An essay on relatinoship between climate change and national security
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Image by Tim J Keegan
Image by Tim J Keegan
Outline the extent to which climate change threatens the national security of states. In light of your discussion, is it appropriate to securitise this issue?
Security discourse has traditionally emphasised the threat from inter-state war and purposive agents (Busby, 2008:471); climate change policy has resided primarily in economic or cost/benefit discourses (Busby, 2007:1), or focused on finding environmentally friendly energy substitutes and establishing cooperative international environmental agreements, ‘not [on] potential security challenges’ (Broder, 2009). There are many readily identifiable concerns related to climate change, including environmental degradation, natural resource scarcities, CO2 emissions, melting polar ice, extreme temperatures, flooding, natural disasters, and extreme weather. However, security ‘is an inherently ambiguous and inconsistent concept’ (Edwards, 1999:311), with its images culturally, temporally and spatially grounded – each born of a different philosophical tradition (Haftendorn, 1991:3-6). At the individual level, security can be ‘the condition of being protected from or not exposed to danger’ (Barnett, 2003:7); a subjective perception of ‘assurance’ about ‘survival and well-being’ (Soroos, 1997:236); and an ‘inner security that ultimately forms the bedrock of our being’ (Myers, 1994:16). In emphasising the state as the referent object, national security discourse traditionally aligned with the realist paradigm and its concern with strategies for survival (Haftendorn, 1991:6-8; Buzan et al, 1998:21) through violence and military force (Trombetta, 2009:587; Busby, 2008:474; Haftendorn, 1991:8). For realist Stephen Walt (1991:212), ‘[t]he main focus of security studies is easy to identify… it is the phenomenon of war.’
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However, this ‘conveys a profoundly false image of reality’ (Ullman, 1983:123), as it ‘excludes environmental and other non-military threats by definition’ (Levy, 1995:39). Fortunately, the post-Cold War ‘search for a new security paradigm helped open up the security debate to new issues’ (Hauge & Ellingsen, 1998:300). In 2004, the British government’s chief scientist asserted that ‘[c]limate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism’ (King, cited in BBC, 2004), and in 2007 the UNSC held its ‘first-ever debate on the impact of climate change on peace, [and] security’ (UNSC, 2007). Evidently, understandings of security are ‘expanding to include threats from a changing global environment’ (Hendrix & Glaser 2007:696), including ‘[p]henomena like pandemic disease, natural disasters, and climate change’ (Busby, 2007:5). Still, Buzan’s Cold War-era delineation of national security, which does mention environmental threats, is perhaps the most developed and identifies three core referent objects: the idea, the institutional expression, and the physical base of the state (1983:39-64) – although Buzan also recognises that national security ‘cannot be defined in any general sense, but only in relation to specific cases’ (1983:6). Ultimately, national security is still ‘flexible enough to mean anything one wishes’ (Levy, 1995:37). To outline the extent of the climate change threat to every plausible referent object of national security is impracticable here. Consequently, this essay will focus on the following areas: resource security; territory and population; military capability; and catalysts for conflict – after which the securitisation of climate change will be considered.