Environmental security in the era of hybrid threats systemic degradation and adaptation strategies

Abstract

Contemporary geopolitical instability has thrust the environmental factor to the forefront of hybrid confrontation. The environment is no longer viewed merely as a victim of conflict; it has evolved into a complex theater of operations in which natural processes are deliberately distorted to achieve strategic superiority. Unlike traditional conflicts, hybrid warfare involves exploiting ecological catastrophes to engineer zones of strategic chaos. This is executed through cyber-physical attacks on Industrial Control Systems (ICS) of potentially hazardous facilities, allowing aggression to be masked as industrial accidents. At the intersection of ecology, political science, and defense technologies, a new multidisciplinary vector is actively emerging, defining the priorities for future scholarly inquiry within the changing nature of global conflicts. One of the most perilous strategies of hybrid warfare in this context is the artificial construction of an "architecture of scarcity." Unlike a direct economic blockade, this approach involves covert and purposeful interference with the reproduction of natural resources. This method is closely linked to manifestations of resource nationalism, characterized by the imposition of rigid control over critical minerals essential to the global "green transition" and the use of this dominance as an effective tool for political blackmail.