In her CNAS publication, Burke defines “natural
security” as “sufficient, reliable, affordable, and sus-
tainable supplies of natural resources for the modern
global economy” (2009, 9). Natural resources are
broadly defined, as basic resources such as sunlight,
water, land, biodiversity, and minerals in the earth,
to the services humans obtain from these resources
through agriculture, fishing, forestry, energy harvest-
ing, and mining. Burke highlights several interstate
tensions surrounding natural resources, such as dams
in Turkey on the Euphrates River affecting Syria and
Iraq, water withdrawal on the San Pedro and Colo-
rado Rivers in the United States affecting Mexico, and
Russia’s use of natural gas as a political tool to ma-
nipulate Ukraine.
Burke’s definition of “sufficient, reliable...natural
resources for the modern global economy” supports
the perspective of global populations, economies, and
ecosystems are intertwined and resource degradation,
resource scarcity, illegal trafficking of resources, and
stakeholder exploitation of natural resource derived
revenues are legitimate concerns of the international
community, working through and with sovereign
states. Others argue it is within the sovereign rights
of nations to use and distribute their natural resources
as they determine appropriate, without international
interference. In a world where global connections are
more tightly wound each day, nation-states are still
the fundamental political unit. These debates will con-
tinue, but the interests of stakeholders beyond those
represented by nation-states, whether within a nation
or across national boundaries, are gaining expression,
and changes in nation-states are taking place more fre-
quently, based upon the concerns of exploited stake-
holders within these states and the concerns of those
sharon
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