Nature’s role in national security

Bradley J Cardinale, J. Emmett Duffy, Rod Schoonover

The ability of a nation to protect its citizens, institutions, and interests from domestic and foreign threats is one of the foundational responsibilities of any government. However, the ability of sovereign nations to ensure national security for their citizens and institutions has been increasingly challenged by various forms of anthropogenic global change. While the link between climate change and national security has already received considerable attention, biological changes in nature that generate ecological disruptions and increase national security risks have been comparatively overlooked. This is unfortunate given that ecological disruptions like habitat loss and degradation, biodiversity loss, invasive species, pest and disease outbreaks, overharvesting, and others can contribute to food and water scarcity, energy shortages, economic crises, disease outbreaks, property destruction on scales comparable to climate change. Here we draw explicit links between biological forms of global change that generate ecological disruptions and security risk. We focus on five key aspects of national security: food security, water scarcity, health security, protection from natural disasters, and environmental crime. For each aspect, we discuss how ecological disruptions impact social and political stress and use case studies to illustrate how such disruptions impact national security. Collectively, the suite of examples suggests that ecosystems and biological communities that underlie human well-being form a natural infrastructure that helps ensure national security. This natural infrastructure operates much like a nation’s physical infrastructure (e.g., communication networks, electrical grids, and transportation networks) to buffer against the worst impacts of natural resource shortages, energy shortages, economic crises, and public health emergencies. Given this, we suggest the role of nature and its natural infrastructure warrants greater attention in security planning.