a source of friction between and within states. These include whether countries meet their mitigation commitments, efforts to keep hydrocarbons in the ground, geo-engineering, support for clean energy, attempts to divert water or acquire foreign agricultural lands, as well as border fences. 18 All of these developments portend a rich research and challenging policy agenda going forward.

In what follows, issues such as conflicts related to water, fisheries, and timber are given short shrift. The environmental consequences of war itself are not discussed (cf. Chalecki 2010 ; Dalby 2010 ; Hendrix et al. 2016 ).

Malthus thought the rate of population growth would inexorably exceed the capacity of food production to expand, leading to boom–bust cycles of population growth and famine ( Malthus 1798 ).

Theisen largely could not replicate these findings with the original data or with better time series data ( Theisen, 2008 ).

An updated literature review found more support for abundance arguments than scarcity ones ( Koubi et al. 2013 ).

The venue for Kahl and Homer-Dixon’s rejoinders to Peluso and Watts was the report series from the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). Since 1994, ECSP has served as an important outlet for scholars interested in environment and security.

There is a different literature on water and conflict that finds interstate water wars have almost never occurred ( Wolf 1998 ).

See http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09626298/26/6

See http://jpr.sagepub.com/cgi/collection/special_issue_on_climate_change_and_conflict?page=2

See http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09626298/43

See also my 2008 paper in Security Studies for a more theoretical account of the ways climate change could pose a threat to US national security ( Busby 2008 ).

Ban Ki-Moon (2007) . Homer-Dixon argued climate factors were key to understanding the origins of the conflict while De Waal discounted their significance ( de Waal 2007 ; Homer-Dixon 2007 ).

The claim is that the drought was mismanaged by the Syrian state which led to rural–urban migration and those new migrants were among those who joined the early protests against Assad. His repression, in turn, escalated to violence and the formation of a violent rebellion ( Friedman 2013 ; Polk 2013 ; Gleick 2014 ).

Ciccone provided a critique of this methodology and suggested these findings disappear if one uses rainfall levels rather than growth rates in rainfall ( Ciccone 2011 ).

Meier et al. (2007) . See also Hendrix and Salehyan (2012) ; Salehyan and Hendrix (2014) .

Raleigh and Kniveton (2012) . For their part, Fjelde and von Uexkull found the opposite—that large negative deviations in rainfall in Africa were associated with more conflict ( Fjelde and von Uexkull 2012 ).

( Smith 2014 ). Buhaug has two pieces on food prices that conflict with Smith and with each other ( Wischnath and Buhaug 2014 ; Buhaug et al. 2015 . See also Hendrix and Brinkman 2013 ).

For a similar take, see Hendrix et al. (2016) .

Dabelko et al. (2013) .

Adger, W. N. , J. M. Pulhin , J., Barnett , G. D. Dabelko , U. Oswald Spring , C. H. Vogel . 2014 . Human Security. In C. B. Field , V. R. Barros , D. J. Dokken , K. J. Mach , M. D. Mastrandrea , T. E. Bilir , M. Chatterjee , K. L. Ebi , Y. O. Estrada , R. C. Genova , B. Girma , E. S. Kissel , A. N. Levy , S. MacCracken , P. R. Mastrandrea , and L. L. White (eds.), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects , pp. 755–91. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge and New York: IPCC.

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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies pp 457–463 Cite as

Environmental Security and Conflict

Suzette A. Haughton 3
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Introduction

Environmental security refers to the value humans place on the environment as a referent object of security and the risk that something bad can happen to it resulting from environmental change (Barnett 2007 ). Biswas ( 2011 ) makes the point that the environment is both threatened and vulnerable. States and people’s vulnerabilities increase with environmental degradation as well as climate change, and the environment-vulnerability nexus creates a real threat to human and state security (Biswas 2011 ).

Within the field of security studies, environmental security adds to the broadening and deepening of the concept of security (Collins 2016 ). It broadens security as it is a contemporary nontraditional human security matter – people’s survival depends on the environment and how it is threatened by environmental change or environmental degradation. The notion of environmental security also deepens the concept of security by extending it to include security of the natural...

Environmental Security
Environmental Degradation
Environmental Scarcity
Instability
The Toronto Project
The Zurich Project

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Haughton, S.A. (2023). Environmental Security and Conflict. In: Romaniuk, S.N., Marton, P.N. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74319-6_404

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Environmental security
Environmental security is environmental viability for life support, with three sub-elements: preventing or repairing military damage to the environment, preventing or responding to environmentally caused conflicts, and. protecting the environment due to its inherent moral value. It considers the abilities of individuals, communities or nations ...
Environmental Security: Concept and Implementation
Environmental security, a relatively new and still somewhat contentious concept, may be defined as the intersection of environmental and national security considerations at a national policy level. It may be understood as a result of several important trends. One, of course, is the breakdown of the bipolar geopolitical structure that ...
Essay On Environmental Security
Essay On Environmental Security. 1560 Words7 Pages. According to Dabelko, security is defined as "freedom from the risk of loss or damage to a thing that is important to survival and well-being" (Dabelko, 2009). As realists claim security is the major factor for survival and thus their main interest is to increase power.
How climate change will impact national security
Rising temperatures and intensifying weather due to climate change, along with the unlikelihood of meeting the 2030 emissions goals of the Paris Agreement, will exacerbate geopolitical tensions, social instability, and the need for humanitarian aid, according to a joint report by the U.S intelligence community last month. The National Intelligence Estimate lays out the likely security ...
PDF Environmental security: dimensions and priorities
environmental security. Environmental security has been described as a bundle of issues which involves the role that the environment and natural resources can play in peace and security, including environmental causes and drivers of conflict, environmental impacts of conflict, environmental recovery, and post-conflict peacebuilding.
Environmental Security
Environmental Security. J. Barnett, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009 There are various interpretations of environmental security, depending on how the environment and security are themselves understood.The concept is the product of the environmental movement and the changed strategic landscape at the end of the Cold War.
How Does Environmental Security Affect Sustainable Development? Essay
The Concept of Environmental Security. Environmental security is an interdisciplinary issue concerned with researching the natural environment and human activity in order to find out what hazards the latter creates for the former and what threats nature might pose to human security as a result and averting these hazards and threats (Khagram, Clark & Raad 2003 p. 291).
Environmental security
Environmental security emphasize that unsustainable human activities have resulted in environmental tribulations threatening life on Earth in various ways. These unsustainable activities have endangered availability of critical resources, renewable as well as nonrenewable. This concept is termed as "scarcity".
Environmental Security
The concept of environmental security views ecological processes and natural resources as sources or catalysts of conflict, barriers or limits to human well-being, or conversely, as the means to mitigate or resolve insecurity. Security over natural resources—particularly energy and increasingly water—seen in terms of territorial control ...
Reconsidering the Environment-Security Relationship
To reach a consensus on the securitization of the environment, there needs to be a focus on the relationship between the environment and pre-existing conceptions of security, on analytical, empirical and normative grounds, rather than attempting to redefine security as a whole. Reference List. Bulloch, John and Darwish, Adel. 1993.
Environmental Security?*
definitions of environmental security have focused on sustainable utilization and protection of * A Review Essay on the literature on environmental security, in particular Buzan et al. (1995), Kakonen (1994), Lodgaard & af Omas (1992), and Westing (1989). This article draws heavily on Dokken & Grager (1995).
PDF Is the Environment a National Security Issue?
International Security 20:2 | 36 This essay examines the proposition that global environmental degradation is a security threat to the United States. I focus on three distinct forms of connection between the environment and security, which I term the existential, the physical, and the political.
(PDF) IS THE ENVIRONMENT A SECURITY THREAT ...
the envi ronment as a threat to in dividual, national, or gl obal security has cre ated a new. agenda in the discourse of security studies. The increasing scope of international security now ...
Environmental Security
The chapter presents a critical genealogy of environmental security studies, with a particular emphasis on trends in scholarship over the past 25 years. At the heart of environmental security studies is a profound contradiction: while 'human transformation of the environment is a global-scale problem', and while humans are connected by ...
(PDF) What is Environmental Security
In this study, it will be argued that environmental security is a national security issue. Since environmental threats are different from classical security threats, it will be pointed out that environmental security is at least as important as national security in state governance based on human survival. Download Free PDF.
(PDF) Environmental Security
Ecosystem security comprises compliance, conservation, pollution prevention, restoration, and application of environmental security technology. It denotes the state of protection of the natural ...
Environmental Security Essay
Environmental Security Essay. The summer of 2012 was the worst drought the American Midwest had seen in decades, although irrigation has done much to modernize agriculture there is no substitute for rain. Crops nationwide withered under the heat of the merciless sun, the fate of those crops affected global populations until the following spring.
Environmental Security
This chapter assesses the connections between the environment and security by reviewing two waves of scholarship, the first mostly qualitative literature from the 1990s on the general links between environmental problems and conflict and the second generation of scholarship from the 2000s, much of it quantitative, on climate change and security ...
Environmental Security
According to Brown, Hammill & McLeman (2007: 1142), the increased attention on security and its relation to politics and environmental issues is inevitable as the new millennium progresses. Indeed, in the wake of the ozone issue, global environmental issues and security have incrementally increased in importance.
Environmental Security and Conflict
Environmental security refers to the value humans place on the environment as a referent object of security and the risk that something bad can happen to it resulting from environmental change (Barnett 2007).Biswas makes the point that the environment is both threatened and vulnerable.States and people's vulnerabilities increase with environmental degradation as well as climate change, and ...
Environmental Security: Climate Change and Prospects for ...
The Special Issue "Environmental Security: Climate Change and Prospects for Sustainable Development Goals" calls for papers around environmental security in the wake of climate change and the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Global warming is regarded as the greatest threat facing mankind.
Defining Environmental Security as a National Security Issue
Abstract. Defining Environmental Security as a National Security Issue Berna Aksoy Özcan Abstract In the 1990s, the relationship between security and the environment has been studied intensively ...
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