Conceptual bases of environmental security

Abstract

This article encompasses the conceptual foundations of the formation of the «environmental security» concept; also reveals the essence of environmental security in the context of a globalizing world. This made it possible to determine that environmental security is the process of ensuring the protection of the vital interests of the individual, society, nature and the state from real and potential threats posed by anthropogenic or natural impacts on the environment. The article attempts to define a common vision of the environmental dimension of the security concept, based on the systematization of pre-existing approaches to the security issue. Consideration is given to the natural-scientific, financial, and political components of global environmental protection problem. It is determined that, during the transformation of the concepts of international environmental security at the turn of the 20th — 21st centuries, the classical concepts of international security, which focused on military confrontation of sovereign states, were replaced by the concepts of comprehensive security and human security, in which environmental began to play a major role. The historical stages of the formation of the concept of environmental security are investigated. The first stage is the revision of the concept of security after the end of the Cold War and the connection of environmental problems with security. The second stage is the establishment of empirical relationships between the environment and security, the third stage — deepening and theoretical extension of the concept, and the fourth stage — the concept of balance. The works of theorists who provide an extended definition of the concept of security are also analyzed. The article is a comprehensive interdisciplinary study, with both a general theoretical conceptual and a sectoral character.