Climate Change, Environmental Terrorism, Eco-Terrorism and Emerging Threats

Abstract

The footprint of human advancement has accelerated a climate variability with no precedents, further driving devastating natural and social events. The decrease in basic resources like water, has already been identified as a driver of violent conflicts, which have given way to the strengthening of terrorist organizations that used the environment as a tool of coercion. The damage caused to the earth’s ecosystem has additionally raised a wave of defensive activism that was initially considered as eco-terrorism. While the original eco-movements had not induced fatalities, recent extremist organizations are showing a more violent anti-progress and pro-environment agenda. Added to these, the response of the states against environmental activism initiatives, has spiked some concerns over the repression of civil liberties, which may have the potential to fuel the angering of extreme individuals, who can be prompted to take radicalized action. Using open source data, this article shows that environmental terrorism represents an increasing security threat, which in the future, might be worsened by the individual radicalization of marginalized environmental extremists.