Environmental security: Concept and implementation

Environmental security, a relatively new and still somewhat contentious con cept, may be defined as the intersection of environmental and national secu rity considerations at a national policy level. It may be understood as a r esult of several important trends. One, of course, is the breakdown of the bipolar geopolitical structure that characterized the cold war. A second, l ess visible to many in the policy community, is the shift of environment fr om compliance and remediation to strategic for society. This process is occ urring at many different scales, from implementation of Design for Environm ent methodologies within firms, to integration of environmental and trade c onsiderations in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Taken together, these trends suggest that environmental security may be an important evolution of national state and international policy systems. If this is to occur, howe ver, the concept must be defined with sufficient rigor to support an operat ional program.