The Environment and Security Initiative in South Eastern Europe: Transforming Risk into Cooperation

South Eastern Europe, being shattered with conflicts in the last decades, still faces numerous challenges today such as inadequate growth, declining living standards and high environmental stress. Climate change will exacerbate the situation in the future. Since environmental security is an emerging concern that cannot be tackled with traditional approaches, new ways to deal with it have to be developed. Cooperation forms the core of such means, aiming at a cross-sectoral approach and guaranteeing a wide-stakeholder participation with the view of integrating the principle of sustainable development into national policies. The ENVSEC, a unique partnership between the UN and other agencies that is targeting certain hotspots in Europe and Central Asia can serve as a model to meet security and environmental concerns also in other areas of the world.