UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The security of every nation faces an increasingly severe and frequent threat: disruptions to nature. According to Bradley J. Cardinale , professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, disrupted ecosystems can lead to increased risk for food security, water availability, health and well-being, as well as crime.
Cardinale, along with collaborators J. Emmett Duffy , marine biologist and chief scientist for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and Rod Schoonover , ecological security expert who was a former director for the U.S. National Intelligence Council and adjunct professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, published an assessment of 27 case studies on how disrupted ecosystems can heighten risks of societal unrest and political instability, ultimately threatening national security, in the journal Nature-Based Solutions .
In the Q&A below, Cardinale discussed nature’s role in national security, as well as how governments can best protect against ecological disruptions.
Cardinale: We have long known that ecosystems and the creatures that live in them provide goods and services to people. These have been referred to as “ecosystem services” or “nature’s benefits to people.” Examples include provisions like food, wood and water; mitigating impacts of climate and disease; cultural benefits, such as recreation; and support for other life-support processes, like nutrient cycling.
In this paper, we extend these concepts to the scale of entire countries by looking at how nature influences the ability of a nation to protect its citizens, institutions and interests from domestic and foreign threats. We draw explicit links between biological forms of global change that disturb ecosystems — what we call ecological disruptions — and increased risk in five areas of national security: food security, water scarcity, health security, protection from natural disasters and environmental crime. For each aspect, we show how ecological disruptions increase social and political stress that, in turn, undermine national security.
Cardinale: Ecological disruptions are intense, rapid changes to the natural or semi-natural environment that significantly alter the structure, function and biodiversity of ecosystems. Ecological disruptions are often caused by humans, such as when our activities degrade or destroy ecosystems or threaten the species that live in them.
In this paper, we consider five types of ecological disruption, including habitat loss, overharvesting, pest and disease outbreaks, invasive species, and biodiversity loss. We discuss how these ecological disruptions generate social and political stress, as well as provide 27 well-documented case studies showing how disruptions lead to mass migrations of people, border breaches, violent protests, regional conflict, even warfare.
Our case studies include some well-known examples like the Cod Wars that occurred after overharvesting of cod led commercial trawlers to ignore international boundaries to fish for declining stocks. The result was a military conflict between Iceland and Britain. Examples of other case studies we review include deforestation exacerbating drought and water scarcity leading to violent protests in South America, invasive species causing crop failures and famine leading to mass migration and border breaches in Africa, mismanagement of wildlife causing pandemics of infectious disease that have led to civil disorder and violent protests globally, and illegal logging and wildlife poaching that has funded drug cartels, terrorist organizations and crime syndicates in several regions around the world.
Cardinale: It would be easy to suggest that individuals can protect against ecological disruptions by conserving and restoring nature. But this recommendation would be woefully inadequate due to a mismatch in scale. The ecological disruptions we are talking about — and the implications these disruptions have for security — are national and international in scale. As such, addressing the problem requires intervention by whole governments.
We argue in this paper that governments should build and protect natural infrastructure in the same way they build and protect physical infrastructure. Governments already understand the important role of physical infrastructure like energy grids, transportation and communications networks, and water and food systems for national security. Indeed, we go to great lengths to protect physical infrastructure from bad actors and enemies during a conflict. In contrast, most governments are just beginning to appreciate the important role of natural infrastructure — the ecosystems and biological communities that are required to meet basic human needs and prevent ecological disruptions.
Unfortunately, just as many nations are coming to appreciate the role of nature in maintaining natural security, others are actively dismantling the agencies, scientific expertise and investments necessary to understand changes in, and therefore safeguard, critical natural infrastructure. Weakening these institutions has the potential to undermine a nation’s ability to meet the basic needs of its citizens, fueling grievances that erode trust in government and heighten instability within and among nations.
Cardinale: There are two directions we are going at present. First, we are trying to gather more examples of how nature impacts national security. If we can get a more case studies, including a more diverse representation of national security impacts, then we can transition into the next phase of quantitative data analysis where we determine which aspects of nature most impact security and compare the role of nature to other drivers of national security.
Second, we are building a community of practitioners who will work together at the intersection of nature and national security. There are many biologists and ecologists who already think about how ecosystems provide goods and services to humanity. But these folks rarely extend the benefits of nature to entire nations. At the same time, there are individuals who work in positions that oversee national security and appreciate that global change can alter our security forecasts. However, they don’t often talk with biologists who understand which ecosystems and species are key service providers. Getting these two groups to talk and work together will go a long way towards advancing our understanding of how nature influences national security.
Nature-Based Solutions
Nature’s role in national security
1-Jun-2026