Environmental Threats and America: Divergent Interests and National Security in the United States Federal Government (original) (raw)
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Defining Environmental Security as a National Security Issue
International Journal of Politics and Security (IJPS), 2023
In the 1990s, the relationship between security and the environment has been studied intensively due to globalization. As a result of the environmental problems being included in the national security agenda, the elements of the traditional security understanding remained insufficient in the definition of national security. The uncertainty and non-locality of global environmental threats force the state, which is the highest organizational structure among the actors of international relations, to play an important role in ensuring environmental security and cooperating with other states. In this study, it will be argued that environmental security is a national security issue. Since environmental threats are different from classical security threats, it will be pointed out that environmental security is at least as important as national security in state governance based on human survival.
National security and environmental protection: new realities in American public policy
Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, 2004
Definitions of "National Security" revolve around the ability of a nation to defend borders and project power Some have challenged these definitions and tried expanding the concept to include environmental pmtection as part of national interest. This idea hasn 't achieved broad acceptance and the core remained focused on the activities of the military. In the United States postSeptember 11 2001, these areas were thrust together and conflicts of authorities arose. This article examines conflicts that have arisen in American policy revolving around environmental protection and national security; in particular in the areas of public dissemination of environmental information, Community Right-To-Know, Energy Policy, Nuclear Power Regulation, and Defense Department compliance with environmental laws. When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.
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The study attempts to provide a historical approach to the role of the environment in security studies. Contemporary security challenges have shown that the narrow definition given to national security is no longer adequate. Instead, there was the emergence of newer security conceptual frameworks, such as human security, to account for transnational security challenges. In this scenario, the role of the environment in security changed as well. As a non-military threat, environmental degradation comes with its own challenges. These challenges include overcoming the ambiguous nature of the concepts of human security or environmental security and finding ways to scientifically measure these concepts, in order to propel policy and legislative changes to protect environmental security. In this respect, further debate should revolve around the task of operationalizing environmental security.
The Environmental Security, a National Security Dimension
Fiabilitate şi Durabilitate, 2018
In the paper, the author approaches a topical issue, namely the issue of the environmental security as a dimension of the state"s national security. Starting from a distinct approach of the security concept, in general, and of the national security as a component of the global security, the author draws attention to the existence of a need, of a friendly resource provider environment, as well as for the man as a part of the bios and of the globally ecosystem, an imperative condition of a person's development and affirmation. In the author's opinion, the environment represents a potential source of various crises threatening the status of national / regional / global security, as global changes, resources mitigation, inequality in access to resources, or the failure of states to respond to potential crises may lead to conflicts, both in the internal plan but also between countries. The environmental security addresses interdisciplinary concepts specific to fields such as...
2021
Global ecological disruption is arguably the 21st Century’s most underappreciated security threat. Human societies are producing rapid, novel, and foundational changes across multiple Earth systems with concomitant—and sometimes severe—consequences for people, societies, and security worldwide. These changes are significant and globally consequential, and include the transformation of the atmosphere’s composition, overloaded and depleted soils, toxified and acidified oceans, and reconfigured freshwater systems. Due to human activities, the biosphere—the Earth system that encompasses all living entities—is destabilizing rapidly and fraying the ecological fabric on which human society depends. Many scientists warn that Earth is entering a sixth mass extinction, a period of rapid loss of biodiversity so consequential that it affects the fate of the majority of multicellular organisms on the planet. Humanity’s alteration of the Earth’s climate, driven primarily by the discharge of greenhouse gases into the troposphere, is now receiving well-deserved and long-overdue attention from the media, governments, security institutions, and publics worldwide. Broader activities related to ecological or natural security— ones that more directly alter ecosystems and transform the biosphere—have been no less dramatic or consequential but have been absent from most of these discussions. Further, both climate and broader ecological security risks continue to be under-recognized as issues with tangible and present consequences for safety, security, and U.S. strategic interests. The national security structures and agencies of the United States and many other countries were designed to protect their respective citizens against malign nation-state actors, having shifted over the past few decades to also recognize threats from non-state actors. Actorless security threats, or threats without "proximate" actors or explicit actor intention, such as infectious disease outbreaks, pandemics, and intensified natural disasters that harm people and infrastructure, present threats to which national security structures and agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere must adapt, and restructure where necessary, in order to meet their missions in the coming years and decades.
2013
The time is long overdue to acknowledge that global climate and resource stresses, encompassed by the concept of environmental security (ES), are an increasingly important part of homeland security (HS) study and practice, by even the most restricted definitions of HS. Environmental security issues will affect global economic and political stability, US national interests, and the risk of war and terrorism. Just as homeland security encompasses many complex issues and interconnected subfields, environmental security (ES) is interdisciplinary by nature. In essence, ES is an emergent discipline borrowing from a combination of environmental studies — which decades ago integrated environmental science with public policy — and the broader observations of how environmental change, extreme weather events and resource scarcity issues impact domestic and international security. In a two-part argument, we first observe the growing environmental and resource-related security threats at every l...
Policy in Conflict: The Struggle Between Environmental Policy and Homeland Security Goals
2013
Since the 1970s, every American president and many Congressional leaders have called for "national energy independence" as a top policy priority. Among many reasons the United States (U.S.) has been unable to deliver on this goal over four decades are certain environmental policies that may tend to inhibit efficiency in fuel consumption of vehicles. This study examines the unintended consequences of certain environmental policies for American homeland security. The analyses suggest that some environmental policies may have a deleterious effect on the ability of the United States to achieve a level of energy efficiency in the transportation sector that could contribute to achieving "national energy security." This study suggests ways to achieve a level of sustainable energy security by reducing consumption in the most important petroleum consuming sector, that of automobile transportation. Some U.S. oil dollars may be directly supporting terrorist organizations or, at a minimum, go toward supporting the spread of radical Islamic Salafism that is inimical to U.S. and Western interests. This inquiry examines evidence to show that America's continuing dependence on other foreign oil, especially oil from the Middle East, is perilous to homeland security and compels limits to U.S. freedom of action in foreign affairs. 15. NUMBER OF PAGES 131
Environmental security and policymaking: concepts and practices in North America and Europe
2008
The paper presents brief excursion into history of the concept of environmental security and its practices in North America and Europe. The concept of environmental security was first introduced in the end of the XX. century when new unconventional threats were added to national security agendas of individual states. Along with traditional military aspects, such components as economic stability, rapid population growth, natural resource depletion and environmental degradation became "state security issues". Research of the links between environment and security includes environmentally caused scarcities and conflicts, as well as the influence of environmental problems on health and on economic and political stability. The main components of this concept form the basis of the environmental policymaking on national, state and local levels. In the European countries, environmental policies are closely interlinked with and incorporated into the scheme of relevant measures of t...