摘要：Approaches to the study and definition of the concept of security have started to change rapidly since the end of the Cold War. Today there is a high level of agreement among theorists that security is a dynamic social process, hence threats to security are different, not necessarily defined as military threats to national sovereignty. The definition of a security threat depends on the time and place. One of the most important contributors to the study of the contemporary phenomenon of security is the Copenhagen school of security studies. Buzan, Waever and associates have established the theory of securitization and desecuritization as a persuasive instrument for defining contemporary security threats in the context of modern liberalism. Securitization marks a given phenomenon as a security threat and transfers it to the sphere of the so-called emergency action which is, according to the critics of the Copenhagen school, its major drawback since such situations may cause the erosion of democratic standards. Therefore, the theory of desecuritization tries to prevent securitization from potentially jeopardizing the democratic process. Specifically, emergency measures can be withdrawn without a public debate and the matter handed over to political institutions when and if the arguments in favor of withdrawal are sufficiently convincing. Regardless of different theoretical approaches, one can argue that the state still remains the most dominant actor in defining a specific problem as a security threat. When it comes to matters of environmental damage, civil society is emerging as a credible securitizator and corrective to state institutions which are often unable to adequately “control” levers of economic development. However, civil society also has certain limitations which are most commonly manifested in the blockage of reforms and social asymmetries of civic activism.
关键词：environmental security; securitization; desecuritization; activism; state; civil society
