Securitizing the Environment in Human Terms

Abstract

The fact that forms of negative environmental change, such as pollution or resource depletion, can be sources of insecurity is uncontentious. Nevertheless, the notion of environmental security remains highly contentious. Environmental security is increasingly invoked in political discourse but it means very different things to different people. This article examines the different ways in which the environment has come to be ‘securitized’, as a matter of national, human or ecological security and also appraises the arguments against securitization, from the perspectives of both environmental sceptics and political ecologists. One important consequence of this epistemic divergence on environmental security has been to inhibit the building of a consensus on how best to address urgent environmental problems. This is particularly problematic because environmental problems, more than most if not all political concerns, require consensual responses. Issues like climate change or atmospheric pollution are more complex, holistic and multi-faceted than more typically securitized issues- such as war or terrorism- and so require more complex, holistic and multi-faceted political responses to mitigate their effects. Hence, agreeing upon what we are talking about when invoking ‘environmental security’ is an important task beyond an academic ontological debate. This article argues that it is both necessary and possible to overcome some of the differences that impede epistemic consensus on securitizing the environment. In particular, it is argued that there is more common ground between human security approaches and political ecological thought than is often appreciated and upon this we can construct a meaningful and useful notion of environmental security.