environmental security

The practice of protecting societies from instability associated with weather, water, and climate events.

Environmental security exists when environmental and societal systems provide safety, health, livelihoods, and stability to meet basic needs and support functioning societies in response to the compound effects of changing environmental conditions that may be episodic (e.g., droughts, floods), long-term trends (e.g., aridification), or exceedances of critical thresholds (e.g., collapse of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation).

Environmental security is threatened when environmental hazards and long-term environmental changes interact with evolving human and societal exposure, vulnerability, and governance. The impacts may undermine the safety, health, livelihoods, and basic needs of humans (often referred to as human security) and/or the stability, resilience, and functioning of societies, economies, institutions, and critical infrastructure within or across national boundaries (often referred to as national security). Environmental security is undermined when human activities and the built environment disrupt natural systems and the environmental services on which human well-being, livelihoods, and functioning societies depend.

Term edited on 31 August 2026.