Introduction: security and the environment - the link

Since the end of the Cold War, there is much evidence that environmental stress is becoming a main catalyst for creating societal insecurity, which may or may not result in armed conflict and the loss of lives (GPI 2019). Probably even more significant are the climatic changes and the ensuing elusive scarcity that structurally affects livelihood, poverty and food security. Moreover, there are now several indirect and dynamic effects of environmental problems and resource scarcity of renewable natural resources. It is increasingly being argued that climate change will intensify environmental stress and might even create new conflict patterns (GPI 2019). These would include resource scarcity-induced population migration, which has become a source of turbulence, social misery and violent conflicts, as well as the loss of living space and sources of livelihood attributable to climate change. Most likely, the mass movement of populations, land degradation, shifting rainfall patterns, livelihood crises, global health challenges, and food deficiency due to climate change will create security concerns for nation states, for communities and for individuals alike. The recent COVID-19 crisis has accentuated the challenges that pandemics play for security – both in traditional terms but also, and importantly, human security terms. Hence, we are facing sources of insecurity far from the traditional conceptions as typically seen in the realist paradigm (Carr 1939; Morgenthau 1948; Waltz 1979). Environmental scarcity in the context of climate change has already changed the discourse of international politics, bringing the hegemonic conservative military security paradigm into question (Barnett 2001). Although the geopolitical dimensions and military security consequences of climate change-induced environmental scarcity pose a severe challenge to interstate relations, the adverse impact on the security of communities and individuals is, arguably, the most worrying. The world is becoming warmer much faster than it has ever in the last 2000 years (University of Bern 2019). If the present trend of greenhouse gas emissions continues, the UN Climate Science Panel warns of the possibility of a sea-level rise of between 61 centimetres and 1.1 metres by 2100 (IPCC 2019a). The rise of the seawater level to this magnitude will inundate the highly populous low-lying countries and coastal zones of China, India, Egypt, Brazil, Mozambique, Bangladesh, and many small island states in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Way back in 1987, the then president of Indian Ocean island country the Maldives, Maumoon Abdool Gayoom, made an emotional appeal in the UN General Assembly that a sea-level rise of only one metre would threaten the life and survival of all his countrymen (Gayoom 1987). More than three decades have passed, and the threat of several small island countries disappearing from the global map altogether looks more real than ever before.