Academic Year 2026-2027

This course analyzes the connections between environment, conflict, and security. After briefly going over some of the root causes of environmental and development crises, we will take a closer look at the different linkages between environmental change and human and national security, and armed or violent conflicts. We will discuss and analyze the initial understandings of environmental security, going from older frameworks of scarcity induced conflicts to natural resource abundance, and then move the discussion towards securitizing climate change, conservation conflicts, the increasingly visible violence suffered by environmental defenders, and end with the topic of environmental peacebuilding. Throughout the course we will be dealing with concepts like sustainability, ecological limits, limits to growth, globalization, and emphasize the importance of including power dynamics and historical, political, ecological, and economic perspectives when analyzing and discussing concepts like development, environment, and peace and conflicts.