Environmental Security: Approaches, Issues and Actors

This book offers a comprehensive survey of the distinctive theoretical approaches, fundamental issues and key actors that are central to the contemporary field of environmental security studies.

Through a series of chapters written by leading experts, this volume provides readers with an overview of environmental security studies, an arena of considerable policy and research attention that has evolved quickly over the past several decades. The relationships linking climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution to different ways of thinking about, and optimizing, security are broadly relevant, complex and intensifying. Contributors to this volume provide authoritative analyses of competing and complementary theoretical approaches; key issues including food, water and energy; and the actions and aspirations of multilateral, national and sub-national actors.

This book has been carefully designed to benefit anyone interested in environmental and climate security. It is especially valuable as required reading for students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Beyond that it serves as a reliable resource for established researchers in the field, as well as advocates, policymakers, security professionals, climate change and other environmentalists, and members of the public.

Rita Floyd is Professor of International Security and Ethics at the University of Birmingham, UK, and a co-editor in chief of International Affairs. She has published widely on securitization theory, security theory, environmental and climate security, including four monographs, and most recently Teaching Security Studies, 2025.

Richard A. Matthew is a Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the University of California at Irvine. He directs UCI’s Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change, the Climate and Urban Sustainability Program, and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation’s Climate Change and Security Program. His research examines links among climate change, conflict, public health and migration, and using music to mobilize youth around climate change, peacebuilding and sustainable urban redevelopment. He has worked extensively in Africa and South Asia.