The Ecology of National Security

That’s the title of today’s column by John Fleck over at the Albuquerque Journal. What I really like about this piece is that the focus is on ecosystem services, which to me, seems firmer ground to build this concept on, rather than the climate security link.

Via Fleck, we learn that a federal laboratory is actively working on the interplay between ecological and national security issues, so there’s something happening beyond the think tanks and U.N conferences otherwise engaged with the environmental security issue. Here’s the money quote from Fleck’s column:

Failing ecosystems and the decline of ecosystem services at regional and global scales pose a long-term threat to U.S. national security as great as the more conventional threats of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and war.