Securitizing Climate as a threat multiplier increases military power that turns case and increases emission

2. Climate change, a problem securitized? Climate change, like any major change in the conditions of human societies, will create and fuel conflicts, affecting the living conditions of many people. In many cases, such change will be for the worse. This may, in turn, lead to violent conflict. The deterioration of the human environment and the resulting violent conflict may induce large numbers of people to migrate, thus also creating conflicts in areas less negatively affected by climate change. Beyond local and regional effects, climate change increases the global risk of violent conflict by adding another element of contention to the competition among major powers. These dangers associated with climate change are by now quite well rehearsed. But how high is the probability that they will occur? How likely is it that climate change will lead to more interstate wars, intrastate wars or terrorism? How much do we know about the links between climate change and violence? Are these dangers ‘real’ in the sense of having a high likelihood of occurring or are they largely fictitious, edge-of-range possibilities that are used to draw attention to climate change, a level of attention that would not be attainable by stressing the more likely, but less spectacular economic and social consequences of the problem? The latter would be understandable but potentially counterproductive. In the literature on securitization it is implied that when a problem is securitized it is difficult to limit this to an increase in attention and resources devoted to mitigating the problem (Brock 1997, Waever 1995). Securitization regularly leads to allround ‘exceptionalism’ in dealing with the issue as well as to a shift in institutional localization towards ‘security experts’ (Bigot 2006), such as the military and police. Methods and instruments associated with these security organizations – such as more use of arms, force and violence – will gain in importance in the discourse on ‘what to do’. A good example of securitization was the period leading to the Cold War (Guzzini 2004 ). Originally a political conflict over the organization of societies, in the late 1940s, the East-West confrontation became an existential conflict that was overwhelmingly addressed with military means, including the potential annihilation of humankind. Efforts to alleviate the political conflict were, throughout most of the Cold War, secondary to improving military capabilities. Climate change could meet a similar fate. An essentially political problem concerning the distribution of the costs of prevention and adaptation and the losses and gains in income arising from change in the human environment might be perceived as intractable, thus necessitating the build-up of military and police forces to prevent it from becoming a major security problem. The portrayal of climate change as a security problem could, in particular, cause the richer countries in the global North, which are less affected by it, to strengthen measures aimed at protecting them from the spillover of violent conflict from the poorer countries in the global South that will be most affected by climate change. It could also be used by major powers as a justification for improving their military preparedness against the other major powers, thus leading to arms races. This kind of reaction to climate change would be counterproductive in various ways. Firstly, since more border protection, as well as more soldiers and arms, is expensive, the financial means to compensate for the negative economic effects of reducing greenhouse gas emission and adapting to climate change will be reduced. Global military expenditure is again at the level of the height of the Cold War in real terms, reaching more than US $1,200 billion in 2006 or 3.5 percent of global income. While any estimate of the costs of mitigation (e.g. of restricting global warming to 2°C by 2050) and adaptation are speculative at the moment,1 they are likely to be substantial. While there is no necessary link between higher military expenditures and a lower willingness to spend on preventing and preparing for climate change, both policy areas are in competition for scarce resources. Secondly, the acceptance of the security consequences of climate change as an intractable problem could well reduce efforts to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts that will inevitably come with climate change. Climate change will have major consequences, particularly in countries where living conditions are already precarious (IPCC 2007, WBGU 2007). The consequences of climate change on some basic foundations of life, such as fresh water supplies, arable land and agricultural productivity in various parts of the world can already be roughly estimated for various global-warming scenarios. There are also more or less well founded predictions of the consequences of reduced availability of natural resources such as arable land and water on hunger and disease, even though such consequences are highly dependent on counter-measures and adaptation efforts in affected regions. There is no inevitability about these consequences. This is even more the case for violent conflict of various types. The links between reductions in resource availability and violent conflict are complex. A deterioration in human security – threats to the ‘vital core of life’ (Commission on Human Security 2003, p. 4) does not necessarily imply an increase in violent conflict. To assume the opposite may lead to the neglect of opportunities for conflict resolution and the prevention of conflict from turning violent. Those who do not accept the ‘securitization’ argument have argued that framing a problem as a security issue does not necessarily have these consequences (Knudsen 2001; Jackson 2006). While raising military preparedness and favouring military over civilian approaches to dealing with conflicts may have been the predominant reaction in the Cold War, this is supposedly not the case any more. It is argued that the rethinking of the best approach to security in the final phases of the Cold War – relevant keywords include Common Security and Comprehensive Security – as well as the expansion of the concept of security to cover a wide range of issues, including the environment and 1 One example of the difficulties is the discussion of the cost calculations in the Stern Review, see economics and culminating in the concept of human security already mentioned, decoupled ‘security talk’ from instruments particularly connected to the military and the police. The issue at stake here is whether the framing of an issue as a security matter can have different outcomes depending on the understanding of security used. Does it make a difference whether those ‘securitizing’ an issue are arguing in terms of ‘hard’ security – of wars, weapons, and armies – or in terms of ‘human security’ – of hunger, disease and refugees? Or put differently, can the ‘exceptionalism’ signified by use of the word ‘security’ have different configurations, for instance, can it be limited to the application of greater attention and more financial resources than ‘normal’, or will it inevitable be linked to the use of violence? While often talking past each other, proponents and critics of the ‘securitization’ argument have had major debates in the past, on environmental security in the early to mid-1990s, and on the development/security link, migration and terrorism in the early 2000s. Neither of these debates has been conclusive. Climate change offers another opportunity to investigate the validity of the claims of the ‘securitization’ critique. In what follows here, I will do this on the basis of four selected recent studies, which all ‘securitize’ climate change, albeit with differing understandings of security. None is limited to a narrow conception of ‘hard’ security, and all include ‘soft’ security concerns. However, they differ in their emphasis, which ranges from a conception of human security that encompasses all threats to human life and well-being, to national security. My question in this paper is whether differences in understanding lead to differences in the presentation of the problem, the analytical instruments and the policy recommendations. These three aspects structure the paper.