Environmental Security and Resource Conflicts

Introduction

Environmental security examines how environmental conditions affect the safety, stability, livelihoods, and well-being of people and states. Pollution, ecosystem degradation, resource scarcity, climate change, and disasters can undermine economic activity, public health, food production, and political stability.

Natural resources can also become sources of competition or conflict. Land, forests, minerals, oil, gas, fisheries, and water may have substantial economic and strategic value. Disputes can arise over ownership, access, extraction, distribution of revenue, environmental damage, or control of resource-rich territories.

Environmental stress does not automatically produce violent conflict. Outcomes depend on political institutions, social inequalities, economic conditions, resource governance, and the ability of communities and states to cooperate. The United Nations Environment Programme emphasizes both the conflict risks associated with natural resources and the potential for environmental cooperation to support peacebuilding. <Cite refs={[“turn680886search0″,”turn680886search5”]}/>

Core Concepts

Environmental security: The protection of people, societies, ecosystems, and states from threats arising from environmental degradation, resource pressures, pollution, and related hazards.

Resource conflict: A dispute or conflict involving the access to, ownership of, control over, or distribution of natural resources.

Environmental degradation: The deterioration of environmental quality through pollution, habitat destruction, soil erosion, resource depletion, or other harmful processes.

Resource scarcity: A condition in which the available supply of a resource is insufficient relative to demand, access, or the needs of a population.

Resource abundance: The presence of substantial natural-resource wealth. Abundance may create opportunities for development but can also produce governance challenges and unequal competition over revenues.

Environmental vulnerability: The susceptibility of people, ecosystems, or economic activities to environmental harm.

Ecological security: A concept concerned with maintaining the ecological systems and natural processes that support life and human well-being.

Environmental governance: The institutions, rules, policies, and practices through which environmental resources and risks are managed.

Resource governance: The arrangements through which resources are accessed, extracted, regulated, conserved, and distributed.

Natural Resources and Strategic Competition

Land conflict: A dispute involving land ownership, access, boundaries, tenure, settlement, or use.

Forest conflict: A dispute involving forest access, timber extraction, conservation, land conversion, or the rights of communities dependent on forests.

Mineral conflict: Competition or violence linked to the extraction, ownership, trade, or revenue distribution associated with minerals.

Energy resource competition: Strategic or commercial rivalry over oil, gas, coal, uranium, or other energy resources.

Fisheries conflict: Disputes involving fishing rights, maritime boundaries, access to fish stocks, conservation measures, or illegal fishing.

Resource nationalism: Government policies that seek greater national control over natural resources or a larger share of the benefits generated by them.

Extractivism: An economic approach heavily dependent on extracting natural resources for export or revenue, often discussed critically when environmental and social costs are inadequately addressed.

Critical minerals: Minerals considered important for strategic industries, energy technologies, or economic security because of their functions and potential supply risks.

Supply-chain vulnerability: Exposure to disruptions in the production, processing, transport, or supply of resources and materials.

Resource Scarcity, Abundance and Conflict

Relative scarcity: A shortage arising because available resources do not meet demand or because access is unequal, even when a resource is not physically exhausted.

Physical scarcity: A situation in which the natural supply of a resource is limited relative to demand.

Economic scarcity: A shortage created or intensified by affordability, infrastructure, distribution, market access, or institutional barriers.

Resource curse: The possibility that resource-rich countries experience weaker development outcomes, governance problems, corruption, or instability despite substantial natural wealth. These outcomes are not inevitable.

Dutch disease: An economic condition in which a boom in a resource-exporting sector contributes to currency appreciation and weakens the competitiveness of other tradable sectors.

Rent-seeking: Efforts to obtain economic benefits through privileged access, political influence, or control rather than through productive activity.

Elite capture: A situation in which powerful groups gain disproportionate control over resources, public benefits, or decision-making.

Revenue-sharing arrangement: An agreement governing how income from a resource is distributed among governments, communities, companies, or other stakeholders.

Benefit-sharing: The distribution of economic, social, or other benefits arising from the use of a resource or ecosystem.

Environmental Stress and Human Security

Environmental migration: Movement of people influenced partly or substantially by environmental changes or hazards. Migration decisions usually involve multiple interacting factors.

Climate-related displacement: Forced or constrained movement in which climate impacts play a significant role.

Livelihood insecurity: Uncertainty about the ability to maintain income, food, shelter, and other essential means of living.

Environmental health risk: A risk to health caused by environmental exposures such as contaminated water, polluted air, toxic substances, or unsafe waste disposal.

Pollution burden: The harmful effects of pollutants on human health, ecosystems, and economic activity.

Environmental inequality: Unequal exposure to environmental harm or unequal access to environmental benefits and decision-making.

Environmental justice: Fair treatment and meaningful participation of people in environmental decision-making, including attention to unequal environmental burdens.

Disaster risk: The potential for a hazard to cause harm, shaped by exposure, vulnerability, and capacity to respond.

Environmental Conflict and Peacebuilding

Environmental peacebuilding: The use of environmental cooperation and resource management to support dialogue, confidence-building, conflict prevention, and peace.

Resource-sharing agreement: An arrangement that establishes rules for access to or use of a shared resource.

Environmental mediation: A process in which a neutral third party helps disputing parties negotiate solutions to environmental or resource-related disagreements.

Joint resource management: Cooperative management of a resource by two or more governments, communities, or institutions.

Transboundary environmental cooperation: Cooperation among countries over environmental issues that cross borders, such as shared rivers, pollution, ecosystems, or wildlife.

Benefit-sharing mechanism: An arrangement for distributing the benefits generated by a shared resource or joint project.

Conflict-sensitive environmental policy: Environmental planning that considers existing grievances, power imbalances, land rights, and the possibility that policies may intensify or reduce conflict.

Post-conflict natural resource governance: The management of natural resources after conflict to support recovery, accountability, economic reconstruction, and peacebuilding.

Environmental peace dividend: The benefits generated when environmental cooperation reduces tensions, improves livelihoods, or creates shared incentives for peaceful relations.

International Environmental Governance

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): The UN body that coordinates environmental activities within the UN system and supports environmental assessment, policy development, and international cooperation.

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD): An international treaty focused on biodiversity conservation, sustainable use, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources.

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD): An international agreement addressing desertification, land degradation, and drought.

Basel Convention: An international treaty regulating transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES): An international agreement regulating international trade in listed species to help ensure that trade does not threaten their survival.

Polluter pays principle: The principle that polluters should bear appropriate costs associated with preventing, controlling, or remedying pollution.

Precautionary principle: The idea that uncertainty should not automatically prevent reasonable measures to address risks of serious or irreversible environmental harm.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA): A process for identifying and evaluating likely environmental effects of a proposed project before decisions are made.

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA): An assessment of environmental consequences at the level of policies, plans, or programmes rather than only individual projects.

Key Distinctions

Key Terms at a Glance

• Resource depletion: Reduction in available stocks through extraction or use.
• Ecosystem degradation: Decline in ecosystem quality, function, or capacity to support life.
• Illegal resource extraction: Extraction that violates applicable laws or regulations.
• Environmental crime: Conduct prohibited by law that causes serious environmental harm or violates environmental protections.
• Community-based resource management: Resource governance involving local communities in decisions and implementation.
• Common-pool resource: A resource from which excluding users is difficult and one person’s use can reduce what remains for others.
• Tragedy of the commons: The risk of overuse when individuals have incentives to exploit a shared resource without effective collective management.
• Environmental externality: An environmental cost or benefit imposed on others without being fully reflected in the transaction price.
• Restoration ecology: The practice and science of assisting the recovery of degraded ecosystems.
• Environmental security assessment: An analysis of environmental pressures and their potential implications for stability and human well-being.

Related Glossaries

• 9.2 Human Security and Non-Traditional Security
• 10.5 Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution
• 12.5 Resources, Energy and Geoeconomics
• 12.6 Critical Minerals and Strategic Resources
• 17.7 Food, Health and Human Security
• 18.1 Climate Change and Global Warming
• 18.2 Climate Security and Climate Diplomacy
• 18.5 Water Security and Transboundary Waters
• 18.7 Biodiversity and Global Environmental Governance

Conclusion

Environmental security links ecological conditions with human well-being, economic development, and political stability. Resource scarcity and resource wealth can both create governance challenges, but neither automatically produces conflict. Transparent institutions, fair benefit-sharing, environmental regulation, community participation, and cooperation across borders can help turn resource competition into sustainable development and opportunities for peace.