The environment and security – ending the vicious cycle

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Climate change, environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity threaten world peace and security. Here, the UN Environment Science-Policy Platform on Environment and Security sets out ways to tackle these problems

Threats from chronic changes in the environment are difficult to predict. Difficulty mitigating these threats then creates uncertainty and instability across global society.

Governments focus on more acute threats such as terrorism and cyber-attacks. This creates a blind spot around global security challenges that include environmental degradation to food security, agriculture, water accessibility and housing.

Military, social, economic and environmental threats are growing. Security implies an effective response to the risks, dangers and challenges of the modern age.

These risks are increasingly complex, due to technological, financial and political interconnectedness in modern society that creates unpredictable risk and threat combinations for all of us.

They are also creating a vicious circle, due to the uncertain cause-effect relationships in many old – often frozen – conflicts and to inefficient management.

In broad terms, security exists in the absence of threat. With drought, environmental uncertainty has security implications because it threatens people’s ability to secure their livelihoods.

Environmental uncertainty makes people more vulnerable, decreasing their ability to cope with new threats of environmental uncertainty. Vulnerable people, unable to cope with new or changing environmental situations, seek ways to support themselves and their families – becoming desperate in dire situations.

With environmentally driven food insecurity, for instance, that desperation can create civil unrest and erode civil security.

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