During the 1990s, security dynamics established during the decades long Cold War began to loose their currency. At the same time, increasing evidence about the unprecedented magnitude of human-generated pollution, ecosystem simplification, and resource depletion was compelling. Many important relationships between nature and security had long been acknowledged by security specialists: the differences in the modalities of power of land- and sea-based states; the advantages and disadvantages conferred on offense and defense by topography and climate; the challenge of getting fuel and food to troops on foreign soil; and the risks to soldiers posed by unfamiliar viruses and bacteria. Perhaps addressing challenges posed by new forms of environmental stress and scarcity was the logical next phase of a well-established defense tradition. A significant number of people within the national security community--including researchers, policymakers, and high-level officials--began to take this idea seriously, and act upon it.

Thinking about nature and security, however, was by no means confined to the defense establishment. In the 1980s and 1990s a variety of perspectives sought to shape public perceptions, attract resources, and guide policy. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is fair to claim that concerns about the magnitude and multiple implications of human-generated environmental change have had significant influence on the theory and practice of national security. Our research continues to explore linkages between environmental degradation and security issues and includes work which proceeds on two tracks: Human Security and the Security Implications of Landmines.

Human Security

Our research into human security issues suggests that activities which boost human security sharply reduce the attraction of forms of political violence and crime that threaten the interests and national security of America and its allies.

learn more...

Climate Change and Human Security

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released four reports. To prepare these reports, thousands of scientists from around the world pored over all of the peer-reviewed research conducted since 2001, when the last assessment was published. The scientists synthesized the findings of this complex literature, and presented them to the world with careful estimates of how much certainty we can attach to each claim. Commentators are in wide agreement that these reports are extremely well done—they tell us exactly what scientists are discovering about human impact on the planet’s climate system.

What they are discovering is that climate change—or global warming—is significantly the result of people burning vast quantities of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels create greenhouse gases. These trap solar heat in the earth’s atmosphere. The oceans warm up. The land warms up. Glaciers melt. Polar ice melts. Big changes start to take place across the earth’s surface. Climate change scientists are not surprised by any of this. They have been sounding louder and louder alarms since the first IPCC report was published in 1990. What surprises scientists the most, is that we have done so little in the past two decades to mitigate our impact on the global climate system.

learn more...

The Security Implications of Landmines

Close to 80 countries remain infested with tens of millions of landmines. These mines cause thousands of casualties every year and reduce livelihood choices available to people in many parts of the world. Our research in this area recently culminated with the publication of Landmines and Human Security an analysis of the transnational effort to ban antipersonnel landmines, an effort that culminated in 1997 with the signing of the Mine Ban Treaty. This is a story that is instructive for those tackling other global issues. And it is a story that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the profound changes taking place today in the international system.

learn more...

Sustainable Livelihoods, Environmental Security and Conflict Mitigation

Natural resource-dependent individuals and communities become marginalized because they either have no rights to the resources on which they are dependent -- or no feasible way to exercise the rights they do have. Clashes between traditional and contemporary systems of property rights are often at the root of livelihood and environmental insecurity. The most vulnerable communities are invariably the poorest and most marginalized, for whom alternatives are non-existent or come at an exorbitant cost. The regions affected by these conditions are where environmental insecurity is most likely to lead to conflict. Water and forests are considered among the primary sources of environmental insecurity in South Asia.

learn more...

Links to More Information

• Environmental Stress, Conflict and Insecurity in Northern Pakistan

• "Building on Solid Foundations: Environment, Security and Development in the Reconstruction of Kabul." International Conference on Kabul, September 2002

• Social Impacts of Environmental Stress on Small Island States

• Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

• Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project (GECHS)

• The World Conservation Union (IUCN)

• IUCN Project on Sustainable Livelihoods, Environmental Security and Conflict Mitigation

• United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

• The International Institute for Sustainable Development

• The Millennium Project

• The University of Toronto's Peace and Conflict Studies Program's Environmental Security Database

• Poverty, Inequity and Rights in Conservation: an IUCN-IUED-GIAN project

• The ‘Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation’ platform