Environmental security

That negative forms of environmental change, such as pollution or resource depletion, can be sources of insecurity is uncontentious. Nevertheless, the notion of environmental security remains highly contentious. Environmental security is increasingly invoked in political discourse but it has come to mean very different things to different people. This chapter examines the different ways in which the environment has come to be ‘securitized’: as a matter of national, human or ecological security. It also appraises the arguments against securitization: from the perspectives of both environmental sceptics and political ecologists. Such epistemic divergence is particularly problematic because environmental problems, more than most if not all political concerns, require consensual responses. Issues like climate change or atmospheric pollution are more complex, holistic and multi-faceted than more typically securitized issues- such as war or terrorism—and so require more complex, holistic and multi-faceted political responses to mitigate their effects. Hence, agreeing upon what we are talking about when invoking ‘environmental security’ is an important task beyond an academic ontological debate. This chapter explores how it might be possible to find common ground between the human security approach and political ecological thought in order to construct a meaningful and useful notion of environmental security.