The Correlation between Environmental Security and National Security (Case Study of Bioterrorism)

Security and peace establishment in each society is one of the most important responsibilities and goals of government that is taken care of by use of all its executive agents and abilities. Today, not only does the security concept include military issues, but also all aspects of human life. For instance, environmental problems and security threats are results of this concept that attract high levels of global attention. As an environmental threat, bioterrorism can endanger the country's security, in case of occurrence. Additionally, it can become a national crisis, which requires crisis management, panic control and social stability in order to decrease the attack effects for its prevention. Based on our country's location and presence of some powers like US and Israel around us, Iran's vulnerability in national level like borders and ethnic regions from one side, and disability of some neighbor governments in governing their territory from the other side, have made terrorism an important issue for Islamic republic of Iran. Survey assumptions include: 1) It seems that there is a direct relationship between environmental security and national security. 2) There is an inverted relation between bioterrorism threats’ effects and government and society’s readiness. Survey results show that lack of planning and readiness of society and government against a bioterrorism act influences countrie's political, social and economic dimensions and causes huge disaster. Folk's knowledge and education in addition to government’s planning in the field of unexpected and unnatural threats and events such as bioterrorism, play a key role in decreasing the crisis effects as the result of those events. As the most important result, the requirement for analysis of a bioterrorism action is having sufficient knowledge. It also must be considered that prevention of bioterrorism occurrence is much better than being faced to it afterwards.