Environmental Change and Human Security: Research Directions
Publisher: National Science Foundation
Author(s): Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education
Date: 2021
Topics: Climate Change, Programming
Countries: United States
Accelerating rates of anthropogenic environmental change are stressing human institutions and can present novel security threats to our nation. These changes manifest in many ways, such as in the extreme weather events that impact food and water systems, contributing to conflict, or in the human encroachment on critical ecosystems that drive disease transmission, as seen with COVID-19. Environmental stresses are an increasingly clear influence on security. Within the national security community, some view environmental stresses as ‘threat multipliers’ that can exacerbate existing social, economic, and political tensions, while parts of the defense sector may not take environmental stresses into account. Within the U.S. environmental science community, research efforts on the linkages between environmental stress and human security remain piecemeal and have generated only a limited understanding. There are few examples of the comprehensive basic research programs needed to understand how such stresses shape threats to the many dimensions of U.S. security. Scientists and practitioners do not yet have a fundamental understanding of the factors that determine a society’s resilience to environmental stress. These are challenging problems to study because they are complex and require integration of perspectives from a range of academic disciplines that rarely come together in the current funding landscape. The U.S. scientific community could substantially ameliorate the limited understanding of important research questions at the intersection of environmental science and national security. Examples of these critical research questions include: (1) Which if any correlations observed between extreme weather events such as droughts or heat waves and social unrest or conflict are causal? (2) What potential do global environmental changes have to exacerbate existing tensions, disrupt geopolitical relationships, and create new threats to national and international security, as well as to the local security, health and welfare in places experiencing these changes? (3) What is the role of environmental peacebuilding and diplomacy in national security? There are, moreover, important ancillary process questions about the most appropriate scales at which to study these problems and the kinds of tools that will be most useful to support security broadly. The goal of this report is to lay out opportunities to promote research at the intersection of environmental science and security. The report is prepared by the NSF Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education (ACERE). The report identifies near-term opportunities to promote critical research through existing disciplinary approaches; more diverse and robust interdisciplinary/convergent research inclusive of social and behavioral sciences; and to design novel mechanisms to overcome barriers between academic groups and the national security community. Opportunities also exist to create partnerships with other US Federal agencies, and international counterparts seeking to predict and prevent security threats driven by environmental change. A more robust research community focused on these issues will both produce new understanding and a new workforce ready to tackle the rapidly growing number of security threats tied to environmental change ensuring improved national security for generations to come.