Background and History of Environment and Security

The linkage between environment and security has a long history, underscored by events such as the oil embargo of 1972 that led to gas rationing around the world. Both academic and government experts have worked hard to understand how environment and security can be managed in a coordinated fashion.

The widely-known 1972 “The Limits to Growth” report by the Club of Rome called attention to the risks associated with natural resource scarcities and continuing deterioration of environmental quality (Meadows et al.). It pointed out connections with an array of socio-economic problems (population growth, urbanization, migration, etc.), particularly in developing countries, that could lead to security-relevant threats or even to the outbreak of violent conflicts

A decade later in “Redefining Security,” Richard Ullman identified a number of environmental problems that could potentially lead to security implications. His list included earthquakes, conflicts over territory and resources, population growth, and resource scarcity, particularly oil (Ullman 1983).

To avert these security implications, Ullman argued for redefinition of the threat to national security to include “disturbances and disruptions ranging from external wars to internal rebellions, from blockades and boycotts to raw material shortages and devastating ''natural'' disasters such as decimating epidemics, catastrophic floods, or massive and pervasive droughts.”

The link between environment and security became more evident in the 1987 UN Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) – also known as the Brundtland Commission – report, Our Common Future (UN 1987). This was the first international report to refer explicitly to the connection between environmental degradation and conflict. Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who chaired the Commission, strongly believed that the traditional definition of security, which relied primarily on a military response to threat, was inadequate for dealing with environmental issues that demand non-military responses.

The WCED report advanced the idea that "The whole notion of security as traditionally understood – in terms of political and national threats to sovereignty – must be expanded to include the growing impacts of environmental stress – locally, nationally, regionally, and globally."

The Brundtland Report advanced the vision that “it is possible to construct an economically sounder and fairer future based upon policies and behavior that can secure our ecological foundation.” Hence, future challenges have to be met with a new model that effectively links policy and science in the context of basic food and energy needs, natural resource management, public health and safety, and economic development.

Beginning in the 1990s, the linkage of environment and security began to appear in high-level U.S. policy statements. The National Security Strategy is a document prepared periodically that states U.S. foreign and security policy objectives and seeks to inform the American public and policymakers worldwide of these objectives and strategies. All past national security documents can be downloaded from The Defense Strategy Review Page. The 1992 Strategy advanced the notion that the United States “whenever possible in concert with its allies, to […] achieve cooperative international solutions to key environmental challenges, assuring the sustainability and environmental security of the planet as well as growth and opportunity for all.

Public awareness of the scale and importance of environmental and security issues were further advanced by Norman Myers (1993) and Thomas Homer-Dixon (1993.) In one article Myers wrote (1993):

National security is no longer about fighting forces and weaponry alone. It relates increasingly to watersheds, croplands, forests, genetic resources, climate, and other factors rarely considered by military experts and political leaders, but that taken together deserve to be viewed as equally crucial to a nation’s security as military prowess.

Also in 1993 the Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon writing in Scientific American argued that environmental change could be a cause of serious national conflict. The article in turn led to a New York Times op-ed, which was widely circulated in the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The article prompted then Vice President Al Gore to invite him to Washington.(Floyd, 2010.) In another landmark publication, Robert Kaplan in 1995 portrayed environment degradation and conflict over resources (such as water) as potential causes of international conflict that can only be controlled if the environment is made a national security issue. Kaplan called the environment as the “national security issue of the early twenty-first century” (Kaplan 1995.) He argued that “the political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions will be the core foreign policy challenge from which most others ultimately emanate, arousing the public and uniting assorted interests left over from the cold war.”

This article resonated with a number of important government officials. Former CIA director James Woolsey wrote that the Kaplan article was carefully studied by President Clinton and had captured the imagination of Vice President Gore, who instructed Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Timothy E. Wirth to fax the article to all U.S. embassies. (Floyd, 2010)