ABSTRACT
As the climate crisis advances and reports of biodiversity loss become increasingly alarming, it is clear that environmental change will have impacts on security. The Western Balkan countries suffered from historically severe floods in 2014, and studies suggest similar and worse events will follow in the future. Environmental change will also have implications for the geopolitical context of the Western Balkans as well as regional relations. In addition, the urgent task of mitigating and adapting to environmental change will have impacts on security, both locally and internationally. This chapter considers environmental security in the Western Balkan context. It utilises a three-level framework of local, geopolitical, and structural impacts to present an overview of environmental security issues for the region. Based on this discussion, the Western Balkan countries need to take environmental security into account in a comprehensive way in their policies on disaster risk management and preparedness planning, as well as foreign and security policies.
