Environment and National Security

The ways in which environmental factors impact national security issues. Beginning with the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, prominent world leaders—including Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, Premier Rajiv Gandhi of India, and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney [Page 237]of Canada—have urged that traditional national security concepts consider environmental elements that impact virtually all human existence. These elements include management of natural resources such as soil, water, forests, grasslands, and fisheries as well as natural and man-made climatic disruptions, specifically those related to greenhouse, gases, a byproduct of unsustainable development globally.

The rationale for linking the environment to national security is simple. If a nation's ecosystem is degraded (by drought, for example), then its economy will decline, causing social and political destabilization that can result in conflict—either internal disorder or aggression against neighboring nations that may have an abundance of the needed resource, such as potable water.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the primary watchdog of national security in the United States, began utilizing its vast resources to monitor the environment in 1992. Since then, a team of civilian environmental scientists have been paired with CIA personnel to use agency resources—such as satellites, spy planes, and submarines—to investigate, among other things, the impact on national security of greenhouse gases, the thickness of polar ice, ocean temperatures, shifting forest and desert boundaries, and the availability of water and other resources.

Various environmental data—such as the date of the first polar snow melt and ocean temperatures—are routinely collected by the CIA and other national security agencies, providing valuable information to scientists studying global warming and other environmental impacts. Spy satellites that once tracked the license plates of Soviet officials during the Cold War could easily be redirected to monitor the growth or shrinkage of forests and deserts. The agency's advanced Kennan satellites provide photographic resolution measured in inches, far above the quality of instruments used in the best civilian laboratories. Additionally, the intelligence community has been keeping detailed records of climate events for decades, allowing scientists to track historic changes and the rate of these changes to the environment.

Other national security technology—such as the Global Positioning System and a vast array of undersea listening devices deployed by the Navy to track hostile submarines—provide similar research opportunities for environmental scientists. These devices are easily adapted to monitor various environmental conditions, ranging from ocean salinity to the migration of whales.

The CIA's environmental monitoring program drew criticism from third-world nations at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro summit. Some small nations charged the CIA with spying on their climates. Yet, these same nations may also be those most likely to go to war with neighbors over natural resources or face internal collapse from the social, economic, and political turmoil caused by shortages of natural resources.