Environmental Security
Résumé
The notion of environmental security and its strategic importance for a global geopolitical balance arose for the first time in 1972 during Stockholm’s First UN Conference on Human Environment, but it was not until 15 years later, in 1987, that the international community recognized its value during the 42nd session of the UN General Assembly. On the basis of the conclusions of the Brundtland Commission Report, several international organizations focused on issues linked to environmental security. At a global level, the organizations included the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Seabed Authority, the UN Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the newborn World Nature Organization. At a regional level, organizations such as the Central African Forest Commission, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, and the Mekong River Commission started to work to create a set of transnational norms to regulate the way states use their natural resources and to protect those resources in case of international conflicts or natural disasters. Thanks to that dynamic, environment has been recognized as a human right, and its protection has been extended to international humanitarian law to avoid military action against natural resources. Public recognition of the anthropogenic causes of catastrophes such as the Bhopal gas disaster in 1984, the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986, the foundering of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989, the explosion of the oil platform Deepwater Horizon in 2010, and the accident at Fukushima atomic central in 2011 has driven ecological protection to become a top strategic priority for Western governments, alarmed by the political and economic instability dynamic that environmental catastrophes can engender.