Environment and Security

Environment and Security is an interdisciplinary, international, peer-reviewed journal. It seeks to publish innovative research on the intersections between environmental and security issues, and to inspire debates by decision makers and practitioners. All research published in the journal will engage with and advance existing academic debates on the topic, either through presenting novel empirical findings, through theoretical elaboration, or through insights from practitioners.

Environment and Security is open to a wide range of topics. We understand the environment to comprise (i) natural resources used by or (potentially) useful to humans, (ii) the ecosystem services sustaining these resources, and (iii) the components of the earth system into which these resources and services are embedded (e.g., climate system, biosphere). We understand security in a wide sense, encompassing international security, national security, human security, ontological security, and securitization, among others, including a wide range of referent objects. The journal will address both violent/armed conflicts as well as social conflicts, incorporating concepts of both positive and negative peace. All contributions clearly speak to current theoretical and/or empirical debates about the environment-security nexus.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• Resource scarcity and environmental change as drivers of conflict
• Climate change, extreme events, and conflict
• Conflict financing through natural resources
• Environmental dimensions of peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding
• Environmental conflict resolution and diplomacy
• Cooperative potential of shared environmental interests
• Environmental impacts of armed conflict
• Gender dimensions of environment-security intersections
• Role of the environment for economic development and human security
• Environmental justice, human security, and social conflicts
• Disasters, disaster risk reduction, peace, and conflict
• Political ecologies of extraction and resource grabbing
• Environmental and climate-related migration
• Violence against environmental activists
• Environmental security discourses and securitization of the environment
• The peace and conflict aspects of environmental politics and policies

Environment and Security is committed to theoretical and methodological diversity. It welcomes contributions from a wide range of disciplines like political science, international relations, environmental studies, anthropology, economics, geography, law, and sociology. The journal also seeks to enrich interdisciplinary fields like peace and conflict studies, development research, and gender studies, among others. It is open to quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research designs. We are open to studies using established as well as innovative methods and data sources.

Environment and Security recognises the underrepresentation of scholars from the Global South in the debates outlined above and is hence particularly interested in contributions from these regions.