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SECURITY THREATS, CHALLENGES, VULNERABILITY AND RISKS
Abstract
Four security dangers are distinguished: threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks. Two developments have influenced the reconceptualization of security since 1990: a) the global contextual change with the end of the Cold War and b) constructivist approaches in the social sciences. This dual change had a direct impact as to how security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks have been reconceptualized during the 1990s and in the new millennium.
Below, first the etymological origins, the synonyms and meanings of the four terms “threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks” in contemporary English will be analyzed, then definitions of these concepts in scientific dictionaries and encyclopedias as well as in key publications will be reviewed. With the end of the cold war, the relatively simple concept of security threats was increasingly replaced by references to new security challenges and risks, partly with references to the high degree of vulnerability of modern societies to attacks by non-state terrorist actors.
The concepts of vulnerability and risks are not only used in the context of foreign and defense policy, but also with regard to environmental security challenges by the global environmental change, the climate change and the hazard and disaster communities, where no consensus within and among these communities exists on the meaning of vulnerability and risks. This survey of the conceptual thinking on security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks has stressed a dual need for: a) more precise definitions and for a consensus on these concepts especially with regard to practical political measures to achieve the agreed goals; and b) a systematization of the threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks for military, diplomatic, economic, societal, environmental as well as human, food, health, energy, livelihood, and gender security.
Keywords: Beck, Ulrich; climate change community, cold war, disaster, disaster risk, environmental conflict, environmental degradation, environmental scarcity, environmental security and stress, global change community, global environmental change, hazard community, New Millennium, reconceptualizing security, risk, risk assessment, risk management, risk society, security challenge, security risk, security threat, security vulnerability.