| Environmental security is widely debated in a range of national and international contexts by a diversity of research and policy actors. This dissertation traces the evolution of environmental security from the 1960s to 2003 with special attention to the United States and Norway. It employs theories of ideas and institutions to answer how and why environmental security ideas have had discernable policy impact in the face of the persistent statist security paradigm. Environmental security is not one coherent idea but instead multiple strands that operate separately, in tandem, and in sequence. The strands, ordered from least to most challenging to the assumptions of the statist security paradigm, are (1) security institutions and environmental data and monitoring, (2) the toxic legacy of military institutions, (3) the environment and conflict thesis, (4) environment as a pathway to confidence-building, and (5) ecological and human security.; The five strands of environmental security developed through a complex set of interactions among scholars, knowledge brokers, and policymakers between national and transnational levels. The evolution of environmental security reveals the power of institutions to embrace those aspects that serve, not question, their strategic interests while marginalizing those ideas that call for fundamental transformation. Yet environmental security ideas impacted policy in each of the environmental security strands, often after institutions acceded to superficial rhetorical compliance to satisfy leadership demands. Impacts ranged from doctrinal change to institutionalization to legal codification of environmental security norms. A foot in the door was often a first step in a lengthier, iterated process that in some cases led to institutionalization of ideas and to the reconstitution of interests. The environmental security case suggests that bureaucratic co-option of ideas should not be prematurely dismissed as necessarily superficial policy impact. Ideas that include a clear program of action that help policymakers address a problem had more success in penetrating bureaucracies and shaping interests. |
