Environmental quality and national security

This article defines national security and environmental quality, points to the developing connection between the two, and uses the case of Israel to illustrate this link. The following matters have to be learned about national security as well as world security - rainfall and water table levels as predictors of famine and the collapse of governments, or the spread of the Sahara Desert as a predictor that ethnic strife will result. Failure to halt the deterioration of ecological systems threatens national security and human survival as a whole. There are disasters that are immediate, but most of them do not constitute a threat to the national security of states, the exceptions are nuclear threat as in the Chernobyl case, or droughts and flooding. There are disasters that are felt only in the medium term, like climatic changes and they can endanger entire states, thus weakening national security.