Elizabeth L. Chalecki - Environmental Security: A Guide to the Issues

Security and the environment are deeply interconnected. Humans are dependent on our environments for basic human needs and for the resources we have used to grow wealthier than ever and improve our quality of life as a species. Yet, as human impacts on our local, national and global environments accelerate, we are seeing morenot fewerchallenges to our safety and well-being as a result. Environmental security issues are here to stay.

Environmental security was once a new and untested conceptbut no longer. For decades, debate raged as evidence and high-quality research mounted. Elizabeth Chalecki's analysis here demonstrates that national security and human security are deeply and complexly connected to aspects of our environment around natural resource extraction and use, food and climate change issues, and war-making and military-security operations around the world. Today, academics, activists, and policy makers in many countries grapple with these issues every day. Environmental security analysis and planning are now the subjects of offices in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense. National security institutes around the world, long the bastions of traditional national security ideas, have taken environment and security connections into their portfolios, as have military academies in the United States and abroad.

As this book demonstrates, the growing threats to human security posed by increasing environmental change are already altering our thinking and theories about international relations and civil war, as well as the everyday policy decisions made in national capitals and defense and security planning offices around the world. Students, like other citizens and many public officials, are beginning to grapple with environmental security questions: How will climate change impact our food and water supplies? How will it change migration patterns for people, animals, insects, viruses, and bacteria? If demand for oil, gas, and mineral resources grows indefinitely, will we need more international law and cooperation or more military assetsor bothto protect our access to the things we need and want? How much will it cost to adapt to climate and other environmental changes, if we have to rebuild large portions of our infrastructure even as we seek to help people in other countries to adapt to changes in their areas? Are our governments up to these tasks?

From classrooms to boardrooms and the corridors of government power, environmental security is of growing concernand there is much to be done. Chalecki's Environmental Security: A Guide to the Issues not only identifies governance challenges and security threats posed on ongoing environmental change, it seeks to identify what we can do about these growing problems. A modern, high-tech military consumes enormous amounts of oil, gas, and electricity just as it consumes massive mineral and industrial resources to continue its operations in peacetime and in war. Security planners the world over seek to secure their access to the materials they need. Small and large businesses face the same challenge. If they are to profit and grow, they need secure and reliable access to the resources required to make the products and services they sell. But access to the resources any of us might want is not the only concern. If a powerful nation secures its access to scarce water or oil either by paying a higher price or by using force to get what it wants, it may well end up denying such resources to others. These scarcities can result in greater trading and innovation to meet growing demand, or they may result in increased violence or poverty or oppression. This growing competition for resources takes place in a warming world, which can change national borders, food production patterns, and the frequency and strength of extreme weather events.

Pursuing national security is a complicated task. Should Americans build massive pipelines to bring oil and gas from Canada and open their parks and offshore areas for more oil and gas exploration to avoid being dependent on other, less friendly or less stable countries? Many Americans would say yes, but if climate change is also a threat to security, and oil and gas and coal consumption increases climate change, which choice makes Americans more secure? Likewise, many Europeans do not want to be dependent on Russia for oil and gas, but the choices between becoming more energy efficient and investing in renewable energy production, nuclear power, or coal-fired power plants have very different implications for European and global security.