Revisiting Environmental Security and Climate Justice

A healthy and secure environment is essential to the survival of all living beings. Human interactions as individuals, social beings, and economic agents depend on the ecosystem. However, humans brutally exploited the ecosystem beyond its regenerating capacity, causing severe damage to environmental sustainability. This chapter employs a systematic review and thematic content analysis. The finding shows that humans' profit-oriented and egoistic interests caused unparalleled damage to nature, resulting in global warming, biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic climate change. Such a precarious situation compelled global leaders to prioritize environmental security primarily through the 1987 sustainable development paradigm. In this regard, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) introduced the human security paradigm in 1994 as a broader framework, encompassing environmental security as its core category. Both Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals echo the spirit of human security's people-centered approach. From this perspective, this chapter critically revisits environmental security and climate justice through the lens of the human security paradigm.