18.06.2015

Institutskolloquium: ClimaSec – The Securitisation of Climate Change

Thomas Diez, Franziskus von Lucke, Zehra Wellmann at Wednesday, June 24th, 2015 · 16:00 c.t. · Room 124, Institut für Politikwissenschaft

Thomas Diez, Franziskus von Lucke, Zehra Wellmann (Universität Tübingen)

ClimaSec – The Securitisation of Climate Change: Actors, Processes and Consequences

INSTITUTSKOLLOQUIUM

Wednesday, June 24th, 2015 · 16:00 c.t. · Room 124, Institut für Politikwissenschaft

Climate change has increasingly been represented as a security issue – many security strategies refer to the dangerous effects of global warming, science, media and civil society forecast apocalyptic scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. But has climate change really been effectively turned into a security issue in the sense that it is widely seen as an existential threat that calls for extraordinary measures or legitimised important new policies?
This talk draws on a research project funded by the German Science Foundation comparing the securitisation of climate change in four countries (USA, Germany, Mexico, Turkey). To what extent has climate change been represented as a security issue in these cases and what are the variations in terms of different climate security discourses? Who was driving the securitisation processes, how can we assess the political consequences and what explains the differences between cases?
Drawing on a typology of different climate security representations we demonstrate that the choices of discursive entrepreneurs in specific historical and cultural contexts played a major role in how debates about climate change have evolved in the four cases and have led to very different policies.