ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the scope of environmental security, highlighting important events and actors. It focuses on climate change as the generally acknowledged key environmental issue with implications for human, national, and international security. Concerns about the environment are not original to the twenty-first century. The United States had already established its own domestic Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, two years before United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was established. But at that time environmental issues were usually couched in the language of concerns about pollution and conservation of natural resources and areas in the wake of what many increasingly saw as uncontrolled population and industrial growth. The importance of environmental security has been recently influencing strategic defense and military thinking in the United States. Existing environmental issues like natural disasters, population density, water scarcity, and desertification will doubtless add to environmental security challenges in many parts of the world.
