Abstract
Terrorism aims to attack resources which are critical and vulnerable, but it often aims also at jeopardising aspects of human life which have the highest emotional impact. One of these aspects can surely be the environmental resources, since everything dealing with safety and salubrity of the environment affects all strata of the population. In particular, when environmental contamination affects the production of food and the supply of water the impacts become higher: it affects populations at large, it specifically affect the weak members of the populations, e.g. children and elderly, it addresses a fundamental need of people, and its perturbation is of high psychological impact, its manipulation can destroy the consumers' trust in industry, producers, and retailers, and it leads to massive economical impacts. This paper describes instances of environmental contamination and lists possible sensitive targets for terrorism. It lists current and innovative approaches to monitoring of resources and describes the initiatives organised within the NATO Science for Peace and Security Program against ecoterrorism.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge funding from NATO's Public Diplomacy Division for Short-Term ad hoc project ECOTER and in the framework of “Science for Peace”, project SFP982498 SITCEN. Contributions have also been provided by GSA project MENTORE and by the University of Parma.
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Marmiroli, N., Marmiroli, M., Maestri, E. (2010). Monitoring of Environmental Resources Against Intentional Threats. In: Koukouliou, V., Ujevic, M., Premstaller, O. (eds) Threats to Food and Water Chain Infrastructure. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3546-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3546-2_4
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