Environmental Security: Conceptual Contestation and Empirical Relevance in the Mediterranean

Abstract

Environmental security remains an evolving concept without a consensual definition. Little agreement exists regarding which issues constitute “threats” under the environmental security umbrella and which do not. For some, the term is limited to the role environmental degradation may play in precipitating violent conflict. For others, environmental security encompasses the toxic legacy of the Cold War left on battlefields and military bases. Still others understand environmental security as a fundamental shift from state security to individual security, where the health of a population is the object of security. It is not my intention to evaluate the merits of the alternative configurations of environmental security. Rather, this chapter seeks to illustrate the tremendous diversity of debates associated with the concept of environmental security, offer a typology for these diverse debates, and use the typology to demonstrate the conceptual and empirical relevance in the Mediterranean region of the many linkages between environmental and security concerns.