Environmental (In)Security
Publisher: International Encyclopedia of Geography
Author(s): Simon Dalby
Date: 2017
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes
Human insecurity is a matter of both environmental and social circumstances. In recent decades concerns with environmental change and its possible impacts on human societies have been linked to policy discussions of security. Scholarly analyses of resources, environment, change, and conflict suggest that these are far from simple linkages; scarcities and abundant resources are related to conflict but in complex ways. Discussions of the collapse of civilizations and alarm about such things as water wars now connect academic research, policy discussion, and media to the extensive discussion of climate change. This has rekindled scholarly debates from the 1990s and added urgency to policy deliberations about environmental security now that it is increasingly clear that humankind is substantially altering the earth system.