On Environmental Law, Climate Change & National Security Law
Publisher: Harvard Environmental Law Review
Author(s): Mark Nevitt
Date: 2020
Topics: Climate Change, Governance
Countries: United States
This Article offers a new way to think about climate change. Two new climate change assessments — the 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel’s Special Report on Climate Change — prominently highlight climate change’s multifaceted national security risks. Indeed, not only is climate change an environmental problem, it also accelerates existing national security threats, acting as both a “threat accelerant” and “catalyst for conflict.” Further, climate change increases the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events while threatening nations’ territorial integrity and sovereignty through rising sea levels. It causes both internal displacement within nations and climate-change refugees across national borders. Addressing this new climate-security nexus brings together two historically distinct areas of law — environmental law and national security law. As we properly conceptualize climate change as a security threat, environmental law and national security law — once separate and often in conflict with each other — engage with each other in new and complex ways.