The Securitization of Climate Change: A Developmental Perspective

Disasters, climate change, and securitisation: the United Nations Security Council and the United Kingdom's security policy

“…This paper builds on this by adopting the position of Peters and Mayhew () who undertook a review of the inclusion of climate change in the UN Security Council and UK security policy and revealed that a full process of securitisation has not occurred, if understood to mean treating climate change as an existential threat that warrants ‘emergency action’. However, if taken to refer to Abrahamsen's () gradual process wherein ‘political choices are made to conceptualise an issue in a particular way’ then securitisation does occur (Peters and Mayhew, , p. 213). This paper does not repeat that work—readers are pointed to Peters and Mayhew ().…”

“…However, if taken to refer to Abrahamsen's () gradual process wherein ‘political choices are made to conceptualise an issue in a particular way’ then securitisation does occur (Peters and Mayhew, , p. 213). This paper does not repeat that work—readers are pointed to Peters and Mayhew (). Crucially, it extends the discussion by focusing specifically on a neglected aspect: the role of disasters in a partially securitised climate change.…”

“…There has been much analysis since 2007 of whether or not climate change has been securitised (Trombetta, 2008;Youngs, 2014, Peters andMayhew, 2016;Warner and Boas, 2017). The growing body of literature examining the inclusion of climate change in security policy, from a national, regional and international perspective, includes the European Union (EU) (Youngs, 2014), the UK (Peters and Mayhew, 2016), and the UN Security Council (Sindico, 2007).…”

“…There has been much analysis since 2007 of whether or not climate change has been securitised (Trombetta, 2008;Youngs, 2014, Peters andMayhew, 2016;Warner and Boas, 2017). The growing body of literature examining the inclusion of climate change in security policy, from a national, regional and international perspective, includes the European Union (EU) (Youngs, 2014), the UK (Peters and Mayhew, 2016), and the UN Security Council (Sindico, 2007). This paper builds on this by adopting the position of Peters and Mayhew (2016) who undertook a review of the inclusion of climate change in the UN Security Council and UK security policy and revealed that a full process of securitisation has not occurred, if understood to mean treating climate change as an existential threat that warrants 'emergency action'.…”

“…Building on this evolution, this paper takes as its starting point the premise that climate change has undergone a partial securitisation, if understood as Abrahamsen's () conception of ‘a gradual process through which political choices are made to conceptualise an issue in a particular way’ (Peters and Mayhew, , p. 231). Despite some analysis of the securitisation of climate change (Sindico, ; Peters and Mayhew, ), what remains unexplored is how climate change articulated in security domains has explicit and implicit ties to natural hazard‐related disasters (‘disasters’). Moreover, as Warner (, p. 79) remarks: ‘disasters have received surprisingly little attention in the security studies literature’—the application of concepts of securitisation, although they lend themselves to the examination of disaster studies, have rarely been investigated except by Warner himself.…”