Threats to conservation from national security interests

There is a growing trend of nation states invoking national security and emergency declarations to build state‐sponsored infrastructure projects for border defense, energy production, and transportation. Established laws, regulations, and agreements for the protection of nature and cultural heritage within and between countries are becoming secondary to national security, compromising the function of protected areas, such as national parks, wilderness areas, and biosphere reserves that safeguard biodiversity, climate, and human health. We considered cases where decades‐long multinational cross‐border endangered species recovery programs have been jeopardized by waivers of environmental protection laws to facilitate rapid construction of border barriers that impede the movement and migration of animals, such as at the US–Mexico and Poland–Belarus borders. Renewable energy megaprojects, such as the Pinacate solar plant in Mexico, coupled with power transmission lines and road networks likewise cast a large footprint on the land and are being carried out with minimal to no environmental compliance under the guise of national security. National sovereignty likewise has been used as justification for bypassing laws to proceed with similar projects, such as Mexico's Dos Bocas refinery and Poland's Vistula Spit canal. Emphasis on security is also apparent in increasing military expenditure by the world's largest economies, which has created a mismatch with improvement in environmental policy stringency. Decisions to prioritize security can undermine democratic principles and environmental review protocols, trivialize humanity's dependence on functioning ecosystems, and contradict the United Nation's resolution on the human right to a healthy environment. Framing infrastructure projects as matters of national security also foments civil and political unrest by the labeling and casting of dissenters, including conservation scientists and environmental defenders, as antinational. World leaders must refrain from misusing extraordinary powers, adhere to laws and international agreements, and consult experts and local people before taking unilateral action on projects that affect ecological and human communities.

que resguardan la biodiversidad, el clima y la salud humana.Consideramos los casos en donde se han puesto en peligro los programas longevos y multinacionales de recuperación de especies en peligro por las exenciones a las leyes de protección ambiental para facilitar la construcción rápida de barreras fronterizas que impiden el movimiento y la migración de animales, como es el caso de las fronteras entre EU y México y Polonia y Bielorrusia.Los megaproyectos de energía renovable, como la planta solar del Pinacate en México, en conjunto con las líneas de transmisión eléctrica y las redes de carreteras también dejan una gran huella sobre la tierra y se realizan con el mínimo o ningún cumplimiento bajo el aspecto de la seguridad nacional.La soberanía nacional también se ha usado para justificar la omisión de las leyes para proceder con proyectos similares, como la refinería de Dos Bocas en México y el canal Vistula Spit en Polonia.El énfasis sobre la seguridad también es evidente con el incremento del gasto militar de las mayores economías mundiales, lo que ha creado una desigualdad con las mejoras en la exigencia de la política ambiental.Las decisiones para priorizar la seguridad pueden debilitar los principios democráticos y los protocolos de revisión ambiental, banalizar la dependencia de la humanidad por los ecosistemas funcionales y contradecir la resolución de las Naciones Unidas sobre el derecho humano a un ambiente saludable.Cuando se denominan los proyectos de infraestructura como asuntos de seguridad nacional, también se fomenta el malestar civil y político al etiquetar como antinacionales a los disidentes, incluidos los defensores ambientales y los científicos de la conservación.Los líderes mundiales deben abstenerse de usar indebidamente los poderes extraordinarios, adherirse a las leyes y acuerdos internacionales y consultar con expertos y personas locales antes de actuar de forma unilateral en cuanto a proyectos que afectan las comunidades humanas y ecológicas.

INTRODUCTION
Pitting national security against long-term sustainability and shared nature protection agendas and goals is coming at the cost of a functioning environment-also a vital national and international interest.In May 2022, in a letter to a European Parliament member, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote that "decisions on infrastructure at borders is the national responsibility of each Member State" and that the Commission at the European Union (EU) level "consistently supports efforts towards long-term sophisticated border management and on surveillance solutions as part of the 'European integrated border management' concept."Environmental concerns were deemed secondary to "imperative reasons of overriding public interest or public safety."The border and site in question were the Polish-Belarusian border and Białowieża Forest, a transboundary UNESCO World Heritage site and one of Europe's most intact forest ecosystems.That same month, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Julia Margareta Johansson stated that "overriding public safety" may exempt damage to environments protected under the EU's Habitats Directive (Nielsen, 2022).Scientists who criticized Poland's construction of a border wall through Białowieża Forest (Jaroszewicz et al., 2021) were labeled treasonous in a Polish media outlet (Gazeta Polska Codziennie, 2022).
The EU Commission's response with respect to a border barrier through Białowieża Forest epitomizes a growing trend of invoking national security concerns to respond to geopolitical challenges, irrespective of costs to nature, local communities, or public health.National security decrees sanction the bypassing of environmental review processes and public input requirements in place for the protection of places such as old-growth forests, deserts, and glaciers (Figure 1).There appear to be fewer limits on what constitutes national security (Drinhausen & Legarda, 2022).Big infrastructure may be built for the alleged welfare of a country or, as in the case of Poland's border wall, "to defend the external eastern border of the EU." Semantics are important here because the line between national security and national interest is becoming increasingly blurred, with their misuse resulting in abuse of authority.Nation states, along with the international community, would be wise to agree within and among themselves what constitutes each.
Megaprojects, such as dams and highways, generally fall under the category of national interest, but categorizing them as national security may in some cases override human rights by disturbing or even displacing Indigenous and local communities; restricting access to the public, researchers, media, and even humanitarian aid workers and medics; and fragmenting critical habitats.This practice contravenes the recently passed United Nations (UN) resolution upholding human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (UN Resolution 76/300, https://unemg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/EMGSOM.28_INF_4_Common-Narrative-on-Upholdingthe-Right-to-a-Healthy-Environment.pdf).Public discussions linking environment and security began in the 1980s with the proposition that environmental degradation leads to security risks.A gap in the narrative is how nations override environmental regulations in the interest of national security.We describe cases in which environmental laws, domestic and international, have been circumvented in the name of national security, including for border protection, energy and transportation development, and sovereignty.We draw on examples from the United States, China, India, Mexico, Poland, and Hungary, all of which, except for China (which abstained), endorsed the abovenamed UN resolution.We think it is imperative to engage the conservation science community in discussions surrounding the dangers ensuing from pursuits of national security that have repealed environmental laws, along with public access to information, because it is setting back the legal protection of nature.The cases we considered are a small sample and are biased toward border regions and geographical areas we are most familiar with.We relied on our thematic and regional engagements on these issues in combination with a literature review.

BORDER SECURITY
Borders are often marked by geographical features such as mountains and rivers, which tend to be focal points for biodiver-sity.Policies that ease environmental clearance near borders to erect barriers or enact other types of border defense jeopardize such areas, which also tend to be socioecologically and culturally meaningful and diverse (Gamble, 2019;Liu et al., 2020;Titley et al., 2021).Borders, from the perspective of security, exist to protect citizens from outside threats, rendering border control the unilateral right of a state.However, a more balanced perspective dictates that states be held accountable to international law standards in their border protection practices (Espejo, 2020).
We describe four examples of environmental laws being bypassed: for border security along the US-Mexico border; national security in the context of so-called hybrid warfare and border crossings into Poland from Belarus; border security in China's Land Borders Law; and military conflict on the Siachen Glacier between India and Pakistan, a nuclear trijunction and source of freshwater for millions of Indians and Pakistanis.All four cases involve expansive and expensive infrastructure and protected areas and sensitive habitats along international, shared borders.Two-Siachen Glacier and the US-Mexico border-featured in discussions about peace parks as possible means of arresting environmental degradation and stemming border conflicts in these regions (Biringer & Cariappa, 2012;Chester & Sifford, 2012); however, these peace parks have yet to materialize.
In 2005, as part of the REAL ID Act, the US Congress authorized the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive all legal requirements that the Secretary determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of border barriers and roads.As of today, 84 laws have been waived (see a list of 84 citations to the identified waived laws and additional information at Madsen, 2019; https://u.osu.edu/madsen.34/maps/).The statutory basis for the waiver of all legal requirements for border barriers and associated infrastructure in the United States is Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) § 102, as amended (codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1103[c [Note]).Among long-term, possibly irreversible damage caused by US border wall building is draining of desert springs, changes in hydrology, blockage of gene flow between wildlife populations (Garbus, 2018) (Figure 2; Peters et al., 2018), and disruption of binational programs protecting transboundary species.
Although the 2006 Secure Fence Act was described as the "first step in addressing one of our nation's greatest security vulnerabilities: our porous borders" by Congressman John Carter from Texas (Espejo, 2020 p. 283), the phrase national security does not appear in the Secure Fence Act.However, when former US President Donald Trump issued a national security strategy in 2017, he included strengthening of border control (White House Archives, 2017).
In February 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border to access defense funds for the construction of the border wall (Manne & Weinberger, 2020), which resulted in 737 km of 10-m-tall pedestrian barriers (border wall) with 10-cm spacing between the steel beams impeding passage of medium and large mammals (Traphagen, 2021).The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) and Sonoran pronghorn (Antilocapra americana sonoriensis), subjects of decades-long joint binational recovery programs (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [USFWS], 2015, 2022), have been affected by the US-Mexico border wall.In 2021 a GPS-satellite-collared wolf traveled 37 km along the border wall but was unable to cross into Mexico.Conversely, in 2017, prior to border wall building, another collared wolf traveled over 1000 km from Mexico, crossed into the United States in the same location, and then returned to Mexico (Kocherga, 2018).Although current US President Joe Biden terminated the national emergency in February 2021, the waiver of laws in the name of homeland security remains and is being used for additional wall construction along the US-Mexico border.
In September 2021, the Polish government declared a state of emergency on its shared border with Belarus (Government of Poland, 2021), and, as in the US, fast-tracked construction of a border barrier (187 km and 5.5 m high [Figure 1]), alternative solutions were not weighed.Among the Natura 2000 sites affected by the wall is the transboundary UNESCO World Heritage site Białowieża Forest.Laws forgone including the EU Habitats Directive, EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive, Bern Convention, and Polish national laws such as the Water Law, and environmental laws and regulations on provision of environmental information, planning and spatial development, and protection of agricultural and forest land and the environment.Detrimental impacts on sensitive habitats, species, and populations (e.g., wolf [C.lupus lupus], lynx [Lynx lynx], and moose [Alces alces]) remain unmitigated (Jaroszewicz et al., 2021), whereas applications to access the border for research purposes, including to investigate mitigation possibilities, have been denied.In Białowieża Forest, we observed trees cut, toppled, or damaged along the border and forest roads leading to the border, wildlife road mortality associated with high traffic of construction and military vehicles, plastic pollution, and the appearance of non-native plant taxa in construction material.
Both these border walls bypassed environmental and social impact assessments and international and national laws and conventions (e.g., Espoo Convention) without the application of mitigation and compensatory measures.Given negative impacts on border ecosystems and communities, and erosion of common conservation causes on continental or even intercontinental scales, thousands of scientists and conservation practitioners denounced these walls in petitions (e.g., Nauka Dla Przyrody, 2022) and publications (Jaroszewicz et al., 2021;Peters et al., 2018).Poland national courts ruled that Polish border guard is violating international human rights laws by pushing people back into Belarus without recourse to international protection (European Legal Network on Asylum [ELENA], 2022).The EU has meanwhile allocated €7.4 billion to an Integrated Border Management Fund (2021-2027).In February 2023, EU leaders from 27 countries unanimously decided to tighten border controls through more funds allocated for cameras, drones, and watchtowers (surveillance technologies) at EU's external borders (The Guardian, 2023a) in response to a high number of asylum claims made since 2016.In contrast, it took the European Parliament several months of political arguments and an opposition campaign (debunked by scientists as misinformative) to finally pass the Nature Restoration Law in July 2023, with a narrow margin of about a dozen votes.Negotiations on the final version of the law could potentially take months, awaiting final approval from a committee comprising representatives from national governments, Parliament, and EU executives (The Guardian, 2023b).In sum, compromise was reached more quickly over border protection than nature restoration.
Border security is also a central tenet of China's Land Borders Law.It involves the building of infrastructure by China along its borders with India, Nepal, and Bhutan (among others), while simultaneously prohibiting similar construction near China's border by neighboring countries without prior permission from Chinese authorities (Luo, 2021).Illustratively, China's construction of highways is exempt from environmental review (China Dialogue, 2022) with anticipated adverse effects on high biodiversity and climate-sensitive regions.In response to India's construction of roads near China's border, north of the Pangong Tso (lake), a violent clash broke out along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh, in the Himalayas in May 2020, described as an "infrastructure arms race" and a "race to secure borders" between the two countries (Sun, 2020).Both coun-tries are increasingly investing in hydropower projects that have extended boundary disputes to water, for which Himalayan glaciers are the principal source (Bawa et al., 2010), demonstrating the intricate links between politics and environment in the Himalayan region (Davis, 2023;Davis et al., 2019).
The Siachen Glacier lies in the world's only nuclear trijunction area, where the border between India, China, and Pakistan remains unresolved with competing claims.Although China is not an active combatant on Siachen, they are a close ally to Pakistan and the disputed Sino-India border is only about 30 km from Siachen (Baghel & Nusser, 2015;Kashmir Reader, 2022).The glacier is characterized by unusual flow and accumulation dynamics that affect the glacier and combatants alike, rendering it a highly challenging battlefield for over 30 years (Smith, 2021).Soldiers and infrastructure, including satellite broadband, are stationed at 6700 m asl (Tahir-Kheli & Biringer, 2000).The permanent outposts have led to the dumping of enormous amounts of human and military waste into the glacier's crevasses, altering and polluting the englacial microbial community and rivers that originate from the snout of the glacier (Biringer & Cariappa, 2012;Rafiq et al., 2017).Melting of the glacier (Agarwal et al. 2017) and destruction of habitat already endanger the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), Himalayan ibex (Capra sibirica), Himalayan black (Ursus thibetanus laniger) and brown bears (U. arctos isabellinus), and cranes (e.g., Anthropoides virgo) and have led the World Wide Fund for Nature to designate the entire Tibetan Plateau Steppe, encompassing Siachen Glacier, as one of 200 areas "critical to global conservation" (Smith, 2021).
There are commercial aspects of border conflicts and defense because contractors and companies involved in border infrastructure projects (e.g., Atlas Steel, Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. and Budimex S.A.) may have connections to politicians or are partly state-owned.They may rationalize their involvement and activities with claims that their work is by order of the government, that they are obliged to support the state, or that they are providing strategic defense of the country.Thus, they condone violations of environmental review processes and safeguards and a lack of transparency with the public and investors.They might also receive exemptions and concessions by governments.

ENERGY, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND TRANSPORTATION
The internationalization and globalization of energy as an industry and growing energy interdependence globally with reliance on and competition for fossil-based resources have resulted in intricately linking energy security with national security.The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) plays an important and distinct role in areas of energy security of its allies (Bartuška et al., 2019).In the case of the United States, Russia, and European nations, energy security is closely linked with national security, making it necessary to secure nations' energy supplies.According to security theory, the construal of an issue as security elevates it above regular politics, shuts down public discourse, and validates the execution of extraordinary means (Buzan et al., 1998).This leads to energy security being concentrated at the level of the nation, devoid of environmental considerations, and climate change mitigation.It also highlights the failure to consider securing the environment as intricately linked to energy security (Nyman, 2018).We explain this with some recent examples.
In the current global order, increasing demands for energy coupled with sharp recent increases in energy prices (or limited availability) mean that energy may be couched as strategic and superior to environmental issues, including by way of extraordinary powers.For example, as part of the EU's emergency energy plan, the Polish government passed a bill (Government of Poland, 2022) suspending-for 2 years-a ban on burning coal and other fuels of low quality, aggravating greenhouse gas emissions and leading to further worsening of Poland's already poor air quality with adverse health effects.Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán meanwhile signed a "decree on emergency firewood supply" relaxing logging rules in protected state-owned forests (Government of Hungary, 2022; Telex, 2022).
There is motion in the US Congress to expedite all forms of energy development, including fossil fuel development, through the modification of the environmental review process.For instance, the recently introduced Revitalizing the Economy by Simplifying Timelines and Assuring Regulatory Transparency Act bill (S.1449) would eliminate the requirement to assess cumulative and indirect impacts in the environmental review process.More positively, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act provides over $1 billion dollars to increase the capacity of agencies to implement environmental review (P.Law 117-169; 16 August 2022), a far superior approach to expediting alternative energy projects intended to address climate change than weakening environmental review processes (Pleune, 2022).
A worrying trend is that among areas being targeted for energy and transportation development, including in the United States and Mexico, are Indigenous sacred sites and ancestral lands (Takala & Goldberg, 2022) even when it is precisely such areas that are sustaining biodiversity and staving off climate change (Garnett et al., 2018).Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is using a decree enacted in November 2021 that declares megaprojects as works of national security (Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2021).The decree requires that federal agencies grant automatic approval to any project the government deems in the national interest, the most notable of which is the Tren Maya (Mayan Train), a 1500-km train line in Mexico's southern Yucatan Peninsula that will pass through three Mexican states and fragment portions of the second largest intact tropical rainforest in the Americas, the 15 million ha Selva Maya, which contains the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Miguel, 2023).The train will affect 1240 Indigenous communities and could result in the forced displacement of many residents (Kishwari, 2023).Another UNESCO World Heritage site in Mexico, the El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve, already affected by the US border wall, is slated for a 5000 ha (1000-MW) solar project with an accompanying transmission line that will bisect the reserve (Blust, 2022) and affect ejidos (commu-nally owned lands).This is an example of a protected area facing cumulative effects of multiple national interests.
Similarly, in 2022, India's Ministry of Forest, Environment, and Climate Change cleared the decks for the Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island along the Galathea Bay, an important leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) habitat.This mega infrastructure project consists of a transshipment port, international airport, 450 MVA gas and solar-based power plant, and a greenfield township on over 160 km 2 , of which 130 km 2 is primary forest.This will involve clearcutting of a million trees in an intact rainforest ecosystem.Of the island's total land area of 900 km 2 , 850 km 2 are delegated as an Indigenous reserve under the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956, which the project directly violates.Moreover, due to its ecological diversity, the region was declared a biosphere reserve in 1989 and included in UNESCO's Man and Biosphere Programme in 2013.Researchers and civil society organizations have objected, deeming the government's EIA process flawed, not transparent, inadequate, pernicious to Indigenous communities, and critical habitats (The Hindu, 2023).The idea for developing Great Nicobar, closer to Myanmar and Sumatra than to the Indian mainland, was first floated in the 1970s and centered on national security and consolidation of the Indian Ocean Region.India's geopolitical security continues to be prioritized over socioecological concerns.

SOVEREIGNTY
Infrastructure projects may also be rationalized on the basis of national sovereignty facilitating the circumvention of approvals through standard regulatory review processes.For example, to justify the Dos Bocas oil refinery, President Obrador stated that dependence on imported fuels undermines Mexico's sovereignty (Reuters, 2023).In late 2022, in the name of "Polish sovereignty, independence, and freedom," timed with the 83rd anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland, the Vistula Spit canal opened.It was justified by Poland's need for independent access from the Vistula Lagoon to Gdańsk Bay, circumventing the existing Strait of Baltiysk controlled by Russia.To enable its construction, economic and ecological arguments were rendered secondary to national security (Sommer & Zakrzewski, 2021).The project, for which some 10,000 trees were felled, forged ahead chiefly for symbolic reasons despite environmental concerns, impacts on three protected areas, including a Natura 2000 site, and lack of EU approval (Reuters, 2019).Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) describes the canal as contradicting the "goals, spirit and principles of the (1992) Convention for the Protection of Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area" and urged the European Commission to take action in response to Poland's unilateral implementation of the project (Coalition Clean Baltic [CCB], 2019).
Sovereignty can thus be a legitimizing tactic for furthering big infrastructure plans for energy, defense, and freedom from hostile neighbors, irrespective of associated environmental harms or lack of approval.

MILITARY EXPENDITURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY STRINGENCY
Drawing on available on military spending and an index on environmental policy stringency (EPS), we examined whether 33 countries, 30 of which were among the world's 50 biggest economies in 2022 based on gross domestic product, are improving less in environmental regulation while increasing military spending in recent years.We sourced data on military expenditure (Milex) from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and data on EPS from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).The EPS data (OECD, 2023) reflect the extent to which regulatory policies deter environmentally harmful behavior, with an emphasis on air pollution and climate change mitigation (Kruse et al., 2022).We examined trends in Milex and EPS from 1990 to 2020 for the 33 countries for which both types of data were available, including our focal countries, apart from Mexico (for which environmental stringency data are not openly available from the OECD website).
We estimated temporal trends of Milex and EPS with two general additive models (GAM) implemented in mgcv package for R (R Core Team, 2022; Wood, 2017).In the two GAMs, year effect was fitted with a thin plate regression spline that allowed testing of nonlinear trends, country identity was introduced as a random effect, and Milex and EPS were response variables, standardized for each country separately before analyses (i.e., variables had a mean of 0 and an SD of 1).
The recent trend in improvement in EPS has plateaued relative to the spike in Milex (Figure 3).This is consistent with analysis by Kruse et al. (2022) who reported a 1.1% average annual increase in EPS from 2010 to 2020 as compared with 6.8% and 8% in 1990-2000 and 2000-2010, respectively.Meanwhile, a sharp increase in Milex since 2015 is reported by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (2023).This indicates a growing mismatch between investment in environmental regulation and investment in military, with potential adverse environmental consequences, and negative impacts on national security as well.

WAYS TO HELP PREVENT NATIONAL SECURITY INTERESTS FROM UPENDING CONSERVATION
An emphasis on national security (e.g., in China [Drinhausen & Legarda, 2022]) and on defense (e.g., in the United States, where 1% of federal spending is on diplomacy and 72% is on defense [Peltier, 2023]) is occurring at the cost of nature.Although conservation strategies and legislation are typically planned during and for stable times and not emergencies, a 2022 policy brief of the European section of the Society for Conservation Biology states, "Do not sacrifice biodiversity to swiftly address war and energy crises" (Society for Conservation Biology Europe [SCB Europe], 2022).Relatedly, in August 2023, the Indian Parliament passed the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023.The contentious law redefines the scope of forest legislation by excluding forest lands due to "strategic linear projects of national importance and concerning national security" that fall within 100 km of international borders (The Wire, 2023).Scientists and activists are concerned that this will divert large tracts of forest land for commercial activities, including plantations, and render 28% of India's forest cover vulnerable because these tracts would fall outside recorded and protected forest area.The lives and livelihoods of local and Indigenous forest-neighboring and dependent communities would be altered (Mongabay, 2023).If environmental safeguards and laws continue to be waived for national emergencies, security, energy needs, and other stated national interests and imperative reasons, there is little chance of weathering precarious times.Long-term, climate-resilient thinking on bioregional scales is needed.
As a recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2022) report emphasized, increased investment in nature to halt climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crises is needed from US$120 to 285 billion/year by G20 countries.By comparison, world military spending (data on which are more accurate, accessible, and comprehensive than on conservation spending) has risen yearly since 2015, growing by 3.7% in 2022 and reaching a record high of $2240 billion (>80% represents spending by G20 countries).In 2021 (prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine), the United States ($800 billion), China ($293 billion), and India ($77 billion) had the highest military expenditures in the world.In 2022 Russia leapfrogged India for the world's third highest annual military expenditures (SIPRI, 2023).Disparity between spending on defense and spending on nature is axiomatic even with imperfect data on the latter.Further, military expenditure is associated with increased energy consumption and environmental degradation (Ahmed et al., 2020).
Functioning ecosystems buffer humanity from disease, facilitate the restoration of degraded areas (including in post-conflict zones), and accommodate multispecies migration driven by a rapidly changing climate (Titley et al., 2021).Protected areas, apart from helping safeguard species and habitats, offer disaster preparedness and risk reduction (Buyck et al., 2015;Duncanson et al., 2023).As recently observed in Ukraine, intact forests, wetlands, and restored woodlands can help disrupt an enemy's advance (Ankel, 2023;Charlton, 2022).We are not advocating for an environmental security approach given the problems-including militarization-with governing the environment (Duffy, 2016(Duffy, , 2022)).Rather, we argue for increased investments in environmental stewardship, especially by nations that are major consumer societies and military spenders, and for a more consistent compilation and reporting of environmental spending, which could be done through the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting framework (https:// seea.un.org/).
National security decrees and emergency declarations, combined with direct disregard for environmental laws, can undermine the foundations of democratic principles and protocols, public input, and transparency.Framing border security, energy, and transportation as national interests that override environmental interests has already led to labeling of environmental defenders, conservation scientists, journalists, and other dissenters as antinational, making them targets of hostility and violence (Chacko, 2018;Dutta & Nielsen, 2022).
What can be concretely done to prevent national interests from overriding conservation efforts and regulations within broader contexts of the climate and biodiversity emergencies?The conservation science community needs to engage in the framing of what constitutes an emergency or crisis (McHugh et al., 2021), calling out when an emergency aligns more with political or for-profit motives or when national interest is used to cloak-even partially-large-scale commercial interests.Emergency measures should generally be temporary in nature and not leave lasting ecological footprints.
Scientists must partner with environmental defenders and frontline communities (Bluwstein et al., 2021), including the 2346 jurisdictions in 40 countries which, as of September 2023, have declared a climate emergency (Climate Emergency Declaration, 2023), and amplify coordination with the broader community to enable strategic actions, for example, lawsuits, such as those filed by the Southern Border Communities Coalition (https://www.southernborder.org/) in the United States; research and archiving, as done by Badaczki i Badacze Na Granicy (Researchers on the Border, https://www.bbng.org/) in Poland; and coproduction of knowledge (Nel et al., 2016).Because sociopolitical factors drive conservation efficacy (Liu et al., 2020;Titley et al., 2021), conservation biologists should foster collaboration with social scientists and employ science diplomacy as a tool for cooperation (Bawa et al., 2020).A cautious revival of peace parks as a global initiative warrants attention to revive momentum toward cross-boundary cooperation (Chester & Sifford, 2012;Liu et al., 2022) without the domination of national interests, with communities as partners and leaders and a rights-based approach to tackle sensitive border dynamics (Büscher, 2013;Duffy, 2001;van Amerom & Büscher, 2005).
Across scales, given the ubiquity of securitization at the cost of nature and people, leaders and governments need (galvanizing) to adhere to regulatory frameworks and uphold laws and human rights; avoid using national security to justify unilateral or autocratic decision-making about (but not limited to) mega and transboundary infrastructure projects that jeopardize shared bioregions and heritage areas; apply precaution through compliance with environmental and social review processes without exception or exemption (the precautionary principle puts the burden of proof on proponents of emergency measures to justify them as superseding the prevailing uncertainty over damage that may or will be caused through their application.);follow globally accepted frameworks when planning land-altering projects (Arlidge et al., 2018); not misuse or overuse executive, extraordinary, or emergency powers; eschew framing migration as a crisis or security issue; and enhance transboundary biodiversity conservation and climate responsibilities, resilience, and cooperation through peaceful means, conflict resolution, and demilitarization (Ali et al., 2019).

CONCLUSIONS
This essay foregrounds what we perceive as the increasing importance of linking geopolitics with nature conservation, what Davis (2023) in the Himalayan context calls "geopolitical ecology."We also emphasize the reconfiguration of geopolitics with a focus on security policies that need to be farsighted, adhere to human (and more than human) rights, and curate a sustainable world by staying within "planetary boundaries" (Richardson et al., 2023), conceptualized as "Anthropocene geopolitics" (Dalby, 2020).We highlighted cases where environmental safeguards were or are being bypassed affecting humans and other species in spaces of ecological diversity concomitantly fraught with histories of border disputes and other tensions.
We encourage colleagues to partake in and expand on this discussion and propose undertaking of a more comprehensive review to systematically examine the enabling conditions for bypassing nature-related protective legislation to help avert its further erosion and reversal of gains made in transboundary conservation in the name of security.
Confronted with mounting challenges, world leaders should adhere to existing laws, treaties, agreements, and disavow the misuse of extraordinary powers.Sixty-two years ago, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address (Eisenhower, 1961), "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."The pragmatic and moral imperative Eisenhower imparted in 1961 is more relevant today than ever, "we must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow."

FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3Temporal trends of military expenditure and environmental policy stringency (EPS) index (1990-2020) (both standardized to analysis) for 33 countries (black curves, general additive model fit; gray shading, 95% confidence intervals; triangles, G7 countries and China; circles other countries; edf, estimated degrees of freedom; GAM, general additive models).Abbreviations of country names are shown for some outliers.