Environmental Impact of Climate Change on National Security

Abstract

Although the effects of climate change are threatening to the living conditions of a large part of the world, different groups of activists have failed to improve the climate regime. It is natural that those countries which are more vulnerable to climate change should find some ways to improve the climate by using both legal methods and other less formal methods such as identifying climate change as a security and environmental problem. Climate change and global warming are regarded as two factors, which play a significant role in threatening human security since food shortages, water scarcity, environmental degradation, poverty, disease outbreaks, and mass migration can separately lead to national security, which will undermine and contribute to the failed government scenario. In the domestic and global arena, the security of the modern government becomes meaningful with respect to superior power, and the society is considered insecure even if it faces with a lack of threats. In the modern national security discourse, we see an increase in security software, in addition to its hardware. In the wake of the development of the concept of security, especially the development of a range of national security threats, critics have suggested that civilian threats such as economic and environmental threats can, in turn, be as serious as military threats. Therefore, these threats should be considered as security threats. This article tries to provide an analysis of the impact of environmental dimensions of climate change on national security from the perspective of international environmental law, using an interdisciplinary approach.