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Environmental challenges as a factor of security problems have entered mainstream discourse. Various international organisations have developed new instruments to look at the overlap between environmental problems and security threats. One such theatre of late has been the Maghreb, a sensitive region bordering the European Union. By looking at EU-Maghreb relations, this paper argues that, very often, environmental discourse is part of several other discourses and policy options, and rarely the dominant one. It coexists with other discourses such as 'economic reforms', 'democratisation', and 'good governance'. Yet, under conditions of rapid liberalisation and privatisation, these have simultaneously brought the Maghrebi economies under Western influence and kept them away from sustainability. As a result, environmental concerns become instrumentalided to re-design new hierarchies, or to legitimise old hegemonic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]