Climate Change: Is Securitisation The Answer?

The climate crisis is amongst the greatest existential threats facing humanity. Yet we seem to have done very little about it. Despite frameworks for addressing climate change such as the UNFCCC and multilateral treaties such as the Paris Agreement, fossil fuel subsidies reached an all-time high in 2022, and current mitigation strategies fall far short of the Paris Agreement’s aim to ‘limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.’ Indeed, geopolitical tensions at COP29 highlighted the inefficacy of such conferences to pass effective climate legislation. If COPs really are ‘no longer fit for purpose’ - their slow-moving negotiation processes unable to successfully deliver the urgent change necessary - what form might alternative strategies take? How can governments be spurred to take the action humanity so desperately needs?

One proposed solution to this epidemic of inaction is securitising the environment – that is, framing the climate crisis as a global security issue. If climate change was fully securitised under the UNSC, this could lead to the development of more focussed and urgent policy responses. However, this approach to increasing action against climate change is not without considerable risk to global international society. Moreover, while securitising climate change may theoretically present solutions to climate inaction, in practice, achieving full securitisation is highly unlikely, and it would still only amount to too little, too late. 

Firstly, what does ‘full securitisation’ actually mean? While many countries have recognised the climate crisis as a threat to national security, full securitisation of the environment would require the UNSC to declare climate change a threat to international peace and security. Council members, and above all its five permanent members, would have to recognise that climate insecurity falls within Article 24 (1) of the United Nations Charter, which gives members of the security council ‘primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security’, and grants them powers to act accordingly, as delineated in Chapter VI (recommendatory powers) and Chapter VII (emergency powers).

Theoretically, achieving full securitisation of the environment might trigger increased global action against climate change: Buzan, Wæver, and deWilde note that ‘adopting a security framing can mobilize extraordinary political responses’, overcoming ‘slow-moving ordinary political processes so common in environmental politics’ (Security: A new framework for analysis, 1998). Under Chapter VII, council members would have the power to establish international criminal tribunals, impose sanctions, and use force to address climate change as a security issue. Global international society could be pushed to urgently mitigate climate change via the material and social powers of the UNSC. 

However, a national-security type response to climate change may not even be able to tackle the full complexity of the crisis, and is not without considerable risk. Security responses often encourage short-term, territorially defined and militarised policies; yet environmental problems often require long-term, internationally coordinated change. As such, many environmentalists have resisted securitisation as ‘an unhelpful legitimisation of state-centric approaches that would prove … counterproductive,’ for example by encouraging inappropriate military responses. Many countries also express concern at the prospect of great powers using climate change as an excuse for military intervention or other coercive measures motivated by realpolitik. 

Crucially, in the face of real-world politics, such debates can only ever amount to a mere theoretical exercise. Regardless of whether full securitisation of the environment would lead to successful policies combatting climate change, current political realities suggest that achieving full securitisation is extremely unlikely. Establishing climate change as a security issue under the UNSC would require assent from all five permanent council members, namely the US, China, France, Russia and the UK, each of whom possess veto powers. Given Trump’s recent withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement and resolution to ‘drill, baby, drill,’ let alone Russia’s rejection of the idea that UNSC responsibilities include climate security, and China’s emphasis that climate change is primarily a sustainable development issue (p. 33), envisioning the UNSC deeming climate change a threat to international peace and security is almost comically unrealistic. 

Even if the future landscape of global international society shifts to become climate-friendlier, past attempts to securitise climate change indicate that the process would be far from simple. For example, in 2008-9, the first Obama administration failed in its attempt to frame climate change as a security issue, both in terms of gaining public acceptance and initiating policy change. Falkner and Buzan note that it is easier to securitise ‘specific threats from human agents’ rather than ‘diffuse threats from structural or natural causes’ (p. 42). Furthermore, responses to climate change are inextricably bound to economic competition; if great powers assumed responsibility for climate change via full securitisation, this would come at considerable economic cost. Under the current competitive global capitalist system, it is unrealistic to assume that powers would implement climate mitigation policies at the risk of grievous economic loss. 

Failing to tackle long-term threats such as climate change does not yet jeopardise international society and its current order. Scott and Ku suggest that ‘a tipping point in the physical world’ may trigger moves towards full securitisation of the environment. Yet current estimates indicating global shortcomings in mitigating climate change suggest we cannot afford to wait for such an ecological tipping point. Successful climate action is urgently required; waiting for some distant event which may or may not trigger securitisation of the environment, which would in turn likely fall short of providing effective climate change solutions, and may even compound the crisis through an increased risk of military response, cannot be the answer. 

Rather than theorising about highly unrealistic, and potentially ineffective approaches to mitigating climate change such as full securitisation of the environment, we should instead concentrate on devising policies that make climate action economically advantageous under the current global capitalist system. The compatibility of successful climate action within a capitalist system hinged on exponential growth and exploiting resources should also be fundamentally questioned, and possibilities for reform, such as ‘degrowth and delinking’, made a priority. Yet until reform becomes possible, we must work within the constraints of this system, and aim to make green policies a competitive, economically desirable choice at both domestic and international levels.

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