At the onset of the 1970s, European and US-American politics, sciences
and societies perceived imminent environmental threats as relevant to security.
Early concepts and ideas regarding the interdependence of environment and security
flourished and traversed the Atlantic, transforming into national, transatlantic and
global cultures of environmental security. The environment and security developed
a common social, political, national, international and transnational history. This
observation is anything but trivial. Rather, it highlights the way both merged at the
genesis of modern global environmental policy between 1969 and 1975. This paper
analyses the emergence of environmental security as one political road map to
environmental policy in Europe and the United States as well as in NATO’s
‘‘Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society’’ (North Atlantic Treaty Organization/
NATO CCMS), the European Communities and the United Nations. A new
research matrix is tested here and three contemporary types of environmental
security cultures are being identified and historicized, all of which became powerful
national and international political and scientific mindsets before waning at the
middle of the decade in the wake of the energy crisis.

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• Environment, Security and Global Affairs The Emergence of Environmental Security in the Early 1970s