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

Boas, Ingrid; Rothe, Delf

doi:10.1080/09644016.2016.1160479

Cited by 98 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The FCO has been amongst the leading actors in portraying climate migration as a matter of security, both within the UK and internationally, as part of a wider narrative on climate change and security (Trombetta 2008;Boas and Rothe 2016). The FCO was for instance the UK ministry that thought of the idea to hold a debate on the topic of climate change (including climate migration) in the UN Security Council in 2007 and pushed for it to happen, both domestically and internationally.…”

Section: Uk: a Security Narrative As A Diplomatic Strategy On Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A national advisory committee, the Dutch Delta Commission, was instated in 2006, presided over by former Agriculture Minister and Wageningen University CEO, Cees Veerman, and consisted of representatives from the domains of politics, science, engineering and civil service (Boezeman et al 2013). In 2008 its conclusions were presented on national TV with great fanfare.…”

Section: Climate Securitisation: Securitising the Dutch Deltamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the 2010 National Security Strategy and the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review produced in the time of the Coalition Government, the need for a multilateral deal on climate change mitigation is only mentioned once (Cabinet Office, 2010: 18), and a security narrative had not been employed to promote efforts towards such action. The policy constituency within the UK fizzled out, making space for alternative and related framings (Boas and Rothe 2016).…”

Section: Uk: a Security Narrative As A Diplomatic Strategy On Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

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Securitisation of Climate Change: The Risk of Exaggeration

Warner

Boas

2017

Ambient. soc.

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The present contribution focuses on the ‘selling’ of the ‘climate crisis’ to intended key audiences, both in the international domain and at home. We look into the mechanics of crisis framing, the audience, and the resonance that the frame had, as well as development over time in two cases: the UK addressing the UN Security Council and the State Advisory Commission on Deltas (‘Delta Commission’) seeking support in the Netherlands for drastic measures to address sea level rise. For this, we apply the conceptual framework from critical security studies and securitisation, with contributions from the domains of crisis and disaster studies. Both case studies discussed show a dramatic securitising move, where climate change is presented as the source of great potential crisis that will harm us all, unless we take urgent action - either for mitigation (the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) or for adaptation.

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Section: Uk: a Security Narrative As A Diplomatic Strategy On Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Climate Securitisation: Securitising the Dutch Deltamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Uk: a Security Narrative As A Diplomatic Strategy On Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

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Securitisation of Climate Change: The Risk of Exaggeration

Warner

Boas

2017

Ambient. soc.

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“…The first-mentioned "systemic" approaches have been criticized from social-scientific (e.g., Brown 2014, Olsson et al 2015, Boas and Rothe 2016 and political ecology perspectives (e.g., Taylor 2015). Taking the latter approaches as a starting point, we aim to understand peri-urban water conflicts from an interdisciplinary perspective combined with insights from political ecology (e.g., Swyngedouw et al 2002, Budds 2009), access theory, and legal-anthropological approaches to property.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flows of change: dynamic water rights and water access in peri-urban Kathmandu

Shrestha¹,

Roth²,

Joshi³

2018

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Urbanization and the changing climate are increasingly influencing people's access to land and water. Changes in use of, and rights and access to, land and water are most acutely experienced in peri-urban areas. We analyze these changes in peri-urban Kathmandu, Nepal. Increasing pressures on land and growing water needs of an expanding population in Kathmandu Valley are creating new patterns of water use, water-related conflicts, and (in)securities. We use two case studies that are characteristic of these changes, with a focus on the microlevel redefinitions of, and struggles about, rights, access, and notions of legitimate water use, and what these mean for water security and water conflict in a socially and institutionally complex and dynamic environment. Our findings show that these water-related changes cause contestations and conflicts between peri-urban water users. Amid increasing competition for water, people are using new sources and technologies, searching for negotiated solutions based on local norms and rights, and co-opting other water users through cooperation to create access opportunities and avoid conflicts. Our cases show self-restraint in practices of claiming or accessing water, while avoidance of conflicts also derives from an awareness of unequal power relations between user groups, past experiences of violence used against protesters, and lack of active intervention to regulate increasing exploitation of peri-urban land and water resources.

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“…Climate change‐induced migration is a remarkable phenomenon: although clear causal links between climate change and migratory decisions cannot be established and research has proven many of the projected numbers of future ‘climate migrants’ wrong, the trope received considerable attention in Western public and political discourses (see Boas and Rothe ). In the following, two dominant discourses of climate change, migration and security linkages are described and read through a lens of gender…”

Section: Discourses Of Climate Change Conflict and Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendering Resilience: Myths and Stereotypes in the Discourse on Climate‐induced Migration

Rothe

2017

Global Policy

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The research article critically investigates recent European policy proposals that promote migration as an adaptation strategy to increase the resilience of communities vulnerable to the environmental crisis. Such proposals have been welcomed for breaking with alarmist discourses that framed climate-induced migration as a threat to national or international security. The present article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by bringing in a fresh perspective that has so far been neglected: the perspective of gender. Drawing on a poststructuralist perspective on gender the article reveals that policy debates on climate-induced migration take place within highly gendered discourses. Applying this perspective to recent policy reports on climate change, migration and resilience, the article helps to paint a more nuanced picture of the highly criticized notion of resilience. The analysis shows that, on the one hand, resilience thinking helped overcoming a masculinized discourse of security as control. On the other hand, it reproduces a series of 'gender myths' about the role of women in the so-called Global South.The issue of climate change-induced migration is fiercely debated in academic, political and public media discourses. These debates have long been dominated by alarmist threat images and projections of looming waves of hundreds of millions of climate refugees in the near future. Recently, such alarmist voices have been replaced by a more modest discourse, which revolves around the notion of resilience. In line with resilience thinking this discourse has stressed the complexity and multi-causality of climate-induced migration. Most importantly, climate migration has been normatively reevaluated -from posing a threat to (inter)national security to being a potential adaptation measure that might reduce the vulnerability of communities in climate hot-spot regions (see Scheffran et al., 2012). In the academic literature, there is a heated normative debate about this discursive shift. Some have welcomed the rise of resilience for its openness and departure from a defense-oriented approach to security (Corry, 2014). Others have condemned resilience as yet another expression of a neoliberal hegemony, which is shifting the burden of protection from state agencies to the vulnerable communities themselves (Bettini, 2014;Methmann and Oels, 2015).The present article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by bringing in a fresh perspective on this debate that has so far been neglected: the perspective of gender discourse. It asks how we can evaluate the recent shift in discourses of climate-induced migration, when they are read through the lens of gender. Drawing on a poststructuralist understanding of gender, the article seeks to reveal the gendered subject positions and narratives in resilience thinking. For this, the first section very shortly introduces the poststructuralist understanding of gender and its operationalization. Section 2 distinguishes between two ideal-typical discourses of climate chan...

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

Cited by 98 publications

References 31 publications

Securitisation of Climate Change: The Risk of Exaggeration

Securitisation of Climate Change: The Risk of Exaggeration

Flows of change: dynamic water rights and water access in peri-urban Kathmandu

Gendering Resilience: Myths and Stereotypes in the Discourse on Climate‐induced Migration

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