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Environmental security: concepts, challenges, and case studies

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T1 - Environmental security

T2 - concepts, challenges, and case studies

AU - Murray, Elisabeth Hope

A2 - Lanicci, John M.

A2 - Ramsay, James D.

N2 - Security threats today are increasingly complex, dynamic, and asymmetric, and can affect environmental factors like energy, water, and food supply. As a result, it is becoming evident that the traditional model of nation-state based security is incomplete, and that purely military capabilities, though necessary, are insufficient to protect the United States and other democracies from the array of threats that challenge liberty and the free flow of people and commerce. A more complete picture of modern national security requires a more complete integration of the question of environmental security.The purpose of text is to better address the many aspects of environmental security and to represent this major area of academic research in an introductory text format that can be used in the rapidly growing number of homeland security studies programs as well as related degree programs. The concepts, challenges, and case studies in this text vitally extended such curricula, giving students a deeper appreciation for the critical role environmental security plays in overall state security, as well as for our nation, our way of life, and indeed for the human race at large.

AB - Security threats today are increasingly complex, dynamic, and asymmetric, and can affect environmental factors like energy, water, and food supply. As a result, it is becoming evident that the traditional model of nation-state based security is incomplete, and that purely military capabilities, though necessary, are insufficient to protect the United States and other democracies from the array of threats that challenge liberty and the free flow of people and commerce. A more complete picture of modern national security requires a more complete integration of the question of environmental security.The purpose of text is to better address the many aspects of environmental security and to represent this major area of academic research in an introductory text format that can be used in the rapidly growing number of homeland security studies programs as well as related degree programs. The concepts, challenges, and case studies in this text vitally extended such curricula, giving students a deeper appreciation for the critical role environmental security plays in overall state security, as well as for our nation, our way of life, and indeed for the human race at large.

M3 - Edited Book/Anthology

SN - 9781944970413

BT - Environmental security

PB - American Meteorological Society

CY - Boston, USA

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Article contents

Environmental security and climate change.

• Simon Dalby Simon Dalby Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.168
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017
• This version: 30 June 2020
• Previous version

Environmental security focuses on the ecological conditions necessary for sustainable development. It encompasses discussions of the relationships between environmental change and conflict as well as the larger global policy issues linking resources and international relations to the necessity for doing both development and security differently. Climate change has become an increasingly important part of the discussion as its consequences have become increasingly clear. What is not at all clear is in what circumstances climate change may turn out to be threat multiplier leading to conflict. Earth system science findings and the recognition of the scale of human transformations of nature in what is understood in the 21st century to be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, now require environmental security to be thought of in terms of preventing the worst dangers of fragile states being unable to cope with the stresses caused by rapid environmental change or perhaps the economic disruptions caused by necessary transitions to a post fossil fueled economic system. But so far, at least, this focus on avoiding the worst consequences of future climate change has not displaced traditional policies of energy security that primarily ensure supplies of fossil fuels to power economic growth. Failure to make this transition will lead to further rapid disruptions of climate and add impetus to proposals to artificially intervene in the earth system using geoengineering techniques, which might in turn generate further conflicts from states with different interests in how the earth system is shaped in future. While the Paris Agreement on Climate Change recognized the urgency of tackling climate change, the topic has not become security policy priority for most states, nor yet for the United Nations, despite numerous policy efforts to securitize climate change and instigate emergency responses to deal with the issue. More optimistic interpretations of the future suggest possibilities of using environmental actions to facilitate peace building and a more constructive approach to shaping earth’s future.

• Anthropocene
• development
• earth system
• environment
• geoengineering
• planetary boundary
• safe operating system
• sustainability

Updated in this version

Updated references, enhanced discussions of security and political geography.

Environmental Security and Sustainable Development

The contemporary formulation of environmental security was effectively put on the international policy agenda by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in its 1987 report, Our Common Future . While the report is best remembered for its advocacy of sustainable development and its catalyzing role in shaping the agenda that led to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the so called “Earth Summit,” environmental security is specified in the report as the provision of the conditions necessary for sustainable development. Environmental security is also unlikely to be a possibility in the long-term future if sustainable development is not followed as an overarching economic priority. Thus, the two formulations mutually reinforced each other. Without environmental security sustainable development was unlikely to succeed because conflict and disruption would prevent sensible initiatives. Likewise, if sustainability wasn’t a policy priority, in the long run, ecological destruction would prevent its accomplishment.

While the exact trajectory of climate change wasn’t clear in the 1980s, and Our Common Future suggested that much more science was needed, it was noted as a significant issue that needed attention in formulating environmental security. Other matters, including the dangers of the cold war arms race, were highlighted; clearly nuclear military preparations were anathema to long-term survival and the possibilities of environmental security:

Perhaps the greatest threat to the Earth’s environment, to sustainable human progress, and indeed to survival is the possibility of nuclear war, increased daily by the continuing arms race and its spread to outer space. The search for a more viable future can only be meaningful in the context of a more vigorous effort to renounce and eliminate the development of means of annihilation. (WCED, 1987 , p. 35)

While the dangers of nuclear warfare and the possibilities of a nuclear winter disrupting climate patterns for years, or even decades, were on people’s minds in the 1980s (Sagan & Turco, 1990 ), environmental security was understood as a larger planetary concern needing attention and, implicitly, a very different formulation of security. “The time has come to break out of past patterns. Attempts to maintain social and ecological stability through old approaches to development and environmental protection will increase instability. Security must be sought through change” (WCED, 1987 , p. 250). Simultaneously, Our Common Future suggested that there were growing sources of environmental conflict where resource shortages fed into violence in many underdeveloped parts of the world. Wise use of renewable resources, to ensure their sustainable yields, was a key part of providing environmental security too. Quite how resource shortages were causing conflict wasn’t clearly specified in the report; this was simply assumed to be the case and assumed to be a situation that was getting worse. That there were numerous environmental problems in need of attention isn’t in doubt, but the assumption that scarcity was the cause of the difficulties went more or less unexamined.

Three decades later, as the science on climate change and the role of fossil fuel consumption in particular is highlighted as a key cause of global warming, it is clear that the problem that needs attention is not a matter of scarcity. While climate disruptions may cause local scarcities of water in particular, the problem with climate change is that there is too much fossil fuel, not too little, being used in the global economy. As climate change accelerates, security is increasingly a matter of infrastructure provision and vulnerabilities to extreme events (Dalby, 2009 ). Fossil fuel’s geographical distribution likewise has consequences for geopolitics and the conduct of climate policy, which does not make global coordination of climate change efforts easy (McGlade & Ekins, 2015 ). Renewable energy is widely dispersed and, given the lack of fossil fuels, access and transportation difficulties are much less likely to be a matter of geopolitical disputes (Overland, 2019 ). However, despite this, much of the discussion about climate change and security replicates the earlier discussion of the 1990s, on environmental causation of conflict, without focusing on the larger system transformation that climate change is driving and the consequences of that for security broadly understood.

This is changing, however, as discussions of climate risk and the need to rethink environmental contexts and interconnections in the global political system become clear, in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of 2015 , and the toll rises of casualties from storms, droughts, fires, and floods as a result of accelerating climate change. Earth system science, in its nascent stages when Our Common Future was being written, has progressed by leaps and bounds, and the necessity of thinking through human vulnerabilities, in what is now widely called the Anthropocene, has become clear to most researchers (Lewis & Maslin, 2018 ). This is not necessarily clear to many policy makers still working within traditional developmental frameworks and energy supply security agendas. The contrast between traditional energy security priorities with energy independence as top priority, for the United States in particular (Yergin, 2011 ), and climate change policy (Nyman, 2018 ), is especially stark in the Trump administration, a matter that highlights the importance of politics in deciding on priorities in security planning.

Our Common Future didn’t provide a precise definition of environmental security, but it clearly suggested that environmental stress was a cause of conflict and that sustainable development required stable environmental conditions to succeed. Hence, environmental security emerged as a policy goal despite the lack of a clear definition as to what it entailed. These themes subsequently shaped both the policy and scholarly agendas in the 1990s, engaging the relationships between environment and insecurity, widely understood, as well as the more specific research focus on environmental change causing conflict (Dalby, 2002 ). While scholarly and policy attention to environment temporarily receded in the early years of the 21st century , during the war on terror, climate concerns reactivated this discussion in updated form, especially in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005 , an event that raised numerous questions about human vulnerability and the capabilities of states to provide security for their citizens in the face of accelerating climate change.

Various formulations of climate security emerged (McDonald, 2013 ), and in parallel with the discussion in the 1990s, scholars set about trying to clarify the role of climate in causing conflict while simultaneously addressing how this new discussion of human vulnerabilities required updated formulations of security. Most recently, this research and the policy debate have been shaped by the findings of earth system science and emergent discussion of the policy implications of the Anthropocene era (Dalby, 2020 ). In all this, there is no commonly accepted definition of either environmental or climate security, beyond a general sense that predictable weather conditions are key to human flourishing, both directly in agricultural societies, and indirectly given the vulnerabilities of urban societies to infrastructural disruptions.

To explicate all this further, the rest of this article looks back briefly to the discussion in the 1990s concerning environmental change and conflict, then observes the reinvention of the environmental causation arguments and their links to security in the middle of the first decade of the new millennium. Subsequent sections deal with the emergence of the larger earth system science discussion, which documents the scale and urgency of dealing with climate change, energy security that frequently contradicts climate policy, the emergence of climate risk as a policy focus, the discussion of climate securitization, and possibilities of planetary geoengineering; finally, the chapter draws some tentative conclusions about future research directions.

Environment and Conflict

While Our Common Future assumed relationships between resource shortages and conflict, quite how this relationship actually worked wasn’t clear in the report. Two major research projects were undertaken in the 1990s to address the question of how environmental change might generate conflict, in what conditions, where, and with what implications for policy. Thomas Homer-Dixon ( 1999 ) led a team of researchers that investigated a number of case studies, including South Africa, Rwanda, Pakistan, and elsewhere to trace the casual pathways between environmental change and what he termed acute conflict. One of the initial problems turned out to be that security was such an imprecise term that it wasn’t practical as a research agenda if causal relationships were the key to the investigation. Hence, this project focused more narrowly on acute conflict, rather than security more generally. Guenter Baechler ( 1999 ) led a parallel series of investigations that more closely looked at matters of development and discrimination in terms of access to environmental resources in rural areas.

In very broad terms, both research efforts concluded that environmental matters alone weren’t key to predicting conflict. While they were obviously important in numerous situations, key intervening variables included historical patterns of grievance and conflict as well as the competence and legitimacy of existing governmental structures. Scarcity wasn’t obviously a causal factor, and clearly it emerged that in crisis conditions elites often acted to enhance their power and control over resources, a matter that accelerated the marginalization of rural communities. Maldevelopment in Baechler’s ( 1998 ) terms was a key problem and, as such, policies that dealt with the perverse consequences of rural transformation and focused on practical matters in particular contexts were key to sustainable economic activities that were likely to avoid conflict. Elite appropriation of resources was also a theme in Colin Kahl’s ( 2006 ) detailed field-based studies of Kenya and the Philippines. This finding is broadly in parallel with the political ecology literature that has long investigated the power relations in rural transformations linked to development and economic change (Peluso & Watts, 2001 ).

Simultaneously, another series of research efforts were looking to the role of resources in civil wars and larger scale conflict in the Global South. Here, the discussion suggested that control over extraction and export of resources, including timber, oil, diamonds, and coltan, was a key to understanding patterns of violence in the Global South (Bannon & Collier, 2003 ). This is a long-standing pattern in traditional geopolitics, where rivalries over access to resources is a cause of conflict, and in cases such as the Japanese entry into the Second World War, major warfare too (Le Billon, 2013 ). Controlling resource streams and the revenues that they generate may be a way to power and wealth in poor areas that is much more tempting than waiting for long-term economic development to enrich a society. This suggests that local cases of resource abundance may be much more important than scarcity as causes of conflict generation (Le Billon, 2005 ). But it is important to note that most of the resources in these discussions concerning diamonds, minerals, and petroleum, in particular, are not strictly environmental matters. Hence, the discussion of resource curses, Dutch disease, and related resource economics issues are often tangential to environmental security matters.

These studies all suggest in one way or another that theories of locally generated violence as the source of environmental conflict are inadequate; clearly, the larger global economy and the political economy of resource supplies is key to explaining conflict in particular locations, although the causal link is frequently indirectly environmental, at best. Clearly too, while war is related to famine and frequently involves the use of food as a weapon, starving people are usually far too busy trying to find food to initiate large scale conflict despite the practicalities of violence often involved in these situations (Watts, 2013 ). Food riots are frequently urban phenomena emphasizing the importance of economics in insecurity, but large-scale insurrections are at best indirectly related to resource scarcities. As the Arab spring phenomenon suggested global food prices matter; rapid increases in these are often the trigger for political unrest; but environmental matters are indirectly rather than directly involved here as a cause of conflict (Homer-Dixon et al., 2015 ).

In terms of wider interpretations of environmental security, it was also clear in the 1990s that matters of pollution, food shortages, inadequate nutrition, and lack of safe drinking water were substantial hazards to populations in many places. These concerns were part of the larger discussion of human vulnerability (Adger, 2006 ) and human security that incorporated environmental matters into its overarching formulation of the dangers faced by the poorest parts of humanity that threatened their prospects for development (Adger et al., 2014 ). Environmental security in these terms is compromised by many factors, not just those related to overt conflict (Floyd & Matthew, 2013 ); the discussion of specifically environmental security spills over into larger concerns with human security broadly understood (O’Brien, Wolf, & Sygna, 2013 ). Both the narrow version of conflict-related environmental change and the broader understanding of human security having an environmental component fed into the policy discussion of sustainable development.

Climate and Conflict

The failure of the American state to deal effectively with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, in 2005 , dramatically increased the policy attention given to the matter of vulnerabilities to climate change. In 2007 , the discussion once again found its way into policy debates in the United States and the United Kingdom (Mabey, 2007 ) with a number of high-profile publications coinciding with the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate assessment and the controversy over Al Gore’s documentary movie An Inconvenient Truth , which shared a Nobel prize with the IPCC and won an Oscar. Both the CNA Corporation ( 2007 ) and the Centre for Security and International Studies (Campbell, Gulledge, McNeill, Podesta, & Ogden, 2007 ) published reports on national security and climate change in 2007 , to be followed soon by the German Advisory Board on Climate Change ( 2008 ) and the US Army War College analysis of national security and climate change (Pumphrey, 2008 ).

A key formulation in this literature in the United States was the idea of climate change as a threat multiplier (CNA Military Advisory Board, 2014 ), something that added to other sources of instability, and in light of the focus on terrorism, a potential source of discontent and terrorist recruitment. Hence this was seen as an issue for national security, and something worth thinking through in terms of long-term strategy. It once again raised the question of the causal links between environmental change, this time explicitly as a result of climate change induced weather variability, and conflict generation. An updated formulation suggested that climate was better understood as a catalyst of conflict (CNA Military Advisory Board, 2014 ). In parallel, the American military became concerned that storms and rising sea levels might render its facilities vulnerable (Briggs & Matejova, 2019 ); a decade before, Tyndall Airforce Base in Florida was badly damaged by hurricane action in 2018 . Vulnerabilities of facilities and the potential for growing interventions to deal with disaster relief and insurgencies aggravated by climate change made climate a matter for military attention regardless of the lack of interest from the Bush, and subsequently the Trump administration in Washington (Klare, 2019 ).

These concerns generated a renewed research focus on environmental conflict and revived the 1990s discussions as to the appropriate frameworks for analysis and methods to investigate political consequences of climate change. A research literature emerged addressing both the empirical studies and policy implications with some quantitative analyses suggesting a clear indication that weather events and larger scale climate change do cause violent conflict (Hsiang & Burke, 2014 ; Hsiang, Meng, & Cane, 2011 ). But other research produced results that are much less certain on connections between civil wars and climate (Buhaug, 2015 ), suggesting that the empirical evidence about such things as drought causing conflict is less than consistent or less than clear (Theisen, Holtermann, & Buhaug, 2012 ). Special issues of Political Geography in 2007 and in 2014 and the Journal of Peace Research in 2012 (see Gleditsch, 2012 ) have generated both empirical investigations and methodological disputes about how to tackle the relationships between climate change and conflict. In Africa, where many of these studies are done, detailed research doesn’t obviously link climate to large scale conflict (O’Loughlin et al., 2012 ). A key part of the methodological debate here in terms of whether large studies are what is required, or whether, given the large variation of social and geographical circumstances over which climate change occurs, data aggregation across diverse situations is in fact useful (Buhaug, 2015 ; Busby, 2018 ; Ide, Link, Scheffran, & Schilling, 2016 ).

These findings are sometimes complicated by the inclusion of large-scale historical events and more contemporary cases as well as their inclusion of a variety of scales from individual acts of aggression all the way up to climate as a factor in civilizational collapse (Hsiang, Burke, & Miguel, 2013 ). Historical studies linking up with new scientific analysis of climate records suggest very clearly that the period of the little ice age, especially in the 17th century , when agricultural production and food supplies were severely compromised in many parts of the world, is related to wars and political conflict (Parker, 2013 ). Similar investigations of the decline of the Western Roman Empire suggest that climate, and in this case disease, were key factors in these historical events (Harper, 2017 ). But great care has to be taken to generalize from these past events to draw conclusions about present trends given the sheer scale of transformations in the global economy over the last few generations, and the emergence of international institutions of aid and governance.

While some large statistical studies claim there is a relationship between climate and conflict, detailed empirical work on the ground repeatedly suggests that if there is such a relationship it is relatively weak in comparison to issues of development and governance (Selby, 2014 ). Focusing on livelihood issues and historical trajectories in particular places suggests specific local factors are crucially important in understanding relationships of violence (Deligiannis, 2012 ). There are numerous difficulties with data sets, distinguishing dependent and independent variables, universal causation claims, and the scales involved (Meierding, 2016a ). Likewise, difficulties occur in terms of how media reports code events, whether civil wars are the focus or more general outbreaks of violence, the scale at which events register in these sets, given that national aggradation over large states may produce spurious correlations, and their completeness as a record of political conflict (Buhaug, 2015 ).

Some quantitative analyses focusing on Africa have suggested that there is a relationship between warming and civil war in Africa (Burke, Miguel, Satyanath, Dykema, & Lobell, 2009 ), but detailed investigation of the statistical claims seems to suggest that the relationships between conflict and environmental change are anything but clear, especially in the case of Eastern Africa (Raleigh & Kniveton, 2012 ). The scholarly research on this theme comes to diverse conclusions. “Sweeping generalizations have undermined a genuine understanding of any climate–conflict link, whereas cumulative results from the numerous studies of individual communities are difficult to summarize” (O’Loughlin et al., 2012 , p. 18344). The finer points of the methodological debate are beyond the scope of this chapter (see Bretthauer, 2017 ), but efforts to integrate different research methods are obviously important to get greater clarity on which connections are most important (van Baalen & Mobjork, 2018 ). While rural disruptions are clearly a matter influenced by weather (Busby, 2018 ), the question as to whether distress turns to conflict relates to the political and social circumstances in particular cases, and the particular ways that rural political economy channels social change into conflict, migration, or collaboration (Ide et al., 2016 ). Nonetheless, despite the lack of clarity about results, this literature has fed into policy analyses of climate risks and the need to consider conflict risks as a matter of foreign policy in Europe (Detges, 2017 ), and in the United States (Werrell & Femia, 2017 ).

A noteworthy attempt to resolve some of the conflicting claims in the empirical discussions by a process of expert elicitation among the key researchers appeared in Nature (Mach et al., 2019 ). This synthesis suggests that four drivers of conflict are especially important in subnational contexts: low socioeconomic development, low capabilities of the state, intergroup inequality (for example, ethnic differences across groups), and recent history of violent conflict. What is unclear is the importance of climate variability, although there is agreement that further climate change will amplify conflict risks. Much of this is simply because, to date, climate disruptions have been small relative to other conflict drivers. Nonetheless, this research effort continues because “Given that conflict has pervasive detrimental human, economic, and environmental consequences, climate-conflict linkages—even if small—would markedly influence the social costs of carbon and decisions to limit future climate change” (Mach et al., 2019 ). The concerns about climate change are about future possibilities, which climate projections suggest will be severe for most societies (Steffen & Rockstrom, 2018 ), but there is no agreement in the scholarly literature that there is a substantial empirical record of this so far in the 21st century . In the policy discussions that draw on this work, there is considerable concern that climate change induced conflict will change the geostrategic situation in dangerous and unpredictable ways, not least as a result of extrapolations from the war in Syria.

Multiple accounts suggested that one of the causes of the Syrian civil war was the migration by unemployed farmers from drought stricken eastern areas to Syrian cities (Gleick, 2014 , Kelley, Mohtadi, Cane, Seager, & Kushnir, 2015 ; Werrell, Femia, & Sternberg, 2015 ). If climate change had induced the drought, which in turn removed agricultural livelihoods from rural areas, and these people, upset with the failure of the government to assist them protested then, so the argument went, here is a case of climate-induced conflict. Careful subsequent analysis of the case and the evidence on which it is based cast considerable doubt on the whole situation, both as to whether climate change had caused the drought in 2007 and subsequent years, and whether the protestors who were attacked by state security forces included substantial numbers of displaced farm workers (Selby, Dahi, Frolich, & Hulme, 2017 ). While rural distress in Syria clearly happened in those years (Daoudy, 2020 ), the causal link via formulations of migration and political protest all the way through to the subsequent civil war is difficult to establish (Ide, 2018 ; Selby, 2018 ). The violent suppression of protest would seem to be key to subsequent events, and the history of regime violence against protests is nothing new in Syria.

Overall, it may be more important to inquire into how large-scale processes of globalization have played out in the region and how the responses of particular regimes to the ongoing warfare since 9/11 have shaped political rivalries (Swain & Jägerskog, 2016 ). In these terms, the role of oil in geopolitical competition is important too, and American intervention in particular is a key factor in the larger patterns of violence. That said, even if so-called oil wars , to gain access to specific supplies, may be overrated as a direct cause of war (Meierding, 2016b ), there is a long history of conflict around oil in the Middle East in particular (Bichler & Nitzan, 2004 ). Now global food markets and climate disruptions are adding additional complications to this pattern. In terms of causal factors relating violence and change 21st century events are heavily influenced by the global economy and multiple interconnected crises in the political architecture of the international system (Homer-Dixon et al., 2015 ).

The Anthropocene

The Syrian case also poses the question as to how much the drought might have been caused or aggravated by anthropogenic climate change. The question of attribution, as it has come to be known, in terms of either the increased likelihood or the severity of damaging weather events (Kirchmeier-Young, Gillett, Zwiers, Cannon, & Anslow, 2019 ), raises issues of responsibility and hence liability, as well potential conflicts if victims of increased storm activity and other climate-change related disruptions seek recompense for their suffering (Byers, Franks, & Gage, 2017 ). As critical scholars have emphasized, as extreme events escalate, people in the Global South in particular, who had very little to do with causing climate change, are its victims. Hence climate justice is a key part of geopolitical discourse, even if representatives of states that have caused the bulk of climate change downplay it, and repeatedly refuse to comprehensively discuss loss and damage as part of international climate change negotiations (Chaturvedi & Doyle, 2015 ).

All of which is even more complicated by the fact that climate change is but one of the phenomena in play as human actions transform ecosystems in most parts of the earth system. Earlier discussions of global change (Steffen et al., 2004 ) have fed into what is known as earth system science and changed our understanding of how planet Earth works. The scale of human activities suggests that we live in new circumstances, in a planetary system that we are remaking drastically and quickly, so much so that it is widely accepted that we live in a new geological epoch named the Anthropocene (Lewis & Maslin, 2018 ).

This science provides at least some of the answers to the questions raised in Our Common Future concerning the trajectory of climate change and other environmental factors. Prominent among the formulations in this new Earth System Science is the suggestion that the Holocene period of the last ten thousand years provided conditions within which we know humanity can flourish (Davies, 2016 ). All of human history has occurred since the last glaciation, a period of relative stability in the planetary climate that has allowed agriculture to develop and has provided predictable conditions for complex economies to persist over long periods. During this time human actions have dramatically transformed landscapes by removing forests and changing habitats and species mixes in most of the ecologically productive terrestrial ecosystems (Ellis, 2018 ). The impact of European colonization linked the world into a global capitalist economy.

Most recently, in the period since the middle of the 20th century , now known as the great acceleration (McNeill & Engelke, 2016 ), earlier fossil fuel-powered industry has been dramatically expanded by petroleum-powered globalization. This has involved the vast increase in the use of fertilizers, the introduction of dangerous chlorofluorocarbons and other things into the system, the widespread use of plastics and concrete to change habitats and modes of living, and the diversion of much of the fresh water systems of the planet due to dams, irrigation, and urban water systems. The planet is increasingly an artificial entity due to the expansion of this “technosphere,” which now measures in trillions of tons of material (Zalesiewicz et al., 2017 ).

In earth system science terms, the period of the Holocene provided a “safe operating space” for humanity, a set of conditions within which we know humanity could flourish (Rockstrom et al., 2009 ). Doing so required that the earth system operate within a number of key “planetary boundaries,” beyond which dramatic disruptions not previously known in human history would result (Steffen et al., 2015 ). In contrast to the Holocene period, the previous million years witnessed a series of glacial periods in what effectively was a lengthy ice age marked by brief warmer “inter-glacial” periods. Current trajectories suggest that we are heading toward a hothouse earth pathway, where rapid and accelerating climate change will be the norm (Steffen & Rockstrom, 2018 ).

This trajectory will further disrupt historical ecological systems and agriculture on land, and will, through pollution, warming, and acidification of the oceans, damage oceanic ecologies fundamentally. As life is primarily an oceanic phenomenon this has profound consequences for all of life, not just humanity; this is the new context of rapid planetary change that we face in the Anthropocene (Angus, 2016 ). Environmental security at the largest scale now requires policies that lead to a “stabilized earth” system, one not too far from the conditions that pertained in the Holocene (Steffen & Rockstrom, 2018 ). The alternative “hothouse earth” pathway offers no indications that civilization can function in conditions of ongoing drastic disruptions, a theme that has received widespread popular commentary (Wallace-Wells, 2019 ).

Risks, Fragility and Adaptation

Early in 2019 , the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation that didn’t mince words on the scale of the current transformation:

The accelerating deployment of renewables has set in motion a global energy transformation that will have profound geopolitical consequences. Just as fossil fuels have shaped the geopolitical map over the last two centuries, the energy transformation will alter the global distribution of power, relations between states, the risk of conflict, and the social, economic and environmental drivers of geopolitical instability. (Global Commission, 2019 , p. 12).

This is important, as climate is increasingly being discussed in terms of risks. Mabey, Gulledge, Finel, and Silverthorne ( 2011 ) offered a discussion of climate security in terms of risk analysis, suggesting that, because this formulation is both insightful and familiar to security planners, it should be efficacious in security policy circles. However, while they suggested that risk analysis is useful, they did emphasize a key point that frequently gets lost in the discussion. Normal risk assessments work with a scale that has high probability, low impact events on one end and low probability high risk events on the other. This is not the situation faced by climate analysts (Ruttinger, 2017 ). The present trajectory is clearly leading to high probability high impact futures, and this requires careful thinking about what risks, where and when, need attention in security planning. Focusing on water issues in particular, it is clear that matters of infrastructure and the political economy of access to supplies is key to insecurity, and hence a crucial part of the relationship between climate change and insecurities in particular places (Zografos, Goulden, & Kallis, 2014 ). Likewise, cooperation across international boundaries is important in water management, and cooperation is necessary to effectively deal with extreme events and supply disruptions; at least so far, the vast majority of cases of cross-boundary water difficulties have generated cooperative efforts rather that conflict (Dinar & Dinar, 2017 ).

A report on “A New Climate for Peace,” presented to the G7 meetings in Germany in 2015 , identified seven “compound fragility risks” to states in coming decades as climate change stresses weak states beyond what they may be able to cope with effectively. These risks encompassed: local resource competition,; livelihood insecurity and migration, extreme weather events, volatile food prices and provision, transboundary water management, sea-level rise and coastal degradation, and notably, concern that climate policies may have unintended consequences. This final point draws on studies suggesting that, if adaptation strategies don’t think about specific local conditions carefully, they may aggravate injustices or generate responses that make climate adaptation more difficult. These “backdraft effects” (Dabelko, Herzer, Null, Parker, & Sticklor, 2013 ) may “boomerang” (Swatuk & Wirkus, 2018 ) on aid programs and enhance insecurities, especially where the political economy of climate adaptation perpetuates traditional development efforts relying on engineering projects that fail to take ecological and political conditions in fragile states into account (Sovacool & Linner, 2016 ).

Noting that geopolitical rivalries remain a major problem in the international system, Mobjork, Smith, and Ruttinger ( 2016 ) emphasized the importance of managing them peacefully to facilitate effective climate actions. Similar concerns have been expressed by US AID concerning the risks of climate change and fragile states where “threat multipliers” may enhance the consequences of climate disruptions (Moran, et al., 2018 ; Null & Risi, 2016 ). These considerations have been brought to larger audiences in the documentary movie The Age of Consequences and in the TV series “Years of Living Dangerously.” As with earlier efforts, including the ENVSEC initiative (Hardt, 2018 ), there remains the difficulty with these formulations that focus on the dangers of instability in the Global South, but in the process focus on the symptoms of climate change rather than the causes in metropolitan consumption of fossil fuels (Dalby, 2013 ). This is not to deny the complex consequences of climate change in rural underdeveloped regions that need urgent attention, but the first task in dealing with climate change is the rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels, and this is something that the affluent consumers of the world need to attend to, especially as the social costs of climate change are mounting in affluent states, too (Ricke, Drouet, Caldeira, & Tavoni, 2018 ).

Invoking a universal climate crisis, where everyone is equally affected or capable of dealing with the consequences, or focusing just on its symptoms rather than causes is to misconstrue the geopolitics of environmental security (Chaturvedi & Doyle, 2015 ). This is especially so when Malthusian fears of growing African populations and climate migration are fed into the policy discourse (Hartmann, 2014 ). In so far as climate migration is an issue, much of the dislocation is within states, and while climate is a factor in long-distance migration, disentangling it from political and economic processes is difficult. The World Bank has estimated that as many as 2.8% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America may be forced to move as a result of slow onset climate change (Rigaud et al., 2018 ). While these are large absolute numbers, relative to the dynamics of urbanization and economic change in these regions, they are relatively small amounts. How states respond to cross-border distress migration is one of the key themes that the revival of xenophobic geopolitics poses for sustainable development and effective climate adaptation strategies; the past cases of closing borders to prevent migration from disasters presents alarming precedents (Smith, 2007 ).

Geoengineering and Conflict?

Given the very slow response to increasingly clear indications of rising dangers caused by climate change, discussions of the possibilities of artificially cooling the earth have emerged. Technical fixes to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface include increasing cloud cover by spraying seawater into the lower atmosphere, and most popular, mimicking the cooling effect of volcano eruptions by injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere (National Research Council, 2015 ). While these might be effective in temporarily reducing insolation, their most articulate advocates make it clear this is a really bad idea that only makes sense as a last-resort temporary measure to buy time while energy systems are converted away from fossil fuel use (Keith, 2013 ). This provides one form of environmental security in that it, if it were to work successfully, it might keep earth’s overall temperature within, to use the earth science system terms, the safe operating space of a stabilized earth system.

While such interventions might work to reduce temperatures, they are also likely to have further largely unpredictable consequences, such as changing the patterns of monsoon rainfall in Asia. Hence, as critics argue, such initiatives need to be avoided and sensible climate mitigation strategies followed instead (Hamilton, 2013 ). If, however, geoengineering efforts were undertaken and disruptions of the monsoon happen, with all the likely consequences for crop production in a region that is populated by more than half of humanity, the disruptions would be severe. If in these circumstances, one state’s leaders were to blame another’s geoengineering efforts for the disruptions and issue ultimatums to cease and desist using such technologies, the possibilities of major conflict loom. While no one took Iranian President Ahmadinejad seriously when he claimed, in 2011 , that European states had been using weather modification techniques to cause a drought in Iran, the precedent is troubling (Dalby & Moussavi, 2017 ).

While overt conflict might not result from geoengineering, the discussion of the potential consequences now includes investigations into possibilities of countermeasures (Parker, Horton, & Keith, 2018 ), a situation that implies, and as has been suggested repeatedly, that security in these terms can only be provided by careful agreements and cooperative efforts by governments and corporations who might actually produce these technologies and use them (Burns & Strauss, 2013 ). The continued failure of the international system to grapple effectively with climate change makes it increasingly unlikely that the planet will be maintained within the aspirational targets of 1.5 or 2 °Celsius average heating above pre-industrial levels (IPCC, 2018 ). As heating accelerates in coming decades, it seems increasingly likely that efforts to artificially cool the planet will be attempted whether or not there is widespread consensus among the global community. The possibilities of unilateral action may be over rated, not least because of the possibilities of countermeasures by other actors, but the potential for conflict over diverging priorities and unclear causal mechanisms in the earth system is, potentially, a major security nightmare for policy makers. As such, environmental security is far more likely to be provided by rapid decarbonization than efforts to deal with the effects of failure to do so.

Securitizing Climate Change

At the largest scale, questions of climate disruptions link up with historical discussions of the causes of major events in human history (Harper, 2017 ; Parker, 2013 ). These offer useful lessons for the future of civilization and the possibilities of humanity causing either the collapse of civilization (Diamond, 2005 ), or, in worst-case scenarios, our own extinction (Wallace-Wells, 2019 ). So far, climate change and the larger discussion of the Anthropocene have not shifted the priorities of macro securitization from traditional concerns with nuclear weapons, state rivalries, or terrorism (Buzan & Waever, 2009 ). Nightmare scenarios loom of the future of a planet where the long-term legacy of contemporary actions is a “plutocene” (Glikson, 2017 ), as in a geological epoch where future strata are marked by plutonium as a consequence of future nuclear wars, whether directly caused by climate disruptions or other Anthropocene events, if the new geological circumstances are not addressed quickly.

In terms of securitization theory, linking climate to security has had a mixed success in gaining policy traction (Floyd, 2010 ); the issue is complex, and while climate is an existential threat to many entities, the complexity of the matter defies easy encapsulation in traditional modes of security thinking (Mayer, 2012 ). In the United Kingdom, under the Blair and Brown governments, it was understood to be a policy issue that mattered (Rothe, 2016 ). Elsewhere, in case studies dealing with Germany, Mexico, and Turkey, the difficulties of getting coherent narratives and national attention suggest how complex the issue is, not least because of the various referent objects—individuals, states, and the planet itself—that are invoked (Diez, von Lucke, &Wellman, 2016 ). So far, at least, efforts to make climate change a security priority have had mixed results in the United States. While President Obama invoked the language of security in making climate a security priority, climate policy has had to deal with opposition from the fossil fuel lobby, and subsequently, the enthusiastic endorsement of fossil fuel exploitation by the Trump administration. The sheer complexity of American politics and the conflicting dynamics between interventionist and de-regulationist tendencies in the neoliberal state make for contradictory trajectories (MacNeil, 2017 ).

If climate change is understood to be a global security issue (Goldstein, 2016 ), then the obvious focus for attention to this matter is the United Nations security council. This body has considered the matter of climate security a number of times but hasn’t generated the necessary momentum to deal with climate as a matter of urgency (Scott & Ku, 2018 ). This is not least because the permanent members include the largest carbon dioxide producers, and the sense of urgency generated in scientific analyses of the current trajectory don’t translate into political responses when fossil fuel industry influence is so widespread. Activists have been making the case for emergency action on climate for many years (Spratt & Sutton, 2009 ), invoking metaphors of wartime, like mobilizations, as necessary to tackle the scale of the problem with the necessary speed (McKibben, 2016 ), but so far with little effective traction on international institutions.

The major achievement of the 2015 Paris Agreement and its rapid acceptance by most of the major states is in fact the agreement that this predicament is real and that it needs to be dealt with in coming years by most of humanity. That said, the contradictions between universal aspiration and national commitments remain to be resolved (Höhne et al., 2017 ). In Bruno Latour’s ( 2018 ) terms, all politics is now somehow related to climate, either as a focal point for attempts at collective action, or as a series of policies mobilized to resist these, as in the case of climate denial efforts and fossil fuel company obstruction of climate change initiatives. It also requires focusing on where international investments go, to coal powered generation stations, or into efforts to restore and more effectively manage forests so they can sequester carbon (Gaffney, Crona, Dauriach, & Galaz, 2018 ).

Keeping the earth system within its safe operating space, which is now the key to environmental security, requires rapid action (IPCC, 2018 ). Environmental security can’t be provided by violent actions after disruptions. It needs to be built into planning and preparation for likely disruptions that are already in the system, but it simultaneously needs to work on the rapid elimination of fossil fuel-based combustion everywhere. Clearly environmental management efforts, the use of parks, pollution prevention, and sustainable yield strategies for resource management alone are not adequate to the tasks facing security planners. In Peter Dauvergne’s ( 2016 ) terms, this “environmentalism of the rich” has failed to deal with either the colonial legacies of destruction of indigenous peoples and their places, or the disruption of numerous ecosystems due to the resource extractions and pollution generated by the scale of the global economy. Neither can traditional modes of “fortress conservation,” using armed forces to keep local populations away from traditional territories to supposedly protect them (Duffy, 2016 ). Similarly, assumptions that isolated regions can somehow protect societies from larger environmental disruptions are premised on a failure to understand the interconnections in the earth system and a nostalgia for inappropriate national containment strategies based on territorial sovereignty (White, 2014 ).

Earth’s Future

In so far as peaceful cooperation among the great powers occurs and violence is contained to relatively small areas that are disrupted by climate shocks, the possibilities for environmental peacemaking add another dimension to the policy discussion (Swain & Öjendal, 2018 ). While regional local peace initiatives, peace parks, and peace building around shared waterways and cooperative resource management are useful initiatives, they are all subject to large scale collaborative efforts of the major powers to slow and eventually stop climate change. All this requires a recognition of the new context of the Anthropocene, where caring for ecosystems rather than extracting resources from them is key to security provision on the largest scale (Harrington & Shearing, 2017 ). It is about more than plans to make societies resilient (Grove, 2018 ); what is needed now is transformative thinking to prepare for the disruptions that are inevitably coming, even if decarbonization does eventually lead to a stabilized earth system in future (Kareiva & Fuller, 2016 ).

In many rural areas in the global economy, however, corporations and military agencies continue to expand their control over resources at the sometimes violent expense of local people anxious to maintain traditional modes of livelihood and control over their territories (Buxton & Hayes, 2016 ). Activists who protest often get killed in the process, while international meddling gets the blame (Matejova, Parker, & Dauvergne, 2018 ). As Our Common Future suggested, in 1987 , many of these practices will have to change if sustainability is to be the priority. How to transition to more ecologically sensible modes of economy is now a key theme in the discussions of environment, security, and peace (Brauch, Oswald Spring, Grin, & Scheffran, 2016 ). The problem with climate change in particular, and the Anthropocene in general, is precisely that what has been secured so far is what is now endangering environmental security for all in coming decades (Dalby, 2020 ). Regional efforts and environmental peacebuilding will undoubtedly be useful, especially in areas where major rivers matter to multiple states, as in the case of the Himalayas (Huda & Ali, 2018 ), but these efforts will only work in the long run if the planet avoids the hothouse pathway of runaway climate change.

The states that are most obviously vulnerable to climate are the low-lying, small island states that face immediate questions of survival, and many other states in the Global South that are vulnerable to agricultural disruptions caused by storms and droughts, but lack the means to make their existential plight a matter of concern for the larger international community (Chaturvedi & Doyle, 2015 ). While climate change may be the largest existential crisis facing human kind, the United Nations has not formulated an effective response (Scott & Ku, 2018 ); a global problem still faces the persistent political problems of multiple jurisdictions and politics, where relative gains are still valued in international politics despite the likely disasters that temporary benefits may confer on the collectivity in the longer term (Harris, 2013 ). The Paris Agreement of 2015 does recognize the necessity of dealing with climate change but still relies on states to craft plans to tackle greenhouse gas emissions without any overarching authority to enforce compliance, even with the limited ambitions states have so far shown in dealing with this issue (Falkner, 2016 ). Climate has so far been understood as a development issue and a matter of inter-state rules, the “law between and development within” approach in Conca’s ( 2015 ) formulation. In turn, this raises the question of whether the United Nations might have better success in thinking about climate if it was considered in terms of its functions to protect human rights and its peace building and conflict prevention roles.

More specifically, this requires thinking about survival as a matter of economic production and shifting from fossil-fueled modes to more renewable ones. In terms of geopolitics, it requires a shift, from assumptions of competitive antagonisms as the basic premise for international politics and security problems, to assumptions of the possibilities of resilient peace as an attainable goal for the United Nations (Barnett, 2019 ). As Conca ( 2019 ) suggests, focusing on the consequences of climate change in such places as the Lake Chad basin and Iraq, where climate migrants and instability are linked to environmental change, if not directly to conflict, may facilitate actions by the United Nations that might accrue to a larger general series of policy initiatives.

Future Research

In light of the growing discussion of security in the Anthropocene (Harrington & Shearing, 2017 ), to do so will also require more fundamental rethinking of environmental security to focus more explicitly on the ecological functioning of the planetary system, a matter of “ecological security” in McDonald’s ( 2018 ) terms, referring to a functional earth system, rather than simply taking the environment as a source of resources, or the contextual backdrop for human affairs. The implications of this new Anthropocene context suggest the need for further research looking at the interconnections between places in the earth system, matters sometimes now encompassed in the literature of environmental geopolitics (O’Lear, 2018 , 2020 ), as well as more work in the emerging field of environmental peacebuilding. This latter work focuses on practical measures to use environmental cooperation as a tool for post-conflict reconstruction (Krampe, 2017 ) and the promotion of quality peace conditions.

Nonetheless, unless this new framing has a comprehensive rethinking of rural ecologies and their interconnections into the global economy, there remain dangers that many of the problems with traditional development projects may stymie innovations (Ide, 2020 ). How to avoid these in working on climate adaptations (Sovacool & Linner, 2016 ) is clearly a key theme for new research on ecology and security in the next stage of the Anthropocene. Research in the future must focus on transition strategies (Brauch et al., 2016 ), especially in energy systems (Looney, 2017 ) and on how to accelerate social transformations (Linner & Wibeck, 2019 ), rather than looking to traditional themes of security studies concerned with conflict, war, and its prevention. As Our Common Future suggested, at the beginning of the environmental security discussion, security has to be sought in terms of change.

Digital Resources

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This site contains many of the published IPCC reports online.
• Earth System Governance . A key network of social science research on the earth system.
• Center for Climate and Security . A clearing house for military and policy materials linking climate and security.
• Planetary Security Initiative . A consortium of international think tanks researching climate and related security issues directed by the Netherlands Foreign Ministry.
• Real Climate . Where climate scientists discuss contemporary scientific developments and their human implications.
• United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Environmental Outlook Programme provides links to the latest GEO documents that summarize the changing conditions of the biosphere.
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Environmental Change and Security Program hosts the a key online source in the New Security Beat Blog

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Environmental Security: A Case Study of Climate Change

• Elizabeth L. Chalecki
• Published 2002
• Environmental Science, Political Science

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Environmental Security: A Case Study of Climate Change

Published: August 2002

Authors: Elizabeth Chalecki

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Climate change and security risks

In recent years, the linkages between climate change and security have gained significant attention..

As climate change accelerates, its impacts exacerbate existing social, economic, and environmental challenges in many contexts, which can contribute to insecurity at local levels, or even internationally. Security concerns linked to climate change include impacts on food, water and energy supplies, increased competition over natural resources, loss of livelihoods, climate-related disasters, and forced migration and displacement.

Despite growing recognition of the interlinkages between climate change, peace and security, few examples of integrated programmatic approaches that address specific risks at the intersection of climate change and insecurity exist.  Conflict and crisis affected contexts are more susceptible to being overwhelmed by climate change, but too often peacebuilding and stabilisation efforts often do not consider climate-related impacts or environmental hazards. At the same time, insecurity hinders climate change adaptation efforts, leaving already vulnerable communities even poorer and less resilient to interlinked climate and security crises, but climate change adaptation initiatives often fail to fully integrate peacebuilding or conflict prevention objectives.

UNEP’s initial work on  climate change and security  began when it was requested by Jan Egeland, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Change, to conduct an analysis of climate change and security risks in the Sahel Region. The UN Special Envoy visited the region in 2008 and concluded it was “ground zero” for climate change risks due to its extreme climatic conditions and highly vulnerable population.

In 2009, UNEP partnered with IOM, OCHA, UNU, and CILSS to investigate the implications of climate change for livelihoods, conflict and migration across the Sahel region. The resulting report “ Livelihood Security: Climate Change, Migration and Conflict in the Sahel ” (2011) identifies 19 hotspots where climatic changes have been most severe over the past 20 years. It concludes that climate change effects on resource availability have already led to migration, and increased competition over scarce resources in some of the hotspots.

As a follow-up to this initial work, UNEP was requested in 2009 by the UN Secretary General to provide technical inputs to the drafting of the report to the General Assembly entitled “ Climate Change and its Possible Security Implications ” (A/64/350).

UNEP’s Executive Director was invited to address the Security Council in 2011, a thematic debated which resulted in the Security Council Presidential Statement S/PRST/2011/15 on climate change. In the statement, the council requested the Secretary General to report on the possible security implications of climate change when such issues are drivers of conflict, represent a challenge to the implementation of Council mandates or endanger the process of consolidation of peace.

The next major international milestone was the report “ A New Climate for Peace ,” commissioned by G7 foreign ministries, was launched in New York in June 2015. Based in part on substantive contributions by UNEP, the report identifies seven key compound climate and fragility risks that should form the basis for united action. These include local resource competition, livelihood insecurity and migration, volatile food prices and provision, transboundary water management, and unintended effects of climate change policies.

As a direct follow-up to the G7 report, UNEP established a partnership with the EU in 2017, with the aim of collaborating to strengthen the capacity of countries and international partners to identify environment and climate-related security risks at global, national and community levels, and to programme suitable risk reduction and response measures . The resulting five-year project was among the first of its kind to integrate climate change adaptation and peacebuilding objectives into analysis, planning and resilience-building initiatives in conflict-affected contexts. The project also made important contributions towards strengthening the capacity of key actors at international and field levels to identify and address climate-related security risks.

At the local level, UNEP  worked directly with communities in North Darfur, Sudan and the Karnali River Basin, Nepal to pilot test integrated climate change adaptation and peacebuilding approaches. The project combined climate change adaptation activities – such as the introduction of climate-smart agricultural techniques and water conservation methods, livelihood diversification and the development of sustainable water infrastructure – with inclusive approaches to dialogue, conflict resolution, and natural resource governance with the aim of improving enhancing resilience to linked climate change, peace, and security risks.  In both contexts, the project contributed to enhancing intra- and inter-communal trust and relationships and strengthened the capacity of local communities to resolve conflicts related to natural resources. Key to building resilience, the project also strengthened economic prospects of vulnerable groups through investments in climate-smart livelihood options.

At the national level, UNEP contributed to enhancing preparedness for identifying, preventing and responding to climate-related security risks. National assessments of climate-related security risks produced through the project for Nepal and Sudan provide guidance on how to understand, prevent or respond to security risks linked to climate or environmental change. Together with a series of training initiatives on understanding and planning for the security implications of climate change delivered to national stakeholders in both countries, the project contributed to building both the evidence base and capacity to address climate-related security risks through national policymaking and planning processes.

At the global level, the partnership played an important role in strengthening system-wide capacity to identify, assess and address climate-related security risks. To meet the growing demand for training and expertise, the project developed a Massive Online Open Course on designing and implementing inclusive approaches to addressing climate-related security risks, integrating the project’s guidance and tools into a self-paced, online course that is the first of its kind globally. Drawing heavily on lessons learned and good practices identified through the project – and featuring elements from the pilot projects through interactive case studies – the course provides an introduction to climate, peace, and security linkages using an intersectional lens, as well as guidance on conducting integrated analysis and designing programmes to address these multifaceted challenges.

To further enhance system-wide capacity for integrated risk analysis, UNEP also developed the Strata data platform to identify, map and monitor environmental and climate stresses potentially driving threats to peace and security. Strata offers the best available analytics and visualisations on where and how environment and climate stresses are converging with other factors of risk over space and time, to help field-based partners – national and regional bodies, political and peacekeeping missions, UN Resident Coordinators, UN country teams, EU Delegations and other stakeholders – to prioritise practical risk mitigation and resilience-building measures. A prototype of Strata focused on Somalia was launched in February 2022 to support the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia and the UN Country Team, as well as environmental and peacebuilding civil society organisations in the country.

Finally, UNEP has made significant contributions to strengthening the evidence base on the gender dimensions of climate change and security, recognizing that climate-related security risks do not impact everyone equally. In June 2020, UNEP together with UN Women, UNDP, and DPPA launched the policy report Gender, Climate and Security: Sustaining Inclusive Peace on the Frontlines of Climate Change , illustrating the differentiated impacts and opportunities associated with climate-related security risks in unique contexts across the globe. The report helped to put gender on the agenda in policy discussions related to climate change and security on the one hand, and better integrate climate and environmental considerations into the Women, Peace and Security agenda on the other. At the local level, UNEP and partners tested a new approach to programming through the Joint Programme for Women, Natural Resources, Climate and Peace , demonstrating  that not only is gender equality integral for building resilience in climate and conflict-affected contexts, but also that climate change adaptation approaches can contribute to strengthening women’s contributions to peace.

As the UN scales up global action to build resilience to climate-security challenges, the results and lessons learned from these initiatives provide guidance, practical tools and concrete examples to support future planning and increased programming in different regions of the world. 

Related Publications and tools

• EU-UNEP Climate Change and Security Partnership Project (2017-2022): Final Report
• EU-UNEP Climate Change and Security Project: Building Resilience to Climate-related Security Risks in West Karnali, Nepal (2022)
• EU-UNEP Climate Change and Security Project: Building Resilience to Climate-related Security Risks in North Darfur, Sudan (2022)
• Guidance Note and Tools to  Address Climate-Related Security Risks  (UNEP, EU, adelphi) (2022)
• MOOC on Climate Change, Peace and Security: Understanding Climate-Related Security Risks through an Integrated Lens (UNEP, UN Women, UNDP, DPPA, UN CC:Learn adelphi)
• Integrated Analysis Tool . Climate, Peace and Security: Understanding Climate-Related Security Risks through and Integrated Lens. Published in 2022. 
• Strata , Custom Climate Security Analytics
• Policy Report Gender, Climate and Security: Sustaining Inclusive Peace on the Frontlines of Climate Change (UNEP, UN Women, UNDP, DPPA). Published June 2020.
• Final Report for the Joint Programme for Women, Natural Resources, Climate and Peace (UNEP, UN Women, UNDP, DPPA). Published July 2021.
• DFID,  Topic Guide: Conflict, Climate and Environment , 2014.
• UN-EU Guidance note: Managing and preventing conflicts over renewable resources  (UNEP with EU-UN Partnership on Land, Natural Resources and Conflict). Published in September 2012.
• Livelihood Security: Climate Change, Migration and Conflict in the Sahel  (UNEP, IOM, OCHA, UNU, CILSS). Published in November 2011.
• Security Council, in Statement, Says ‘Contextual Information’ on Possible Security Implications of Climate Change Important When Climate Impacts Drive Conflict , 20 July 2011.
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Environmental security and international relations: the case for enclosure.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2001

The environment is now an established area of theoretical and empirical work in the field of International Relations, but the central question remains whether existing institutional structures, intellectual and political, are being in some respect transformed by this development. This review article examines the concept of environmental security as a reflection of the centrality of the environmental challenge. This relatively novel perspective on a defining feature of the field tests the domain of discourse and inquiry, and thus has implications for the study of international relations, perhaps to the extent of justifying the enclosure of its key concepts within the environmental perspective.

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• Volume 27, Issue 3
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210501004417

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Editor’s pick: 7 case studies on environmental cooperation

We know environmental changes and dwindling resources can lead to conflicts and inflame grievances among societal groups or even states dependant on nature. But how often do we speak about the role of environment as a catalyst for cooperation? In honour of this year’s World Environment Day, we bring to you 7 case studies in which the need to share a common environment and its resources has led adversaries to – despite hostilities and even ongoing conflict, and with the help of several resolution mechanisms – work in cooperation.

Turkey-Armenia: Water Cooperation Despite Tensions

Armenia and Turkey have been sharing the water of the Arpacay River – which forms the border between them – equitably, despite their lack of bilateral diplomatic relations. Before Armenia became independent in 1991, the former USSR had signed a number of treaties with Turkey over the Arpacay (or Akhourian) River. Although relations between Turkey and Armenia have been at an impasse since the 1990s, both countries have continued to implement the old treaties brokered before the collapse of the USSR and share the Arpacay River equitably to this day. 

DISCOVER THE CASE STUDY

Jordan and Israel: Tensions and Water Cooperation in the Middle-East

The rivers of the Jordan system all have a transboundary nature, a configuration which requires cooperation amongst all co-riparians to achieve sustainable water management. Yet the tensions which have prevailed between Israel and its Arab neighbours since 1948 have limited cooperation until today and at times escalated to war. However, one country, Jordan, distanced itself from the other Arab countries in the region and signed a peace agreement with Israel in which cooperation over water played an important role.

Transnational Conflict and Cooperation in the Lake Chad Basin

Since the beginning of the 2000s, growing claims of an urgent need to protect and restore Lake Chad have led the riparian states and the Lake Chad Basin Commission to engage in a number of joint water management initiatives with the support of a number of international organisations. These include a major project to transfer the waters of the Congo Basin (Oubangui) to Lake Chad in order to replenish the lake – the “Transaqua” project and a sustainable development programme for Lake Chad, which was launched in 2009. The Lake Chad Water Charter adopted in 2012 seeks to define water management and wetland management objectives based on shared concerns.

EU Influence on the Euphrates-Tigris Conflict

From the 1960s to the 1990s, tensions among the co-riparian states of the Euphrates-Tigris Basin hampered cooperation over the rivers. Since 1999, when Turkey was granted the status of candidate country for membership to the EU, the country started transposing and implementing the EU body of legislation, including the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). The renewed cooperation which was observed among the three co-riparians in the 2000s reflects the influence of the WFD.

Lower Mekong Basin: Challenges and opportunities for early cooperation

To promote peace, regional cooperation, and development in the Lower Mekong Basin, the United Nations (UN) encouraged the creation of an intergovernmental agency for joint water management. In 1957, the Mekong Committee was created. After an initial period of enthusiasm, momentum began to subside during the 1970s. Nevertheless, the Mekong’s early institutional architecture provided a forum for dialogue that was sustained even in times of regional hostilities. It also laid the groundwork for contemporary Mekong governance in times of rapid development.

Transboundary Water Disagreements between South Africa and Namibia

Following the independence of Namibia in 1990, a number of water-related disagreements have emerged between the Orange River riparians South Africa and Namibia. These revolve around the demarcation of a common border, water allocation and water pricing, and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). Existing water scarcity in the lower Orange River Basin is likely to be further aggravated by the impacts of climate change. Despite the conflict potential harboured by existing disagreements, the basin’s high level of institutionalised cooperation and the possibilities for intra- and inter-basin water transfers could help alleviate water stress and resolve bilateral disagreement over shared water resources.

Iraq-Iran: from Water Dispute to War

The Shatt al-Arab River forms the boundaries between Iran and Iraq before flowing into the Persian Gulf. Due to its strategic importance for both Iraq and Iran, for centuries both countries have defended their sovereignty rights over the river. The Shatt al-Arab dispute was an important cause which led to the outbreak of the 1980-1988 war between Iraq and Iran. In recent years – and particularly since the beginning of the war in Syria –, relations between Iraq and Iran have majorly improved. This has been reflected on the Shatt-al Arab issue. In 2014, Iraq and Iran’s Prime Minister met to discuss how to delimit the river in a mutually acceptable way and to put an end to the status quo. Water-protection aspects took also a major space in the talks. Today both countries have restored bilateral diplomatic relations and reached agreements on a mutually satisfying delimitation of the river. They are also jointly working towards the protection of the river. 

130+ case studies on environment, conflict and cooperation

The Factbook is a knowledge platform that provides an overview of environmental conflict and cooperation from around the world. It does so by offering a select number of case studies that reflect instances of conflict, resolution and peacebuilding processes that are related to environmental change.

The Factbook seeks to help policy-makers, experts, researchers and any interested members of the public to better understand and compare the drivers behind environmental conflict and cooperation. The ultimate goal of this project is to contribute to the prevention and sustainable transformation of such conflicts using lessons learned from earlier (non-) interventions.

                Discover the ECC Factbook

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Climate-ADAPT case studies applying NbS and ecosystems-based approaches

Map (static) Published 01 Jul 2024 Modified 11 Sept 2024

The figure shows a snapshot of the coverage of Climate-ADAPT case studies with 123 case studies in total (The case studies collected at national level, provided by AdapteCCA.es, where removed from the list of case studies (value 10)) by March 2024.

• Climate-ADAPT Case study explorer
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
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This map is generated from the Climate-ADAPT case study explorer. The coverage of Climate-ADAPT case studies that show the use of NbS and ecosystem-based approaches can be accessed from the Climate-ADAPT case study explorer, by using the filter ‘Key Typer Measures’ and the filter option ‘Nature-based solutions and Ecosystem-based approaches’ (D1 Green options, D2 Blue options,  D1 Green options AND D2 Blue options).

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Assessing the climate security sensitivity of WFP’s communal participatory planning project in Burkina Faso: A Climate Security Sensitivity Tool (CSST) case study application

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Sarzana, C.; Ranaivo, R.; Cisse, A.; Laderach, P. (2024) Assessing the climate security sensitivity of WFP’s communal participatory planning project In Burkina Faso: A Climate Security Sensitivity Tool (CSST) case study application. Technical Brief. 16 p.

Abstract/Description

This Info Note reports on the CSST case study application for WFP’s Communal Participatory Planning (PCP) program in Centre Nord and Plateau Central regions in Burkina Faso. It highlights the recommendations formulated by the CSST for the implementation of this programme. The CSST analysis indicates the need to address programmatic shortcomings in the Centre Nord region, particularly related to the Economic Development, Resource Sustainability and Enhancing Knowledge mechanisms, while highlighting its significant peace co-benefits delivered through social cohesion activities, and resilience building. The recommendations emphasize enhancing economic development through communal earnings to promote stability, enforcing forest protection to prevent armed groups from exploiting resources and escalating conflicts, as well as integrating diverse adaptation strategies to support the integration of IDPs and reduce communal conflicts. These targeted actions aim to address the complex challenges of climate change, security, and resource management present in the region. The CSST analysis did not underscore any relevant recommendation for the case of Plateau Central, as the implementation of the PCP program appeared as coherent with the contextual risk factors in the region.

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https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/16/getting-winter-ready-a-case-study/

Getting winter ready: a case study

We recently met up with Tom, a dairy farmer in Cornwall, who had made some major changes to his farm infrastructure . Tom acted to bring his slurry storage into compliance with the Silage, Slurry and Fuel Oil r egulations and to help meet the requirements for Farming Rules for Water. This meant that he had enough storage to see him through winter and could comply with the requirements for spreading manures and fertiliser s to meet soil and crop need only.   

Tom’s slurry situation  

Tom found himself in a situation many farmers will be familiar with. Too much slurry and too little storage. Ultimately, what this ends up with is having to venture out and spread slurry on fields when it is not required by soil or crop. In general terms, there is no soil or crop need for nutrients during the autumn and winter months (though there are some exceptions). There are a lot of issues with spreading at this time of year:  

• It’s not compliant with Farming Rules for Water regulations on soil and crop need  
• Higher risk of pollution from runoff and soil erosion due to poor weather – minimising risk of pollution is also a requirement of Farming Rules for Water  
• Potential damage to soil – through compaction from heavy machinery; this in turn heightens the risk of pollution from run off and, crucially, diminishes soil health  
• Waste of nutrients – as Tom notes in the video, he grew a lot more grass by applying fertiliser during the growing season and not wasting it during the winter months   

What Tom did   

Tom took a range of different measures but for many farmers, they may not all be necessary.   

We would encourage all farmers to look at the more straightforward (relatively speaking) steps first – specifically for clean and contaminated water separation, which you can find out more about here . Understanding how much rainfall you receive and rectifying issues with drainage and guttering can go a long way to reducing the volume of slurry you collect. As Tom notes, he was able to roof existing buildings with grant funding, meaning a lot of improvements made for little or no outlay, and a great deal of benefit to his storage capacity.   

By working with us and getting his own independent advice, Tom has built a slurry lagoon that gives him six months storage for 500 cows. This is a significant buffer for his current requirements and assurance that he won’t have to revisit slurry storage on his farm for many years to come. Tom’s slurry lagoon was a more significant financial investment but he is now reaping the benefits by buying in much less bagged fertiliser. As he mentions in the video, he is growing a lot more grass by applying slurry to his land at the right time.  

Finally, he isn’t having to worry about his storage filling up and needing to spread when he shouldn’t. This gives peace of mind that he is compliant with Farming Rules for Water and the Silage, Slurry and Fuel Oil regulations.   

How to get your farm Winter Ready  

There is help available if you need to improve your slurry storage capacity. At the Environment Agency, we will always be happy to discuss your situation. We appreciate that, as a regulator, you may be hesitant about speaking to us, but if you contact us our first step will be to offer advice and guidance. We will work with you to make sure your plans are compliant and direct you to other sources of guidance and information.    

Catchment Sensitive Farming provide advice on possible sources of funding for bigger changes to farm infrastructure and what changes are likely to have the biggest impact for your farm. The Farming Advice Service also provide free technical and business advice on regulatory compliance.    

With thanks to Tom and our officer Rob for their time and effort in making this video.   

Tags: #WinterReady , slurry

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A study on the relationship between campus environment and college students’ emotional perception: a case study of yuelu mountain national university science and technology city.

1. Introduction

1.1. background, 1.2. literature review, 2. materials and methods, 2.1. research framework, 2.2. research data, 2.2.1. study area, 2.2.2. research data, 2.3. research methodology, 2.3.1. deeplab v3+, 2.3.2. maxdiff perceptual quantization and the xgboost prediction model, 2.3.3. spatial autocorrelation analysis of emotional perception, 3.1. campus environment image semantic segmentation results, 3.2. predictive maps for emotional perception, 3.3. results of correlation analysis, 4. discussion, 4.1. natural environment and emotional perception, 4.2. built environment and emotional perception, 4.3. disciplinary environment and emotional perception, 4.4. campus planning and emotional perception, 5. conclusions, 5.1. environmental perception and quantification of emotions, 5.2. limitations, author contributions, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Peng, Z.; Zhang, R.; Dong, Y.; Liang, Z. A Study on the Relationship between Campus Environment and College Students’ Emotional Perception: A Case Study of Yuelu Mountain National University Science and Technology City. Buildings 2024 , 14 , 2849. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14092849

Peng Z, Zhang R, Dong Y, Liang Z. A Study on the Relationship between Campus Environment and College Students’ Emotional Perception: A Case Study of Yuelu Mountain National University Science and Technology City. Buildings . 2024; 14(9):2849. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14092849

Peng, Zhimou, Ruiying Zhang, Yi Dong, and Zhihao Liang. 2024. "A Study on the Relationship between Campus Environment and College Students’ Emotional Perception: A Case Study of Yuelu Mountain National University Science and Technology City" Buildings 14, no. 9: 2849. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14092849

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Comprehensive susceptibility assessment of continental glacier ice avalanches: a case study of glaciers on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau

• Technical Note
• Published: 17 September 2024

Cite this article

• Yuqi Shang 1 , 2 ,
• Hao Sun 1 ,
• Gaojian Miao 3 ,
• Chao Wang 3 ,
• Jinfeng Liu 1 ,
• Wentao Zhang 1 , 2 ,
• Huaquan Yang 1 , 2 &
• Hang Fu 1 , 2  

Glacial stability on the Tibetan Plateau has declined sharply in the context of global warming. Previously, continental glaciers on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau were considered stable and had little susceptibility to ice collapse. However, in recent years, numerous continental glacier ice collapses have resulted in significant economic losses, casualties, and ecological environmental damage. This study focused on eight watersheds in the Ngari Prefecture of the northwest Tibetan Autonomous Region, specifically in the upper reaches of Zecuo Lake. Continental glacier ice-avalanche disaster factors were examined based on topography, climate, and geological structure. This study proposes a continental glacier ice-avalanche susceptibility assessment method that considers both internal and external factors by combining the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and cloud theory. A comprehensive evaluation and analysis revealed that the eight watersheds in the upstream study area of Zecuo Lake were greatly affected by climate change and geological structure, and the susceptibility assessment ratings for all glaciers were high. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen the monitoring and early warning systems in areas of human activity. The findings of this study provide a scientific basis for predicting, preventing, and mitigating continental glacier avalanche disasters on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau. Additionally, the proposed method can be applied to areas with similar geological conditions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the manuscript.

This research was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) Program (Grant No. 2019QZKK0902), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.42201095), and the Postdoctoral Research Project Special Funding of Sichuan (Grant No. TB2023028).

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Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Earth Surface Process, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610299, China

Yuqi Shang, Hao Sun, Jinfeng Liu, Wentao Zhang, Huaquan Yang & Hang Fu

University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100049, China

Yuqi Shang, Wentao Zhang, Huaquan Yang & Hang Fu

China Railway Design Corporation Geological Survey and Design Research Institute, Tianjin, 300308, China

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Shang, Y., Sun, H., Miao, G. et al. Comprehensive susceptibility assessment of continental glacier ice avalanches: a case study of glaciers on the northwestern Tibetan Plateau. Landslides (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-024-02348-z

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Received : 16 March 2024

Accepted : 09 August 2024

Published : 17 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-024-02348-z

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