Environmental security

Security is a popular term in the study and everyday discussion of politics. In order to identify some of the baggage that the concept of security carries, this chapter provides an account of the historical emergence of the environmental security concept and its popularization in academic and policy circles. It reveals how environmental security was initially constructed through the national security lens, as a non-conventional threat alongside other transnational issues, on a broadened security agenda. The chapter shows how the environment has been constructed as a threat to national survival, human survival and even the survival of the planet itself. It also shows why it is important to think about security as exactly that, a social construct, where different definitions of the problem serve different interests, actors and purposes. The chapter explores the British government's attempt to securitize climate change and also demonstrates how particular constructions of environmental security serve particular interests and purposes.