climate change “threat” reps obscures gendered militarization & causes of climate change,

In their 2007 report, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, a group of prominent retired U.S. military advisors described climate change as a “threat multiplier” facing many countries in the world, especially the United States. They catalogued dangers to national security from climate change-related flooding, drought, extreme weather, disease, famine, and environmentally-forced migration. The report’s focus on dangers and conflicts reflected the institutional perspective and interests of its all-male military advisory board. They recommended strategic planning to defend against the threat of climate change. They did not call for action on the causes of climate change such as the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The militarization of climate change, by defining it primarily as a security threat, represents one of several ways in which climate change policy is gendered. The international failure to respond effectively to climate change also can be understood by analyzing the gender dimensions of the institutions that dominate international climate change research, planning, and negotiations. In her 2010 Nature article, “Call in the Women,” feminist geographer Susan Buckingham argued that gender imbalance is a major reason for the ongoing stalemate in international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Starting in 1995, international environmental leaders have gathered each year at United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) meetings around the world to settle on a response to escalating changes in the global climate. In the past twenty years of annual COP meetings, these mainly male negotiators have not managed to produce any significant binding agreements to reduce the rate and scale of climate change. Negotiators’ inability to craft an international climate change agreement has persisted in the face of mounting scientific evidence and wide consensus about the dangerous consequences of climate change to the planet’s biosphere and human societies. Critics of negotiators’ ineffectiveness typically fault the economic interests of carbon emitting countries in maintaining a global energy and economic system that benefits them. They seldom attribute COP meeting failures to the enduring power of gender privilege. Buckingham, however, sees a more gendered COP landscape marked by the gendered culture and approach of male negotiators. To bolster this critique, she reports consistent research findings supporting improved decision-making in economic and political settings where women are included in adequate numbers. Not surprisingly, this research is ignored by predominately male representatives who dominate the ranks of COP representatives (women comprise less than thirty percent of COP delegates). This is despite the fact that in 1995 the United Nations called for including women in all levels of environmental decision-making. Buckingham’s conclusion: “there is enough evidence now to justify increasing women’s involvement in decision-making on climate change. We should do so without delay.”