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Climate securitization in the Australianpolitical–military establishmentMichael Durant Thomasa

a University of New South Wales, Australian Defence ForceAcademy, AustraliaPublished online: 03 Feb 2015.

To cite this article: Michael Durant Thomas (2015): Climate securitization in the Australianpolitical–military establishment, Global Change, Peace & Security: formerly Pacifica Review: Peace,Security & Global Change, DOI: 10.1080/14781158.2015.990879

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Climate securitization in the Australian political–military establishment

Michael Durant Thomas*

University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, Australia

This paper analyses the response by the Australian political–military establishment to climatechange through the lens of securitization theory. The research used mixed content analysistechniques to systematically examine more than 1500 speech-acts, policies and doctrinalarticles between 2003 and 2013. It argues that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was nota climate securitizing actor and that its response to climate change was mediated by the politicalpartisanship surrounding broader national policy debates on climate change. The politicizationof climate change made it increasingly difficult for the ADF to publicly adopt meaningfulclimate policies. It subsequently crafted a strategy that minimized any investment (resourceor reputational) lest a change of government rendered them invalid or it drew unwanted criti-cism. At the very heart of this finding exists the challenge of an avowedly apolitical institutionresponding to what emerged in the Australian context as a politically partisan security issue.The more serious indictment concerned how national security policy (in the context ofclimate change as a security issue) became hostage to the politics of climate change.

Keywords: securitization; climate change; Australian Defence Force; climate policy

Introduction

The role of military institutions in public policy debates surrounding climate change remains anascent area of research.1 In an Australian context, policy and scholarly debate about the role ofthe Australian Defence Force (ADF) in climate change has been particularly sparse. Besides anunpublished honours thesis,2 a limited number of military journal articles,3 some think-tankreports4 and a related book chapter,5 attention has been sparse. The ADF itself has not publisheda single publicly available document outlining how it is specifically responding to climate

*Email: mickdthomas@gmail.com1 This is particularly true in Asia and the Pacific region, but less so of European and US militaries. Even for the latter,

most remain at higher levels of analysis, including national security, rather than military institutions per se. See, forexample, Michael Brzoska, ‘Climate Change as a Driver of Security Policy’, in Climate Change, Human Securityand Violent Conflict: Challenges for Societal Stability, ed. Jurgen Scheffran et al. (New York, Springer, 2012),165–83. Climate security scholars Hans Gunter Brauch and Jurgen Scheffran have also written extensively on thematter.

2 Alix Pearce, ‘The New Security Climate: Rethinking Australian Defence Policy in an Age of Climate Change’(honour’s thesis, University of Sydney, 2013).

3 Group Captain Robert Lawson, ‘Climate Change in the Asia-Pacific Region: Security Implications for Australia’,Shedden Papers (Canberra: Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies Australian Defence College, 2007); MichaelThomas, ‘Climate Change and the ADF’, Journal of the Australian Profession of Arms, no. 185 (2011); MichaelThomas, ‘The Securitisation of Climate Change: A Military Perspective’, Journal of the Australian Profession ofArms, no. 192 (2013).

4 Alan Dupont and Graeme Pearman, ‘Heating up the Planet: Climate Change and Security’, Lowy Institute Paper 12(Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2006); Anthony Bergin and Jacob Townsend, ‘A Change in Climatefor the Australian Defence Force’, special report, issue 7 (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2007);Anthony Press, Anthony Bergin, and Eliza Garnsey, ‘Heavy Weather: Climate and the Australian Defence Force’,special report, no. 49 (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2013).

5 Peter Christoff and Robyn Eckersley, ‘No Island Is an Island: Security in a Four Degree World’, in Four Degrees ofGlobal Warming: Australia in a Hot World, ed. Peter Christoff (New York: Routledge, 2014), 190–204.

Global Change, Peace & Security, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2015.990879

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

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change. This may pass as somewhat strange when it is considered that the ADF has publisheddozens of strategies covering everything from ‘wellbeing’ to indigenous employment. Even theADF’s lead environmental strategy appears to avoid the term, fleetingly mentioned just twice in34 pages and otherwise referred to as ‘climate variability’.6 Arguably, broad accounts containedin Australian strategic guidance documents such as the Defence White Papers (2009 and 2013)also insufficiently cast it as tomorrow’s problem.7 Scholarly works by academia on climatesecurity in the Australian military sector are also rare. While the Australian scholar Matt McDo-nald exclusively examined climate securitization in the Australian political domain, he omittedthe military and avoided how this particular institution has responded to climate change as asecurity issue.8

This lack of understanding has arguably exposed knowledge gaps, including how climatechange might affect critical homeland defence security infrastructure, deployable military capa-bilities, force structure, workforce health (and their families) or how climate change regulationwill impact on the defence industry, capability acquisition costs or defence procurement morebroadly. The lack of openly available material on the subject is not just limited to formalpolicy documents. Looking more broadly, Australian military leaders have not outlined a detailedclimate change strategy or policy approach for the ADF in any major speeches, articles or mediainterviews. As a self-proclaimed ‘strategy-led’ organization − responsible for a sizeable portionof government spending, a vast labour force, infrastructure and greenhouse gas (GHG) emis-sions − the lack of climate policy by the ADF stands in contrast to that progressed by thecivil sector and Australia’s major allied militaries, the US and UK.9

This paper aims to shed a critical light on the response to climate change by the ADF throughthe lens of two conceptual frameworks, the Copenhagen School (‘securitization theory’) and theParis School (‘governmentality’/‘dispositif’). This paper is presented in two sections. The firstprovides an account of the methodology used to examine political–military responses toclimate change while the second presents an account of selected findings from the research under-taken (focusing on the political–military (strategic) interface rather than the lower levels ofdefence).

Context and research methods

Research undertaken for this paper used two conceptual frameworks to examine Australia’s pol-itical and military response to climate change. The first framework, the Copenhagen School’s‘securitization theory’, was originally outlined by Ole Wæver in 1995 but received its fullest treat-ment in Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998) as a means to broaden the scope of secur-ity studies and to distinguish the process of securitization from that of politicization. According tothe Copenhagen School, securitization is the process that takes an issue beyond the establishedrules of normal politics and frames it as an ‘existential threat, requiring emergency measures

6 Department of Defence, Defence Environmental Strategic Plan 2010–2014 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia,2010).

7 Press et al., ‘Heavy Weather’.8 Matt McDonald, ‘The Failed Securitization of Climate Change in Australia’, Australian Journal of Political Science

47, no. 4 (2012): 579–92.9 See, for example: US Navy, ‘Task Force Climate Change: U.S. Navy Climate Change Roadmap’ (2010), http://www.

navy.mil/navydata/documents/CCR.pdf (accessed October 3, 2013), Washington DC; US Department of Defense,‘Department of Defense Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan Fy 2012 (2012)’, http://www.denix.osd.mil/sustainability/upload/DoD-Strategic-Sustainability-Performance-Plan-FY-2012.pdf (accessed October 3, 2013),Washington DC; US Army Corps of Engineers, ‘Climate Change Adaptation Plan’ (2014), http://www.usace.army.mil/Portals/2/docs/Sustainability/Performance_Plans/2014_USACE_Climate_Change_Adaptation_Plan.pdf (accessedNovember 5, 2014), Washington DC; UK Ministry of Defence, MOD Climate Change Strategy 2010 (Ministry ofDefence UK, 2011). TheMODClimate Change Strategy is today included as part of its Sustainability Development Strat-egy: A Sub-Strategy of the Strategy for Defence 2011–2030.

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and justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure’.10 Actions or events (suchas certain ‘speech-acts’, certain policy measures (e.g. sanctions), or even military build-up andsecurity ‘incidents’) that lead to this state of affairs might generally be considered as securitizing‘moves’. Such actions might ‘move’ an issue beyond what political scientist Angela Oels hascalled the ‘threshold of exceptionality’; ‘de-securitizing moves’ bring the issue back to‘normal’ politics.11 Copenhagen School adherents place a premium on the latter situation, ‘secur-ity [is a] negative… desecuritisation is the optimal’.12 Beyond this, securitization theory offers anumber of other qualifying criteria, particularly the idea that an issue (‘object’) can only be trulysecuritized if an audience accepts it as such.

The second conceptual perspective used during this research, the so-called ‘Paris School’,sought to examine the governance of security issues below the threshold of exceptionality.Grounded in works by Michel Foucault and more recently by Didier Bigo,13 the Paris Schoolfocuses on revealing the everyday (bureaucratic and routine) practices of the ‘professionals of(in)security’ and examines ways in which ‘subjects and objects are produced as security pro-blems’.14 In general terms, the Paris School examines the governance and bureaucratization −the translation into new policies and initiatives − of (security) issues, especially by the agenciesof the police, intelligence, military and associated security professionals. Integral to the ParisSchool framework is a critical perspective that seeks to expose how these security monoliths(the ‘dispositifs’) deliberately position themselves to advantage via various institutional and gov-ernance mechanisms and transnational networks to control security agendas.15 Issues becomesecuritized to suit their agenda, enhance their power and relegate democratic process.

Research methods drew on aspects from both of these frameworks. In the first instance, theCopenhagen approach informed the examination of how climate change has been framed both asa security issue and in terms of emergency measures. Previously, the military has been held aloftas an important securitizing actor, but its role is more dilute, less certain and somewhat contra-dictory in relation to the security threats posed by climate change. ‘Speech-acts’ by politicaland military elites are viewed as particularly relevant in securitization studies and these formeda core part of the material analysed. In the second instance, Paris School concepts informed exam-ination of military–bureaucratic programmes that rendered climate change governable as a secur-ity issue. This aspect ensured a critical examination of military climate policies, programmes,doctrine and other ‘grey literature’ initiatives with the aim of determining where the weight ofmilitary climate response was being directed and whether or not they were acting beyond declaredpolicy or not.

Having established a conceptual framework, this paper examined 1569 publicly availabledocuments from the senior echelons of the Australian political–military establishment as wellas the operational and tactical levels of the ADF. Table 1 shows where the documents were(openly) sourced from within the Australian political–military structure. For the politicaldomain, documents were selected on the basis of their relevance to the subject area (forexample, major speeches made by the Prime Minister and Defence Minister on climatechange, defence policy or security were given priority). For the military domain, similar distinc-

10 Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de-Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (London: Lynne Rienner,1998), 24.

11 Angela Oels, ‘From “Securitization” of Climate Change to “Climatization” of the Security Field’, in Climate Change,Human Security and Violent Conflict: Challenges for Societal Stability, Hexagon Series on Human and Environ-mental Security and Peace, ed. Jurgen Scheffran et al. (London: Springer, 2012), 201.

12 Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 29.13 Didier Bigo, ‘Globalized (In)security: The Field and the Banopticon’, in Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal

Practices of Liberal Regimes after 9/11, ed. Didier Bigo and Anastassia Tsoukala (London: Routledge, 2008),10–48.

14 Oels, ‘From “Securitization” of Climate Change to “Climatization” of the Security Field’, 197.15 Bigo, ‘Globalized (in)security: The Field and the Banopticon’.

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tions were made for the Defence executive that included the Chief of Defence Force, Secretary ofDefence and other senior military bureaucrats. For lower levels in the military, where it wasdifficult to locate speech-acts, document selection tended to focus on journal articles, officialnewspapers (especially interviews with ADF personnel) and doctrine. Once the documentswere sourced (mainly from online archived material), each was formatted (‘.pdf’) and thenuploaded into a content analysis software tool,NVivo. During uploading, all documents were indi-vidually ‘codified’ corresponding to their ‘year’ (of publication), ‘author’, ‘document type’ (e.g.speech, policy, media or journal) and political affiliation (if applicable). The use of softwareenabled a relatively large N sample to be analysed much faster, in greater volumes and with argu-ably more precision, accessibility and traceability than standard data collection and assessmentmethods.

Following data preparation, quantitative content analysis16 was applied through the detailedexamination of documents (directed by ‘word search’ functions within NVivo) and the ‘coding’ oftext into a ‘securitization framework’ (see Tables 2 and 3). Coding of text into the securitizationframework was used primarily to address aspects related to the Copenhagen School (specificallythe framework in Table 2 addressed the issue of securitized/non-securitized ‘framing’ and that ofTable 3 which addressed the aspect of ‘emergency measures’). With regard to securitized/non-securitized framing (Table 2), a three-step process was used. The first step was to decidewhether climate change had been framed in a securitized or non-securitized manner (Level 1in Table 2). The second step was to identify the specific securitized or non-securitized category

Table 1. Documents examined during research on Australian political–military climate securitization.‘Strategic’, ‘Operational’ and ‘Tactical’ represent the three different domains of the national securityestablishment. Each domain consisted of various ‘Programmes’ from where each document originated.

Programme

Document Type1

Total2SPR DTN S&A MDA JNP

Strategic Prime Minister 3 0 153 20 0 176National Security Advisor 1 0 4 0 0 5Minister of Defence 5 0 148 28 5 186CDF and Secretary 29 0 196 15 39 279

Operational Defence Support 5 0 8 1 0 14Chief Information Officer 2 1 1 0 0 4Defence People Group 0 1 0 0 24 25Defence Science & Technology 0 0 15 2 71 88Vice Chief of Defence Force 0 7 5 1 57 71Capability Development 5 1 0 1 0 7Defence Materiel Organisation 1 0 14 2 75 92

Tactical Navy 0 3 22 1 213 239Army 4 1 51 4 143 203Air Force 0 9 14 1 124 148Intelligence 1 0 1 0 0 2Joint Operations Command 0 12 17 0 2 31Total 56 35 649 76 753 1569

Notes:1 SPR = Formal strategy policy papers; DTN = Doctrine (unclassified, military); S&A = Speeches and formal

announcements; MDA = Formal media releases; JNP = Official defence/military journals and military newspapers.2 Numbers indicate quantity of documents analysed (by programme and type).

16 For the general method undertaken in this process, see Harvey Bernard and Gery W. Ryan, Analyzing QualitativeData: Systematic Aproaches (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2010), 287–310.

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(Level 2 in Table 2). For example, was climate change being framed as an ‘energy security’ issueor as a ‘national security’ issue or was it rather framed in (non-securitized) economic, agriculturalor health terms? The third step was to identify whether climate change had been framed as athreat, challenge, in neutral or benign terms, or as an opportunity (Level 3 in Table 2). Anoverall example of how this method was applied can be given by examining the followingpassage that was coded from a speech by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Australian Parliamentin 2008, ‘The First National Security Statement to the Australian Parliament’. During this speech,Rudd stated: ‘climate change represents a most fundamental national security challenge to thelong term future’.17 This passage was coded as a ‘challenge’ (Level 3) within the realm of‘national security’ (Level 2) in the context of a ‘securitized’ frame (Level 1).

The second framework developed (Table 3) examined temporal framing. The intent here wasto determine whether political elites and military forces framed climate change as an ‘urgent’issue requiring ‘emergency measures’ or as a longer-term issue justifying an incremental response(or no response at all). An example of temporal framing can be given by examining a passage of

Table 2. Securitization framework for examining political–military artefacts 2003–13.

Level 1: Broad Level 2: Refined Level 3: Specific

Securitized Frames 1 General security reference

a. Opportunityb. Neutralc. Challenged. Threat

2 Global and regional security3 National security4 Human security5 Energy security6 Environmental security7 Biosecurity8 Convergence/multiple security impacts9 Resource security(excluding energy)10 Non-traditional, new, emerging security issue

Non-Securitized Frames 1 Economic2 Agriculture3 Forestry4 Energy and resources5 Environment and sustainability6 Government and regulatory7 International and global8 Health9 Transport10 Other/non-aligned

Table 3. Framework used for analysing temporal framing of climate change in political–military artefacts.

Temporal Frame Qualifying Description Timeframe (years)

Urgent An urgent issue requiring immediate action. 0–2Short term Response required in decadal timeframe. 3–10Medium term Response required but not in short term, response

required/effects felt decade plus.10–20

Long term Strategic response required or taking effect over decades. 20+

17 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘The First National Security Statement to the Australian Parliament by the Prime Minister of Aus-tralia the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP’ (2008), http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/getdoc/596cc5ff-8a33-47eb-8d4a-9205131ebdd0/TEN.004.002.0437.pdf (accessed June 8, 2013).

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text from a response by the Deputy Secretary Strategy Michael Pezzullo in 2007 to the StandingCommittee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. In response to a question, Pezzullo remarked:‘the strategic implications of climate change in a security sense… are likely to be felt more over a40 to 50 year period’.18 This passage was coded as framing climate change as a ‘long-term’

(security) issue.During the coding process, coding rules were established that limited the number of codes per

document and for bodies of text that might have been repetitious across or between levels in thebureaucracy (intended to remove skewing or bias). That said, the method could have beenstrengthened by having independent verification of coded text or, in a more advanced manner,through the application of algorithms to search the documents for pre-set combinations of text.

In the absence of these measures, however, the author also used qualitative content analysis(or, more commonly, textual analysis) of important speeches, policies and other such documents.Textual analysis of key documents enabled the quantitative findings established from the secur-itization frameworks described above to be placed in a much broader context. This helped build amore complete outlook on how Australia’s political elite and military institutions approachclimate change as a security issue.

Overall, the use of securitization frameworks in combination with NVivo enabled securitiza-tion to be quantified in ways that have not previously been done in this particular research field.This quantification of securitization also enabled the outcomes to be represented in graphicalformat – making interpretation readily accessible and easier to grasp. For instance, since eachindividual document was codified, distinct patterns emerged that made it possible to analysewhen securitization had occurred, who was responsible for it (including an assessment ofwhich parts of the bureaucracy) and from what type of artefact it had originated. Such a frame-work is arguably useful for securitization researchers seeking to empirically examine certain casestudies.

Research results

Key findings on political influence and securitization

This research began by asking whether the Australian military had framed climate change as asecuritized or non-securitized issue. From the outset, however, it was considered that this questioncould only be fully answered by analysing the political context within which climate change wasframed. Buzan et al. would agree, ‘The military agenda… does not operate in isolation. The entireinterplay of military capabilities between states is deeply conditioned by political relations’.19

This approach proved valuable, as the Australian military was generally found by this study toact in response to and following the direction of the (incumbent) political party (not a surprisein a liberal democracy where the military has no significant history of over-riding elected offi-cials). A broad indicator of this is shown at Figure 1. This shows that the political leadershipspoke more frequently and earlier on the issue of climate change (in a public sphere at least)than Australia’s military leadership. While this might seem obvious given the broader societalconsequences of climate change, other examples will be given later in this paper that supportthis finding. Looking beyond this ‘strategic lag’ to when direction to act on climate changewas forthcoming during a change to a centre-left federal government at the 2007 election, noinstances were identified where the military sought to frame or respond to climate changeabove or beyond the conditions set by the government. However, when climate change

18 Official Committee Hansard of The Commonwealth of Australia Senate, ‘Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs,Defence and Trade: Estimates’ (2007), http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/Estimates/Live/commttee/S10269.ashx(accessed April 12, 2013), 102.

19 Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 52.

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became a highly politicized issue (particularly from late 2009 onwards), the Australian militaryappeared to become finely tuned to the contours and sensitivities surrounding the politics ofclimate change − acutely aware that Australia’s major political parties tended toward contrastingoutlooks regarding the science of climate change, its priority as a public policy issue and themethod of policy response.

In terms of securitization, this paper found that climate change was predominately framed as anon-securitized issue by both the political domain and the senior echelons of the military domainbut tended to be framed increasingly as a securitized issue at the operational level and was empha-tically so at the tactical level. Table 4 shows the aggregated results for how climate change wasframed. Overall, this revealed a divergence between how senior strategic defence policy makersframed the issue of climate change and how the lower levels of the military viewed the issue.Again, this is perhaps not surprising, given the wide array of issues that political leaders mustdeal with versus the narrow field of military practitioners. The result may also represent a genera-tional divide between senior military strategists who may be more wary and conservative toward

Figure 1. Comparison of all direct references (unfiltered, all sources) to the term ‘climate change’ by PrimeMinister(s), and the Chief of Defence Force (CDF) and Secretary of Defence (SEC). Note: Note the ‘stra-tegic lag’ (author term) between when the PM publicly spoke on climate change and when the CDF/SECdid.

Table 4. Climate change framed as a securitized and non-securitized issue within the national securitydomains. Securitization became more dominant at the lower levels of the military where securityconsiderations prevail.

Domain Securitized Frame Non-Securitized Frame

Strategic 76 285Operational 17 20Tactical 19 4

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climate change as a security issue against a younger generation of military personnel with differ-ent perceptions of climate change as a security issue.

Climate securitization in the ADF under the Liberal–National government(2003–07)

This paper found the centre-right government led by Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007)predominately framed climate change as a (non-securitized) economic and energy-related issue(Table 5). Howard’s general rhetoric was decisively more neutral than Labor Prime Minister’sKevin Rudd (2007–10 and 2013) and Julia Gillard (2010–13) and Howard’s self-declared‘balanced approach’ to climate change was characterized by long-term strategies that wouldnot undermine Australia’s economic competitiveness.20 Though he accepted he was often castas a ‘climate sceptic’, Howard’s central ambivalence related to ‘the intensity and pace ofdamage being done by climate change’.21 For Howard, the rate of climate change meant‘long-term climate change’, and he was found to frame climate change as a long-term issue(Table 7).22 On this ground, Howard arguably defaulted to his conservative instincts in that itwas ‘important to keep the challenge of climate change in perspective’23 and respond with‘prudent risk management’.24

Despite this ‘balanced’ and ‘prudent’ approach, this paper found Howard never conceived ofclimate change impacting on the military or (national) security more broadly. This was manifest inthat not one of the major national security papers published in the Howard era referenced,let alone discussed, climate change. It was also evident in the speeches made by Howard andhis senior ministers, where ‘hard’ security issues dominated. ‘Terrorism’, argued his Ministerfor Defence Brendan Nelson in 2007, would be ‘the defining issue’ of both his and his children’sgeneration.25 The only occasion Howard conflated climate change with any form of security waswith ‘energy security’ (see Table 6, nine such occasions were identified). However, this outlooknested neatly with his broader views of placing primacy on national economic self-interest with a

Table 5. Climate change framed as non-securitized issues by Prime Ministers Howard, Rudd and Gillardbetween 2003 and 2013.

Non-Securitized Frame Howard Rudd/Gillard

Economic 21 30Agriculture 0 9Forestry 4 5Energy and Resources 20 15Environment and Sustainability 0 11Government and Regulatory 10 27International and Global 7 68Total 62 165

20 JohnW. Howard, ‘Address at the Liberal Party of Australia (Queensland Division) Annual State Convention’ (2006),http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=22559 (accessed February 5, 2014).

21 John W. Howard, ‘Address at the Business Council of Australia Annual Dinner Sofitel Wentworth, Sydney’ (2006),http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=22579 (accessed February 7, 2014).

22 John W. Howard, ‘Address to the National Press Club Great Hall, Parliament House’ (2007), http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=15149 (accessed February 6, 2014).

23 Howard, ‘Address at the Business Council of Australia Annual Dinner Sofitel Wentworth, Sydney’.24 John W. Howard, ‘Weekly Radio Message - Climate Change’ (2007), http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?

did=15292 (accessed February 10, 2014).25 Brendan Nelson, ‘Opening Address to D+I Conference Adelaide’(2007), http://www.defence.gov.au/minister/51tpl.

cfm?CurrentId=7038 (accessed March 3, 2013).

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focus on maximizing Australia’s resource economy: ‘I am not going to embrace an approach toclimate change that damages our great resource industries’.26 For Howard: ‘the Government’s pri-ority is to tackle climate change without damaging Australian jobs and living standards’.27 The‘sensible exploitation of fossil fuels’ was integral to this,28 as was avoiding being ‘mesmerisedby individual reports’.29 Table 6 contains a summary comparison of climate change framed asa securitized issue. Noteworthy is the difference between the ‘narrow’ view of climate securityby Howard and the ‘wide’ view of climate security by Rudd and Gillard.

Although climate change was consolidated as a (albeit peripheral) political issue underHoward, it was never consolidated as a security issue. More accurately, it was never consoli-dated as a national security issue by his centre-right government because it was never framedas such by the primary securitizing actor in Prime Minister Howard. Accordingly, the military

Table 6. Climate change framed as a securitized issue by Prime Ministers Howard, Rudd and Gillard(2003–13). Howard possessed a ‘narrow’ interpretation while Rudd and Gillard possessed a ‘wide’ view ofclimate security. Bottom table shows specific language used to frame climate change as a security issue.

Securitized Frame Howard Rudd/Gillard

Global and Regional Security 0 3National Security 0 9Human Security 0 1Energy Security 9 0Environmental Security 0 0Biosecurity 0 1Convergence 0 2Resource Security 0 2Non-Traditional, New Security 0 10Total 9 28

Specific Frame Howard Rudd/Gillard

Opportunity 0 0Neutral 6 10Challenge 3 12Threat 0 6Total 9 28

Table 7. Temporal framing of climate change by Prime Ministers John Howard (2003–07) and KevinRudd–Julia Gillard (2007–13).

Urgent(<2 years)

Short term(3–10 years)

Medium Term(10–20 years)

Long Term(>20 years)

Howard 0 1 1 7Rudd/Gillard 27 0 0 14

26 John W. Howard, ‘National Plan for Water Security’ (2007), http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=15193 (accessed February 7, 2014).

27 John W. Howard, ‘Nuclear Power Station Plebiscites’ (2007), http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=15491 (accessed February 14, 2014).

28 John W. Howard, ‘Address to the Australia/UK Leadership Forum Parliament House, Canberra’ (2006), http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=22190 (accessed February 5, 2014).

29 Howard, ‘Address at the Liberal Party of Australia (Queensland Division) Annual State Convention’.

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response to climate change under John Howard was marginal. That is, it largely reflected theoutlook and position held by the government of the day where, in the words of AustralianDeputy Secretary of (Defence) Strategy, the military was simply being ‘consistent with Govern-ment policy’.30

Although therewas early evidence (from2006) that the broaderAustralianmilitary-intelligencecommunity was already conducting internal assessments on climate change, understandings withinthe ADF appeared mixed. In late 2006 the Departmental Secretary (Ric Smith) was adamant hisdepartment had undertaken no analysis of the issue.31 However, in 2007 then Deputy Secretaryof Strategy (Michael Pezzullo) discussed it at length but ultimately conceded it a ‘non-traditional’security issue that would ‘not affect the force… being developed over the current 10 year period’and would only impact the ADF over the ‘long-run’ of ‘40 to 50 year period’.32 Other ADF docu-ments, conversely (and admittedly at lower bureaucratic levels), framed climate change as a seriousand broad-ranging ‘threat’ capable of degrading ADF capability in the near, medium and longterms.33 The influence of such documents, however, were marginal. In one instance the ADF pub-lished a document describing the threat of climate change and its possible impacts on defence, butcaveated the publication, saying, ‘the findings and views expressed in this report… are not to betaken as the official position of the Department’.34

Moreover, acutely aware of the ‘very dramatic and active debate’ surrounding the politics ofclimate change (on which Michael Pezzullo remarked, ‘we steer well clear of that’),35 the ADFadopted – from the outset – a minimalist and then gradualist response. In this sense, climatechange came to be initially framed as just ‘one’ of many non-traditional security issues on parwith ‘water resources, resource depletion… pandemic threats, HIV-AIDS and the rest’.36 Insummary, climate change began to emerge from 2007 in the speeches of the Australian militaryelite (such as the Chief of Defence Force and service chiefs) as an adjunct and minor securityissue. It was not viewed as necessarily being a threat in itself, but rather an underlying trendthat might exacerbate existing issues. Much the same as the US military later framed it as athreat multiplier.

Beyond the political influence, however, there were other reasons for a lack of military atten-tion concerning climate change (during the period of centre-right government, 2003–07). Mostprominent was that the Australian military was actively engaged in fighting two major wars(Iraq and Afghanistan) and was busy with other regional operations, training and various insti-tutional reforms. Closely coupled to this observation was that climate change was also not yetfully conceived of as being a security issue or one requiring any military involvement. Such out-looks have been formed through commentary from the scholarly community37 and variationsexist amongst Australian military elite, who have variously positioned the ADF as the ‘agency

30 Natalie Alexander, ‘Climate Change on Radar’ (2011), http://www.defence.gov.au/defencemagazine/editions/2011_03/mag.pdf#nameddest=environ (accessed March 5, 2014).

31 Official Committee Hansard of The Commonwealth of Australia Senate, ‘Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs,Defence and Trade: Supplementary Budget Estimates’ (2006), http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/Estimates/Live/commttee/S9780.ashx (accessed February 19, 2014), 70.

32 Official Committee Hansard of the Commonwealth of Australia Senate, ‘Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs,Defence and Trade: Estimates’ (2007).

33 Department of Defence, ‘Defence Personnel Environment Scan 2025’, inDefence Personnel Environment Scan 2025(Canberra: Directorate of Strategic Personnel Planning & Research, 2006).

34 Ibid., i.35 Official Committee Hansard of the Commonwealth of Australia Senate, ‘Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs,

Defence and Trade: Estimates’ (2007), 102.36 Ibid.37 Peter Halden, The Geopolitics of Climate Change: Changes to the International System (Stockholm: Swedish

Defence Research Agency, 2007), 36; Betsy Hartmann, ‘Lines in the Shifting Sand: The Strategic Politics ofClimate Change, Human Security and National Defense’ (paper presented at Rethinking Security in a ChangingClimate GECHS Synthesis Conference University of Oslo, Norway, June 22–24, 2009).

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of last resort’ and who identified climate change as a ‘long-term’ issue which would not genuinelyimpact on current force structure.38

However, general disengagement on the issue of climate change by the Australian militarybegan to change somewhat from 2007 but particularly from 2008. This can be attributed tothree main reasons. The first − as already alluded to, and addressed in detail below −was the elec-tion of a centre-left government (Australian Labor Party) in late 2007 that came to power on a plat-form of taking action on climate change. The second was the consolidation of climate change as anissue of national and international security significance as a consequence of mounting scientific,social and economic consequences. These aspects were highlighted through globally prominentreports − notably the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007), Stern Review (2006) and theGarnaut Review (2008)39 − as well as its placement on the agenda at the highest politicallevels, including the G8, G20 and UN General Assembly and Security Council (climate changeas a security issue was debated in the UNSC in 2007 and 2011). The third was growingpublic awareness (and opinion). Influential in this sense were mainstream, ‘popular media’,efforts resulting from movies such as Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and a growing volume ofliterature linking climate change and national security.40 Hurricane Katrina and other large-scale natural disasters and seemingly unseasonal extreme weather also contributed to a sensethat the climate was changing, justifying a requirement to act. Not surprisingly, opinion pollsat this time regularly placed climate change as a high-priority policy concern.41

Climate securitization in the ADF under the Australian Labor government(2007–13)

The election of successive centre-left Labor government(s) at the 2007 and 2010 electionsresulted in a stark contrast of climate policy presented by the previous Liberal National Partyunder John Howard. In an Australian context, the differences in climate policy between Austra-lia’s two major political parties have been well documented.42 This research found similaraccounts and these are briefly discussed. Firstly, whereas Howard opposed ratification of theKyoto Protocol, Kevin Rudd enthusiastically supported it and signed it ‘within minutes’ oftaking office.43 While Howard was arguably out-manoeuvred (politically) into calling for anemissions trading scheme, Rudd embraced it and a variation was subsequently legislated by

38 Alexander, ‘Climate Change on Radar’.39 See IPCC, FourthAssessmentReport (AR4), 2007, http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/ (accessedNovember 19, 2014;Nicho-

las Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review, Cabinet Office –HMTreasury, 2006, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm (accessed November 19, 2014); andRoss Garnaut, The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

40 Bergin and Townsend, ‘A Change in Climate for the Australian Defence Force’; Jon Barnett, ‘Climate Change andSecurity in Asia: Issues and Implictions for Australia’, Melbourne Asia Policy Papers, no. 9 (Melbourne: Universityof Melbourne, 2007); Joshua W. Busby, ‘Climate Change and Security: An Agenda for Action’, Council on ForeignRelations, no. 32 (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2007); Kurt M. Campbell et al., ‘The Age of Con-sequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change’, Center for Strategicand International Studies and Center for a New American Security (Washington, DC: Center for a New AmericanSecurity, 2007); Nick Mabey, Delivering Climate Security: International Security Responses to a ClimateChanged World (London: Third Generation Environmentalism Ltd, 2008); Spencer Weart, ‘A National SecurityIssue? How People Tried to Frame Global Warming’, in Global Climate Change: National Security Implications,ed. Carolyn Pumphrey (US Army War College, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2008), http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2008/ssi_pumphrey.pdf (accessed March 9, 2014).

41 Michael Wesley, ‘Climate Views Have Moved On’, Lowy Institute for International Policy, http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/climate-views-have-moved (accessed March 23, 2013).

42 Andrew MacIntosh, Deb Wilkinson, and Richard Denniss, ‘Climate Change’, in The Rudd Government: AustralianCommonwealth Administration 2007–2010, ed. Chris Aulich and Mark Evans (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2010), 589–653.

43 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Australia 2020 – Setting our Nation’s Sights for the Future, Address to the Sydney Institute AnnualDinner 2008’, http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=15873 (accessed February 10, 2014).

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Gillard. Where Howard did not view climate change as an urgent issue, Rudd and Gillard fre-quently framed it as an immediate issue requiring swift, resolute action (Table 7).

To bolster their cause, Rudd and Gillard constantly framed climate change as a social, moral,political, economic and security ‘challenge’ and ‘threat’ in which Australia was ‘on the front lineto suffer’.44 Although Howard framed climate change as a ‘challenge’ (22 occasions were ident-ified in a non-securitized context) he only sparingly framed it as a ‘threat’ (two occasions in a non-securitized context, Table 8). On the two occasions he framed climate change as a ‘threat’, bothwere within months of losing office and one of these occasions was via media release from hisoffice. This contrasted with Rudd (and it was primarily Rudd rather than Gillard) who framedclimate change as a ‘threat’ on 15 separate occasions in a non-securitized context and on sixoccasions in a securitized context (Table 8). Also, whereas Howard was wary of ‘individualreports’, Rudd and Gillard regularly evoked ‘the overwhelming global scientific evidence’amassed by the world’s various scientific institutions and academies.45 Rudd and Gillard alsocast themselves as champions of renewable energy, expanding on Howard’s policies and introdu-cing a number of new climate change initiatives.46

From an economic perspective, Rudd argued that the ‘cost of inaction on climate change is fargreater than the cost of action’ and that ‘failure to engage with the global community on climatechange would exclude us from the chance to shape the global response in ways consistent withour national interest’.47 This was radically different from Howard, but it aligned with Rudd’sbroader strategic purpose of Australia as an activist middle power in which he believed ‘thosethat share the benefits of these systems must also share the responsibilities of supporting andenhancing them’.48 Summarily, Rudd cemented climate change as a core domestic politicalissue and he predominately framed climate change (in a non-securitized context) as an ‘inter-national’, economic and regulatory issue (Table 5).

Having achieved this, Rudd became the first Australian Prime Minister to frame climatechange as a major security ‘threat’ to the Australian people (Table 9). Again, the shift in rhetoricfrom Howard was dramatic. Rudd spoke of climate change in catastrophic and widespread termsthat reached a crescendo in late 2009, whereupon he was under significant pressure to help craftan ‘international agreement’ at Copenhagen and ensure passage of his Carbon PollutionReduction Scheme (CPRS) through the Australian Parliament. Seemingly, between his election

Table 8. Specific language used to frame climate change as a non-securitized issue by Prime MinistersHoward, Rudd and Gillard between 2003 and 2013.

Specific Frame Howard Rudd/Gillard

Opportunity 2 2Neutral 40 71Challenge 22 92Threat 2 15Total 66 180

44 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Climate Change and Water’, http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79983/20080812-0001/www.pm.gov.au/topics/climate.html (accessed February 10, 2014).

45 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Address to the Lowy Institute’, http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=16904 (accessedFebruary 8, 2014).

46 For example, the creation of a ministerial portfolio for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency along with the Depart-ment of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.

47 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Address to the East Asia Forum in Conjunction with the Australian National University, AdvancingAustralia’s Global and Regional Economic Interests’, http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=15823(accessed February 11, 2014).

48 Rudd, ‘The First National Security Statement to the Parliament Address’.

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in late 2007 and exit from the prime ministership in mid-2010, Rudd used rhetoric and pursuedactions that attempted to securitize climate change by presenting it as an existential threat and torender it ‘governable’ (as a security issue) by moving it into the domain of domestic nationalsecurity institutions. As he did this, he increasingly shifted his rhetoric from framing climatechange as a long-term issue, to one that required urgent attention (Figure 2). While much hasbeen made of his political motives, what relationship did this have with the military? Also,what does the Copenhagen theory offer by way of an explanation of his actions and rhetoric?

Recalling the Copenhagen School framework, Rudd arguably sought to securitize climatechange so that − in the words of securitization theory − it became ‘above politics’. Mostlikely, he also had a firm eye on widening the discussion (to his favour) such that he wouldattract political support for his climate change legislation. Enlisting the military’s support forthis cause might not have been beyond comprehension; adding a sense of military gravitas inorder to galvanize public opinion. In looking at the whole, his climate securitization agendawas arguably born first and foremost out of political considerations. Thus, Rudd − as Prime Min-ister and with the authority of a legitimate securitizing actor − became energetic in attempts toconstruct climate change as a security threat. From London to the Pacific to the UnitedNations, Rudd insisted ‘[c]limate change is not just an environmental, economic and moral chal-lenge. It is also a security challenge’.49 Table 10, from this research, empirically shows how Ruddheld a much wider view of climate security than Howard.

Table 9. Specific language used to frame climate change as a securitized issue by Prime Ministers Howard,Rudd and Gillard (2003–13).

Specific Frame Howard Rudd/Gillard

Opportunity 0 0Neutral 6 10Challenge 3 12Threat 0 6Total 9 28

Figure 2. Climate change framed as an ‘urgent’ and ‘long-term’ issue by Prime Ministers John Howard,Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard 2003–12. During the height of Rudd’s climate change agenda (2009), heincreasingly framed climate change as an urgent issue; though not in a security sense.

49 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Address to the London School of Economics: Australia and the UK – Global Partners in Shaping theFuture Global Order, London’, http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=15847 (accessed February 18, 2014).

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To the Pacific Island Forum, Rudd labelled climate change a ‘matter of national survival’.50

To an Australian audience he argued that failure to act on climate change would have ‘severe’consequences and ‘resulting catastrophic events’.51 The devastation portrayed was widespread;nine distinct ‘security categories’ were identified by this research in which Rudd framedclimate change as having an impact. Time and again, climate change was framed as a ‘threat’to Australian security, the economy, society, the environment and future generations. Whencalled for by the occasion, it was framed as a ‘planetary’-wide threat. His language intensifiednearer the political culmination of his centrepiece climate legislation and the Copenhagenconference: ‘the latest scientific research on climate change confirms our worst fears. Climatechange is happening faster than we previously thought’.52 In totality, his rhetoric approximatedpowerfully to the Copenhagen qualifier that to become securitized an issue must be presentedas an existential threat.

Pursuing securitization, Rudd called on climate change to be mainstreamed by the country’skey national security institutions (including the military) and into their ‘policy and analysisprocess’.53 Notably, this was the political institution calling for it to become a mainstream secur-ity issue, not the other way around. In the language of the Paris School, Rudd now actively soughtto render climate change governable as a security issue within the military bureaucracy of theADF. Thus, wherever he spoke of national security, climate change was prominent. UnderRudd and then Gillard, every major national (defence) security publication between 2008 and2013 (2009 and 2013 Defence White Paper and the 2008 and 2013 National Security Strategy)described the security risks posed by climate change. In these documents and accompanyingspeeches by both Prime Minister Rudd and his successive defence ministers, the most significantmilitary contribution to combating climate change would be its increasing role in the provision ofhumanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) missions.54

Joel Fitzgibbon, Minister for Defence 2008–10, spoke constantly about changing militaryroles required for such an effort: ‘[T]he world has changed so much… But the role of militaryis also changing – today, defence forces find themselves participating in a wide range of non-

Table 10. Climate change as a securitized issue for Prime Ministers John Howard, Rudd and Gillard(2003–13). Howard possessed a ‘narrow’ interpretation while Rudd–Gillard possessed a ‘wide’ view ofclimate security.

Securitized Frame Howard Rudd/Gillard

Global and Regional Security 0 3National Security 0 9Human Security 0 1Energy Security 9 0Environmental Security 0 0Biosecurity 0 1Convergence 0 2Resource Security 0 2Non-Traditional, New Security 0 10Total 9 28

50 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Transcript of Address at the Close of the Pacific Islands Forum Cairns’, http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=16737 (accessed February 3, 2014).

51 Rudd, ‘The First National Security Statement to the Parliament’.52 Kevin M. Rudd, ‘Focus on Climate Change – Prime Minister Blog’, http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79983/20091030-

1529/www.pm.gov.au/PM_Connect/PMs_Blog/Climate_Change_Blog.html (accessed February 2014).53 Rudd, ‘The First National Security Statement to the Australian Parliament’.54 HADR was tended to be framed as part of the Labor Government’s National Security.

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traditional operations, such as disaster relief and stabilisation and reconstruction’.55 Mike Kelly,Parliamentary Secretary for Defence under Fitzgibbon, noted, ‘In an era of climate change, we canonly expect the incidence of climate-related natural disasters to increase’.56 Calling for ‘newthinking’, Kelly called for an expansion of domestic security capabilities ‘to address the chal-lenges of [the] contemporary and future international security environment’ that would ‘integrateour military, police, political, humanitarian, economic and development goals’.57 Minister forDefence Science and Personnel Warren Snowden added, ‘Governments are asking their militaryforces to undertake a new range of missions – such as humanitarian assistance’.58 Climate change,causing an increase in extreme weather events and natural disasters, was a central justification inexpanding military HADR. Subsequently, the ADF witnessed a surge in military-style HADRtraining activities and by 2011 Labor ministers began framing the acquisition of capability primar-ily for HADR purposes.59 This justification was strengthened by circumstances, whereupon a suc-cession of large-scale domestic natural disasters – Victorian bushfires (2009), Cyclone Yasi(2011) and the Queensland floods (2010–11) – witnessed unprecedented ADF operationalresponses and made Rudd’s vision prescient. The 2013 White Paper (delivered by JuliaGillard) made the causal link and represented the culmination of Rudd’s earlier efforts:

The combination of effect of climate change and resource pressures will increase the risk of insecurityand conflict… these factors, taken together, point to an increasing demand for humanitarian assist-ance, disaster relief and stabilisation operations over coming decades.60

In this political context, the active mainstreaming of climate change within the national securityinstitutions as well as the intense focus by the Prime Minister and his defence ministers resulted ina situation where the ADF could no longer be exceptional to debates − and response measures −surrounding climate change. While the ADF had entered at the margins as early as 2006, by 2008this was arguably no longer tenable. Thus, from 2008 the Australian military (under successiveLabor governments of Rudd and then Gillard) initiated a broad response to climate change. Byextension, it became partially engaged in the accompanying debates surrounding climatechange and, for a time, had the appearance of a de facto securitizing actor.

However, the ADF response to climate change was arguably a mixed one. The senior leader-ship of the ADF barely spoke on climate change and never at any great length. This research ana-lysed 93 speeches by the three service chiefs (Army, Navy and Air Force) between 2003 and

55 Joel Fitzgibbon, ‘Making Defence Policy in Uncertain Times’ (speech, Shangri-La Conference, Singapore, May 31,2008).

56 Mike Kelly, ‘PNG: Securing a Prosperous Future’ (speech, Deakin University, Geelong, April 13, 2012).57 Mike Kelly, ‘John Gee Memorial Lecture’ (lecture, Australian National University, Canberra, August 29, 2008).58 Warren Snowden, ‘Australia’s Strategic Imperatives presented to the ASPI Global Forces Conference’ (ministerial

release, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, July 2, 2008).59 Numerous actions were undertaken to increase military HADR, including (1) the first desktop regional disaster-relief

exercise co-hosted by Indonesia and Australia in May 2008; (2) the first field activity for ASEAN Regional Forum(ARF) that witnessed an ADF contingent join other South East Asian, Pacific Island, the US and other countries indemonstrating disaster relief capabilities; (3) establishment in 2008 of the Asia Pacific Centre for Civil MilitaryCooperation with the aim to improve Australia’s effectiveness in civil–military collaboration for conflict andHADR management (administered by the Vice Chief of Defence Force); (4) Strategic Partnership Agreement(2009) between the ADF and AUSAID, providing a closer framework for cooperation between the two agenciesin recognition of shared strategic interests; and (5) increased international strategic agreements and activities withAsia Pacific nations in which HADR was emphasized. Examples included Exercise COOPERATION SPIRIT aHADR activity hosted by the ADF in participation with Chinese People Liberation Army and the New ZealandDefence Force (2012); increased US–Australian cooperation on HADR as instanced by the Regional LeadersSeminar in Cairns (2011) that featured HADR; Defence Cooperation Agreement with Vietnam emphasizingHADR (2010). For examples of ministers framing defence capability in terms of HADR, see Minister for Defencestatement that Labor procured two amphibious vessels specifically ‘in support of HADR operations’ (StephenSmith, ‘Minister for Defence and Minister for Defence Materiel – Joint Media Release –Ocean Shield arrives in Aus-tralia’ (media release, Canberra, June 30, 2012).

60 Department of Defence, Defence White Paper 2013 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2013), 18–19.

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2013. Of the 93 speeches, just six contained any reference (brief as they were) to climate change.No organization-wide mitigation or adaption programme was implemented. While it might seemunusual for a single government department to have one, the Department of Defence is not a usualdepartment. Even the relatively small ADF (by international standards), manages some $71billion in total assets, including $22 billion of land, buildings and infrastructure (3 million hec-tares of land with more than 25,000 buildings) and constitutes about 60% of government green-house gas emissions (even larger than some small island and developing states).61

Also, unlike in the UK and US, no senior Australian military officer was appointed tooversee a climate response or act as a focal point. While middling officers wrote on thevarious climate change threats, it was also acknowledged as being too intangible to havemuch policy relevance for the ADF.62 Energy security and its attendant issues became promi-nent, but even these arguably appeared piecemeal and lacking in strategic purpose. Contri-butions by the Australian military to establish emissions reductions targets (mitigation) wereraised but then dropped.63 While one programme, ‘Combat Climate Change’, claimed theADF would do ‘all it could’ to reduce emissions, large and significant parts of the organization(e.g. ‘operational fuels’) were excluded. Tellingly, ADF greenhouse gas emissions increasedduring the life of this very programme.64

Although use of the term ‘climate change’ crept into doctrine, the penetration and extentappeared minimal. This was also the case with the ADF’s major environmental and energy pol-icies where − amongst literally dozens of initiatives − climate change was only rarely invokedas a pretext for action. Indeed, of the defence energy policy that was published in this period,climate change was never linked. Once again, this situation contrasted with the US and UKmilitaries that both published climate change adaptation strategies, the US military in particularemphasizing the inextricable nexus between climate change and energy use. Seemingly theAustralian military also sought to avoid using the term ‘climate change’, preferring the morepolitically neutral term ‘climate variability’ (see for instance the Defence Environment Strategy2010–2014). Furthermore, although there emerged a deeper bureaucratization (mainstreaming)of climate change within and across the Australian military, the major statements (e.g. declara-tory policy such as the Defence White Papers) emanated from the strategic level. Thus, whilethey were part-military, they were also part-government and therefore part-political pro-ductions.

Elsewhere in the Australian military, climate change was ‘bureaucratized’ at the operationallevel in a largely piecemeal and uncoordinated fashion. There appeared no overarching directive;programmes and responsibilities emerged across different areas. Most prominent was a $2 millionrisk assessment on the threat of sea-level rise to defence bases, commissioned by Defence SupportGroup (DSG) in 2009 with the final report delivered in 2011. Because it was classified the out-comes were never released to the public. From 2008 DSG also oversaw ‘Combat ClimateChange’, a relatively prominent but narrowly conceived small-scale energy efficiency programme

61 Department of Defence, ‘Asset Management and Purchasing’, in Defence Annual Review 20012–13, http://www.defence.gov.au/annualreports/12-13/pdf/Defence%20Annual%20Report%202012-13.pdf (accessed September 12,2014); Department of Defence, Defence Support and Reform Program, http://www.defence.gov.au/dsg/ (accessedSeptember 12, 2014); Thomas, ‘Climate Change and the ADF’.

62 Major Martin White, ‘The Compelling Requirement to Energy-Proof the Australian Defence Force’, Journal of theAustralian Profession of Arms, no. 175 (2008): 12.

63 GHG emission reductions targets by the ADF were identified to form part of ADF policy in the 2009 Defence AnnualReport, along with an intention to publish a Defence Climate Change and Sustainable Development Strategy, but nomention of these initiatives appeared in the 2010 Defence Annual Report. See Department of Defence, DefenceAnnual Report 2008–2009, http://www.defence.gov.au/AnnualReports/08-09/2008-2009_Defence_DAR_v1full.pdf (accessed November 19, 2014) and Department of Defence, Defence Annual Report 2009–2010, http://www.defence.gov.au/AnnualReports/09-10/dar_0910_v1_full.pdf (accessed November 19, 2014).

64 ADF emissions profile calculated from combining defence GHG emissions data provided in Energy Use in the Aus-tralian Government’s Operations series from 2006 to 2013.

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that literally targeted individuals on how to reduce their own carbon footprint by, amongst othermeasures, ‘car-pooling’ and ‘printing double sided’.65 A separate area within Defence, the ViceChief of Defence Group, initiated another programme (Global Change and Energy SustainabilityInitiative, established c. 2010) examining the impact of global change and climate change on ADFpreparedness and readiness. Defence infrastructure also oversaw some medium-scale infrastruc-ture initiatives, including a joint public–private wave of energy development at Fleet Base West,HMAS Stirling. More subtly, and not as visibly as those just mentioned, the ADF also began toadapt its organization to meet governance requirements of climate change. In an interview in2011, Deputy Secretary of Strategy Peter Jennings singled out discrete areas within the militarybureaucracy to deal with what he saw as three key aspects impacting on defence; rising sea levels,greenhouse gas emissions and ADF energy requirements. He particularly cited Strategic PolicyDivision as ‘the lead’ and that the strategic impacts of climate change would now be consideredpart of ‘annual Defence planning’.66 Although it was not entirely clear what planning this wouldinvolve, it may have acted as the lead on Defence’s contribution to the Interdepartmental Com-mittee on Adaptation that included 13 other government departments responsible for providing‘whole-of-government consultation and coordination on climate change adaptation policy andreform’.67 (A range of other initiatives under the rubric of ‘sustainable development’ and‘energy efficiency’ also formed a constant part of Defence’s environmental business practices– e.g. minor changes to defence procurement guidelines regarding energy efficiency standards,‘green’ star energy ratings for defence infrastructure and so on. However, these were rarelydirectly stated by the Defence department as forming part of its organizational response toclimate change.)

All in all, these initiatives represented the core ADF response to climate change; decidedlythey were not policies that ‘securitized’ climate change but rather piecemeal bureaucraticresponses geared to reduce strategic risk, improve operating efficiency and save money.68 Onthe one hand, they were about mainstreaming climate change in the ADF (just as Prime MinisterRudd had called for in 2008) but on the other they also appeared not to do too much. Thus, whilemany initiatives appeared credible as stand-alone projects, they arguably lacked an overall strat-egy tying them together. This aspect, combined with the lack of open public discussion and adver-tisement by the ADF hierarchy gave the impression that such a policy was deliberately avoided.That is to say, for an organization that prided itself on being ‘strategy led’ and one that had lit-erally dozens of other ‘strategies’ and ‘policies’ of every kind, it is unlikely that ‘climatechange’ was somehow missed.

Furthermore, the ADF never exceeded the apparent expectations of government by progres-sing any major climate change initiatives. While some scholars posed the idea that the Labor gov-ernment might have deliberately talked up climate change threats to create strategic–militaryopportunities,69 reality suggested otherwise. Just as climate change began to emerge as a nationalsecurity threat of any significance, the Australian defence budget contracted to the lowest pro-

65 Department of Defence, ‘Combat Climate Change’, http://www.defence.gov.au/environment/climate_change/(accessed April 3, 2014).

66 Alexander, ‘Climate Change on Radar’.67 Benedikte Jensen, ‘Interdepartmental Committee on Adaptation Terms of Reference’ (2013), http://webcache.

googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5aGHEhqSs_gJ:https://senate.aph.gov.au/submissions/comittees/viewdocument.aspx%3Fid%3Df4b02515-fbc4-48f2-a0e3-eb76cca0f832+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au (accessedMarch 3, 2014).

68 The dominant frame in many military environmental policy related documents remained protection of ‘the environ-ment’. Under this rubric, the ADF undertook numerous initiatives, but the case was never clearly made on what theirconnection (if any) was to climate change. Often, the initiatives were designed to ensure positive corporate govern-ance, meeting of various legislative requirements and the sustainability and preservation of natural resources forfuture ADF use (e.g. defence training grounds).

69 Chun Zhang, ‘Rebuilding Middle Power Leadership for Australia’, Journal of the Australian Profession of Arms, no.180 (2009), 7–9.

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portion of GDP since before World War II.70 Additionally, although climate change becameestablished as an issue within discrete areas of the ADF, the broader picture suggested minortake-up. From a force structure and capability perspective, when Rudd and his ministers talkedup the prospect of climate change increasing HADR and stability missions, the ADF readilyadded the requirement to create a ‘balanced force… giving us the option to build a morepotent force structure relatively quickly’.71 Warfighting and its attendant capabilities that weregeared to ‘defeat the nation’s enemies’ remained the priority. Not surprisingly, climate changewas never a driver of force structure or capability. Neither, though this time perhaps surprisingly,was it included as a factor in the 2012 Force Posture Review (FPR) that examined future defenceestate requirements. Given that the ADF already knew in 2011 from a first pass study that three ofits major bases (RAAF Base Townsville, HMAS Cairns and HMAS Stirling) might be subject to‘inundation by storm surges occurring within the context of rising sea levels from climatechange’, its absence from the FPR was, on the surface at least, questionable.72

So, on the one hand, this reflected the Paris School framework that emphasizes how securityinstitutions create their own bureaucracies as a means to govern security issues (consisting of newpolicies, ‘roadmaps’, doctrine and so on). But on the other hand, the tentative military response −well behind the political sphere and industry response − stood in contrast to a central aspect of theParis School which portrays an almost Orwellian-like security apparatus exerting disproportionateinfluence over the political domain. If anything, on the evidence examined by this research it wasthe political direction at the instigation of the centre-left Labor government from 2007 onwardsthat prompted a military response. Equally, when it became clear that climate change was a par-tisan issue between the two major federal parties, the military arguably began to limit its involve-ment on the issue of climate change.

A telling anecdote on this point occurred between the period of Rudd’s securitization apogeein late 2009 and his removal as Prime Minister in mid-2010. Just as the pace of climate securiti-zation gathered in the lead-up to the Copenhagen conference, the ADF declared in its 2009 end ofyear annual review that it would set climate change emissions ‘targets’, promote an internal dis-cussion paper on climate change impacts and develop the ‘Defence Climate Change and Sustain-able Development Strategy’ for publication.73 But just as it did so, political momentum changed.The Liberal–National coalition, then in opposition, elected a leader (Tony Abbott) who ferventlyrejected Labor’s climate agenda. When the Copenhagen conference failed to deliver a unified andcomprehensive international climate agreement and Rudd’s CPRS again failed to gain passagethrough the Senate, ‘climate change’ was consolidated as a particularly bitter and divisiveissue. While Rudd sought to minimize reference to it, his political opposition capitalized onhis strategic back-down.74 When news broke on 27 April 2010 that Rudd had abandoned thescheme, a subsequent Newspoll found Labor had lost around 1 million supporters in a fortnight.75

It was a contributing factor for Rudd being deposed as Prime Minister in June 2010 and replacedby Julia Gillard.76 Arguably attentive to the partisan and polarized political debates, the ADF

70 Mark Thomson, ‘The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2013–14’ (Canberra: Australian Strategic PolicyInstitute, 2013).

71 Angus Houston, ‘Future Security Prospects, Future Capability Plans and how the ADF Makes a Contribution to a“Whole of Government” Approach to National Security’ (lecture, Australian National University, Canberra,October 29, 2010).

72 Official Committee Hansard of the Commonwealth of Australia Senate, ‘Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs,Defence and Trade: Questions on Notice – Committees’, Senate Budget Estimates, Question 95 (Canberra: Common-wealth of Australia, May 28/29, 2012).

73 Department of Defence, Defence Annual Report 2008–09 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2009).74 Macintosh et al., ‘Climate Change’.75 Philip Chubb, ‘The Day the Rudd Government Lost Its Way on Climate Change’, http://www.theage.com.au/insight/

the-day-the-rudd-government-lost-its-way-on-climate-change-20140509-zr7fm.html (accessed May 26, 2014).76 Chris Aulich, ‘It was the Best of Times; It was the Worst of Times’, in The Rudd Government: Australian Common-

wealth Administration 2007–2010, ed. Chris Aulich and Mark Evans (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2010), 15–53.

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reneged on its pledge to set emissions targets and publish a climate strategy. From what thisresearch found, both remain unpublished and unspoken of by anyone within the ADF. Thereafter,and with the exception of the Global Change Energy Sustainability Initiative and the piecemealinitiatives identified above, climate change remained a low priority for Defence (no other majorclimate change programmes were initiated by Defence from 2010/11). Correspondingly, from2011 onwards, this research found climate change was scarcely being framed as a security ‘chal-lenge’ or ‘threat’ by Australia’s political and military elite (see Figure 3).

From the perspective of securitization theory, and in relation to climate change, the Australianmilitary thus appeared − at first glance − as a reluctant securitizing actor. Arguably, this was aty-pical for the military where, in traditional security affairs, it was (and remains) a proactive if notcentral, securitizing actor. And so, apart from being ‘busy elsewhere’ and ‘not the lead agency’ torespond to climate change, what other factors were at play that fed ADF reluctance? Also, on theevidence available, was the ADF really a ‘securitizing actor’ at all, reluctant or otherwise?

To answer this question, a deeper assessment of Rudd’s securitization agenda is required.Arguably, although Rudd pursued securitization of climate change, he never truly sought topursue it to the lengths defined by Copenhagen’s framework. Moreover, Rudd never sought‘emergency measures’ that required ‘actors’ to move ‘beyond rules that would otherwise bind’.This was true of his political measures − he baulked at the prospect of a double-dissolution elec-tion to seek passage of his climate legislation77 − and it was equally true of his securitizationmeasures. For instance, although Rudd spoke often on the magnitude of the security threats, hesimultaneously offered reassurance that it would only manifest ‘in the long run’.78 The 2009Defence White Paper referred to decades-long timescales. In the 2008 National Security State-ment Rudd opined: ‘over the long term, climate change represents a most fundamental nationalsecurity challenge, over the long run’.79 Thus, deeper examination of Table 7 revealed a distinc-tion between Rudd’s politicization timeframe (urgent) and his securitization timeframe (distant).Put another way, this research found that all temporal references to climate change in a securitizedcontext (by Rudd–Gillard) were framed in a long-term context. The long timeframe of climatesecuritization further rendered the idea of taking ‘emergency measures’ (in a securitizationsense) a nonsensical one and of marginal interest to the Australian military that dealt foremost

Figure 3. Climate change framed as a security ‘challenge’ and ‘threat’ in the speeches and policies for allstrategic programmes (Prime Minister, Minister for Defence, Chief of Defence Force, Secretary ofDefence) considered by this research.

77 See Philip Chubb, Power Failure: The Inside Story of Climate Politics under Rudd and Gillard (Collingwood, Vic.:Black Inc. Agenda, 2014).

78 Rudd, ‘The First National Security Statement to the Australian Parliament’.79 Ibid.

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with short and near-term time horizons. As a result, climate change was partly framed by themilitary as an issue for capability development and strategic analysis − areas of equally longduration.

Relevant to this point was the idea that ‘climate change’ cannot be easily reconciled underCopenhagen securitization theory. Apart from the decades-long ‘time-scales’, few genuinelyplausible options existed as to what may have constituted ‘emergency measures’, particularlywhere military involvement was concerned. This equally applied to the idea of getting ‘actors’to move ‘beyond rules’. What ‘actors’, what ‘rules’? Were ‘green’ nations to adopt punitivemeasures against ‘dirty’ nations? What role would the military play in this scenario? As absurdas it is to suggest, might the military be used to strike industrial greenhouse gas emissionssites of ‘dirty’ nations? Might the military be used as an instrument for geo-engineering purposes(either unilaterally or multilaterally) such as releasing atmospheric particulates to reduce theamount of incoming solar radiation? Such a case was never made by Rudd. Indeed, it nevercould have been since every nation was (and is) implicated. As remarked by former UKForeign Secretary Margaret Beckett, ‘we are all our own enemies’.80 Moreover, securitizationas understood in traditional geopolitics has typically witnessed military involvement in someform or another. But its role is far less certain in climate change; the most activist offeringsstretch the realms of credibility.

Accordingly, while Rudd spoke in generalities of climate security threats, he never invokedthe military as a solution to those threats. Rather, the Australian military was framed as ‘firstresponders’ in the event of climate disasters and the likelihood of regional ‘stability operations’.Both of these also fitted comfortably with Labor’s enduring strategic narrative that has histori-cally placed primacy on the Australian continent and the immediate region.81 Nested within thisstrategic outlook was an increased emphasis for the ADF HADR and stability operations (thisresearch allocated such references within the context of national security). While these might beviewed as involving the security establishment, they were hardly dominated by the securityestablishment. Furthermore, despite efforts by some scholars,82 it is difficult to argue thatsuch measures were (are) not in the interest of either Australians or those from across theregion.

Having now teased out Rudd’s agenda, a more nuanced picture emerges. Summarily, secur-itization was pursued by Rudd to support his political agenda. But his securitization agenda hadintended limits; it was never invoked with the commitments described by Copenhagen securitiza-tion theory. It was, in some respects, a feigned securitization where rhetoric exceeded any genuinewillingness to act. How, then, can the Australian military response to climate change be summar-ized in the context of these theoretical positions over the period 2008−13?

The Australian military, acute to the political sensitivities and cognizant of the inherent limitsto Rudd’s securitization agenda (and the military’s role within it), thus presented as a reluctant butnonetheless calculating actor, in a scientifically regarded but politically dominated climate secur-itization agenda. To be sure, it was ‘consistent with Government policy’, but it also had a firmgrasp of the possibility that a change of government at either the 2010 and then 2013 electionsmight render any climate change investments or initiatives null and void. Thus, from a Copenha-gen conceptual perspective, the Australian military was not a securitizing actor per se, rather itsought to position itself as a neutral participant − actively avoiding the political dimension −and focusing on a cautious, low-profile, low-cost, gradualist response to only the most practical

80 Margaret Beckett, ‘The Case for Climate Security’, Royal United Services Institute, http://www.rusi.org/events/past/ref:E464343E93D15A/info:public/infoID:E4643430E3E85A/ (accessed January 10, 2013).

81 Michael Evans, ‘The Tyranny of Dissonance: Australia’s Strategic Culture and Way of War 1901–2005’, LandWarfare Studies Centre, Study Paper no. 306 (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2005).

82 Betsy Hartmann, ‘Rethinking Climate Refugees and Climate Conflict: Rhetoric, Reality and the Politics of PolicyDiscourse’, Journal of International Development 22, no. 2 (2010): 233–46.

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and strikingly obvious of long-term risks posed by a changing climate.83 It was a strategy thatminimized any investment (resource or reputational) lest a change of government renderedthem invalid or it drew unwanted criticism. The ‘non-securitized’ dimensions of climatechange subsequently became a focus for the operational and strategic levels of the ADF; bureau-cratic programmes were developed to oversee their governance but were cognizant not to over-step the mark. This outcome depicted aspects of the Paris School (particularly its ideas on‘bureaucratization’) but it repudiated its central thesis that conceived a framework in which themilitary exerted disproportionate influence over the national (political) security agenda.

At the very heart of this analysis existed the challenge of an avowedly apolitical institutionresponding to what emerged in the Australian context as a politically partisan security issue. Themore serious indictment concerned how national security policy (in the context of climate changeas a security issue) had become hostage to the politics of climate change.

Conclusion

Having reached this assessment, it might be asked − is this situation adequate? Moreover, ifclimate change was (and remains) an existential threat and if the current decade represents the‘critical decade’ to avoid these threats, then is the Australian military justified in adopting aminimalist climate change strategy? Should it play a more proactive role? If so, what is thisrole and do notions of climate securitization have any relevance in elevating it as a policy priority?More broadly − and looking to the future − does the Australian military and associated federalintelligence and assessment institutions have a unique obligation to extricate themselves fromthe politics of climate change so that they might provide the public an unfettered appreciationand clearer picture of the security risks involved? Furthermore, what are the broader implicationsfor Australian strategic policy and how might climate change affect the future relationshipbetween the military, the government and the people (particularly where the security threatscontinue to be viewed in such a partisan manner)? As was put by one commentator: ‘Howdoes the military, hoping to develop intellectual grit, manoeuvre around the very institutionthat feeds it?’84

Arguably, the Australian military is confounded on the issue of climate change. Unable topublicly express its strategic concerns with any genuine authority it has largely stood as asilent witness to Australian climate policy debates. Despite this, the 2015 White Paper to bereleased by the Abbott government should be carefully scrutinized and compared with previousdefence policy positions (on climate change). The findings from this paper suggest that the 2015White Paper will downplay climate change as a security issue and reframe it in ways that suit thepolitical agendas of the Liberal and National parties (i.e. one that favours a minimalist climatechange strategy). Arguably, such a reframing is already underway. Prime Minister TonyAbbott in his September 2014 Statement to Parliament on National Security did not mentionclimate change once (‘terrorism’ garnered 15 references).85 Former Defence Minister David John-ston has also avoided any reference linking ‘climate change’ to increasing causes of instability or(in)security. ‘Natural disasters’, ‘humanitarian aid’, ‘disaster relief’ (without their link to climatechange) and MacKellaresque observations that ‘the weather has always been unpredictable andharsh’ are euphemistically filling the void. While reframing climate security in such a mannermay be viewed as offering short-term political advantages, it is counter to the strategic response

83 In this view, it is not surprising that the very public and very political 2012 ADF Force Posture Review did notaddress climate change.

84 Julia Terreu, ‘Can the Australian Military Think Out Loud’, The Diplomat, April 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/can-the-australian-military-think-out-loud/ (accessed April 9, 2014).

85 Tony Abbott, ‘Statement to Parliament on National Security’ (2014), https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2014-09-22/statement-parliament-national-security (accessed October 15, 2014).

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required and the increasing volume of scientific evidence that shows an acceleration of the under-lying causes of anthropogenic climate change and its attendant security implications. Paradoxi-cally, the 2015 White Paper therefore represents an opportunity for the ADF to distinguishitself as an apolitical institution by expanding on its existing statements regarding climatechange and laying a basis for a more comprehensive strategic response nested within broadersocial, economic and community-based climate strategies.

Buzan et al. stated that understanding securitization is more difficult when it is ‘moved out ofthe military’.86 This may or may not be so, but as the role, influence and capacity of military insti-tutions in responding to climate change unfolds there should be recognition that this facet ofclimate change discourse remains a nascent area that presents both opportunity and risk. Theirony of this situation should not be lost. Militaries, ostensibly designed to protect ‘us’ from‘them’, now seem incapable of protecting us from ourselves. Military institutions must reflectdeeply on this and question if this is to be their legacy during the first critical decade of theAnthropocene.

Notes on contributorMichael Thomas is an inter-disciplinary PhD candidate with UNSW researching the securitization of climatechange. He is a serving officer in the Australian Army and in 2014 was awarded a science scholarship withthe Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

86 Buzan et al., Security: A New Framework for Analysis, 1.

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