The Securitisation of Climate Change

Diez, Thomas; Lucke, Franziskus von; Wellmann, Zehra

doi:10.4324/9781315665757

Cited by 61 publications

(37 citation statements)

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“…However, the securitization of climate change is disputed because stringent climate policies have not yet been widely implemented despite the growing awareness of the threat that climate change poses (Oels, 2013;von Lucke et al, 2014) or because such securitization attempts may actually backfire and result in loss of support (Warner and Boas, 2019). Diez et al (2016) observed that climate security discourses have not yet been translated into extraordinary climate policies, let alone military responses, although recent studies show some indications of climate security threats being integrated into the decision-making of the U.S. department of Defense (Burnett and Mach, 2021;Garfin et al, 2021). They argue that the long term and uncertain character of climate change does not fit with the traditional securitization theory of the Copenhagen School that focuses on direct existential threats and direct (military) responses (Diez et al, 2016).…”

Section: Securitization Theory and Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Climate change has been framed as a threat to human security and a "threat multiplier" (UN, 2009) to the extent that some scholars argue that it has become "securitized". This means that climate change should be regarded as a threat to the international, national and local security and as such extraordinary measures should be put in place to fight its consequences (e.g., Barnett, 2001;Barnett and Adger, 2007;Oels, 2012;Diez et al, 2016). Securitization is the process whereby a public issue is framed as an existential threat to the survival of a certain entity, thereby transporting the issue to security politics that legitimize the use of extraordinary and far-reaching measures instead of normal policy making (Buzan et al, 1998;Scott, 2012;Balzacq et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, while climate change as a public issue has become a securitized issue according to some scholars (Scott, 2012;Diez et al, 2016;Dupont, 2018;Sperling and Webber, 2019), we generally lack an understanding of how and to what extent adaptation, as an adequate response to climate insecurities, has been securitized (Rhinard et al, forthcoming). There are some early indications that some degree of securitization of adaptation has been taking place at the international level (Rhinard and Morsut, In Press), while the securitization of national adaptation has not yet been subject to investigation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We organized the paper as it follows: Section 2 discusses the theoretical underpinning of this study based on Diez et al (2016) and presents the analytical framework for the analysis of two distinct levels of securitization. Section 3 presents the methods used, followed by section 4 with the results.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Dutch national climate change adaptation policy through a securitization lens: Variations of securitization

Mees

Surian

2023

Front. Clim.

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Climate change has been framed as a threat to human security and has therefore become securitized, scholars argue. But what about the securitization of climate change adaptation as a policy response to fight climate change? Adaptation has risen on political agendas worldwide, and a few scholars have found some early signs of the securitization of adaptation at UN/EU levels. This paper analyzes how and to what extent adaptation has become securitized at national level, studying The Netherlands as one of the frontrunners in adaptation. We compared the levels of securitization for different adaptation issues, based on content analysis of 19 general and sectoral national policy documents and 7 in-depth interviews with national policy makers and experts. Securitization is studied with respect to the discourses used to frame the climate as a risk or threat, and the actors and tools that are put forward to address the climate risk or threat. The results show that climate change has made Dutch adaptation to flood risks even more prominent: in the two most important national policy documents climate change is framed as a wake-up call to speed up the plans and actions of the longstanding Delta program to protect The Netherlands against flooding. We also see considerable differences between the levels of securitization for different adaptation issues. Water-related adaptation issues show signs of riskification, while the same cannot be said for adaptation to heat stress and drought. Furthermore, most attention goes to the governance of adaptation in the built environment, while neglecting the social and health care domains and the need to take account of the capabilities of at-risk citizen groups. By applying the securitization lens this research has yielded new insights into national adaptation policy development. Future research could develop a better understanding of how securitization tendencies travel across different governance scales; for instance, on how national level discourses influence securitization of adaptation at the local level.

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Section: Securitization Theory and Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Dutch national climate change adaptation policy through a securitization lens: Variations of securitization

Mees

Surian

2023

Front. Clim.

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“…True, mostly the ‘referent objects’ of securitization are supposed to be more or less stable—namely, state institutions and national sovereignty, which constitutes a continuum with the ‘realist’ branch of International Relations (Wæver 1995 ). Yet, more recent research has shown that there is a plethora of potential referent objects of securitization, including the economy, the environment, cultural identity, and others (Buzan et al 1998 ; Stritzel 2012 ; Diez et al 2016 ). The pandemic confronted political actors and institutions with the necessity to make security prioritizations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Publicness of Pandemic Security and the Shortcomings of Governmentality

Langenohl

2022

Eur J Secur Res

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Employing the example of Germany within a European context, this paper argues that government responses to the pandemic relied too much on the biopolitical governance of populations, and too little on the symbolic governance of public spheres. Based on an analysis of policy documents and their medial representation, it is found that the politics of pandemic security is focused on the regulation of population aggregates and movements (social distancing, lockdowns, border closings, etc.), resembling a quasi-Foucaultian notion of biopolitical governmentality. Confident that the crisis can be handled through a classical apparatus of security through self-conduct within an imaginary of stochastic aggregation of the social, these modes of governance paid virtually no attention to non-stochastic social aggregates, such as those which can be observed in public spheres. Yet these aggregates produced massive mobilizations against the politics of pandemic governance in liberal democracies, in the streets and on the internet. In conceptual terms, these mobilizations can be understood as an insistence on sovereign power, in Foucault’s sense, yet ‘from below’: They reinvigorate the dramatic public, as opposed to the inconspicuous circulation, as the site for claiming attention, legitimacy, and potentially disruption—in other words, for claiming sovereign power. In the final analysis, a major security problematic can be seen in the failure of the politics of governmentality to be insensitive to the politics of sovereignty.

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Securitization of local adaptation: Signs of riskification in a Dutch region

Jochemsen,

Mees

2024

Risk Hazard & Crisis Pub Pol

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Climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events and sea level rise, causing scholars to argue that it has become a security issue and that extraordinary measures are being legitimized by its perceived threat, referred to as securitization. Securitization of climate change has so far been studied predominantly in an international and occasionally national context. Little is known on how security dynamics play out on the local, subnational level. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated if and how adaptation to climate change (CCA) has been securitized for the water domain in a region in the Netherlands that is a CCA frontrunner: Dordrecht. Our case study comprised a detailed document analysis complemented with eight policymaker/expert interviews. In the discourses, actors and tools employed in the governance of CCA in Dordrecht we found signs of securitization in the form of riskification: risk terminology being used in CCA governance; greater involvement of risk and safety actors; and the development of new risk tools like risk and vulnerability analyses. However, securitization remains largely absent: CCA continues to be dealt with as a shared responsibility and as a cross‐sectoral policy issue to be integrated and mainstreamed to become the “new normal.”

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The Securitisation of Climate Change

Cited by 61 publications

References 0 publications

Dutch national climate change adaptation policy through a securitization lens: Variations of securitization

Dutch national climate change adaptation policy through a securitization lens: Variations of securitization

The Publicness of Pandemic Security and the Shortcomings of Governmentality

Securitization of local adaptation: Signs of riskification in a Dutch region

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