Climate change and maritime security

Abstract

Climate change has been recognised as a major issue for coastal populations. Under this context, the potential socio-economic, environmental and health impacts at local, regional and global scales have received considerable attention by scientists. The knowledge gained feed official strategic documents, which aim to increase awareness but also propose and apply management and mitigation measures towards reducing risks for human beings and the natural environment. Dependencies between human security, social vulnerability of coastal communities and the occurrence of maritime crime have also been studied. There is a consensus on the need to deepen the understanding of the links between climate change effects and threats to maritime security, but it remains to be seen if existing knowledge on the interplay between climate change and maritime security has been translated into policy. This article offers a synthesis on recent evidence and knowledge gained to elaborate the nexus between climate change impacts, social vulnerabilities and the occurrence of maritime criminality. We further explore the extent to which official documents account for the maritime dimension of climate change security. Despite the existence of an embryonic official discourse linking climate change and maritime security, our analysis reveals significant gaps between the concerns raised by the academic community and what is acknowledged in national and regional official strategic documents. Informing decision-makers and stakeholders about the possible dependencies between climate change and maritime security is thus a crucial step towards improving global ocean governance.