The environment has a profound impact on our national interests in two ways: First, environmental forces transcend borders and oceans to threaten directly the health, prosperity and jobs of American citizens. Second, addressing natural resource issues is frequently critical to achieving political and economic stability, and to pursuing our strategic goals around the world.

– Secretary of State Warren Christopher

Threats to U.S. public health

• There are emerging concerns that climate change and other environmental factors are contributing to the emergence and spread of dangerous new epidemics, such as West Nile virus.
   
• Accumulations of toxic chemicals threaten food safety and cause long-term health effects. Persistent Organic Pollutants can now be found virtually everywhere in the world.
   
• While the United States has made substantial efforts to reduce domestic lead emissions, children adopted from foreign countries are suffering from lead poisoning, imported consumer products still contain lead, and the winds transport lead into our environment.
   
• About half the world’s tropical forests have been lost in just the last forty years. Continued deforestation threatens potential pharmaceutical sources. New medicines may never be discovered, or may become rare and therefore prohibitively expensive.

Threats to U.S. National Security

• Environmental degradation causes, and is caused by, civil and international conflict.
   
• As the environment and natural resource base are degraded, income disparities widen and the absolute number of people living in poverty in the developing world increases, giving rise to social and political unrest and the prospects of even more terrorists and millions of environmental refugees.
   
• Water shortages will become a major source of conflict as one-third of the world’s people already live in "water-stressed" countries that find it difficult or impossible to meet all of their water needs. UNESCO predicts that by mid-century as many as 7 billion people in close to 60 countries could face water shortages, threatening to cause political instability, create a public health crisis and negatively impact the global environment.
   
•  The pillaging of commodities—minerals, gems, timber, and others—has exacerbated several violent conflicts in developing countries.
   
• There are links between the growing world illegal trade in wildlife, and other resources and the supply of arms and drugs.
   
• Invasive species and exotic diseases have been identified as potential weapons of terrorism.

Threats to U.S. Economic Interests

• Scientists predict that in the future the weather is likely to become more erratic and extreme as a result of climate change. More severe droughts and hurricanes could severely damage food production and be very costly to our economy. The number of people affected by weather-related disasters rose from 147 million people/year in the 80s to 211 million people/year in the 90s, costing an estimated US $100 billion per year.
   
• Rising sea levels could flood coastal cities costing billions to mitigate and rebuild.
   
• Biodiversity is important for the continued availability of many key commodities. Declines of wild plants related to industrial crops such as cotton or plantation-grown timber could one day limit our ability to cultivate those commodities by shrinking the gene pools needed for breeding new varieties.
   
• Species invasions cost the United States an estimated $136 billon each year.

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