Environmental security and climate change: analysing the discourse

Abstract

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.

From conflict to resilience? Explaining recent changes in climate security discourse and practice

“…Following the problematisation of the secondary implications of climate change, the main policies promoted by UK conflict discourse were overseas conflict prevention taking consideration of climate-change impacts (Cabinet Office 2010, p. 44, DFID, FCO, MOD 2011, and international efforts to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions to prevent climate change (Trombetta 2008). For instance, the latter was the UK's key objective when initiating the UN Security Council debate on climate change and security of April 2007(interview, FCO Official, 6 October 2011.…”

“…The UK case is an extreme one, given the strong resonance that both climate security as well as resilience thinking produced in UK discourse. The UK is often referred to as one of the places where discourses of climate conflict first appeared in the policy field (Trombetta 2008, Toke 2013, Corry 2014, Boas 2015. It was, for instance, the UK that initiated the first-ever UN Security Council debate on climate security.…”

Torn between war and peace: Critiquing the use of war to mobilize peaceful climate action

“…This layered, complex nature of security is confirmed by the environmental securitization literature, which is witness to many localized securitizing moves but cannot confirm the acceptance of extraordinary measures by the intended audience and as such the successful securitization of climate change (De Wilde, 2008;Oels, 2013;Trombetta, 2008).…”

The Impact of Contemporary Environmental Migrations on International Security.

“…Although climate change and environmental degradation have been considered as a threat for decades, the relevant act of securitization has been made relatively recently. On 24 October 2006 the British Minister of Foreign Affairs Margaret Beckett stated, during her speech given in Berlin, that "climate change is a serious threat to international security" and that "achieving climate security must be at the core of foreign policy" (Scott, 2008;Trombetta, 2008). This was the first time that the term climate security was used deliberately and with direct reference to foreign policy.…”