Abstract
As the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the broader scientific community produce dire warnings and stronger evidence that climate change exists, is caused by human activities, and poses a significant threat to humans and all living creatures on the earth, effective agreements to mitigate climate change on the international level have seen little success. Even with little international progress, an increasing number of actors from the local to the global level are framing climate change as a security threat. Climate security, defined as reducing vulnerability and risk of harm, is a contested issue. This chapter will focus on identifying the language and processes used by global actors to frame climate change as a security issue, and the impact of such a frame on policymakers. In the end, the chapter will advance our understanding of the efficacy of framing climate change as a global security issue, and the impediments to reducing its threat vis-à-vis the promise of global governance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For an introduction to frame analysis, see Entman (1993) for a discussion of framing as ‘a process of selecting some aspects of a perceived reality in order to make them more salient for audience members’ (Entman 1993, p. 5), Goffman’s (1974) introduction of frame analysis as a tool to examine symbolic communication, and Hoffman’s (2011) and Nisbet’s (2009) application of frame analysis to climate change.
Bibliography
Barkdull, J., & Harris, P. G. (2014). Climate Catastrophe and Transformationalism. Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 16, 119–130.
Busby, J. W. (2007). Climate change and national security: An agenda for action. CSR No. 32, November. New York: Council on Foreign Relations.
Campbell, K. M. ed. (2008). Climatic cataclysm: The Foreign policy and national security implications of climate change. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Chaturvedi, S., & Doyle, T. (2015). Climate terror: A critical geopolitics of climate change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2015.
Crutzen, P. J., & Steffen, W. (2003). How long have we been in in the Anthropocene era? Climatic Change, 61(3), 251–257.
Dalby, S. (2009). Security and environmental change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Dalby, S. (2013a). Climate change as an issue of human security. In M. R. Redclift & M. Grasso (eds.), Handbook on climate change and human security (pp. 21–40). Cheltenham, UK, Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Dalby, S. (2013b). Climate change. The RUSI Journal, 158(3), 34–43.
Dalby, S. (2016). Climate change and the insecurity frame. In S. O’Lear & S. Dalby (Eds.), Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics. London, UK: Routledge.
deBrun, T. (2013) “Climate change and security” http://webtv.un.org/watch/climate-change-and-security-tony-debrum-marshall-islands-press-conference/2167969694001.
DiMento, J. F. C., & Doughman, P. eds. (2014). Climate change: What it means for us, our children, and our grandchildren. Cambridge, MA/ London: The MIT Press.
Dunlap, R. E. (2013). Climate change skepticism and denial: An introduction. American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 691–698.
Dyer, G. (2011). Climate wars: The fight for survival as the world overheats. London, UK: One World Publications.
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward a clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 51–58.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hoffman, A. (2011). Talking past each other? Cultural framing of skeptical and convinced logics in the climate change debate. Organization & Environment, 24(1), 3–33.
Kreft, S. et al. (2014). Global climate risk index 2015: Who suffers most from extreme weather events? Weather-related loss events from 2013 and 1994 to 2013. Bonn, Germany: Germanwatch e.V. (www.germanwatch.org).
Lacy, M. J. (2005). Security and climate change: International relation and the limits of realism. London: Routledge.
Lazarus, R. (2009). Super wicked problems and climate change: Restraining the present to liberate the future. Cornell Law Review, 94((5 July)), 1153–1234.
Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., & Leiserowitz, A., (2010) “Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis” (Yale University and George Mason University: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication).
Malm, A., & Hornborg, A. (2014). The geology of mankind? A critique of the anthropocene narrative. The Anthropocene Review, 1(1), 62–69.
Matthew, R. A. (2014). Climate change and human security. In J. F. C. DiMento & P. Doughman (eds.), Climate change: What it means for us, our children, and our grandchildren (pp. 257–294). Cambridge MA/London: The MIT Press.
Myers, T., Nisbet, M., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2012). A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change. Climate Change, 113(3), 1105–1112.
Nisbet, M. (2009). Communicating climate change: Why frames matter for public engagement. Environement: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 51(2), 12–23.
Obama, B. (2015) “Climate Change and President Obama’s Action Plan” https://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change.
Oels, A. (2014). Climate security as governmentality: From precaution to preparedness. In J. Stripple & H. Bulkeley (eds.), Governing the climate: New approaches to rationality, power and politics (pp. 197–218). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Oels, A. (2016). Resisting the climate security discourse: Restoring ‘the political’ in climate change politics. In S. O’Lear & S. Dalby (eds.), Reframing climate change (pp. 188–202). London/New York: Routledge.
O’Lear, S., & Dalby, S. (Eds.). (2016). Reframing Climate Change: Constructing Ecological Geopolitics. London, UK: Routledge.
Pettenger, M. (2007). The Social Construction of Climate Change: Power, knowledge, norms, discourses. London, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Rothe, D. (2016). Securitizing global warming: A climate of complexity. London, UK: Routledge.
Rowling, M. (2016) “Interview: Stop ignoring cost of smaller disasters - UN risk chief” in Thomson Reuters Foundation, 21 January, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-disaster-risks-idUSKCN0UZ12U.
Selby, J. (2014). Positivist climate conflict research: A critique. Geopolitics, 19(4), 829–856.
Shapiro, A. (2015), “For the Marshall Islands, the Climate Goal is ‘1.5 to Stay Alive’ “ http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/12/09/459053208/for-the-marshall-islands-the-climate-goal-is-1-5-to-stay-alive.
Szasz, A. (2016). Novel framings create new, unexpected allies for climate activism. In S. O’Lear & S. Dalby (eds.), Reframing climate change (pp. 150–170). London/New York: Routledge.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - Paris Agreement (2015), FCCC/CP/2015/L.9, Paris, 11 December 2015, Available from https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/2016/02/20160215%2006-03%20PM/Ch_XXVII-7-d.pdf.
U.S. Department of Defense [DoD]. (2016). DoD directive 4715.21 climate change adaptation and resilience. January 14. http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/471521p.pdf.
Vergara, A. 2003 “Vermeer and the Dutch Interior” http://essentialvermeer.com.
Von Lucke, F., Wellmann, Z., & Diez, T. (2014). What’s at stake in securitising climate change? Towards a differentiated approach. Geopolitics, 19(4), 857–884.
Webersik, C. (2010). Climate change and security: A gathering storm of global challenges. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Welzer, H. (2012). Climate wars: Why people will be killed in the 21st century. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
World Meteorological Organization, 26 January 2016, “2015 the hottest year on record” https://www.wmo.int/media/content/2015-hottest-year-record.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pettenger, M.E. (2017). Framing Global Climate Security. In: Burke, A., Parker, R. (eds) Global Insecurity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95144-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95145-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)