Security and the Environment

In 1993 the first Clinton administration declared environmental security a national security issue, but by the end of the Bush administrations environmental security had vanished from the government's agenda. This book uses changing US environmental security policy to propose a revised securitisation theory, one that both allows insights into the intentions of key actors and enables moral evaluations in the environmental sector of security. Security and the Environment brings together the subject of environmental security and the Copenhagen School's securitisation theory. Drawing on original interviews with former key players in United States environmental security, Rita Floyd makes a significant and original contribution to environmental security studies and security studies more generally. This book will be of interest to international relations scholars and political practitioners concerned with security, as well as students of international environmental politics and US policy-making.

'This volume presents a comprehensive account of the links between securitisation theory and the debate about environmental threats, recent American policy and the ethics of security. A must-read for foreign and security policy scholars interested in the Clinton and Bush administrations' formulation of international environmental governance.' Simon Dalby, Carleton University, and author of Security and Environmental Change, 'Written with clarity and confidence, Floyd's analysis of the Clinton administration's attempt to institutionalize environmental security in the 1990s brings a welcome European perspective to a period of dramatic change in US national security policy. This work will be of great interest to policymakers as well as scholars and students.' Richard Matthew, University of California, Irvine, 'Overall, Floyd successfully highlights some key problems with securitisation theory and goes on to rectify them through a rich empirical analysis of US environmental security policy backed up by interview with a number of key actors. she provides an improved and more nuanced understanding of securitisation in the environmental sector … the book is a well-written and interesting contribution both to securitisation studies and to environmental policy and security.' Jonna Nyman, Political Studies Review

Rita Floyd is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, and Fellow of the Institute for Environmental Security.