Climate Security in Europe, the US and the UN Security Council

Abstract

This chapter provides a narrative history of the policy-orientated literature on climate security, with a focus on highlighting climate discourse within US and European militaries, and the UN. With the fundamental science of climate change in place by the end of the 19th century, it was not until major environmental movements of the 1960s and ’70s that rising GHG concentrations were tentatively, then more boldly, linked to adverse consequences for human, national and international security. By the 1980s climate change as a security issue had been elevated at major global meetings, the US Congress and the UN. Although wider debates on environmental security became prominent in the 1990s, it was not until the mid-2000s that climate change as a security issue was significantly addressed. Robust attempts were made by many Western nations between 2007 and 2010 to frame climate change as a security threat, culminating in it being debated by the UNSC. A counter bloc of countries, dominated by the so-called BRICS, argued against climate change being debated by the UNSC and for it to be addressed exclusively as a sustainable development issue in non-securitised, multi-lateral forums. Climate security in the US was extensively addressed by the US Congress, the National Intelligence Community and by US think-tanks from 2007, and it emerged as an issue of increasing significance for the US military from 2009. In Europe, although there existed moves by various leaders and institutions to frame climate change as a security issue, it was never fully translated into near or long term military planning.