Is the environment an international security issue?

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

4 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

01/15/2007

Category :

Political science

Sub category :

International relations

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Summary :

Introduction
The origin of the word 'Environment'
Defining security
Environment as a threat to international security
1. Ecological problems
2. The impact the environment
3. Environmental refugees
4. Increasing the gap between developed countries and the developing world
Conclusion

Abstract

The last half of the 20th Century has been exclusively dominated by the Cold war conflict. There was little space in the analysis of the scholars in international relations for other minor issues of "low politics", while the questions of the nuclear war and balance of terror dominated the studies of world politics. Although international agreements have been signed for about a century, "the environment was simply regarded as the unchanging context of international politics." The first change occurred in the late 60s early 1970s, from a public awareness of environmental degradation due to the industrial activity. This emergence of the ecologic sensibility was translated by the creation of lobbying groups such as Greenpeace, and political parties around the Western world. But the real change in that respect was corollary to the end of the cold war. The collapse of the USSR put a temporary end to the major threat of the time, the nuclear war. New threats and a new definition of security then appeared in the study of international relations, challenging the old realist theories. These attempts to redefine concepts such as security or threat will be studied in the first part, as it is a key to understand how environment can be a security issue. There are several fashions in which environmental issues can represent international threats, and that is the focus of the second part.