Linking climate change and security in Mexico: explorations into an attempted securitisation in the Global South

Abstract

Besides being discussed as an environmental or economic issue, climate change has increasingly been evoked as a security problem as well. However, research on the securitisation of climate change focuses mostly on the global level and on countries and actors in the Global North. Thus, there is a growing sentiment in the field of Critical Security Studies that there is a need to include countries from the Global South into the analysis as they are often the target of climate security constructions. Using a revised securitisation framework that distinguishes between different climate security discourses, this paper takes a closer look at the attempted securitisation of climate change in Mexico. The analysis shows that several foreign actors have linked climate change to human security and risk conceptions. Yet, because of the prevalence of other security issues, a diplomatic misunderstanding and a successful politicisation of climate change as environmental issue, its impact on Mexican policy has remained limited. By focusing on a defined national context in the Global South, the paper shows the specific difficulties that securitisations encounter in such a context and the role that different discourses and actors play in their relationship to the host country’s authorities.