What do you think? Are there dangers to reframing climate change as a security threat? Is it a good way to get people to start thinking about climate change?

Climate Conversations - Rethinking climate change as a security threat

By Corinne Schoch

Over the past five years, climate change has moved from being a purely environment and development issue to being a matter of national and international security.

For years we have understood that civil wars generally break out as a result of political instability, a poor national economy, weakened infrastructures and, in the case of African states, the collapse of the Cold War. 

Now it seems that environmental shocks can be added to that list - journalists, academics, policymakers, security institutions and heads of states repeatedly tell us that the impacts of climate change pose a grave security threat.

As a result, the idea that prolonged heat waves, rising sea levels, more variable climates and more frequent disasters such as cyclones or droughts will result in more civil conflicts has taken firm root in the public’s imagination. The popular belief that climate change will soon spark ‘water wars’ between water-scarce regions and countries is just one example.

But while the notion that climate change could lead to conflict is widespread, it is based on very little evidence and questionable sources.

The debate tends to be characterised by conjecture, extrapolations and a limited set of facts that make assumptions about how the climate will change in years to come, and how people will respond - for example, that increased climate variability automatically causes inter- and intrastate migration, or that a drop in rainfall is what led to the Darfur crisis. The links between what causes conflict have been simplified.

The truth is that there are, as yet, no concrete examples of violent conflicts induced by climate change, and a limited understanding of what the future holds. Take the example of water wars: Many researchers argue that it is not climate change that is to blame, but rather it is issues such as poor governance of water resources that are the driving factor behind such conflicts.

Just how useful is it to reframe the climate change debate as a security issue?

A seat at the table

The debate on links between climate change, diminishing resources, violent conflict and security is not new but it wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union that discussions around them really became possible.

Up until the early 1990s, security agendas on both sides of the Atlantic were dominated by measures to protect the state and support military institutions. But in the aftermath of the Cold War, the new political landscape demanded a broader, wider approach to the term ‘security’.

A 1994 report by the UN Development Programme articulated this need and gave birth to the term ‘human security’, shifting the emphasis away from a state-centric approach towards one that focuses on securing individual people.

This created the space to incorporate ‘non-traditional’ threats - such as the environment, health and human rights - into the security agenda, alongside longstanding issues of military defence and state interests.  In this way, climate change was ‘securitised’.

Attaching a security label to climate change has certain advantages. For a start, it gives the state or government power over the issue and can end up mobilising vast amounts of political and financial resources to address it.

But perhaps the biggest ‘win’ in securitising climate change has been raising awareness of this environmental issue and capturing the attention of Northern countries. There is little doubt that climate change is now firmly in the sights of decision makers at all levels - in a way that would have been much harder to achieve with an environment and development framework alone.

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