The Impact of Environmental Security on Consolidating Sustainable Peace in the Twenty-First Century: Obstacles and Challenges

The systemic transition to the post-Cold War international system has functionally and fundamentally transformed the nature of the international peace and security, such a way that the building blocks of the sustainable international peace are conceptualized as including the regulations against environmental, economic, social and human threats at the national, regional and global levels. In the present article, the research method is explanatory-analytical, and using documentary sources, the role and position of the environmental security in promoting global peace and stability and the challenges and obstacles to address this issue are explored in addition to examining the importance of the environmental security as an emerging and dynamic security phenomenon. The main question is how the environmental security can consolidate the sustainable peace in the 21st century? In answer to this question, it is hypothesized that the environmental security reduces systemic disorder and entropy in the international system by controlling and organizing human, social and economic threats, and will pave the way for a sustainable state of peace in the international system. Findings show that the environmental threats threaten the sustainable world peace through the integration of other destabilizing components in the international system (i.e. economic, social and humanitarian threats), and in this regard, the consolidation of the sustainable international peace depends on the establishment and maintenance of a sustainable environmental security within the framework of a public and active dialogue and action.