Abstract
With the growing insight that outbreaks of violent conflict may be linked to environmental degradation and scarcity, "environment and security" has become an object of interest to both political and environmental science. The road to mutually reinforcing activities is blocked by several antagonisms, however, and the heavy emphasis on the national level has precluded the tapping of the wealth of conflict knowledge in anthropology. An improved relationship between the security and environment science fields is suggested by clarifying and linking the generalized "causal stories" that security and environmental scientists tell around their core concepts (security and sustainability, respectively). On that basis, and if focusing on a (subnational) scale that facilitates the involvement of anthropology too, joint research projects can yield a balanced understanding of the links between environment and security.
