ABSTRACT

Chapter 2 explores the conceptual link between environment and security along different proposals of definitions, and through four main chronological phases of research evolution and their related debates in the literature. This chapter can be seen as a critical bibliographic review of the concept of environmental security, describing the environmental conflict thesis and the environmental peace thesis, which are the dominant theories in the field of environmental security studies. The recent trends and research foci, which include among others the focus on climate change and the link to the concept of human security are outlined. In a last section, the case is made for initiating the next phase of environmental security in the literature, in order to conceptualize the Anthropocene as a challenge to the former understandings and dimensions of security.