Defense ministries regularly frame climate security in their national security strategies. Recently, “civil” ministries also begun mentioning climate security. However, they do not mean the same thing. This article develops four indicators to assess the commitment of climate security framings to an understanding of climate security as either human/environmental or national security issue. It applies the indicators to fifty submissions of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) by civil ministries and seventy defense publications. The paper finds that NDC commonly refer to climate changes’ anthropogenic origins and biophysical impacts but rarely to indirect consequences such as migration or conflict. In contrast, military administrations rarely mention anthropogenic origins but warn more often than NDC of indirect consequences. This shows that a civil domestic discourse on climate security has emerged, more attuned to human security and environmental security and more conducive to climate change mitigation and adaptation. The paper argues that organizational theory can explain these differences in securitization: defense and civil ministries frame climate security differently so that it falls in line with their respective mandates and established organizational features. The article concludes with a checklist for assessing framings of climate security.
The impacts of climate on security are contested. There is broad agreement that climate change endangers individuals, groups, and societies by means of a broad range of increasingly extreme weather phenomena as well as sudden and slow-onset disasters. However, the manifestation of these direct impacts depends on many intervening factors. Even more, contingent is the manifestation of indirect consequences such as displacement, the entrapment of populations, and military conflict.
Whether climate change affects security depends critically on policy and framing choices. Good policy choices strengthen resilience, support potentially displaced people, and reduce societal tensions, which are often the underlying reason for violent escalation. In turn, these policy choices are influenced by how climate change is framed as a security issue. Framings of climate security contain “often radically different ideas” and lead to significant differences in the “practices endorsed or dismissed and the actors or institutions legitimized or marginalized”.
Studies have often contrasted two prominent approaches to climate security that have very different policy implications. One frames climate change as a national security issue and highlights its second-order consequences such as displacement or scarcity conflicts, while neglecting mitigation and stigmatizing vulnerable populations. The second group of framings links climate change to human or ecological security by highlighting the grave dangers emerging for displaced people, entrapped populations, and underprivileged population groups.
Researchers have traced how international political actors commit to varying degrees to these different approaches. Research on the domestic politics of different states has mostly focused on military matters and defense ministries. Research on the activities of ministries other than departments of defense (from now on referred to as “civil ministries”) in relation to climate security is limited. Nonetheless, a recent study surprisingly found that coalitions of civil ministries often frame climate change as an “urgent security issue”.
This approach to climate security by civil ministries is understudied. Existing studies either do not capture more recent political developments or focus on individual cases. The few comparative studies that do exist focus either on defense or on civil ministries. No study has so far systematically compared whether civil and defense ministries frame climate security differently.
Hence, this study compares the framings of climate security used by civil and defense ministries. It suggests a system of four indicators that can be applied to evaluate whether institutional framings commit to framing climate security in terms of human security or national security. Climate security frames (1) may focus either on direct impacts on ecosystems or humans or on national security-related indirect impacts that usually require the involvement of human perpetrators to manifest. They also differ in (2) whether they refer to the anthropogenic origins of climate change. In most cases, such references are more important for the protection of ecosystems or human populations than for national security. Statements about climate impacts also express different degrees of (3) certainty and (4) temporality. The scientific evidence base gradually declines from contemporary direct impacts on human or ecological security to possible future indirect impacts on national security. When framings deviate from this epistemological schema, it is likely to reflect institutional campaigning for a preferred human/ecological or national climate security agenda.
The study demonstrates this framework by applying it to civil and defense documents from thirty-nine countries. It finds that civil and defense ministries frame climate security substantially different. This can be explained by organizational theory: bureaucracies frame new policy problems in line with existing activities and established organizational features. Civil ministries emphasize anthropogenic emissions and the biophysical impacts of climate change, whereas MoDs have a stronger focus on second-order consequences such as conflicts. Civil ministries are also more likely to describe the manifestation of climate-related insecurities as a past or present issue than are MoDs.
This indicates that defense ministries’ framings reflect shortcomings often associated with national security framings, while civil ministries put a stronger emphasis on human or even ecological security components. These differences show the diversity of approaches to climate security within governmental apparatuses. They also indicate a possible siloization of responses in the name of climate security. Since civil and defense ministries describe climate security very differently, they promote very different policy responses.
The article proceeds as follows. The first section outlines how policy responses are crucial for climate security outcomes and how they are affected by framing. A subsequent section introduces the four indicators of climate security frames. A brief section on method is followed by analysis and discussion of the findings.
This is an excerpt from the academic article authored by Anselm Vogler and published by International Studies Review. Click here to read the full version of this article.