why is climate change seen as a security issue?

7/31/2019 Why is Climate Change Seen as a Security Issue?

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Why is climate change seen as a security issue?

By Arjun Patel

This essay argues that climate change has become a security issue for two main

reasons. The first reason is the debate over whether and how climate change can lead

to conflict, focusing on conventional, state-level analyses. This may include general

debates about causal mechanisms that may lead to conflict through factors such as

water supply, and also more specific debates about the effects of climate change upon

the geopolitics concerning Arctic sea passages. The second reason is the shift in post

Cold-war discourse that stretches conceptualizations of what 'security' might entail, to

include for example, the global ecosystem or the individual as referent objects, instead

of the state. Whilst these re-definitional approaches also point to increased risks of

conflict from environmental changes such as climate change, the conceptualization of

this process shifts the focus from state-level actors and organizations to broader social

and environmental concerns.

In the broadest terms then, climate change has started to appear on the security

agenda, either because it is a new factor that affects traditionally conceptualized security

concerns, or because the fundamental concept of security itself has changed. It is

extremely difficult to distinguish between the two in the extant literature, however, which

Gleditsch (1998) points out contains frequent lapses in conceptual clarity. He argues

that, at least in part due to a lack of systematic research and reliable evidence, many

participants in the debate resort to muddled argumentation including unjustified

conjecture, a lack of clarity on the level of analysis, and reverse causality. As this debate

is not a purely academic one, but also includes a large number of broader political

interests, this seems justifiable - if a political actor can get climate change onto the


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security agenda regardless of the conceptual clarity behind such a proposition, then this

would further their political goals. Indeed Norman Myers, who admitted to 'heroic

extrapolations' in some of the figures he cited on this regarding climate migrants, seems

a prime example of this case (Brown 2008).

The fact that scholars are not conceptually clear on how climate change might generate

security threats, despite the issue already being discussed at high levels within fora such

as the UN Security Council, suggest that an overarching answer to the question above is

the following: climate change has become a security issue out of political expediency.

This process of securitization has been a collaborative one in which journalists,

politicians, international organizations and NGO's have all participated. Deudney also

suggests that many security organizations and experts welcome this, as it helps to

maintain the currency of national security in the post Cold-War world (1990). And the

widely disparate view of security scholars on the issue allows this to occur without clear

or unified contestation from academia.

Scholars have, however, of course made many substantial arguments in support of

securitizing the climate change agenda. The rest of this essay discusses the core

reasons proposed within Security Studies that support climate change as a security

issue, firstly by looking at the at the arguments surrounding security threats with the

state as the referent object, and secondly by exploring wider definitions of the term

security.

There is much debate as to what extent climate change might affect the risks of conflicts

at the international level. Deudney (1990) questions whether the impact of environmental


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material to generate trends. As such, they provide little predictive power to assess future

security threats from climate change.

In spite of this, there have been several attempts to establish broad patterns of the

security implications of climate change. Scholars such as Thomas Homer-Dixon have

proposed that climate change will have neo-Malthusian consequences, i.e. population

pressures and the consequent resource scarcities and migration will increase the

likelihood of violent conflict. He does however stress that his models are hypothetical,

and require verification though testing using historical and contemporary data (1991).

The causal mechanisms proposed by Homer-Dixon and others, supporting the links

between climate-change and increased violence, have been summarized by Gleditsch

as follows:

Population growth/high resource consumption per capita > deteriorated environmental

conditions > increasing resource scarcity > harsher resource competition > greater risk of

violence (1998, p. 383)

This broad model has been proposed by a number of scholars that conceptualize

environmental security from several different perspectives, ranging from biologists to

critics of capitalism (Gleditsch 1998, p. 383).

Recently, however, empirical analyses attempting to test such hypothetical models have

emerged. In looking at migration, for example, Reuveny (2007) argues that climate

change can cause migration effects that contribute to conflict risk. However, he writes

that the response of migration to environmental changes is one of three potential

reactions to climate change. The choice between staying in place and doing nothing,


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staying in place and mitigating problems, and migrating, depends upon both the severity

of conditions, and the capacity of the population to mitigate the problems. Hendrix and

Glaser (2007) also find some positive associations between reduced freshwater

availability, land degradation and climate suitability for Eurasian agriculture and an

increased risk of civil war. They also find that this is a weak association, particularly in

comparison to inter-annual variations in precipitation, which is a much better determinant

of conflict risk. The paper seems to show that short-term triggers are more important

than long-term climate changes.

What both the above papers show then is that climate-change and security threats can

be shown to be causally linked, but the significance of these links depends upon the

time-scale over which such changes occur, and of their severity. No-one has, of course,

managed to make long-term accurate predictions about climate change, the severity or

speed of climate change, and by extension the implications for the security of states

from conflict remain unclear. I would nevertheless argue that climate change deserves

its position on the security agenda, as recent empirical studies show that climatic

changes may well contribute to security threats, even where the term security is

narrowly defined. The arguments that the causal links are weak and offer little predictive

power do not negate the reason that they exist as security threats and uncertain

causality and low predictability are surely trademark characteristics of this subject as a

whole.

Many of the security threats outlined in the examples above could be shown to apply to

conceptualizations of environmental security where the nation-state was not the referent

object. Climate change has also become a security issue as a consequence of a


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paradigm shift in Security Studies through a redefinition of the concept security. Many

of the paper titles during the early years of environmental security scholarship confirm

this aim - for example Redefining Security (Brown 1977), Redefining Security again

(Ullman 1983), and An expanded concept of International Security (Westing 1986).

A human security approach, for example, to environmental security regards the referent

object as individuals (Barnett 2010), and the focus is often on threats of conflict at the

intra-state level. This is perhaps a more useful lens for looking at conflict such as Darfur,

where the causes and the impacts of the conflict are clearly not simply at the state level.

Defining environmental security from a human security perspective is at the same time

problematic, as it limits the usefulness of the study for policymakers almost any area of

public policy can be made a human security issue from this perspective, and the idea of

security loses its focus to wider, long-term socioeconomic issues, that may well

necessitate new legislation, rather than the use of security forces.

However, as mentioned above, many seeking to place climate-change under the policy

umbrella of security, are not necessarily seeking to further our understanding of the

relationship between security and climate change, but simply to raise its political profile.


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Reference List

Barnett, J., 2006. Environmental Security. In: Alan Collins, ed. Contemporary Security Studies.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch 11.

BBC, 2007. Russia plants flag under North Pole.Available at:

[Accessed 11 January 2011].

Brown, L., 1977. Redefining Security, WorldWatch Paper, 14. Washington, D.C.: WorldWatch

Institute.

Brown, O.,2008. Migration and Climate Change, IOM Migration Research Series, 31 Geneva:

International Organization for Migration; p. 12

Busby, J.W. 2008. Who cares about the weather? Climate change and US national security,

Security Studies, 17(3), pp. 468-504.

Cullen H. & Sarah G., 2007. Trends and triggers: climate, climate change and civil conflict in Sub-

Saharan Africa. Political Geography26(6), pp. 695-715.

Deudney D., The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security,

Millennium 19/3 (1990), pp. 461-476.

Gleditsch, N., 1998. Armed conflict and the environment: a critique of the literature. Journal of

Peace Research 35: 381-400.

Homer-Dixon, T., 1991. On The Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict,

International Security, 16 (2) (Fall), pp. 76-116.

Rafael R., 2007. Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict. Political Geography

26(6), pp. 656-673.

Ullman, R.H. 1983. Redefining Security, International Security, 8(1) Summer 1983.

Westing, A.H. 1986. An Expanded Concept of International Security, In: Global Resources and

International Conflict, ed. Arthur H. Westing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

why is climate change seen as a security issue?

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