The Securitisation of Climate Change ─ Actors, processes and consequences

It thus closes an empirical gap in the literature, in which securitisation studies focus either on the global level or on single-country cases and do not reconstruct detailed securitisation dynamics. The comparative framework presented here allows conclusions to be drawn about the conditions and consequences of successful securitisation based on empirical and comparative analysis rather than theoretical debate only. The authors focus on which climate-security discourses have been dominant, which actors have been involved, which political consequences have been legitimised and what role the broader context has played in enabling the specific securitisations. By including industrialised countries (USA, Germany) and emerging economies (Mexico, Turkey) as well as climate vanguards (Germany, Mexico) and laggards (USA, Turkey), the book generates insights into how securitisation processes play out in different contexts and at the same time address the 'Western bias' in securitisation and environmental studies .

As a basis for research, the authors develop a new and systematic theoretical framework that distinguishes between different referent objects of securitisation (territorial, individual and planetary) and between a security and risk dimension. This framework clarifies and summarises the ever-increasing literature on different forms of securitisation and the relationship between security and risk. On the one hand, the book thus introduces order into a currently rather confusing debate. On the other hand, this framework allows the authors to operationalise different conceptions of securitisation and thus to trace these in the empirical studies. The book further contributes to securitisation theory by not only addressing the two different logics of security and risk, but by also re-defining and mapping the relationship between politicisation and securitisation.

This study uses actor analysis, discourse analysis of the most relevant reports on climate change and security, expert interviews, and the analysis of parliamentary debates and newspaper coverage. This systematic methodological approach enables the authors to trace securitisation processes and to come to detailed insights about how the dominant climate-security discourses have translated into concrete policies. On this basis, we can also assess these consequences from a normative perspective. In addition, the book generates insights into the conditions for success or failure of securitisation by including the role of specific actors as well as the wider context. Thus, the approach contributes to the literature on climate change as well as to critical security studies in general and encourages a more empirically and comparatively focused research agenda in both fields.

Thomas Diez is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tubingen, Germany. He is author or editor of ten previous books in English, including, most recently,A Different Kind of Power? The EU’s Role in International Politics (editor, 2014) andKey Concepts in International Relations (editor, 2011).

Franz von Lucke is a researcher in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tubingen, Germany.

Zehra Wellmann is a research assistant and PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tubingen, Germany.