This dissertation was submitted for the Mst International Relations at Cambridge University in June 2007. Please cite as: Hughes, Hannah

(2007) Climate change and securitization. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.

Climate change and securitization

Hannah Hughes

M.St International Relations (2005-07)

Centre of International Studies University of Cambridge

ii

Table of contents Table of figures iv List of abbreviations v

Introduction 6

1. Security Studies 10

Traditional Security Studies 12 Critical Security Studies 13 The Copenhagen School 15 Environmental security and the changing security agenda 18

2. Securitization and environmental security 24

The Process of Securitization 25 Facilitating Conditions 28 The Components of Securitization 32 Referent Object 32 Existential Threat 34 Securitizing actor(s) 35 Audience 38 Securitized or not? 40

3. The intensification of climate change 45

The Emergence of Climate Change as a Political Issue 45 Functional Actors 50 Functional actors facilitating securitization 52 Functional actors hindering securitization 58 Facilitating Conditions 61 Hindering conditions 62 The Impacts of Climate Change 63 Climate Change as a Security Issue 65

iii

4. Climate change and the government’s securitizing moves 71

Step 1: Existential Threat - The Securitizing Actors 75 Tony Blair (prime minister) 76 David Miliband (Secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs) 80 Margaret Beckett (Foreign Secretary) 83 Step 2: Audience Acceptance 87 Step 3: Emergency Measures 93 Step 4: Effects on Interunit Relations by Breaking Free of the Rules 95

Conclusion 97

References 102 Primary Sources 102 Secondary sources 105

iv

Table of figures 1.1 The spectrum from non-political to securitized 16 3.1 The spectrum from non-political to securitized 46

v

List of abbreviations AOSIS Alliance of Small Island States CO2 Carbon Dioxide COP Conference of the Parties EFTA European Free Trade Association EU European Union Defra Department of environment, food and rural affairs DfID Department for International Development DfT Department for Transport DOD Department of Defence DTI Department of Trade and Industry FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office G8 Group of eight (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia,

United Kingdom, United States) G77 The group of seventy-seven les developed countries IGO Intergovernmental organisation INC Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change NSS National Security Strategy NGO Non-governmental organisation OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development UN United Nations UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change WMO World Meteorological Organisation

Introduction

The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC)

Working Group I, released February 2007, states that ‘warming of the climate system is

unequivocal’ (emphasis added). The Working Group II (2007) report outlines the

impacts of climate change, which constitute the most fundamental and wide-ranging

challenges to human existence and the prevailing political and economic order. It

concludes that through rising temperatures and sea levels, changed food production

patterns, increased incidences of vector-borne diseases and frequency of extreme

weather events, climate change has the potential to radically disrupt millions of lives

over the decades to come.

Climate change increasingly poses a threat to security. It is not the aim of this research

project, however, to identify the ways in which climate change constitutes a threat to

security. Instead, this thesis examines the shift within security studies from the 1980s

onwards, which has enabled environmental issues, such as climate change, to be

constructed as security issues and potentially incorporated into national security

agendas.

With the end of the Cold War the momentum for broadening the security agenda to

include non-conventional, non-military threats to national security gathered pace. This

broadened agenda was accompanied by questioning of the state as the given referent

object of security, and consequently, environmental issues were conceptualised as a

7

threat to human security, national security and ecological security. This opening of

security to critical examination pushed national governments and state institutions to

reassess their security agendas, and by 1991, environmental considerations had been

incorporated into the United States National Security Strategy (NSS).

One approach to the study of security that came about during the unpacking of the

concept was the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory. The main contributions to

this theoretical framework are Barry Buzan’s broadened security agenda, which

includes the environment, and Ole Waever’s speech act theory, which theorizes the way

issues become identified and constructed as security issues. This combined approach

offers a framework for the analyst to critically examine the construction of

conventional and non-conventional issues as security issues, accounting for the

observable process by which securitising actors gain control over issues and

legitimately implement emergency measures, which would not have been permitted had

the discourse not become one of security.

The Copenhagen School’s approach is not without its controversy, both on ethical and

theoretical grounds. Certain components of the framework require further explanation

to account for successes and failures observed in the securitization of environmental

issues. Here, criticisms of the securitization framework offer useful means by which to

add to components that have been neglected or under theorized by the Copenhagen

School.

8

This research project aims to construct a framework, centred around the Copenhagen

School’s approach to security analysis, to measure the extent environmental issues, and

climate change in particular, have been conceptualised as security issues and

incorporated into national security agendas. Climate change was largely neglected as a

security issue in and of itself in the environmental security literature of the early 1990s.

Today however, it is increasingly recognised as the ultimate challenge to the survival

and wellbeing of humankind. This thesis traces the shift in priority climate change has

received from the 1980s, when it was a non-political issue, to 2007 when the UK

government used their chairmanship of the United Nations Security Council to debate

the security implications of climate change.

The report is divided into four chapters. The first chapter examines the broadening and

deepening of the security concept from the 1980s onwards, and how this in turn

affected the conceptualisation of environmental issues as a security threat. The second

chapter users the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework to dig into the

environmental security literature and to assess the extent to which environmental issues

were securitized when they were incorporated into the United States NSS. The third

chapter investigates the functional actors and the conditions that have facilitated and

hindered the positioning of climate change on the political spectrum. This is followed

by a review of the latest IPCC Working Group II report on the impacts of climate

change, and how these impacts are conceptualised as a security issue in the literature.

The final chapter explores the construction of climate change as a security issue in

British politics.

9

Britain provides an excellent case study on the development of government policy to

emerging scientific consensus on climate change. From the 1990s onwards the UK has

attempted to carve itself a leadership role in climate negotiations, especially as broker

between Europe and the United States. The government made the intensification of

climate change a strategic priority for 2006-07, which culminated in Britain using its

chairmanship of the United Nations Security Council to debate climate change as a

security issue. Following the progression of climate change as a political issue in

Britain, chapter four will delve into the speech of the prime minister, the foreign

minister and the environment minister to uncover the extent to which climate change

has been securitized domestically and internationally by the UK government.

10

1. Security Studies

The aim of this chapter is to explore the opening of the security concept over the last

three decades, enabling environmental issues, like climate change, to be conceptualised

as security issues and potentially incorporated into national security agendas.

In the 1980s some academics began questioning the adequacy of the traditional state-

centric, military approach to security premised on realist assumptions of the

international system. The two academics considered to have had the greatest impact on

the re-opening of national security are Richard Ullman and his paper, Redefining

Security, and Barry Buzan and his book, People, States and Fear, both published in

1983. Both are said to have exposed the inadequacies of the traditional, militarised

interpretation of security, which had dominated the study of security since the end of

the Second World War. Although their work upheld a state-centric approach to

security, they proposed threats other than military threats, such as the environment,

could threaten national security. Their work however, coincided with a period of

heightened Cold War tensions and because of such, the relevancy was not necessarily

apparent to its audience. In fact it was not until the close of the decade, which brought

with it an end to the bi-polar confrontation that had dominated thinking on international

relations for nearly fifty years, that the relevance of their broadened security agenda

became apparent, and the dominance of realist assumptions and threat perceptions in

security studies came into question.

The environment and security discourse is very much a contributor to, and the product

of this wider security debate. Most of the early conceptual work, framing the

11

environment as a security threat, was not done by academics but rather advocates of

greater environmental awareness concerned by the effects of environmental change and

the heightened militancy of the Cold War. The result was alongside articles discussing

traditional conceptions of security versus widening of the security paradigm, were those

more narrowly focused on the environment as a threat to security.

The environmentalist Lester Brown first argued for a redefinition of national security

in 1977. Although it was largely ignored, when Richard Ullman (1983, 129) lent his

support to this idea, warning that by concentrating on military threats and ignoring

other dangers states risked reducing their ‘total security’, other academics were inspired

to conceptualise the environment as a threat to security. Many hoped that with the end

of the Cold War the role of armed security would decline, and threats besides those

requiring traditional military solutions would be dealt with more seriously (Kakonen,

1994, 1), as Myers (1993, 12) exemplifies ‘the end of the Cold War offers us glorious

scope to embark on entirely new approaches to security’.

The result of the opening up of security to critical examination meant that not only

threats other than military threats could be addressed, but the object to secure,

traditionally the state, was no longer a given, and the question of what should be

secured also came under scrutiny. This change within security studies is again reflected

in the environmental security literature, with environmental issues conceptualized as a

threat to human, national and international security.

This chapter will examine security through the lens of Traditional Security Studies,

Critical Security Studies, and the Copenhagen School’s securitization approach,

12

exposing the underlying assumptions informing their conceptualisation of security, and

how these different approaches have influenced the environmental security literature.

Traditional Security Studies

Traditional security studies are based on realism’s scientific objectivist account of

knowledge, which claims that there exists ‘an objective and knowable world, which is

separate from the observing individual’ (Mearsheimer, 1995/96, 41). In this approach,

security is not a contested concept. Traditional security studies is concerned with the

study of the ‘relentless security competition’ between states ‘with the possibility of war

always in the background’ (Mearsheimer, 1995/96, 9).

This approach is informed by realisms perception of the international system, where

there is no central authority to guarantee security above the unit of sovereign state.

Alongside this assumption is the reality that all states within the international system

possess some offensive military capability, if not weaponry then at the very least the

fighting potential of the state’s population. The combination of these assumptions, in

which there is no security in the absence of authority, results in a self-help system in

which each state must guarantee its own survival, thus creating the great “security

dilemma”, described by John Herz in 1950. Traditional security studies can therefore be

defined as the ‘threat, use, and control of military force’ (Walt, 1991). Defined as such,

it is very unclear where environmental threats to human survival, like climate change,

fit into security studies.

13

Critical Security Studies

Critical studies finds realisms most basic assumptions about the international realm

and the appropriate methodology for social sciences highly problematic, particularly the

given of the state as the referent object of security, and the achievability of “objective”

knowledge.

Ken Booth (2005, 5) suggests the period of realism’s greatest domination was the Cold

War, and the reason realism was able to accurately describe the political reality at that

time was because ‘it helped construct some of that reality’. Yet, despite realism’s

domination of security studies, no international relations specialist working within the

realist paradigm foretold the end of the Cold War, which according to a critical

account, required looking beyond the state/system interaction to understand (Wyn

Jones, 1999, 97).

Critical theorists also criticize traditional security studies for their ‘obsession with

external threats to state security’, which leaves them unable to account for the greatest

source of violence and war in the international system since the end of the Second

World War (Ayoob, 1997, 121). As Ayoob points out, most conflicts since the end of

World War II have been primarily intrastate in character, or have had an important

intrastate component within them, which cannot be explained by states as unitary actors

concerned with securing themselves from threats beyond their boarders (ibid, 122).

What then does critical security studies pertain to offer as an alternative approach to

studying security? Critical security studies defines itself as a body of critical knowledge

14

and not a critical theory of security. As such it does not tell the theorist ‘which referents

to prioritise in world politics, or which threats to watch, or who might be the agents for

change, or even how security should be defined’ (Booth, 2005, 260). Rather the critical

approach offers the security analyst the opportunity to question the givens of the

traditional account of security.

Unlike the traditional account of international politics, critical studies do not take the

principle actors and “structures” of world politics as given, rather they are socially

constructed and therefore not determining. As Krause and Williams (1997) point out in

the preface to their book Critical Security Studies Concepts and Cases, security is a

derivative concept, that is to have meaning, it presupposes there is something to be

secured. In realism’s account of security the sovereign territory is the thing to be

secured and the state is the agent to ensure this. However, in critical security studies

what is to be secured and the agent to secure this are unclear. Critical theorists maintain

that this is not an attempt to deny the importance of the state in world politics (Wyn

Jones, 1999), which would also deny the possibility of ‘influencing what remains the

most structurally capable actor in contemporary world politics’ (Williams and Krause,

1997, xvi). Rather, critical studies aims to ‘understand more fully its structures,

dynamics, and possibilities for reorientation’ (ibid).

As part of this critical approach to security there have been attempts, mainly from the

1980s onwards, to extend the concept of security beyond its purely state-level,

militarised world view. This has enabled environmental issues, along with other

concerns, to be conceptualised as a threat to security. The ensuing ‘opening’ of security

can broadly be defined along two axis, the horizontal axis calls for ‘broadening’ the

15

security agenda, and the vertical axis calls for ‘deepening’ the referent object of

security (Krause and Williams, 1996). The broadeners want to see the conception of

security widened to include threats other than military threats to the agenda of security

studies. Whilst some broadeners adhere to the realist, state-centric approach, others

have called for security to be deepened by moving either down the vertical axis to the

level of the individual, “human security”, or up to the level of international, “global

security”. Consequently, environmental degradation has been conceptualised as a threat

to human security (Myers, 1993; Lonergan, 2000; Barnett, 2001), national security

(Myers, 1989; Mathews, 1989; Kaplan, 1994) and ecological security (Pirages, 1997).

The Copenhagen School

Like the critical approach to security studies, the Copenhagen School’s securitization

framework is based on a constructivist account of world politics. The best presentation

of this approach is Buzan, Waever and Wilde’s (1998) book, Security: A New

Framework for Analysis, in which Buzan’s broadened agenda for security studies is

combined with Waever’s process of securitization in an analysis of ‘the practice of

securitization’.

In this approach, the meaning of security ‘lies in its usage’ (Buzan et al, 1998, 24).

International security has a distinctive agenda, or more accurately, the usage of

‘security’ by political actors has a distinctive agenda. Security is not an ontological

given but a process—a “speech-act” (Waever 1995)—in which an actor declares an

issue to be an existential threat to a referent object, and if recognized as such by a

16

relevant audience, the use of extraordinary measures to tackle the threat is legitimized.

Successful securitization then, can be summarised as a three-step process:

1. Existential threat

2. Emergency measures

3. Effects on interunit relations by breaking free of the rules (Buzan et al., 1998,

26)

This account provides a spectrum from non-politicized to securitized, and for the

Copenhagen School it is the positioning on this spectrum which determines the urgency

and means with which an issue is tackled:

Non-politicised Politicised Securitised

|--------------------------------------|------------------------------------|

Not political/state issues Political issue and part of public policy Above politics

Figure 1.1 The spectrum from non-political to securitized

The outcome of successful securitization (and thus a motive in securitizing moves) is

‘absolute priority’, enabling ‘emergency actions’ to tackle the issue, and ‘justifying

actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure’ (Buzan, et al., 1998, 24).

The Copenhagen School is not suggesting, and Ole Waever (1995) in particular has

been explicit in this, that securitization is some ideal state whereby issues are tackled

with the urgent measures they require. Securitization is a political decision through

17

which the securitizing actors ‘claim a right to handle something with less democratic

control and constraint’ (Buzan et al., 1998, 29). Unlike politicisation, in which an issue

appears ‘open’, and the realm of everyday political choice and decision, securitization

presents an issue as urgent and ‘so important that it should not be exposed to the normal

haggling of politics but should be dealt with decisively by top-leaders prior to other

issues’ (ibid). As such, the Copenhagen School consider it as a negative process, ‘a

failure to deal with issues as normal politics’ and view “desecuritization” as preferable.

Desecuritization removes issues from the traditional ‘threat-defence sequence’ and puts

them back into the ‘ordinary public sphere’ (ibid).

In traditional security studies, existential threats are identified by the threat they pose

to sovereignty, thus anything that ‘questions recognition, legitimacy, or governing

authority’ is a threat to national security (Buzan et al., 1998, 22). Traditionally then, the

referent object is the state, and the actor identifying the existential threat is most likely

a state-actor(s), whom ‘in naming a certain development a security problem’ claims the

state has a special right to deal with it, and if the securitization is successful, gains

‘control over it’ (Waever, 1995, 54). This leads to the implementation of certain

institutionalised methods for addressing the problem, and as Waever (1995, 65) points

out, these tend to be ‘threat, defense, and other state-centred solutions’. This type of

traditional military threat to the state would fall under the Copenhagen School’s

military sector. They have however, broadened their security agenda to include other

threats to security, which they divide into five sectors: military, environmental,

economic, societal and political.

The environmental sector, unlike the military sector, is considered to have a range of

18

possible referent objects, from relatively ‘concrete things’, such as the individual, to

much ‘fuzzier, larger-scale issues’, like the climate or biosphere (Buzan et al, 1998,

23). This is accompanied by a correspondingly wide range of existential threats, usually

under the heading of “environmental degradation”, which have been identified by a

range of securitizing actors, including scientists, environmentalists and state elites.

Environmental security and the changing security agenda

Having reviewed the Traditional, Critical and Copenhagen School approach to security

studies, it is necessary to consider the influence these approaches have had on the

environmental security literature, and vice versa.

Traditional security studies is not open to a deepened security agenda, that is the

referent object of security being something other than the state, and many have made

spirited defences about keeping the focus of security studies on the phenomenon of war

(Walt, 1991). Some realists however, support the broadening project and maintain that

the pursuit of national self-interest ‘encourages states to interpret many situations in

terms of national security’ including those related to environmental degradation

(Frederick, 1999, 92).

As realism has dominated the discipline of International Relations and security studies

for a considerable length of time, it has had a strong influence on the conceptualisation

of environmental security. As a result, the early literature in particular, cloaked

environmental security in familiar ‘national security’ language, with environmental

issues added as components to ‘to pre-existing notions of security’ (Paterson, 2000a,

19

20). In this respect, the environment is ‘built on to’ the realist security paradigm rather

than attempting to ‘transcend it’ (Dyer, 1996, 26). In such analysis, the referent object

remains the same; the state, and often the ‘new’ threats ‘are old ones dressed up as

environmental conflicts – the struggle between states for access to strategic resources’

(ibid).

One of the motives for dressing these new environmental threats in traditional security

clothing was to capture the attention of policymakers and bring the research to a wider

audience. Jessica Tuchmann Mathews is thought to have played a pivotal role with her

piece ‘Redefining Security’, published in Foreign Affairs in 1989. She insisted that ‘the

1990s will demand a redefinition of what constitutes national security’, and suggested

broadening the definition of national security to include ‘resource, environmental and

demographic issues’ (Mathews, 1989, 162). These conceptualisations of environmental

issues as a national security threat tended to be overly dramatic, like that of Robert

Kaplan’s apocalyptic vision, which he promised to be the national security issue of the

21st century. Aware of the language that would attract attention and making good use of

it in his 1994 article entitled ‘The Coming Anarchy’, Kaplan depicted a scene of Third

World countries scarce in resources, overpopulated, and riddled with malaria and HIV

collapsing into chaos, which threatened Western interests and world order.

Consequently, this body of literature was often criticised for being general and

anecdotal (Lonergan, 2000, 67). Levy labelled it the ‘first wave’, accusing the writings

of being ‘highly rhetorical, offering neither clear new definitions of security nor serious

scholarship’ (1995, 44).

This so-called first wave was followed by a ‘second wave’, which Levy describes as

20

‘more methodological and sophisticated’ (ibid). The second wave, or ‘second

generation’ as Ronnfeldt (1997) refers to it, still tended to adhere to the state centric

model, but concentrated its efforts on researching the link between violent conflict and

environmental degradation, predicting that environmental stress promotes and in some

cases is the direct cause of conflict. Homer-Dixon was the first to empirically test the

link between environmental degradation and acute conflict. Although his work has been

criticised on rhetorical and methodological grounds1, as the lead researcher on the

Toronto Project he produced the first systematic attempt to explore the negative social

consequences of environmental change, and is considered by some to have provided the

most influential model of environmental security in both academic and policy arenas to

date (Fraser, 2002). However, the relationship between environmental degradation and

conflict proved to be more complex than originally thought, and after nearly a decade

of research, the original hypothesis was modified to stress environmental scarcity as an

indirect rather than a direct cause of conflict2. Nevertheless, the role of environmental

degradation in conflict remains a popular means of conceptualising environmental

security.

The deepening of security is a project that has taken on a force of its own. It pushed

some analysts who originally conceived of a wider agenda for security studies in

reference to the state, to reconsider the state as the necessary referent of security. This

is well illustrated in the progression of Barry Buzan’s work. In his book People, States

and Fear (1983, 1991) he called for a broadened agenda for security studies to include

1 See Levy (1995), Homer-Dixon and Levy, “International Security Correspondence” (1995/96); Dalby (1999) and Deudney (1999) are not overly critical of Homer-Dixon per se, but criticise the environment 2 See Homer-Dixon, 1991 for research agenda, Homer-Dixon et al. 1995 evidence for case studies, and Homer-Dixon 1999 for detailed report on successes of project.

21

five sectors that could potentially be areas in which threats to national security could

arise, these were: military, political, societal, economic, and ecological. His decision to

retain the state as the referent object and provider of security was criticized by Wyn

Jones (1999), who suggested the book might have been more aptly titled ‘States and

Fear’. Yet in Buzan’s collaborative work with Ole Waver and Jaap de Wilde (1998,

36), the authors suggest the referent object could potentially be anything ‘to which one

can point and say “It has to survive and therefore it is necessary to survive…”’. 3

This move away from a state-centric approach to security is also represented in the

environmental security literature. In 1989, Norman Myers first conceptualised

environmental issues along traditional national security lines. However, in his 1993

book Ultimate Security, his definition of security had deepened to the individual as

referent object:

security applies most at the level of the individual. It amounts to human well being: not only protection from harm and injury but access to other basic requisites that are the due of every person on earth. (31)

Humans as the referent of security has been given considerable attention within the

environment and security literature, with contributions by research at the Global

Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) project, and a number of

individuals4.

It is not only the human referent represented within the environment and security

literature, some have conceptualised environmental change arising from human

3 However, there are criteria that the Copenhagen School suggest privileges certain referents over others, and these will be explored further in chapter 2. For some the Copenhagen School’s approach is still state-centric (Booth, 2005). 4 See for example Lonergan, 2000; Barnett 2001; Page, 2002.

22

activities as a threat to ecological security. Pirages (1997, 38) for example, suggests

that ‘rapid population growth and related urbanization are creating ecological

insecurities by overwhelming the sustaining capability of the physical environment’.

This demonstrates how in less than a decade security studies opened up beyond the

traditional state-centric perspective that had dominated security thinking for decades

previously.

However, the attempt to couple the concept of security with environmental degradation

has not been without its critics. Deudney (1990, 474) suggests that the traditional focus

of national security—interstate violence—has little in common with either

environmental problems or solutions. He also warns that it may well be a

counterproductive move by those who want to bring greater attention to the plight of

the environment, as ‘the nationalist and militarist mindset closely associated with

“national security”’ threatens to undermine globalist sensibility and perpetuate the

status quo. A particular concern is that framing of environmental degradation as a

security issue will militarise the response (Renner, 1997, 29), and the military and war

are directly destructive on the environment (Finger, 1994). For others, the national

security thinking of “us” and “them” is inappropriate for environmental issues (Waever,

1995; Dalby, 1999), and could in turn lead to ‘an inappropriate construction of our

environment, as a threat/defence problem’ (Waever, 1995, 65).

Critics also point out, that contrary to the motivation behind environment and security

linkage—to create greater political will to tackle environmental issues—the

consequences of framing the environment as a threat to national security result in

environmental degradation being viewed as another item in which national interests

23

should be protected against those of other nations. This usually results with the

underdeveloped global ‘South’ portrayed as the source of instabilities threatening the

‘North’ (Dalby, 1999, 2000), which removes the opportunity for the industrialised

North to take greater responsibility in causing environmental problems and

acknowledging the shared nature of the challenge.

As this chapter aimed to demonstrate, security studies considerably opened with the

end of the cold war, with environmental security very much part of the ensuing debate.

However, as the critics demonstrate, the opening of security studies to include non-

conventional threats has not been a move welcomed by all. They also reveal that it was

not simply security studies that expanded to subsume environmental issues. For many

advocates of environmental security, conceptualising environmental problems as a

security issue was a move intended to focus attention on environmental degradation.

The next chapter will aim to establish to what extent the broadened security agenda to

include environmental issues was incorporated into US national security thinking

during the 1990s.

24

2. Securitization and environmental security

The aim of this chapter is to employ the Copenhagen School’s framework to determine

whether environmental issues were securitized in the United States during the 1990s.

This chapter will pay particular attention to the components of the securitization

framework considered under theorized by its critics, such as the role of contextual

factors, history and personal experience in facilitating securitization. It will also be

suggested that there is a difference between those who can “speak” security and those

who can “do” security, and this will be examined in relation to the incorporation of

environmental considerations into the National Security Strategy (NSS).

Securitization is a still-evolving concept even for those who conceived of it, so

although this study focuses on the securitization as conceptualised in Security: a new

framework of analysis (1998), it acknowledges there have been further contributions by

those authors and subtle changes in opinion which may not be represented.

The Copenhagen School have been less clear about the means by which to study the

process of securitization, than the process itself. They suggest it can be studied directly

through the study of ‘discourse and political constellations’, thus the role of the analyst

is to ask when does an argument of existential threat to designated referent object

‘achieve sufficient effect to make an audience tolerate violations of rules that would

25

otherwise have to be obeyed?’ (Buzan et al., 1998, 25). The Copenhagen School

emphasise though, that it is not enough for a securitizing actor to simply present an

existential threat to a referent object, this in itself is only a securitizing move. It is the

breaking free of the rules and procedures the securitizing actor would otherwise be

bound by which is the crucial measure of a successful securitization, and this requires

the issue be accepted as an existential threat by the target audience (ibid, 25). However,

in situation, securitization may not always be directly observable, and as Williams

(2003, 521) highlights,

to focus too narrowly on the search for singular and distinct acts of securitization might well lead one to misperceive processes through which a situation is being gradually intensified, and thus rendered susceptible to securitization, while remaining short of the actual securitizing decision.

This chapter will aim to demonstrate that in relation to environmental issues it is

difficult to clearly observe the securitization process as presented by the Copenhagen

School. However, using the Copenhagen School’s framework to identify the

securitizing actors, their conceptualisations of environmental security and the audience

they appealed to, one can represent how environmental issues were constructed as

security and incorporated into the US National Security Strategy.

The Process of Securitization

As outlined in the previous chapter, securitization as proposed by the Copenhagen

School can be summarised as having three components (or steps):

26

1. Existential threat

2. Emergency measures

3. Effects on interunit relations by breaking free of the rules (Buzan et al., 1998, 26)

However, representing securitization as a three step process as the Copenhagen School

have done, privileges the securitizing actors and down plays the role of the audience

and legitimiser of the act. Balzacq (2005, 177) highlights the apparent contradiction in

this approach, questioning whether it is appropriately named a speech-act; a self-

referential practice, in which the response of the audience is assumed acquiescence,

when at the same time they claim securitization to be a intersubjective process requiring

the audience’s acceptance.

In order to represent the process from both a participator and a spectator perspective,

the audiences’ acceptance has been incorporated into the securitization framework as

one of the steps required to label securitization complete5:

1. Existential threat

2. Audience acceptance

3. Emergency measures

4. Effects on interunit relations by breaking free of the rules (Buzan et al., 1998, 26)

The audience will also be included in the subjects of securitization. The Copenhagen

School (Buzan et al., 1998, 36) identified three subjects: referent object; securitizing

actor(s); and functional actor(s), and acknowledged there may be a separate category of

5 I am aware by making this change, and adding the audience as a component in successful securitization, I am shifting the focus away from the Copenhagen School’s speech-act approach, in which the saying is the act. However, as Balzaqc (2005) suggests, it is not enough to speak security even if the felicity conditions of the speech-act are met, as the audience ultimately decides whether the felicity conditions have been met by accepting (or not) the speech act.

27

‘audience’, defined as ‘those the securitizing act attempts to convince to accept

exceptional procedures’ (ibid, 41). They also acknowledge that one danger of phrases

such as “securitization” and “speech act” ‘is that too much focus can be placed on the

acting side’, which in turn privileges the powerful and marginalizes the audience and

judge of the act’ (ibid).

Excluding the audience also presupposes the position of the securitizing actors,

assuming them to be more powerful than the members of the audience, which is not

necessarily the case. This is apparent when comparing the securitization of a military

threat to the move to securitize environmental issues in the 1990s. The securitization of

a military threat is likely to be ‘highly institutionalised,’ and there may be no clear

distinction between the securitizing actors and the referent object, the state being the

referent object, and in a sense speaking for itself ‘through its authorized

representatives’ (ibid, 42). In the environmental sector, on the other hand, the range of

actors and the audience they are appealing to for legitimacy are not as easily delineated.

For example, some of the early conceptual work framing the environment as a security

threat was not done by state actors, but by environmentalists like Lester Brown (1977)

and Norman Myers (1989), aiming to simultaneously increase public awareness in

environmental issues and to attract the attention of policy makers to instigate

‘exceptional procedures’ to tackle them. This highlights the importance of identifying

the actor and the audience, as in doing so it offers explanation for the difficultly in

securitizing non-military, non-institutionalised threats, where a securitizing actor may

be appealing to a state actor, rather than being themselves a recognised authority of the

state to speak on security matters.

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Facilitating Conditions

Facilitating conditions are the conditions or circumstances that increase the likelihood

of successful securitization.

Buzan et al. (1998), drawing on Austin’s (1975 [1962]) speech act theory, describe the

facilitating conditions as the conditions under which a speech act works. Accordingly,

there are two conditions for a successful speech act, and these are given as internal and

external. Internal is the linguistic-grammatical – following the rule of the act, and the

external contextual and social – holding a position from which the act can be made

(Buzan et al., 1998, 32). A successful speech-act then, is born through combination of

the language, or “grammar of security” the actor employs, and its appeal to the society

legitimising the act (ibid, 33-34).

Criticism to this approach has again mainly come from the Copenhagen School’s

construction of a framework privileging the “speech act” to the exclusion of other

important factors considered to facilitate securitization. Balzacq (2005, 172) is critical

of how the speech act reduces securitization to a ‘conventional procedure such as

marriage or betting in which the ‘felicity circumstances’ (conditions of success) must

fully prevail for the act to go through’. Balzacq instead suggests that securitization

would be better understood as a strategic (pragmatic) practice, which occurs within and

part of a ‘configuration of circumstances’. Such an approach, he proposes, enables the

analyst to incorporate ‘the context, the psycho-cultural disposition of the audience, and

the power that both speaker and listener bring to the interaction’ (ibid).

29

History is an important facilitating condition of securitization, which critics suggest the

Copenhagen School cannot sufficiently account for in a framework neglectful of

contextual factors6. Balzacq (2005, 182) for example, writes that in order to win an

audience ‘the words of the securitizing actor need to resonate with the context within

which his/her actions are collocated’, and here history may play an important role

rendering the audience more sensitive to its vulnerability in regard to certain threats.

This may explain why environmental issues, and the actors attempting to securitize

them, have struggled to gain, and maintain, their position on the security agenda despite

following the “grammar of security”.

Those who first conceptualised environmental security were aware of the “grammar of

security”, which is illustrated in the common structure used by those conceptualising

environmental issues as a threat to security, a structure identified by Matthew (1999, 9):

(1) underscore the immediate and prevalent nature of the threat; (2) relate it to national interests; (3) contend that existing beliefs, institutions and practices are in some way inadequate; and (4) call for resources to be applied through new institutions or strategies to achieve specific objectives.

The environmental security literature then, was constructed to appeal to an audience

attuned to the communist threat, not the environmental threat, which the language and

structure of environmental security aimed to overcome. The widely cited articles of

Jessica Tuchmann Mathews (1989) and Robert Kaplan (1994) both followed this

structure and are credited with gaining the attention of the security community, and the

Clinton administration in particular, yet the success of their securitizing move is

questionable. Institutional adjustments were made during the 1990s, and in 1991 the 6 Although the role of history is largely neglected by Buzan et al. (1998) in Security: a new framework for analysis, it is accounted for in Waever’s (2000) description of the ‘felicity conditions’ of a successful security speech act (253).

30

United States NSS recognized the environment as a national security interest for the

first time (Hughes Butts, 1994). The inclusion of environmental issues into national

security thinking was further enhanced in 1993, when the Clinton administration

created the position of Deputy Under Secretary for Environmental Security within the

Department of Defence (DOD) (Hughes Butts, 1999). However, in reality, as Thomas

(1997) and Floyd (2007) demonstrate and as outlined in the final section of this chapter,

environmental issues were securitized in a narrow sense. This so-called “securitization”

of environmental issues centred round the practices of the United States military, rather

than as the foreign policy concern Mathews and Kaplan depicted them as. The limited

success of environmental security supports Balzacq’s (2005, 182) argument that

appropriate language is not sufficient to facilitate securitization:

The semantic repertoire of security is a combination of textual meaning – knowledge of the concept acquired through language (written and spoken) – and cultural meaning – knowledge historically gained through previous interactions and situations.

Without the historical perception of environmental issues as a threat, the appeal of

environmental security did not resonate with its audience the way it had been

constructed.

Williams (2003) and Hansen (2000) are both critical of the emphasis on the speech-act

to the exclusion of other visual medium that the securitizing actor may utilise in

attempting to securitize an issue, such as television and internet. Many analysts have

pointed to the role of imagery in conventional security issues, such as the Gulf War,

Bosnia, Kosovo, and September the 11th, and imagery may prove equally important in

securitizing environmental issues, or at least increasing public awareness, giving

environmental security a wider appeal. Hurricane Katrina for example, awoke many

31

Americans to an issue few had confronted; namely America’s role in climate change

and the possible link between climate change and the increased frequency and intensity

of hurricanes. The shocking imagery of Katrina played nearly continuously on

American news programs for a weeklong period, and may prove to have been the

turning point for climate change’s position on the political spectrum.

Finally, the Copenhagen School are also accused of neglecting direct experience of

insecurity as a factor in facilitating securitization (McDonald, 2007, 7):

there may be (albeit relatively rare) instances of personal experience of physical action, in which events (and associated perceptions of security and threat) are felt or experienced rather than communicated by political leaders.

I would suggest that cases of “personal experience” are not as rare in the

environmental sector as the military sector, and first hand experience may be an

important facilitating condition in the securitization of climate change in particular.

Whereas in the example McDonald uses of troop deployment, individuals experiencing

the deployment are far outnumbered globally by those in no way connected to it, the

effects of increased frequency of drought, floods, typhoons and hurricanes are global,

making individuals more susceptible to claims of existential threat in securitizing

moves, and potentially facilitating the securitization of climate change.

Facilitating conditions such as direct experience of threat and contextual analysis can

easily be incorporated into the Copenhagen School’s framework. This will be done in

the following chapter when investigating the conditions facilitating and hindering the

securitization of climate change. Doing so enables the analyst to provide explanation of

32

why, despite fulfilling the “grammar of security”, securitizing attempts fail or are not

met with the intended outcome, as in the case of environmental issues in the 1990s.

The Components of Securitization

The second half of this chapter will turn to the components, or subjects of the

securitization framework, and aims to identify these in relation to the securitization of

environmental issues.

Referent Object

In traditional security studies the referent object is the state, but as the previous chapter

outlined, in a deepened agenda the referent object may extend from the individual to the

international. In the environmental sector the referent object has been conceptualised

from the micro scale, e.g. an individual species, to the macro scale, e.g. the biosphere.

Although any object may be identified as in need of protection from an existential

threat, there are clearly some referent objects more amenable to the securitizing process

than others, and it is necessary for the securitizing actor to establish and legitimise a

referent objects claim to survival for securitization to be successful.

Buzan et al. (1998, 36-37) identify scale as an important factor in determining a

successful referent object of security. They suggest that where as too small a unit

struggles to find wider acceptance in security legitimacy, too big a unit also struggles to

gain recognition with an audience, and it is the middle scale of ‘limited collectivities’,

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such as states and nations, which has proved most amenable to the securitization

process. This is likely to be due to the potential of socially constructing a shared ‘we’

that needs to survive against some threatening other.

For the Copenhagen School the means of identifying the referent object is through

studying security discourse. By uncovering the referents appealed to in a securitizing

move and establishing whether the appeal is successful, one can discover which

referent objects are deemed legitimate, requiring urgent measures to secure their

survival.

Matthews (2002a) has divided the environment and security literature into three

perspectives according to the referent object it privileges: the statist view, the humanist

view and the ecologist view, or in other words the state as the referent object, the

human as referent object, or the planetary system as referent object. The statist view

conforms most closely to traditional military conceptions of security, in which

environmental issues are seen as having a causal role in conflict, and threatening

national interests. This section of the environmental security literature gained most

attention from US policy makers during the 1990s. A particularly alarmist version of

the statist perspective was depicted in Kaplan’s 1994 article, ‘The Coming Anarchy’,

which dramatised environmental degradation and its potential to cause violent conflict.

This is a linkage Homer-Dixon (1991) sought to empirically establish in his research

project at Toronto University, and both Kaplan’s article and Homer-Dixon’s research

are thought to have had tremendous influence within the first Clinton administration

(Matthew, 2002b, 69). The success of the state-centred conflict thesis indicates that

despite the deepened agenda’s success in security studies, referents other than the state

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did not gain recognition as legitimate referent objects of the US national security

agenda.

Existential Threat

The Copenhagen School are quite clear that it is not the primary task of the analyst to

determine whether some threat represents a ‘real’ security problem’ (Buzan et al., 1998,

33). Instead, the analyst studies the process by which an actor claims the survival of a

referent is threatened. The threat may be an objective threat (real), a subjective threat

(perceived), or a combination of the two. The role of the analyst then, is not to identify

the ‘realness’, or objective level of the threat, but which actor is in a position to identify

this threat. As such it is not the threat itself which is of major concern, as ‘we are not

dealing here with a universal standard based in some sense on what threatens individual

human life’ (ibid, 21), rather the threat is specific to the particular character of the

referent object the actor has pointed to and said this needs to survive.

In these terms then, the existential threat is very much dependent on which of the five

sectors (as proposed by the Copenhagen School) the issue one is analysing falls into. In

the environmental sector, for example, the range of referents is “very large,” and thus

the range of existential threats is correspondingly wide. Drawing only on examples

from state-centric conceptions of environmental security one can see the wide range of

existential threats identified. Norman Myers (1989) for example demonstrates how US

economic and security interests are “increasingly caught up” in deforestation in the

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Philippines, water deficits in the Middle East, land degradation in El Salvador, and

rapid population growth in Mexico. Mathews (1989, 166) takes a similar approach,

suggesting environmental degradation such as deforestation, land degradation, over

fishing, climate change all compounded by over population, impact on nations’ security

through the ‘downward pull on economic performance, and therefore, on political

stability’. In identifying a number of environment-related existential threats, Myers and

Mathews are representative of much of the first generation of the environment and

security literature, often accused of being anecdotal because of this approach.

Although, clearly there are a range of threats associated with environmental

degradation, the approach these authors took may have hindered their move to

securitize the environment, as those the securitizing move was appealed to were more

likely accustomed to focusing on one imminent threat, rather than a diffuse range of

potential threats.

Securitizing actor(s)

The securitizing actors are the individual or group who perform the “speech-act”,

identifying and framing the existential threat to a referent object.

Clearly, some actors are better positioned to ‘speak security’ than others, due to their

ability to identify the existential threat, and their recognised authority to do so. The

Copenhagen School describe these actors as being in a position of power as accepted

‘voices of security’, although maintaining that no one ‘is excluded from attempts to

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articulate alternative interpretations of security’ (Buzan et al., 31). As such, no one

‘conclusively “holds” the power of securitization’ (ibid), though some actors are likely

to be more powerful in this respect than others. Thus, the role of the analyst is to ask:

‘Who can “do” and “speak” security successfully, on what issues, under what

conditions, and with what effects?’ (ibid, 27).

The Copenhagen School suggest that who can “do” and “speak” security successfully

varies between sectors. As a result, the outcome of a securitizing move may largely be

determined by the position of the actors in relation to the referent object, and their

authority on the subject, which gives them a recognised ability to identify the

existential threat. This authority can be framed in terms of knowledge; the knowledge

the speaker brings facilitates securitization by increasing the audience’s ‘readiness to be

convinced’ (Balzacq, 2005, 192).

In the environmental sector Buzan et al. (1998, 40) identify political leaders,

bureaucracies, governments, lobbyists and pressure groups as common agents in

securitizing environmental issues. Particular to the issue of environmental security is

the enhanced role of science and scientists compared to the securitization process of

conventional threats. Scientists, such as the environmentalists Lester Brown (1977) and

Norman Myers (1989) were amongst the first to conceptualise environmental issues as

a security threat. Of course, “experts” in a given field will always be potential actors in

the process of securitizing issues in that area, but scientists potential to reduce

uncertainty gives them particular importance in environmental issues, especially in

relation to climate change, a topic discussed further in the following chapter.

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Scientists are not the only academics that have played a role in securitizing

environmental issues, security analysts have also been central actors. Ole Waever

(2000) recognises the complex interplay between the role of security analyst and

securitizing actor, one which at times may become indistinguishable. For example, the

academics that initiated a broadened security agenda to include environmental issues,

such as Ullman (1983) and Mathews (1989), chose a forum to launch their

conceptualisation of environmental security; International Security and Foreign Affairs,

journals known to be read by policymakers. By writing about security and publishing in

those journals, Ullman and Mathews amongst others, seemingly combined the role of

analyst and securitizing actor.

Despite the authority of science in Brown (1977) and Myers (1989) securitizing move,

or Ullman (1983) and Mathews (1989) attempt to combine the role of security analyst

and securitizing actor, in the final instance environmental security was interpreted and

defined by the state elites when it was written into the United States NSS, which

Waever (1995) would suggest is always the case. Thus, although scientists were

amongst the first to conceptualise environmental security, and most used science to

support their securitizing claims, the state elites ultimately defined how the term was

operationalised.

This has implications for the securitization framework, as there clearly is a difference

between those who can “speak” security, and those who can “do” security. The range of

actors who can “speak” security is practically boundless, although as outlined above,

there are limiting factors. Successful securitization though, requires more than being

able to “speak” security—as Vogler (2002, 190) points out, ‘securitization may amount

38

to little more than a word game if capabilities are absent’—it also requires a capability

to “do” security. “Do” here refers to those actors who can lift an issue out of the normal

realm of politics to a realm ‘above politics’, or in other words have ‘a capacity for

purposive action’ (ibid). Those who can “do” security, in this sense, are fewer in

number than those who can “speak” security, making securitization a more

exclusionary process than it may first appear. The actors who can “do” security are not

simply stating that an issue requires urgent measures, they decide on what urgent

measures it requires and implement them in the form of policy and institutional

changes, or in other words these actors gain ‘control over’ how the issue is tackled

(Waever, 1995, 54). It is for this reason, I suggest, that a clear distinction needs to be

drawn between those who can “speak” security and those who can “do” security, as the

latter clearly have securitizing capabilities the former do not possess. This distinction

will be applied to identifying the securitizing actors in the securitization of climate

change in chapter 4.

Audience

Despite excluding the audience as a subject for analysis, the Copenhagen School is

clear that a securitizing actor’s claim of existential threat needs to be accepted by the

audience. They further suggest this need not be free consent, or total coercion, only that

for the securitizing actor to break free of the rules requires a level of acceptance or

acquiescence.

In the case of environmental security, the audience are difficult to clearly delineate.

Whereas in the case of securitizing a conventional military threat, the securitizing actor

39

is likely to be a state actor appealing to the public for legitimacy, the move to securitize

environmental issues was initiated by a different set of actors and appealed to a wider

audience. As outlined above, environmental activists and security analysts were the

main actors calling for the widening of the security agenda to include environmental

issues, often imitating the language and model of the security community and framing

environmental threats as conventional threats. In many ways, these actors had already

gained the support of the public, and environmental issues had been successfully

politicised. The next step was to appeal environmental issues to state institutions to

securitize environmental concerns and increase the priority by which these issues were

tackled. In this reading of events, the audience and legitmiser of the securitizing move

were state actors, and in theory, as the audience of the securitizing move, these state

actors legitimised the use of extraordinary means to protect the United States

environmental interests by incorporating them into the US National Security Strategy.

However, what becomes clear in this depiction of events, is it was not the securitizing

actors who gained control of the issues as would be expected from the Copenhagen

School’s account of the securitization process. In fact, in the case of environmental

security, it was the contrary. If one accept the conceptualisers of environmental security

as securitizing actors, in initiating the securitization process these actors lost control of

the way environmental problems were ultimately conceptualised and addressed once

they became the remit of the government’s national security institutions. This was an

end result that many of the critics of environmental security, such as Deudney (1990)

and Waever (1995) had warned of (see previous chapter). This also supports the

findings of the previous section that there are those who can “speak” security and those

who can “speak” and “do” security. Without securitizing capabilities it is difficult to

40

see how an actor can maintain control of the development of a security issue once it has

become the remit of the state’s national security institutions.

Securitized or not?

The final section of this chapter aims to address to what extent, if at all, environmental

issues were securitizied in the United States during the 1990s. This requires confronting

another difficult aspect of the securitization framework, the question of when

securitization takes place.

The Copenhagen School suggest it is not enough to declare an existential threat to a

referent object, this in itself is only a securitizing move. Successful securitization then,

is not decided by the securitizer, but by the audience (Buzan, et al., 1998, 31).

However, the audience’s acceptance alone is not enough to determine an issue

securitized, there are two further steps in the process: 1) emergency action and; 2)

effects on interunit relations by breaking free of the rules.

A number of issues arise from defining successful securitization as such. Abrahamsen

(2005) expands on one most relevant to the securitization of environmental issues,

suggesting the Copenhagen School’s sharp distinction between normal, everyday

politics and ‘emergency action’ does not sufficiently represent the complex processes

through which issues become viewed and experienced as security issues. Like Williams

(2003), Abrahamsen (2005, 59) also suggests that securitization is ‘a very gradual

process and only very rarely does an issue move directly from normalcy to emergency’.

41

Abrahamsen instead proposes a continuum: ‘from normalcy to worrisome/ troublesome

to risk and to existential threat—and conversely, from threat to risk and back to

normalcy’.

Abrahamsen (2005) and Williams (2003) both propose a useful means by which to

observe the intensification of a political issue. However, the Copenhagen School’s

framework suggests that at some point an issue stops being normal politics and moves

beyond politics, requiring suspension of the everyday and the implementation of

exceptional measures. According to this view, when securitization is successful there

are observable changes, measures instigated to tackle an issue that survival depends on.

This may be a gradual or a rapid process, but at some point, the issue moves from being

constructed as security to being dealt with as security. The question remains then, have

environmental issues intensified to the level that they are now being tackled with

emergency measures and thus qualify as a case of ‘successful’ securitization?

To summarise the findings above, environmental issues were first incorporated into the

United States NSS in 1991. Environmental factors were given greater consideration as a

security issue under the Clinton administration, with the creation of the Deputy Under

Secretary for Environmental Security within the Department of Defence. Barnett

(2001b, 72) suggests that the incorporation of the environment into the NSS ‘leaves no

doubt that the environment is now a security issue for the United States’. However, as

laid out above, successful securitization is measured by more than the security label, it

requires emergency measures.

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Thomas (1997, 397) investigates the United State’s environmental security policies

and programs, and suggests they are based on a narrow interpretation of the concept.

He analyses the changes to the US national security policy subsystem regarding the

environment on three levels: rhetorical; organizational and; programmatic, and

concludes that although there have been rhetorical changes these have been

accompanied by limited institutional changes. Floyd (2007) elaborates on the policy

response, suggesting that:

in the institutionalised context of the DOD environmental security was absorbed into the normal conduct of policy making, with environmental security being - in the domestic realm – for the most part tantamount to compliance with federal, state and international environmental legislation. (Floyd, 2007, 345)

These institutional adjustments do not amount to suspension of normal politics, and

Thomas (1997) suggests they were never destined for such. He considers that the

efforts to incorporate environmental security into military conduct were primarily for

ensuring environmental problems did ‘not impinge on the traditional defense mission of

the organization and not at addressing environmental problems per se’ (ibid, 416). It

appears that by incorporating environmental security considerations in a narrow sense

the DOD attempted to gain control over the concept’s evolution and implementation.

Further, this supports the view that it was not those who originally conceptualised and

attempted to securitize environmental issues who gained control over how they were

safeguarded, rather it was the state elites with the capability to “do” security.

In gaining legitimate control over the implementation of environmental security the

DOD could have initiated mass mobilisation to tackle the serious nature of

environmental degradation. The Clinton administration could have put a stop to the

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normal haggling of politics, and claimed that the urgency of environmental problems

required the industrial lobbies concerns be suspended for the greater good of cleaning

up the environment. This was not the response initiated, there were no such emergency

measures to protect the environment from human activities, or the state from a

degrading environment, or military mobilisation for future conflict over resources, and

therefore it is hard to qualify the incorporation of environmental concerns into the NSS

as a successful or complete securitization.

Although environmental issues were not securitized, environmental considerations

were nevertheless incorporated into US national security thinking, thus potentially

laying the ground for successful securitization in the future. Here the relevancy of

Abrahamsen’s (2005, 59) continuum becomes apparent, from: ‘normalcy to worrisome/

troublesome to risk and to existential threat—and conversely, from threat to risk and

back to normalcy’. In the 1990s environmental issues were positioned on the continuum

with the potential to be further intensified toward the security end, or to fall from

political and public attention altogether and reverse back to normal politics. Floyd

(2007) demonstrates, to some extent the Bush (Jnr) administration has returned

environmental issues to the realm of normal politics. The administration has cut

funding for the environmental security programme, removed the label ‘environmental

security’ from the NSS, and changed the name of the key environmental security

institution from the Deputy under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security to

the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment (Floyd, 2007,

346).

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The incorporation of environmental issues into the United States NSS as outlined

above, does not neatly fit into the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework or

exemplify a successful securitization. Nevertheless, using the securitization framework

one is able to represent the process by which environmental issues were constructed as

security, and investigate the factors hindering the success of the securitization. This is

useful both from the perspective of developing the securitization framework, and in

tracking the development of the environmental security concept.

In the following chapter, the conditions facilitating and hindering securitization will be

examined in relation to the politicisation and securitization of climate change.

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3. The intensification of climate change

Using the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework the previous chapter

examined the process by which environmental considerations were included in the

security agenda. This chapter further extends the securitization framework by

examining the actors and conditions facilitating and hindering the intensification of

climate change as a political issue and a potential security issue.

The chapter will start with a brief history of the emergence of climate change on the

political agenda. The following section will examine the role of functional actors and

conditions facilitating and hindering climate change’s position on the political

spectrum. The focus will then turn to the likely impacts of climate change according to

the 2007 Working Group II (impacts) report from the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC), and how these have been conceptualised as a threat to

security.

The Emergence of Climate Change as a Political Issue

As described in chapter 2 the Copenhagen School propose a spectrum which issues

may be positioned along from non-politicised to securitized:

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Non-politicised Politicised Securitised

|--------------------------------------|------------------------------------|

Not political/state issues Political issue and part of public policy Above politics

Figure 1.1 The spectrum from non-political to securitized

This chapter will begin by tracing the movement of climate change along this spectrum

from a non-political issue to an issue of political importance both domestically and

internationally.

The idea of a greenhouse effect was not a discovery of the twentieth century, the

French mathematician Baron Jean-Baptiste Fourier first conceived of the analogy

between a greenhouse and the behaviour of heat in the atmosphere. However, even

when in 1896 the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, published a paper postulating

that an effective doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would cause the average global

temperature to rise by 5ºC, climate change did not become a political issue. It was not

until the 1980s that climate change made international headlines, and in 1988 became a

significant issue on the international agenda.

The sudden politicisation of climate change largely came about with growing—not

universal—scientific consensus, which began to converge on the findings of the first

World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) conference in Geneva in 1979:

we can say with some confidence that the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and changes of land use have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the

47

atmosphere…and it appears plausible that [this] can contribute to a gradual warming of the lower atmosphere. (WMO, 1979, 714 quoted in Paterson, 1996, 28)

The scientific position was strengthened throughout the 1980s, and the 1985 Villach

Conference was an important contributor to this growing consensus, and is often

regarded as the start of the politicisation of climate change (ibid, 30). The Villach

Conference was followed up with two workshops held between scientists from 29

countries at Villach, Austria in 1985, and Bellagio, Italy in 1987. It was at these

workshops that scientists confirmed global warming trends, and there was an apparent

‘shift of emphasis’ away from more research required towards assertions of the need for

political action (ibid, 31). An increase in media attention followed these events (Jager

and O’Riordan, 1996, 26).

1988 became a defining year in the acknowledgment and response to climate change,

which is marked by a number of key events. Two of those events occurred in June of

that year, the first was NASA scientist James Hansen’s statement to the US Congress

that he was 99 percent certain the warming of the 1980s was not a chance event

(Rowlands, 1991, 30), a statement which coincided with the biggest drought in the US

since the 1930s. The second was the Toronto Conference on ‘The Changing

Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security’. This was the first major international

gathering focused on climate change as a major political issue, and brought together

more than 300 policy makers and scientists from forty-eight countries, including United

Nations organisations, other international bodies and non-governmental organisations.

Then, in September of 1988, Malta brought climate change to the UN General

Assembly, and by December of that year a resolution passed (43/53) endorsing the

establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

48

Prior to the release of IPCC’s first Working Group report, climate change had the

attention of the international community, but in most instances this was not marked by

domestic policy action. There are some important exceptions, namely Sweden in 1988,

and Norway and the Netherlands in 1989, all three of which set domestic targets for

stabilising carbon dioxide emissions7 (Paterson, 1996, 40). Thus, although science had

in general captured the attention of the international community, for this to translate

into wide spread domestic policy action, states such as the US and the UK claimed

more science was required.

The IPCC was set up to assess the state of scientific knowledge, potential impacts, and

response options to climate change. It came to be widely regarded as the forum for

coordinating policy research and a forerunner to establishing formal negotiations

towards an international treaty. It was split into three working groups: Working Group I

(science); Working Group II (Impacts); and Working Group III (Responses). In 1990

most attention was focused on Working Group I for confirmation as to whether, and to

what extent climate change was occurring.

Working Group I released its interim report in May 1990, and presented its findings to

the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva in November 1990. There are a

number of features of this report worth highlighting as its release marked a significant

shift in the response given to climate change in domestic policy. Firstly, the Group I

policymakers summary was ‘a negotiated consensus document; it represented, or aimed

to represent, the consensus among the world’s leading climate scientists’ (Paterson,

7 Although Sweden later retreated from this undertaking in 1991, instead committing itself to the EFTA agreement (ibid, 40-42).

49

1996, 44). As such there was a greater level of global representativeness than any other

previous report on climate change (ibid). This was a deliberate move, aimed at

including scientists from developing nations sceptical of scientific assessments made

purely in the North. Secondly, the semantics implored were stronger regarding the

scientific confidence that global warming was occurring. The findings of the first

World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) conference in Geneva in 1979 had stated:

‘we can say with some confidence that the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and

changes of land use have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere’

(WMO, 1979, 714 quoted in Paterson, 1996, 28 emphasis added). The IPCC report

strengthened this position by stating that the scientists involved were certain that ‘these

increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional

warming of the Earth’s surface’ (IPCC, 1990, xi).

The UK was quick to respond and side with the science, setting itself stabilisation

targets, and in doing, separating itself from the position of the US. Between May and

December of 1990, thirteen other of the OECD’s twenty-four member-states followed

the lead of Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands, and initiated policies to stabilise or

reduce emissions by the year 2000 (Rowlands, 1995, 79).

From the release of the IPCC’s Working Group I report in 1990, climate change

intensified as a political issue at both a domestic and international level. This

politicisation is probably best marked by the 1992 United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro and informally

known as the Earth Summit. The principle theme of the conference was the

environment and sustainability, and it led to the signing of the United Nations

50

Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC has been

ratified by 191 countries and is the overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to

tackle climate change.

Climate change continued to intensify throughout the 1990s, albeit it with some

controversy. This intensification of climate change will be explored below by

identifying the functional actors and conditions which have facilitated and hindered its

position on the political spectrum.

Functional Actors

The Copenhagen school define functional actors as those ‘who affect the dynamics of

a sector’ and ‘significantly influences decisions in the field of security’ (Buzan, et al.,

1998, 36). This definition is expanded in relation to the environmental sector and

divided into two sets of functional actors, the first include those:

whose behaviour affects ecosystems but who generally do not intend to politicise, let alone securitize, this activity. Their common denominator is that they are large-scale economic actors, generally motivated by profit making. They exploit ecosystems to build or maintain the human habitat. (ibid, 79)

The second group of functional actors is ‘composed of governments and their agencies

and also some IGOs’. According to the Copenhagen School, this group has two main

functions:

1) Setting and enforcing the rules governing economic actors.

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2) Allowing a degree of institutionalisation of environmental security concerns

through the creation of (sub)departments and IGOs, developing international law and

adding new tasks to existing IGOs (ibid).

The Copenhagen School acknowledge other important groups that have contributed to

the intensification of climate change as a political issue, such as NGOs and epistemic

communities. However, they separate politicisation from securitization, suggesting that

although NGO groups can be identified for their important functional role it is largely

restricted to politicisation of these issues (ibid, 77). There is a danger though in

attempting to demark a clear line between politicisation and securitization, which as

Williams (2003, 251) suggests, may lead one to ‘misperceive processes through which

a situation is being gradually intensified’. As this chapter is concerned with exploring

how climate change has taken position on the political spectrum and appears to be

moving toward the securitizing end, and as the role of NGOs and epistemic

communities is to intensify the political response to climate change, excluding

explanation of their functional role whilst focusing on states and corporations would

not give a balanced account of the process. Therefore, this section will be concerned

with identifying those actors seeking to facilitate, as well as those seeking to hinder, the

positioning of climate change on the political spectrum. These actors are not necessarily

identified for their direct role in the securitization of climate change, they are not

‘securitizing actors’, rather these actors play an active role in the positioning of climate

change on the political spectrum.

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Functional actors facilitating securitization

State actors are the “final determinants” of the outcomes of global environmental

issues (Brown et al., 2000, 35), and climate change does not appear to be an exception.

Their role as functional actors can largely be categorised as lead actor, veto actor,

and/or veto coalitions8 (Porter and Brown, 1991 in Buzan et al., 1998, 77).

State actors facilitating the positioning of climate change would be called lead states

under the Porter and Brown (1991) schema. Lead actors are those states with a strong

commitment to effective international action on the issue. These states move the

process of negotiations forward by proposing their own negotiating formula as the basis

for an agreement, and attempt to garner the support of other state actors (Porter et al.,

2000, 36).

West Germany and the UK have both been lead actors on climate change, and the

UK’s role will be explored in greater depth in the following chapter. There are a

number of different means a lead state may employ to further its position. One tactic

may be to lead by example, which is what Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands did by

setting early CO2 stabilisation targets. The British government has also used this tactic

to legitimise their claim to leadership in pushing for a greater international response to

climate change.

Another tactic may be to make a “diplomatic demarche” to a state hindering the

process (Porter et al., 2000, 36). West Germany resorted to this in exasperation with the

United State’s approach during the White House Conference in 1990. The Environment

8 These groupings need not be restricted to states, they may also be applied to non-state actors such as scientists, NGOs, industrial and agricultural lobbies etc.

53

Minister, Klaus Topfer, argued that “gaps in knowledge must not be used as an excuse

for worldwide inaction”, directly challenging the Presidents stance (Keesings Record of

World Events, 1990: 37394 in Paterson, 1996, 39).

A third tactic may be to rely on a network of NGOs to support the lead state’s position

in other countries and at international conferences (Porter et al., 2000, 36). This is a

tactic used by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a coalition of thirty-two

island states especially vulnerable to climate change-driven sea level rise. Stripple

(2002) suggest that AOSIS are in fact a security coalition, as they are increasingly

interdependent over security issues arising from climate change, and have ‘nothing

more in common than a shared vulnerability for climate change’ (ibid, 119). For AOSIS

climate change is a security threat in conventional national security terms, as rising sea

levels threaten national territory and the long-term ability of people to remain living on

their islands (Barnett and Adger, 2001). AOSIS lobby the climate negotiations for

industrial countries to take greater action on climate change and have been a key actor

in the process of moving the impacts of sea-level rise up the political agenda (Stripple,

2002, 118). AOSIS have also actively appealed climate change as a security issue to the

international community, at the UNFCCC negotiations in Buenos Aires in 1998 for

example, AOSIS held a press conference and highlighted climate change as an urgent

and existential threat to their countries (Ibid, 119). Addressing a seminar in Hawaii in

2001, the President of the Federated States of Micronesia said “sea level rise and other

related consequences of climate change are grave security threats to our very existence”

(Falcom, 2001).

54

Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), particularly UNEP, have played a crucial role

in facilitating a political response to climate change, and offer a forum for international

action. UNEP has initiated negotiations and helped to forge the scientific consensus

required for action. For example, UNEP cosponsored, along with the Rockefeller

Brothers Fund, the Villach and Bellagio workshops mentioned above (Porter et al.,

2000, 45). UNEP also, along with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO),

sponsored the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ibid).

The role of the IPCC is intertwined with that of science in a wider epistemic

community in facilitating the intensification of climate change. Haas (1992, 3) defines

an epistemic community as ‘a network of professionals with recognized expertise and

competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant

knowledge within that domain or issue-area’. This ‘recognized expertise’ is most likely

to be sought out by decision makers during conditions of uncertainty (ibid, 21), which

explains why science, particularly that disseminated by the IPCC, has played such a

vital role in intensifying the political response to climate change. The IPCC Working

Group I is an essential information provider to decision-makers on the appropriate

and/or necessary political response to global warming, and as mentioned above, its first

report in 1990 provoked many countries to initiate a domestic policy response to curb

CO2 emissions. The Working Group II’s assessment of the impacts of climate change

are the basis for conceptualising climate change a security threat, and the latest report is

further intensifying climate change as a political issue, pushing it closer towards the

security end of the spectrum.

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It is not just the epistemic community as a whole which has facilitated the positioning

of climate change, individual scientists can also be important functional actors, as

illustrated by two individual scientists in the UK. David Houghton first worked on

climate change as chief executive of the Meteorological Office in the UK and then as

co-chair of scientific assessment for the UN IPCC. In an article published in The

Guardian in 2003, Houghton described climate change as a ‘weapon of mass

destruction’ (28 July 2003). Sir David King is the Chief Scientific advisor and an

advocate for greater action on climate change, claiming to be the prime ministers

“unofficial ambassador on the matter”9. He is thought to have pushed climate change

up the prime minister’s priority list and has openly criticised the Bush administrations

response. In an article in Science, Sir David King wrote, ‘climate change is the most

severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of

terrorism’, complaining that ‘the U.S. government is failing to take up the challenge of

global warming’ (176).

The scientific knowledge these two men possess facilitates the intensification of climate

change by informing those who do not have that knowledge of the serious nature of the

challenge. However, these two men have gone one step beyond advising or informing

policymakers of the science behind the threat, and have chosen to represent that

knowledge in a clear speech act, overtly depicting climate change as a threat to

security. They are both examples of actors who can “speak” security, and may have

some claim to “do” capabilities. King for example, as the lead scientific advisor to the

UK government has the potential to strongly influence the government’s interpretation

9 In an interview on 17 Feb 2006

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of climate change as a threat and how best to mitigate it. However, it could still be

argued that in the final instance a “do” securitizing actor, for example the British prime

minister, chooses whether to accept or refuse such advice, although the more a “speak”

actor is able to intensify the issue the more constrained the “do” actor will become.

Another individual, who has facilitated the intensification of climate change, is Sir

Nicholas Stern. Stern is the head of the Government Economic Service, and adviser to

the British government on the economics of climate change. He released his report, The

Stern Review, on the economics of climate change in October 2006. Members of the

British government, such as David Miliband10 (secretary of state for environment, food

and rural affairs), regularly cite the Stern Review in their speeches on climate change,

and the FCO Departmental Report 2006/07 claims The Stern Review has been ‘a major

diplomatic asset in changing global opinion on climate change’.

Nongovernmental organisations, here referring to private, nonprofit organisations that

are not beholden to government or a profit-making organisation, have become adept at

politicising climate change and furthering international negotiations. Like lead states

they utilise a variety of means, and have become especially active and well organised in

lobbying at international negotiation conferences. The Climate Action Network for

example, was active in the negotiations of the Framework Convention on Climate

Change and the Kyoto Protocol, and continues to lobby extensively for greater

commitments for a post-Kyoto agreement (Porter et al., 2000, 67).

10 For example, Miliband quotes Stern in a speech he gave on 2 Feb 2007, stating: “climate change will, according to Nick Stern, have a greater economic impact than two world wars and the Great Depression put together.”

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NGOs have also facilitated the positioning of climate change through raising public

awareness and understanding of climate change and negotiations. They have done this

by providing background materials to the media, which Carpenter (2001, 319) asserts

has produced ‘unprecedented’ level of media coverage on climate change and the

UNFCCC negotiations. NGOs also use the internet to disseminate information,

influence the media and create networks to spur grass root action.

Multinationals have played both a facilitating and hindering role in the politicisation of

climate change. For example, insurance companies, concerned with the increasing

frequency and severity and therefore corresponding expense of extreme weather events,

have been proactive in supporting targets and timetables for reductions in greenhouse

gas emissions (Porter et al., 2000, 72). Some multinationals have partnered with NGOs,

setting themselves voluntary reduction targets, and allowing NGOs to monitor their

progress (Carpenter, 2001, 320).

Increasingly, even the fossil fuel producers have accepted the climate science. In

September 1997 the British Petroleum Chief Executive announced that the BP group

would begin voluntary measuring and seek ways to limit greenhouse gases, and French

oil group Elf-Aquitaine pledged to cut carbon emissions (ibid, 315). More recently,

the US Climate Action Partnership, which includes major firms such as DuPont and

Shell, is emerging as an important business pressure group in the US, pushing for

harmonised federal legislation on climate change.

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Functional actors hindering securitization

A veto state ‘either opposes a proposed environmental regime outright or tries to

weaken it to the point that it cannot be effective’ (Porter et al., 2000, 36). The United

States has been the most notorious veto state in the politics of climate change. For

example, in the late 1980s the US administration was not content with stalling the

introduction of domestic policy on climate change—citing insufficient science for

policy inaction—but also sought to slow international progress on the positioning of

climate change on the international agenda. At a ministerial conference in Norway in

November of 1989, American negotiators claimed there was insufficient science to

know by how much greenhouse gas emissions needed to be reduced (Rowlands, 1995,

76). President Bush (Snr) continued the role of antagonist after his election in 1989. His

election promise had been to implement ‘The White House Effect’, to counter the

‘Greenhouse Effect’, which he instigated by gathering international decision makers for

‘The White House Conference on Science and Economics Research Related to Global

Change’ in April of 1990. At the conference he continued to emphasise scientific

differences proclaiming, “what we need are facts, the stuff that science is made of”

(White House 1990 in Rowlands, 1995, 76-77). The Conference was widely seen as an

attempt by the white House to emphasise the scientific uncertainties of global warming

and the cost of reducing emissions (Economist, 14 April 1990; 46; Guardian, 18 April

1990; 8, 23 in Paterson, 1996, 38).

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The US has not been the only state slow to accept climate science and hindering the

process of politicisation. The UK stood alongside their American allies, citing lack of

science as an excuse for policy inaction prior to the first IPCC report. The Soviet Union

too attempted to hinder the politicisation of climate change, and remained sceptical

even after the IPCC released their first report in 1990, questioning the findings and

complaining that some of the figures were ‘fictional’ (Financial Times, 30 August 1990

in Rowlands, 1995).

Science has played an important role in raising the profile of climate change on the

political agenda, but has not only facilitated the intensification of climate change as a

political issue, it has also been used by those seeking to hinder it. As the first to

discover climate change, it was scientists who were the first to place it in the public

domain, and on the political agenda. Yet, whilst scientists may produce scientific

knowledge, they are not the only ones with access to it; ‘once produced, knowledge

becomes something of a collective good, available to all who want to incorporate it into

their discursive strategies’ (Litfin, 1994, 37). All actors in the politicisation of climate

change rely on scientific knowledge and at times its manipulation. Lack of science has

been used consistently by a range of actors seeking to hinder a policy response. Bush

(Snr) cited it for lack of action, and developing countries did not trust assessments in

which their scientists had not participated (Bolin, 1987-88 quoted in Schneider, 1991).

Science has also been used by multinational corporations seeking to hinder acceptance

of climate change and the introduction of emission limitations. For example, as the

Kyoto negotiations approached in December 1997, US industry groups representing oil

and coal, waged multi-million dollar print and television advertising campaigns to

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discredit the science underlying the climate negotiations, and warned that a treaty

would lower US citizen’s standard of living (Carpenter, 2001, 314; Porter et al., 2000,

74). Perhaps the most extreme case of this was the initiation of ‘pseudo science’

sponsored by oil companies, with the aim of keeping the concept of global warming in

a perpetual state of contestation (Gleick, 2006, 7).

The media has wittingly or unwittingly been complicit in highlighting the sceptical

scientists case with their attempt to give both sides of the story, which has resulted in

(over) emphasising the level of disagreement in the climate science and not

representing the balance of views within the scientific community (Newell, 2000, 81).

Consequently, the public, particularly in the US, often feel climate change science is

more contentious than the scientific community. This is important, as political measures

to curb carbon emissions deemed to have a potentially damaging impact on the

economy will be less acceptable if the science surrounding climate change is

considered uncertain. By shaping public opinion, the media can create a situation where

it is conducive for governments to act, or hard for them not to act (Newell, 2000, 94),

and thereby have an important role in the positioning of climate change on the political

spectrum.

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Facilitating Conditions

It is not only actors that can facilitate the positioning of issues on the political agenda,

certain conditions or experiences help to galvanise interest in an issue, and may make

an audience more open to the designation of an issue as a priority issue.

Climatic events have played a significant role in increasing awareness of and

acceptance in climate change. Rowlands (1995, 73) suggests that during the late 1980s

‘beyond the testimonies of the ‘experts’, events in the ‘real world’ were seeming to

support the view that global warming was taking place’. Paterson (1996, 25-26) for

example, cites the extreme weather events in the 1960s and 1970s, including the five-

year drought in Sahel, the 1962 drought in the then Soviet Union, the monsoon failure

in India in 1974, and the drought in Europe in 1976, as facilitators in stepping up

general climate research. A commonly cited reason for the amount of action on climate

change during the 1980s are those freak weather events combined with a drought in

mid-western America in 1988 (Cairncross, 1991, 127; Jagger and O’Riordan, 1996,

16), plus the realisation that the 1980s was the hottest decade on record (Vogler, 2001,

195). The combination of such factors ‘galvanised interest in the issue for both policy-

makers and the general public’ (Rowlands, 73). Hurricane Katrina is likely to have had

a similar impact, and may have contributed to raising awareness in the security

implications of climate change.

The experiences of global warming should not be exaggerated though, as Rowland

(1996, 242) points out, ‘subsequent cold winters, particularly in North America,

eradicated memories of hot summers from the minds of many’. And Newell (2000,

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80)—commenting on the media’s coverage of climate change—suggests that in an

attempt to ‘humanise’ the science, global climatic processes have been related to

personal experience of weather. As a result, cold and wet summers in Britain have been

reported as a sign that global warming is exaggerated.

Hindering conditions

The uncertainty relating to the intensity of climate change has hindered its positioning

on the political spectrum, and prevented it from engendering the level of urgency

required to move it from a political to a security issue. This arises from the

uncertainties in time and scale of global climatic changes, ‘nobody really knows how

far in the future drastic climate change might be, and neither do we know with any

certainty how far in advance responses will have to be prepared in order to be cost-

effective’ (Buzan, 1991, 136). As Buzan et al. (1998, 83) suggest, this ‘unspecified,

relatively remote future’ is not conducive to panic politics and engendering the type of

urgency required to move climate change from the realm of normal politics to above

politics. In addition, this time scale does not fit well with the political time frame,

making politicians reluctant to make immediate economic and political sacrifices to

confront uncertain long-range threats, when doing so may affect future elections

(Vogler, 2001, 198).

Increased salience of other security concerns eclipses the attention given to climate

change by state elites, security analysts and the public. For example, environmental

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issues appeared much less relevant to security after 9/11 and the ensuing “war on

terror”, which some saw as bringing national security ‘back to normal’ (Stripple, 2005,

42). There was a corresponding shift in public attention too. A MORI (Norton and

Leaman, 2004, 3) research project demonstrates how terrorism came to dominate public

concern in Britain after 9/11, with environmental issues dropping well below their high

of the late 1980s/early 1990s.

The Impacts of Climate Change

The previous section described the arrival of climate change on the political agenda

and the factors that have facilitated and hindered its migration along the political

spectrum (fig. 3.1). The aim of this final section is to look at the most recent IPCC

(2007) report and to review the emerging climate change and security literature, which

together demonstrate the continued intensification of climate change as a political issue

edging ever closer toward the security end of the political spectrum.

The scientific consensus on the causes and effects of climate change has continued to

grow since the first IPCC Working Group I (science) report released in 1990. The latest

report released in February 2007, uses the strongest language to date on the level of

certainty. The summary for policymakers of Working Group I states:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. (IPCC Working Group I summary for policymakers, 2007, 5, emphasis added)

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There is also far greater consensus on the impacts of climate change in the latest

Working Group II report. Climate change is likely to have considerable global health

impacts, affecting the health status of millions of people, ‘particularly those with low

adaptive capacity’ (IPCC Working Group II, summary for policymakers, 7). These

health effects include but are not limited to: an increase in malnutrition through shifting

agricultural productivity; increased deaths and injuries through heat waves and other

extreme weather events; and altered spatial distribution of vector-borne diseases.

The impacts of climate change highlight an important feature of the insecurity arising

from climate change, namely that the effects of climate change are not evenly spread,

and at the regional, state and even the community level, there is considerable disparity.

Amongst the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change are those living in low-

lying coastal and river flood plains, where rising sea levels will result in loss of land

and contamination of fresh water resources. Water is central, with the difference in

water availability becoming more prominent with progressive warming. Supply to dry

regions may decrease by as much as 30%, whilst increasing by up to 40% at high

latitudes. Food production will be impacted by a combination of climatic changes, such

as reduced water availability, loss of land from rising sea levels and desertification, and

crop damage through increased frequency of extreme events such as floods and

droughts. Although initial warming may increase crop yields, particularly at higher

latitudes, these too are likely to decrease with continued warming. The impacts of

climate change on food production again highlights the inequality in the regional

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impacts of global warming, an issue increasingly confronted in the growing climate

change and justice literature11.

Climate Change as a Security Issue

As the latest IPCC report outlines and the Stern Review (2007) summarizes, ‘climate

change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to

water, food, health, and use of land and the environment’ (65). How then has this threat

to human survival been addressed and conceptualised in the security literature? The

following section will give a brief review of some of the recent literature

conceptualising climate change as a threat to security.

In the late 1980s, early 1990s, climate change (usually referred to as global warming)

tended to be grouped under the heading of global environmental change as a threat to

security12. As such, climate change was largely not identified as a threat in and of itself,

but as an issue promising to increase the stress of continuing environmental degradation

and population growth (Mathews, 1989; Myers, 1989; Homer-Dixon, 1991). Homer-

Dixon in particular, emphasised that degradation and depletion of agricultural lands,

forests and water would contribute greater to social turmoil in the coming decades than

climate change (Homer-Dixon, 1994; 1999).

There are a number of plausible explanations for this apparent hole in the literature.

As Barnett (2003a, 7) demonstrates, identifying which particular climate risks can be 11 See for example Muller 2001; Paavola and Adger, 2002; Barnett, 2003b; Brien and Leichenko, 2005 12 With a few exceptions, see Brown, 1977; Wirth, 1989; Rowlands, 1991b; Fairclough, 1991

66

called security issues is problematic, and ‘has vexed environmental security

scholarship’. On top of which, the effects of climate change are likely to increase the

stress of many of the environmental degradation problems identified in the environment

and security literature. In addition, several features of climate change make

conceptualisation of “climate security” difficult. Firstly, although today there is greater

consensus on the science and impacts of climate change, when environment and

security literature first emerged in the early 1990s, the scale of change varied from

within adaptive capacity, to a threat ‘second only to global nuclear war’ (Toronto

Conference on Climate Change, 1988, 1 in Abrahamson, 1989). Secondly, with greater

understanding has come greater awareness of the fact that the impacts of climate

change are not evenly spread. For some the negative effects are significant, for some

minor, and for others there may even be net benefits (O’Brien and Leichenko, 2005, 2).

As Stripple (2002) highlights, ‘for whom – or what – climate change is to be considered

dangerous, is ultimately a value issue’ (120). Therefore, the idea of a global standard

for “climate security” is not appropriate, as the planning and implementation of policy

will create winners and losers (Paavola and Adger, 2003). These two issues combine to

make a third, equally problematic issue, namely what are we attempting to secure: a

stable climate; current levels of civilisation; or human beings?

Despite these apparent difficulties in conceptualising climate change as a threat to

security, research is growing. Although Homer-Dixon (1999) has been critical of

focusing on climate change, his designation of ‘Migrations, ethnic tensions, economic

disparities, and weak institutions’ as the main causes of ‘ecoviolence’ (Homer-Dixon

and Blitt, 1998), is the thesis that has received the most attention in the climate change

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and security literature. Some of which suffers from the same dramatisation of threat

‘rarely substantiated by convincing evidence’, as the environment and security

literature (Nordas and Gleditsch, 2005, 2).

Probably the most extreme version of the climate change conflict thesis is a report by

Schwartz and Randall (2003, 1), seemingly modelled on Kaplan’s 1994 apocalyptic

vision. Its stated purpose was to ‘imagine the unthinkable…so we may better

understand the potential implications on United States national security’. The report is

based on ‘not the most likely’ but nevertheless ‘plausible’ worst case scenario of

climate change, which leads the authors to predict:

As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. (ibid, 2)

The report was commissioned by the Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, and

was considered very embarrassing for an administration that is yet to make a credible

response to climate change (The Observer, 22 Feb 2004), which may explain the level

of drama contained in the report. The majority of the climate change and security

change literature is less dramatic, seemingly seeking to avoid the criticism’s made

against the ‘first wave’ of the environmental security literature, often accused of being

‘anecdotal’ (Lonergan, 2000) and ‘highly rhetorical’ (Levy, 1995).

The recent climate change and security literature has also linked conflicts, such as

Darfur, to climate change, a link that has quickly found acceptance by political actors

wanting to intensify climate change. For example, Byers and Dragojlovic (2004, 16)

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assert that although the situation in Darfur is usually portrayed as an ethnic conflict that

has resulted in ‘widespread famine, disease and death, [it] is likely linked to a changing

climate in the Sahel region of North Africa’. This link has been quoted by various

actors, including the UK Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett13 and the director general

of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon.

In other literature, climate change has been regarded as a threat to national security in

the conventional sense of loss of territorial integrity, albeit through less than

conventional means. As Barnett (2003a, 9) explains, ‘Because sovereignty over

delineated territory is the material substrata of national security, then physical processes

such as sea-level rise pose substantial security risks’. Barnett highlights this threat in

relation to Bangladesh, where a 45 cm rise in sea-level could potentially displace 5.5

million people, and the atoll countries, which are ‘the most physically vulnerable of all

small island states to sea-level rise’ (Barnett and Adger, 2001). Edwards (1999, 320)

suggests this loss of land from rising sea levels will force more people into urban areas

and increase the pressure on governments to provide the necessary services and

infrastructure to cope with new arrivals. In turn, if governments are unable to provide

these basic services ‘there is likely to be social unrest resulting in political instability’.

Busby (2007), also exploring the link between political stability, government

legitimacy and climate change, considers how extreme weather events, such as

13 In a speech Margaret Beckett gave at the Labour Party Conference, she stated: “It is desertification and water shortage which have fuelled the conflict in Darfur.” (26 Sep 2006); In a speech she gave at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Margaret Beckett said of Darfur: “That is a conflict in which 200,000 people have already died. And it is a conflict in which there has been that same struggle between nomadic and pastoral communities for resources made more scarce through a changing climate.” (10 May 2007); In an interview on BBC Radio 4 Margaret Becketts says: “I think not everyone realises that one of the reasons for the conflict erupting in Sudan in the first place was pressure on land and pressure on water. That is something climate change will make much worse” (17 April 2007).

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Hurricane Katrina, pose legitimation challenges for governments. Busby suggests that

the inadequate US Government response to Katrina shook the country’s international

image as a ‘competent agent’ and ‘created a large credibility gap’ that has hindered the

government’s relationship with the population affected by Katrina , ‘particularly in the

African-American community’ (ibid, 22-23). McLeman and Smit (2005, 12) give a

historical context to the role of extreme weather events on social upheaval and mass

migrations. They demonstrate how the resultant legal and illegal migration of 80,000

Hondurans in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in 1988 is still being managed by US

immigration authorities. Security issues arise, they suggest, through the potential social,

political and economic effects of migration on the receiving state, and potential inter-

group rivalry as a factor in so called “environmental conflicts” (ibid).

The link between climate change and a state’s incapacity to ‘deliver services to its

people, ensure domestic order, and protect the nation’s borders from invasion’ is taken

to its inevitable conclusion in a CNA report (2007), which was compiled with the help

of a U.S. military (retired) advisory board. The report goes as far as to suggest it creates

the conditions ‘ripe for turmoil, extremism and terrorism’. The former Commander-in-

chief Admiral Lopez stating, ‘Climate change will provide the conditions that will

extend the war on terror’, through the creation of ‘More poverty, more forced

migrations, higher unemployment’ (ibid, 17). Like this report, much of the climate

change and security literature stresses that it is those occupying the most ‘precarious

socio-economic positions in an affected population that are most vulnerable to adverse

environmental conditions or changes’ (McLeman and Smit, 2005, 11). As Barnett and

Adger highlight (2005), a weakened state capacity to provide important entitlements

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such as education, health care, law and order, credit and protective security is likely to

compound the insecurity of the most vulnerable.

It is not only the impacts of climate change that have been addressed as a security

issue, it has also been suggested that addressing the causes and impacts of climate

change may in itself threaten national and international stability. Gleick (2006, 7)

proposes that perceptions over US bearing a ‘disproportional responsibility for impacts’

and unwillingness to join multi-lateral efforts to reduce emissions may adversely affect

economic policy, trade agreements, and security arrangements.

Kane (2005, 24), also looking at how climate change is to be addressed, suggests it

could revive old tensions. He concludes that whilst war over carbon may be far-fetched,

‘the idea that climate politics could exacerbate other tensions’ that may ‘ultimately

provoke wars’ is not.

The climate change and security literature demonstrates the increasing willingness to

conceptualise the impacts of global warming as a threat to security. The

conceptualisation of climate change as a security issue and the intensification of climate

change as a political issue suggest that climate change may be nearing the security end

of the political spectrum. This proposition will be tested in the following chapter by

examining the extent to which climate change has been securitized in the UK.

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4. Climate change and the government’s securitizing moves

The aim of this chapter is to use the theoretical framework developed over the previous

chapters to determine whether the UK government has attempted to securitize climate

change, and if so, to what extent this securitization has been successful.

The chapter will start by outlining the UK’s response to the emergence of climate

change as a political issue in the late 1980s, and the intensification of climate change as

a political issue in the UK over time. The second part of the chapter seeks to determine

whether securitization has taken place. The discussion will be structured according to

the four-step process of a successful securitization proposed in chapter 2: 1) Existential

threat ; 2) Audience acceptance; 3) Emergency Measures; 4) Effects on interunit

relations by breaking free of the rules. This process will be followed to determine the

British governments success in securitizing climate change domestically and

internationally.

The UK has a varied record when it comes to environmental issues. During the 1960s

and 1970s, the UK was labelled by NGOs and other European states as the ‘Dirty Man’

of Europe (Cass, 2007, 63). However, in 1990 the UK significantly changed its

approach and became a leading state in shaping international response to climate

change. The reversal of the UK’s position on climate change is usually attributed to the

science contained in the IPCC’s first Working Group I report, released in May 1990.

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Prior to the report’s release the UK took the same approach as the US, citing gaps in

scientific knowledge to explain and justify their inaction (Rowlands, 1995, 77).

The government first set voluntary emission targets in 1990, the emissions reductions

were made during a period of transition from coal to natural gas and consequently were

not too painful. Nevertheless Britain, along with Germany, are credited with providing

the vast majority of CO2 emission reductions for the EU as a whole, which strengthened

their bargaining position and supported their leadership role. Britain also took on the

role of broker between the US and Europe on the question of emissions targets

(Paterson, 1996, 80), attempting to use their historic alliance to further the United

States response to climate change.

As much as the Thatcher government sought to promote action on climate change in

the international arena, they sought to ‘control the issue’s evolution’ (Cass, 2007, 71).

The climate convention negotiations began officially in February 1991. The British

negotiators aggressively worked to shape the negotiating process of the

Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) for a United Nations Framework

Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC). Both Michael Heseltine and Michael Howard

(successive Secretary of State for the Environment) played central roles in securing

compromises with the US between the Second World Climate Conference in November

1990, until the signing of the FCCC at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, in which all

developed countries agreed to return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

The FCCC came into force in March 1994, with the first Conference of the Parties

(COP1) held in March-April 1995. It was at the third COP at Kyoto, in December 1997,

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that ministers and officials from 160 countries reached a legally binding protocol.

Although, during the negotiations Europe took a common position, the UK was still

able to play a strong leadership role, as along with Austria and Germany, it was the

only other member state to have achieved its CO2 emissions reductions targets (Cass,

2007, 78). The conservative government, led by John Major, wanted to secure

American partnership in the protocol and push them to accept meaningful CO2

reduction targets, and was successful in its attempt. The US accepted much greater

emission reduction targets than it had originally proposed, although these came with

considerable compromises.

Under the protocol, industrialised countries were to reduce their collective emissions of

greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent below their 1992 levels between the

years 2008 and 2012. For Kyoto to come into force required ratification by at least 55

Parties to the Convention (responsible for at least 55 per cent of the 1990 carbon

dioxide emissions). Despite the success of the Bush (Jnr) administration in the 2000

elections and their subsequent refusal to ratify, Kyoto came into force on February 16

2005 through Russian ratification.

The Labour government came into power in May 1997, and continued the conservative

government’s ‘leadership’ role in negotiations for the ratification of the Kyoto protocol.

The new government were also responsible for meeting the cuts in carbon emissions the

previous government had promised, although these were not too painful and required

no further domestic policy changes (Cass, 2007 80).

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The government’s action on climate change is well articulated in Climate Change the

UK Programme 2000. This report is highlighted because it is a useful document to

demonstrate the change in government rhetoric on climate change between 2000 and

2006. In 2000 this report opened with a foreword by the deputy prime pinister, John

Prescott, in which he suggested recent climatic events such as floods, droughts and

storms had shown how ‘vulnerable we are to climate extremes’ (Prescott, 2000, 4). The

foreword in the 2006 publication of Climate Change the UK Programme 2006, was

written by the prime minister. This foreword declared climate change to be ‘probably

the greatest long-term challenge facing the human race’ and made it a top priority issue

for the Labour government ‘at home and internationally’ (Tony Blair, 2006, iii). Where

as the former report only spoke of vulnerability, the executive summary of the 2006

version made a direct link between the impacts of climate change and security:

This Government believes that climate change is the greatest long-term challenge facing the world today…If left unchecked, climate change will have profound impacts on our societies and way of life, affecting agriculture and food security, leading to water shortages, triggering population movements and impacting on our economies, and our security. (ibid, 3)

It is not clear whose security is referred to by ‘our security’ perhaps deliberate in its

ambiguity, but through analysing the written and delivered speech of the actors below

the aim is to uncover whether the UK government has, or is in the process of

securitizing climate change. This analysis also aims to uncover the referent object

identified as threatened, and how it is threatened according to the climate change

discourse of the UK government.

The government’s response to climate change will be traced from 2000 when the

government first published its programme on climate change until 2007, when the

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British government used their chairmanship of the UN Security Council to debate

climate change as a security issue. The publication of Climate Change the UK

Programme 2000 is used to indicate the government’s position on climate change in

2000, and its change in attitude towards climate change as a political issue will be

traced by looking at some of the prime minister’s speeches up until 200714.

The prime ministers speeches are taken to reflect the government’s attitude on climate

change and also Tony Blair’s personal stance on the subject. They will therefore be

studied with the intention of determining to what extent, if at all, Tony Blair can be

considered a securitizing actor. Once the government’s response to climate change has

been mapped through its representation in Tony Blair’s speech, I will consider the role

of the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs (David Miliband15) and

the foreign secretary (Margarett Becket16) in intensifying climate change.

Step 1: Existential Threat - The Securitizing Actors

Several actors within the current UK government have drawn the rhetorical link

between climate change and security, and could therefore be labelled securitizing

actors. However, only three actors have been selected: Tony Blair; Margaret Beckett;

and David Miliband. These actors were selected both for rhetorically identifying

climate change as a threat to security, and for their securitizing capability (see chapter

2). Actors with securitizing capabilities are those actors who can both “speak” and “do” 14 Tony Blair’s speeches can be retrieved at: http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page5.asp 15 David Miliband’s speeches can be retrieved from the Defra website: http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/ministers/speeches/default.asp 16 Margaret Beckett’s Speeches can be retrieved from the FCO website: http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029391647

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security. This means that if their claim that climate change is as an existential threat is

accepted by the relevant audience, they will to some degree gain control over the issue

and how it is tackled.

Tony Blair (prime minister)

In a speech Tony Blair gave in 2000 to an audience receptive to environmental issues,

the prime minister outlined the environmental threats. These included population

growth, water resources, soil degradation, and dwindling fish stocks, in a list of

“environmental challenges” very similar to those described in the early environment

and security literature. He identified climate change as “the greatest threat to our

environment today”, stating: “If there is one immediate issue that threatens global

disaster, it is the changes in our atmosphere.” (Tony Blair, 24 Oct 2000).

Climate change the UK programme 2000 laid out the governments ‘strategic approach’

to tackling climate change, detailing the government’s response as one of ‘practical

action to reduce emissions over the next decade’ (Prescott, 2000, 4). It included

ambitious targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, going beyond the 12.5%

reduction required under the Kyoto Protocol, with a goal of reducing emissions 20%

below 1990 by 2020. This target was set to ‘ensure the UK continues to lead by

example on climate change and starts to make the transition to a lower carbon economy'

(Climate change the UK programme 2000, 24). The report reiterates the governments

desire for international leadership on climate change, for which setting an example

domestically is considered vital. This aim is clearly spelled out by Blair in a speech in

2000: “The reason for taking the lead in cutting national emissions, as we have in the

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UK, is to give us the standing and authority in international negotiations” (Tony Blair,

24 Oct. 2000). A position Blair repeats in his speeches on climate change between 2000

and 2007. The Programme outlines how the government plans to meet these targets by

reducing emissions in the energy, business, transport, domestic, agricultural and public

sectors. It does not however deal or designate climate change a security issue.

Blair repeatedly talks about the urgency required to tackle climate change, and is aware

of the difficulty in raising political will to match that which is required. In a speech in

2001 he tells his audience why engendering urgency into the climate change debate is

important, it is he states, “an opportunity” as it “allows us to put it at the top of the

agenda” (Tony Blair, 6 Mar 2001). He again speaks about the urgency climate change

requires in a speech in 2004: “the issue is urgent. If there is one message I would leave

with you and with the British people today it is one of urgency” (Tony Blair, 14 Sep

2004).

He is conscious of the difficulties of engendering urgency in an issue like climate

change, the impacts of which are not immediate. He attempts to over come this by

labelling issues like terrorism, “immediate security…a threat we can see confronting us

directly and now”, and suggesting recognition is also required for issues that affect “us”

over time. In the latter category he includes climate change, and says the problem with

such issues is “they seldom fit political time scales” (Tony Blair, 24 Feb 2003). The

solution he offers appears to accept and promote the need for a broadened security

agenda:

The only answer is to construct a common agenda that recognises both sets of issues have to be confronted for the world's security and prosperity to be guaranteed. There

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will be no lasting peace whilst there is appalling injustice and poverty. There will be no genuine security if the planet is ravaged by climate change. (24 Feb 2003)

Blair notes how coupling climate change to energy security, a move he has made in

several speeches17, may have helped increase the political will to tackle climate change:

“Concerns about energy have also helped spur action. The threat of energy insecurity

has come together with climate change to give even more urgency…” (3 June 2007).

In his speeches Blair outlines the motive for wanting to securitize climate change,

namely to engender the political will to tackle the issue urgently. The question is, do the

rhetorical claims made by Tony Blair over the threat of climate change amount to a

securitizing move?

Despite consistently spelling out the impacts and threats arising from climate change

the prime minister seems to resist directly labelling climate change a threat to security.

For example, in a speech in 2001 Tony Blair linked climate change to issues of

sustainable development, poverty and debt relief, and placed it alongside nuclear

proliferation as a threat facing the human race (6 Mar 2001). He does not however

mention security, although the connection between a threat facing the human race and a

threat to security may be apparent, the prime minister does not directly make the

linkage. This is also the case in a speech he made in June 2007, when he summarised

some of the impacts of climate change with the world’s poorest likely to be hardest hit,

going on to state: “...And the impact, through forced migration, increased conflict and

unrest will be felt in the developed world far beyond poor country borders.” (3 June

17 See 2 Nov 2005, 29 March 2006,

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2007). Such a statement clearly draws on the causal role of environmental degradation

in migration and conflict as presented in the environment and security literature, yet the

prime minister does not directly make this linkage and identify climate change as a

threat to security.

Although the prime minister appears reluctant to directly label climate change a

security issue, he argues its importance as an issue for his government. The

Copenhagen School are clear that ‘actors who securitize do not necessarily say

“security”’ (Buzan et al., 1998, 24), the criteria is only that the securitizing actor argue

an issue take ‘absolute priority’. Perhaps the Prime Minister’s closest statement to this

effect is in Climate change the UK programme 2006, when in the foreword he writes:

‘Climate change is probably the greatest long-term challenge facing the human race.

That is why I have made it top priority for this government, at home and

internationally’. However, even in this statement, the prime minister is only designating

climate change a ‘top priority’ issue and not the ‘absolute priority’ of his government.

Missing from Tony Blair’s “speech act” is overt and consistent labelling of climate

change as an “existential threat” to a designated “referent object”. His statements of

climate change as a threat are vague and ambiguous. For more transparent securitizing

moves one needs to turn to other actors in the British government. These actors also

help further our understanding of what the UK government is identifying as the

existential threat and in reference to what object, thus enabling us to determine what the

UK government is attempting to secure.

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David Miliband (Secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs)

David Miliband has been the secretary of state at the department of environment, food

and rural affairs (Defra) since May 5th 2006, replacing Margaret Beckett in Tony

Blair’s post election reshuffle. Defra is the lead department on climate change, working

alongside the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department for Transport

(DfT), Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and Department for International

Development (DfID)18.

In a speech David Miliband delivered on February 2, 2007, the same day as the release

of the IPCC’s fourth Working Group I assessment, he identified climate change as: 1)

An economic issue; 2) An international development issue; 3) A cultural issue, and; 4)

A national security and foreign policy issue. In this speech Miliband directly identifies

climate change as a threat in the conventional sense of national security for its potential

to spark conflict, citing Darfur as an example he states: “scarcity of natural resources,

in particular water and food, could be a major source of future conflict, as we are

already seeing in Darfur”. He gives his reasons for attributing economic, development

and security issues to the threat of climate change in a speech to GLOBE forum:

When climate change could cause a greater financial meltdown than the two world wars and the Great Depression put together, how can it not be an issue for treasury and finance ministers? When climate change may leave coastal areas uninhabitable, and produce shortages in water and food, how can foreign ministers not worry about conflict from mass migration or conflict over access to natural resources? When climate change will hit the poorest countries in the world the hardest, how can climate change not become a development issue? (14 Feb 2007)

Here Miliband highlights the consequences of climate change, which are a threat to the

to the economy, security and development. These consequences however, are not the 18 Table of government’s international priorities, updated 16 June 2005: http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/international/priorities.htm#19

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economy, security and development. These consequences however, are not the

‘ultimate threat’. Miliband recognises “dangerous climate change” as the ‘ultimate

threat’, and this he associates with atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 550 ppm (14

Feb 2007)

From Miliband’s speeches one begins to get a clearer picture of what the government

identifies as the existential threat in the climate change problem. David Miliband points

to “dangerous climate change” and emphasises its capacity to threaten the economic

and political order how it currently exists. Current development as we have it and future

development as we plan it—or what Buzan et al. (1998, 75) refer to as ‘achieved levels

of civilization’—is the referent which dangerous climate change threatens. The only

way to prevent this threat and its consequences is to stabilize atmospheric gases:

we need to make concrete the 1992 commitment to avert dangerous climate change. That means committing to the idea of a long term stabilisation goal for the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. 450 ppm of CO2 equivalent is almost upon us. 550ppm looks very dangerous indeed. (14 Feb 2007)

Miliband’s statements are in accordance with the threat perceptions and stabilization

goal of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

(UNFCCC):

The objective is to achieve a stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere on a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. (UNFCCC, Article 2, 4, emphasis added)

As Stripple (1996, 116) highlights, ‘the convention does not secure a stable climate.

The convention accepts that the climate is changing but states that the changes should

not be allowed to become ‘dangerous’’. Climate change per se then is not the problem,

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it is “dangerous climate change” and its potential to disrupt our economy, security and

development, which is the problem.

By identifying the ultimate referent as achieved levels of civilization the government

expose the contradiction in the system which got us where we are today; economically

prosperous and threatened by climate change. The government also expose their own

‘security dilemma’, arising from state legitimacy hinging on both provision of security

and economic prosperity19, both of which the government identifies as threatened from

dangerous climate change, and the latter (economic prosperity) the driver of this

ultimate threat. How then do the British government propose to continue providing both

security and economic prosperity by stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide?

The answer is implicit in the title of a speech Miliband gave to an American audience

“Greening the American dream” (6 June 2007). By turning the climate change

discourse into a security discourse, the government is attempting to mobilize

international action for transition to a low carbon economy. This envisions continued

economic prosperity through “green growth”, or in other words the decoupling of

economic prosperity from carbon dioxide emissions. This solution offers other

advantages too; Firstly, as Miliband quotes from the Stern Review, “the cost of

mitigating climate change will be far less than the cost of dealing with the

consequences” (19 Oct 2006). Secondly, in the government’s Energy White Paper,

published May 2007, the government outlines how the UK will become increasingly

19 For discussion on economic growth as one of the central indicators of government legitimacy in the twentieth century see Paterson (2000b). For discussion on the challenge climate change poses to wealth production and the state’s political authority see Litfin (2000).

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dependent on overseas oil and gas supplies as UK reserves decline. By moving to a low

carbon economy the government will reduce the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels,

decreasing its vulnerability to the global fossil fuel market, and thereby increasing the

UK’s “energy security”. Thirdly, “re-framing” the issue as en economic issue, which

Miliband suggests is required (6 June 2007), prevents the climate change debate turning

into one of consumption or limits to growth, which Miliband suggests would require

the UK cut “its consumption by two thirds” (ibid). The governments “vision” instead

“focuses on continuing to consume and develop” (ibid) and therefore ensuring

continued economic prosperity.

Margaret Beckett (Foreign Secretary)

David Miliband’s speeches are useful in establishing how the government views and

constructs climate change as a threat in reference to a specific valued object, and the

means by which it proposes to secure that object. Margaret Beckett’s speeches have

been accompanied with steps beyond the rhetoric to intensify the securitization of

climate change domestically and internationally.

According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Departmental report 2006/07,

‘climate security’ became one of the government’s strategic international priorities of

2006, with the prime minister directing the foreign minister ‘to put climate security at

the heart of her foreign policy responsibilities’.

To help her fulfil this role Margaret Beckett appointed a special representative for

Climate Change, John Ashton (FCO news, 08 June 2006), who describes his job as

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helping Margaret Beckett and her colleagues across Government mobilise a coalition to

respond to climate change with the urgency it needs (BBC interview, 22 June 2006).

Margaret Beckett has also mobilised the government’s diplomats (or posts), for

example in a speech she gave at the British Embassy in Berlin:

At every level – UN, G8 or EU – one of our top-line objectives must be to make real, concrete progress on climate change. We need the political resources of foreign policy to create a shared vision for the future. We need to use the expertise of those in this room - and beyond - to build coalitions, to set agendas and to make multilateral institutions work.

The foreign secretary has herself intensified the rhetoric on climate change as a security

issue. In her speeches she demonstrates her awareness of the difficulty in securitizing a

non-conventional threat, one which she attempts to overcome through evoking

historical examples of the danger of ignoring threats:

Anyone who doesn't see climate change as a security issue today will, in my view, be treading in the footsteps of those who didn't see reparations as a security issue in the 1920s (10 May 2007)

She compares her task of raising awareness in climate change as a security issue to that

of Winston Churchill and the Nazi threat:

It was a time (1919 to 1939) when Churchill, perceiving the dangers that lay ahead, struggled to mobilise the political will and industrial energy of the British empire to meet those dangers. (16 April 2007)

Evoking historical comparison is particularly important in the case of climate change, a

threat which the audience may find difficult to place within a historical context of threat

perception. As noted in chapter 2, history renders the audience more sensitive to its

vulnerability in regard to certain threats. Aware that there is no historical example of

climate change her audience can associate with, Margaret Beckett evokes the Second

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World War as a threat that will resonate with her audience’s perception and

understanding of insecurity.

The foreign secretary tends to construct the threat of climate change along

conventional national security lines, with climate change emphasised for its causal role

in conflict. She grounds this in present day examples, such as the “classic security

challenge” of the Middle East, and Darfur, case studies which again, she knows will

resonate with her audience. Concluding, “it is simply inconceivable that there will not

be a profound and possibly devastating effect on our collective and individual security”

(16 April 2007). However, she also embraces “broadening and deepening of our

understanding” of the underlying insecurities which climate change is driving, such as

water, food and migration issues (24 Oct 2006).

On the 17th of April, Margaret Beckett used the British Chairmanship of the UN Security

Council to convene the council’s first debate on climate change. The government’s decision to

use the chairmanship is its most overt attempt to securitize climate change to date. The UK’s

Concept Paper for the debate outlined the governments understanding of the ‘dilemma’ of

climate change:

All members of the international community face a shared dilemma. To ensure wellbeing for a growing population with unfulfilled needs and rising expectation we must grow our economies. Should we fail, we increase the risk of conflict and insecurity. To grow our economies we must continue to use more energy. Much of that energy will be in the form of fossil fuels. But if we use more fossil fuels we will accelerate climate change, which itself presents risks to the very security we are trying to build. (28 March 2007, 1)

The concept paper focused the debate on ‘the security implications of a changing

climate, including through its impact on potential drivers of conflict (such as access to

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energy, water, food and other scarce resources, population movements and border

disputes)’ (ibid).

Margaret Becket outlined the government’s motives for the securitizing move in a

speech at the UN Security Council the day of the debate:

The UK proposed this debate during its Presidency because we felt that, by facing up to the implications of climate change for that collective security, the world will take wiser decisions as we begin to build a low carbon, global economy. (17 April 2007)

Chairing this debate gave the British government the opportunity to appeal their

framing of climate change and its security implications to an international audience,

and to offer their solution to the problem: “to build a low carbon, global economy”,

with the aim of gaining wide acceptance.

The government’s understanding of climate change as a security issue has developed

since the first publication of Climate change the UK programme 2000, in which climate

change was presented as ‘one of the most serious environmental problems the world

faces’ (2000, 5). Since Margaret Beckett became foreign secretary, the government’s

strategy has been one of re-framing climate change as not simply an environmental

issue but as an economic, political and security issue. To determine the extent to which

the government’s strategy has succeeded, and to what degree their attempt to reframe

climate change a security issue has been accepted, one needs to move to the second step

of a “successful securitization”; the audience acceptance.

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Step 2: Audience Acceptance

The second step of securitization requires the audience accept the government’s claim

of threatened referent objects. The securitizing actors made stronger appeals to

particular referents depending on their audience. For example, in a speech Miliband

gave at the Vatican (26 April 2007) he appealed action on climate change along moral

grounds and emphasised its threat to development. In a speech he gave to an audience

of mainly economic actors at the GLOBE forum (14 Feb 2007) he appealed more to

economic interest and emphasised climate change’s likely impacts on the economy.

Miliband himself acknowledges the importance of constructing the threat according to

the audience’s sensibilities: “I am optimistic we can meet that challenge, but we can

only do so by appealing to a combination of moral duty and self-interest” (26 April

2007).

The UK government have appealed their securitizing move both domestically and

internationally to a range of actors, or audiences. Domestically these include but are not

limited to, political elites, the business community and the public. Internationally, the

government have appealed their claim of existential threat to other governments, the

international business community, and other influential actors.

Domestically, climate change as a security issue appears to be gaining acceptance by

political elites. For example, David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, wrote in

an article published in the Financial Times in January 2007 that ‘climate change is not

just an environmental question, it could have a massive impact on international

security’. He also accepted the environmental conflict thesis, citing Darfur as an

example he postulates that:

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The demand for essential resources could exacerbate tensions within countries…Such conflicts over resources within countries could easily turn into conflicts between countries - either directly through clashes between governments over a resource such as a shared river or indirectly through the pressure of refugees crossing borders. (24 Jan 2007)

Cameron has also appealed climate change as a security issue to the conservative party,

for example in a speech to the Local Government Association:

Twenty years ago, at the height of the cold war, local councils had a key role in contingency planning for the greatest threat to the survival of mankind. Namely, a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers. The world has changed dramatically since then. Today, in the twenty first century, the greatest long term threat this planet faces is climate change. (6 July 2006)

Using the same “grammar of security” as the government, Cameron clearly seeks to

mobilise party response to climate change and garner support for the decision to make

climate change a top priority issue.

Wide acceptance by political elites of the government’s attempt to securitize climate

change would perhaps be in the form of a cross-party consensus, after all securitization

is fulfilled by suspension of the normal haggling of politics and the acceptance that an

issue is above politics. There have been calls for a cross-party consensus by both the

Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, although the cross-party talks on emission

targets recently broke down (McCarthy, Ezilon, 12 Oct. 2005; BBC, 13 June 2006; The

Independent, 14 Mar. 2007). It is interesting to note that the Labour government has not

initiated or been party to the cross-party talks, and declined to sign an agreement

reached between Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Scottish Nationalists

and the Democratic Unionist Party in February 2006. The agreement included

commitments to year-on-year emission reductions and the establishment of an

independent body to ensure reductions take place (BBC, 12 June 2006). The Labour

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government rejected such targets, and instead proposed five yearly targets in the 2006

climate change Bill (Grice, The Independent, 15 Nov. 2006). The break down in the

cross-party talks suggests that currently most political elites (including the government)

are mainly talking about the priority climate change requires, and although they may

accept its potential as a threat are not yet ready to suspend the normal haggling of

politics, or in the case of the government, surrender their control over the issue.

The response by the business community to climate change has changed over time, and

as the previous chapter suggests, corporations have both facilitated and hindered the

positioning of climate change on the political spectrum. However, there seems to be

increasing acceptance of the urgency of climate change and a willingness to act to

reduce emissions. For example, in June 2006 a British business group including

Executives from Vodafone, Unilever, Tesco, Shell and ten other companies, lobbied the

government for urgent action (Elliot, The Guardian, 12 June 2006). The lobby

demonstrated the extent of their commitment for transition to a low carbon economy by

stating they intended to work with all major parties to ensure leadership was sustained

over the long term (ibid). This would suggest that members of the business community

accept the claim that climate change is a threat to the economy, and some are willing to

take stronger measures to tackle carbon emissions.

As for the public, according to a study conducted by Norton and Leaman for the MORI

Social Research Institute (2004) 63% of Britons agreed with Tony Blair when he

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designated climate change the most important environmental issue facing the world

today, and in another poll, 79% thought the government should do more to tackle

climate change (2007 World Environment Review). However, ‘when asked which

global issue – terrorism, global warming, population growth or HIV/Aids – poses the

most serious threat’, terrorism came top by 48% compared to 25% for global warming

(Norton and Leaman, 2004, 5). Also apparent from the MORI research was the lack of

public understanding of climate change, its drivers and affects. Although this may have

increased since 2004 as climate change has continued to intensify as a political issue

and gain greater media coverage, one suspects there is still confusion in public

understanding of the impacts of climate change and its potential to drive economic,

development and security issues.

The response by political elites would suggest they accept the claim that climate

change has the potential to threaten security, but not that it is an imminent threat to

survival, or one would have expected them to suspend the haggling of politics. The

response by the business community would suggest that this target audience likely

accepts the government’s claim of climate change as an existential threat to the

economy, and consequently appear ready to accept and supersede the government’s

response to climate change. However, steps the government has taken to curb

emissions, such as the introduction of a climate change levy in 2001, and caps on

industrial sector carbon emissions as part of the EU emissions trading scheme in 2005,

were widely unpopular, and industry lobbied the government heavily to raise the

emission caps (Morgan, The Observer, 7 Nov. 2004). This would suggests they are

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willing to take action, but only on their terms. The public on the other hand, although

clearly concerned by climate change, do not appear to accept climate change as an

existential threat the way they do terrorism, which may suggest the government has not

targeted them as an audience the way it has the other two groups.

Internationally, the British government’s decision to use their chairmanship of the UN

Security Council to debate climate change sparked controversy, highlighting the

division in international opinion on climate change. Some welcomed the debate, such

as the Director General of the UN, Ban Ki Moon, and executive director of UNEP,

Achim Steiner. Both support the claim that the conflict in Darfur originates from an

extensive drought in the Horn of Africa during the 1980s and that there are likely to be

a growing number of such conflicts in the future (Ban Ki Moon, The Washington Post,

16 June 2007; Bloomfield, The Independent, 21 June 2007).

Amongst state actors the response was varied. European member states, particularly

Germany, are supportive of the UK’s attempt to intensify climate change. Germany has

employed similar tactics to the UK, for example, using its 2007 presidency of the EU

and G8 to garner support for a post-Kyoto (post-2012) emissions reduction framework.

The US, on the other hand, did not consider the Security Council the right place for

climate change, Jackie Sanders, a US Ambassador to the UN, declared climate change

“is not ripe for the Security Council at this stage,” (quoted by Bone, The Times, 8 Mar

2007). This statement however, does not deny climate change’s potential as a security

issue.

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Developing nations too are divided. For many climate change is already having an

impact, with national territory severely threatened by predicted rises in sea level, such

as in the Maldives, other small islands states, and Bangladesh. It is not surprising then,

that these states welcomed the intensification of climate change by its arrival on the

Security Council agenda.

Other industrialising countries such as China and Brazil were suspicious of the British

move, preferring climate change remain a matter for the General Assembly and all

member states. China was particularly vocal during the debate, China's deputy

ambassador, Liu Zhenmin, rejected the session, suggesting: "The developing countries

believe that Security Council has neither the professional competence in handling

climate change -- nor is it the right decision-making place for extensive participation

leading up to widely acceptable proposals." (quoted in Reuters, 17 April 2007). And

the Group of 77, which represents poorer nations, accused Britain of attempting to

widen the elite Security Council's power (Clark, The Guardian, 18 April 2007).

Although the governments decision to use the Security Council as a stage for

intensifying climate change was controversial, it appears that it is the forum rather than

the designation of climate change as a security issue that caused the most disturbance.

In this sense, it is somewhat similar to the British domestic scene, where there is

acceptance that a greater response is required, but trepidation in accepting the

implications of stronger measures.

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Step 3: Emergency Measures

By declaring there is a problem of such consequence that if it is not tackled ‘we will

not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way’, a securitizing actor

claims the right to handle the issue through extraordinary measures, and the right to

break the normal political rules of the game. The Copenhagen School suggest these

measures may include: secrecy; levying taxes; conscription; placing limitations on

otherwise inviolable rights, or focusing society’s energy and resources on a specific

task (Buzan, et al., 1998, 24). These emergency measures are, by their very nature,

going to be controversial and likely to spark criticism. However, by claiming climate

change is a threat to the survival of the economy, development and security, the

government claims climate change requires elevating above the normal haggling of

politics. The question is, are the government sincere in their move to securitize climate

change?

The sincerity of securitizing moves is questioned by Floyd (2007, 20-21) in relation to

the Clinton administration’s attempt to securitize environmental issues. As chapter 2

discussed, environmental issues were securitized in a narrow sense when incorporated

into the US National Security Strategy, and policy response beyond the rhetoric was

mainly restricted to military environmental practices. Environmental security then, may

never have been destined for emergency measures unpopular with strong lobbies and

the voting public. The UK government too, may not be sincere in their move to

securitize climate change.

The UK international priorities: the energy strategy (2004, 10) document states the

government’s objective as ‘by the end of 2007 to agree the next step in the international

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process that will lead to stabilisation of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the

atmosphere at a level that avoids dangerous climate change’. This is an objective

repeated by Miliband in a speech he gave in Berlin, in October 2006: ‘This year our

aim is to promote debate about a goal for stabilising the stock of carbon dioxide in the

atmosphere, and preventing dangerous climate change’ (19 Oct 2006). The government

could have used securitizing overtures to spark that debate to engender international

agreement. Or, the government’s securitizing moves could have been aimed at

appeasing those who want the government to take greater measures to tackle climate

change, a move not supported by government willingness for unpopular emergency

measures.

The latter is easier to discount than the former. The FCO departmental report of

2006/07 outlined that in June 2006 the foreign secretary announced a new strategic

priority: ‘Achieving climate security by promoting a faster transition to a sustainable,

low-carbon economy’. The report goes on to state what fulfilling this priority requires:

This is about creating the conditions for a rapid shift in investment towards a low-carbon global economy. Introducing ‘climate security’ as a Strategic Priority underlines the fact that achieving a stable climate is urgent for our prosperity and security, not just a long-term environmental goal. It also shows that climate security is now a core foreign policy challenge.

We cannot determine whether the government is sincere in their rhetoric at this stage

as we appear to be mid-securitization i.e. the government has put the securitization of

climate change into motion but there are not yet measurable effects in terms of policy

response20. The government’s proposal to transition to “a low carbon economy” may in

the future amount to emergency measures, requiring mass mobilisation to succeed and

20 The government’s draft climate change Bill (2007) is the closest document there is to providing the policy means to transition to a low carbon economy.

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therefore qualifying as a successful securitization. A post-2012 agreement could also

amount to emergency measures should it require unprecedented levels of international

agreement, binding targets, and potential encroachment on state sovereignty.

It appears the government is hoping that by engendering the international debate on

climate change with a sense of urgency, a new post-2012 framework will be negotiated

demanding drastic cuts in emissions. This is turn will require the global transition to a

low carbon economy in order for the emission reductions to be met. The result is that

the British government gets what it says it wants; the stabilisation of atmospheric

carbon dioxide to avert dangerous climate change and a transition to a low carbon

economy, ensuring greater energy security. For the government this will have been

achieved with no greater cost than any other country, perhaps even net gains, as the low

carbon technologies and the green business the government has been fostering at home

will receive greater demand from abroad.

Step 4: Effects on Interunit Relations by Breaking Free of the Rules

The fourth and final step of a successful securitization is the impact the securitization

has on wider patterns of relations. The Copenhagen School suggest that ‘A securitizing

move can easily upset orders of mutual accommodation among units’ (Buzan et al.,

1998, 26).

As the British government has not claimed the right, or been given the level of

acceptance to be able to claim the right to instigate emergency measures to tackle

climate change, one cannot yet assess the effects on interunit relations. However,

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Margaret Beckett suggests what these effects may be if her government’s securitizing

moves are successful:

What the world is trying to do – planning in advance and implementing a new low-carbon industrial revolution – is beyond anything we have ever tried before. It will require the building of the biggest ever global consensus. Not just between governments, business and consumers – but across regions and nations. The whole world will have to act together if we are to succeed. (6 June 2007)

Taken as more than rhetoric, the government’s desire to securitize climate change

appears aimed at engendering international political will to move to a low carbon

economy, the effects of which, as Margaret Beckett outlines above, will be upon all

units and all relations within the international system. Such a solution will require

“effective multilateralism” with the “international community” working towards a

“common interest” (ibid) on a scale that has not been achieved before, and if achieved

have significant effects on interunit relations.

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Conclusion

This thesis has attempted to establish the extent to which environmental issues, and

climate change in particular, have been securitized.

Chapter one followed the opening of the security concept from the early 1980s, which

enabled issues like environmental degradation and climate change to be included in

security studies. Through exploration of different approaches to studying security, this

chapter demonstrated how security opened to both a broadened and deepened security

agenda.

Using the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework, chapter two examined the

extent to which environmental issues were securitized when they were incorporated

into the United States NSS during the 1990s. It concluded that rather than the broad

foreign policy concern they were constructed as; environmental considerations were

largely confined to military cleanup. The unsuccessful move to securitize

environmental issues during the 1990s can partly be explained by the difference

between actors who can “speak” security and those who can “do” security.

Chapter three followed the arrival and positioning of climate change on the political

spectrum, and investigated the actors and conditions that facilitated the migration of

climate change along the spectrum. It demonstrated how the impacts of climate change

are increasingly being constructed as a threat to security, which is further intensifying

climate change and pushing it closer towards the security end of the spectrum.

The final chapter used the securitization framework developed over the previous two

chapters to investigate the extent the British government had securitized climate change

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domestically and internationally. Through analysing the speech of Tony Blair, Margaret

Beckett and David Miliband, this chapter concluded the government recognised climate

change as a threat to ‘current levels of civilization’, and are attempting to reframe

climate change as more than an environmental threat. The government aims to

engender the climate change debate with a greater sense of urgency to create the

political will for a post-Kyoto framework, which they hope will require substantial cuts

in CO2 emissions and force the transition to a low carbon economy. However, at the

current moment climate change is not securitized, although it has the potential to be in

the near future.

There are several factors that may hinder the securitization of climate change, similar

to those that affected the securitization of environmental issues in the 1990s. For

climate change to be tackled as a security issue, even in the narrow sense for its causal

role in conflict, requires acquiring new knowledge and constructing new roles in old

institutions or building new institutions. There are signs that the British military is

beginning to consider this new role21, but dominant thinking will not be changed over

night. Of course, the fact that the foreign secretary is a central actor in mobilising an

international response, has appointed a special advisor on climate change, and is

working alongside other government departments e.g. Defra, suggests in the very least

cosmetic changes have been made.

Secondly, there may be a lack of sincerity in the government’s securitizing move. The

government may desire the urgency that comes from framing climate change as a

21 Lovell, J. “Armies must prepare for new global warming role, says British defence chief”, 25 June 2007, Reuters, retrieved from: http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL2564927320070625

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security issue, but not want to take the unpopular policy steps to start moving to a low

carbon economy. In other words, the government is hoping by engendering the climate

change debate with a sense of urgency the global transition to a low carbon economy

will take on a momentum of its own, and will not have to be forced domestically by

politically difficult changes in policy.

We appear to be at a ‘wait and see’ stage in regard to the extent climate change is

securitized. It is likely that more states will make similar securitizing overtures as the

UK government, particularly in Europe for its advantages in achieving greater energy

security. One certainly cannot dismiss the UK’s chances of achieving its stated goal.

When a post-2012 agreement for emissions reductions is reached, it will likely

induce—as the government envision—the shift to a low carbon economy. The speed

and the extent this transition takes place will likely be dependent on the level of

emissions reductions required under a new agreement. This transition to a low carbon

global economy will certainly not be all on British terms, and their motives require

deeper questioning, but currently there do not appear to be many options open to the

international community for tackling climate change.

It is clear that environmental issues like climate change have in the very least, a

rhetorical position on national security agendas. This is demonstrated by the

incorporation of environmental considerations into the United States NSS in the 1990s

and the British government’s move to securitize climate change. Climate change would

appear to be an easier issue to securitize than environmental degradation in general, in

part due to its suitability for conjuring the drama required in the designation of an

existential threat to survival. Yet, the role of environmental security in paving the way

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for the securitization of climate change should not be underestimated. Environmental

security had done much of the groundwork in focusing the minds of security analysts

on threats other than conventional, militarised ones, and opened up a space in

institutions like the US military to incorporate environmental considerations.

In regard to the theoretical framework of this research project, the thesis made two

significant changes to the Copenhagen School’s securitization framework. Firstly, the

securitizing actors were divided between those who could “speak” security and those

who could “do” security. This greatly reduced the number of securitizing actors who

could potentially gain control over an issue if a securitizing move was successful,

which was demonstrated by the case of environmental issues during the 1990s.

Secondly, the audience acceptance was included as a key component of the

securitization process. As chapter four demonstrated, this provided a more balanced

account of the securitization process and the involvement of actors, other than the

securitizing actors, in the process. By investigating the response of the audience to the

securitizing actor’s claim of threatened referent object, one is able to determine their

likely acquiescence/support for emergency measures, and therefore the likely success of

a securitizing move.

This thesis attempted to uncover the extent to which climate change has been

securitized by the British government. The research methods employed to fulfil this

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task have implications on the findings and for future studies. For example, the selection

and analysis of the securitizing actors has the potential to distort one’s perception of the

securitizing move. Had I selected the secretary of state for trade and industry, for

example, his speeches would have put a stronger emphasis on the role of energy

security as a motive for securitizing climate change. Future analysis needs to take into

account such considerations during the selection of securitizing actors, which will

provide a fuller account of the governments motives and sincerity. It will also help to

uncover the relationship between the securitizing actor, the object they claim to be

securing and other strategic priorities of the actor and his/her department.

The speech of securitizing actors is clearly not enough, policy documents are also a

useful subject for analysis and often provide clearer explanation of strategy and thus

motive for securitization, and should therefore be a central component of future

research.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, future research needs to give greater

consideration to the fourth step of securitization: the effects on interunit relations by

breaking free of the rules. By delving into the governments claim of existential threat in

a securitizing move one begins to perceive possible outcomes, which may not be as

benign as the move itself appears. For example, the British government is proposing to

tie in future development aid with the transfer of low carbon technologies, helping

poorer countries “leapfrog industrialised nations and move straight to a low-carbon

economy” (David Miliband, 7 June 2007). Such policies have clear implications, and

future research needs to follow how the securitization of climate change is progressing,

and its potential consequences on relations between units.

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