ABSTRACT
An analysis of environmental degradation was often accompanied by a loose and non-specific duty on the armed forces to cooperate with other government bodies in 'environmental protection'. Environmental problems were portrayed in these documents as only one of a standard litany of emergent threats with a transnational character in the post-Cold War context, drug trafficking, terrorism, fundamentalism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, organized crime, smuggling and migration. A number of white papers identified climate change as a source of security threats, although the analysis of this phenomenon varied considerably. The environment was often considered a defence responsibility when set in the context of natural disasters, and disaster response has long been a responsibility of the armed forces. The security threat posed by environmental change was often seen in developmental terms in the libros blancos, making environmental conservation pertinent to the armed forces' wider mission.
