This article analyses the emerging discourse on 'climate security' and investigates whether and how attempts to consider environmental problems as security issues are transforming security practices. Attempts to broaden the security agenda have been deemed as spreading the confrontational logic of security-which, within international relations, is traditionally associated with the exceptional decision that brings into existence the logic of war-into sectors from which it had been excluded. This problematic development has been described as 'securitization'. This article argues that this perspective does not consider whether and how by securitizing nontraditional sectors, alternative security logics are evoked and practices associated with securitization are challenged and transformed. The securitization of the environment, it is argued, is transforming existing security practices and provisions. This process is part of broader re-articulation of the spaces in which a logic of security based on emergency and contingency is legitimated and those in which a logic of prevention and management prevails. It implies new roles for security actors and different means to provide security.

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Despite the traditional resistance to consider climate change as a national security issue, the security impact of climate change has been increasingly recognized by official discourses in China over the past few years. The Chinese perception on climate change has shifted from a development issue to a security topic; and two driving forces are behind the emergence of the climate security discourse: the shift of China’s economy towards a “New Normal” and the commitments China made in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Meanwhile, two modalities of discourse that characterize the Chinese context are also discerned. One that involves national security has a rather fixed procedure about how security can be spoken of and by whom; the other is more relevant for issues like climate change and air pollution. In both cases, even if the language of security is used with regard to climate issues, they are handled as normal politics and governmental actions are legitimized by the use of security language. Although China has taken on more climate responsibilities, it seems unprepared for global climate leadership because security considerations not only determine the country’s participation but also limit its international commitments in global climate governance.

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