Abstract
This article situates Japan in the international climate security debate by analysing competing climate change discourses. In 2020, for the first time, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment included the term “climate crisis” (<em>kikō kiki</em>) in its annual white paper, and the Japanese parliament adopted a “climate emergency declaration” (<em>kikō hijō jitai sengen</em>). Does this mean that Japan’s climate discourse is turning toward the securitisation of climate change? Drawing on securitisation theory, this article investigates whether we are seeing the emergence of a climate change securitisation discourse that treats climate change as a security issue rather than a conventional political issue. The analysis focuses on different stakeholders in Japan’s climate policy: the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the parliament, the Cabinet, and sub- and non-state actors. Through a discourse analysis of ministry white papers and publications by other stakeholders, the article identifies a burgeoning securitisation discourse that challenges, albeit moderately, the status quo of incrementalism and inaction in Japan’s climate policy. This article further highlights Japan’s position in the rapidly evolving global debate on the urgency of climate action and provides explanations for apparent changes and continuities in Japan’s climate change discourse.
Highlights
Climate change is undeniably one of the most pressing issues of our time
We do argue that pow‐ erful discourses have enabling and constraining effects on actors through their ability to render certain prac‐ tices logical and others illogical (Doty, 1993). This means that the subsequent discourse analysis will not be able to predict the extent to which Japan’s climate policy will change, but the discovery of a burgeoning securitisa‐ tion discourse would demonstrate that the “conditions of possibility” (Weldes & Saco, 1996, p. 395) for serious climate action have materialised
We have excluded the Ministry of Defence from the discourse analysis because it is not involved in climate policymaking and because its 2020 white paper hardly contains any references to climate change
Summary
Climate change is undeniably one of the most pressing issues of our time. Global warming “will amplify exist‐ ing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems” (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014, p. 13). Given the increasing impact on people’s livelihoods, this article investigates to what extent Japan’s climate change dis‐ course addresses global warming as a security challenge. Occurrences of securitisation in Japan’s foreign and defence policy are limited to traditional security issues such as China’s military rise (Schulze, 2016) and North Korea’s nuclear development and past abductions of Japanese citizens (Hagström & Hanssen, 2015). Since the first climate emer‐ gency declarations emerged in Japan in late 2019, sig‐ nalling a potential turning point in Japan’s climate change discourse, the in‐depth analysis of recent documents focuses on the short yet crucial period from late 2019 to early 2021. Does the use of the terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” signal a discursive shift toward climate securitisation in Japan’s climate policy? This article poses the following research question: To what extent is Japan addressing climate change as a security threat? Put differently, does the use of the terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” signal a discursive shift toward climate securitisation in Japan’s climate policy?
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