This timely volume presents the key concepts, issues, and debates surrounding environmental security, illustrating through a range of examples and cases how global environmental matters and international security are closely linked.

Issues of climate change, dwindling resources, natural disaster, and disease that comprise environmental security are at the forefront of global politics and the media today. Environmental Security: A Guide to the Issues is a primer for anyone attuned to these threats. This well-reasoned, thought-provoking volume establishes and updates the connection between global environmental problems and international security, describing existing theories of environmental security and illustrating them with evidence from present-day global ecological realities.

Specifically, the book shows readers how both shortages and abundance of natural resources such as fresh water, oil and natural gas, and diamonds and timber can contribute to conflict and insecurity. It also discusses how agriculture and fisheries issues affect food security with international ramifications, how global ecosystem shifts like climate change are affecting both the earth and the movement of people on it, and how war and preparation for war can affect the natural environment. Finally, the book explores how nations can, and must, cooperate with each other to confront and manage these threats.

Foreword by Stacy VanDeveer Preface and Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Historical and Current Overview of the Issue Chapter 2 Natural Resources Chapter 3 Food Security Chapter 4 Climate Change Chapter 5 Collateral Damage Chapter 6 Conclusion: Ecological Thinking Appendix I: Biographies Appendix II: Key Documents Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 16 June 1972 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, 14 June 1992 Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques, 18 May 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977 The Carter Doctrine, 1980 An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security (Executive Summary), 2003 Further Resources Index