Thomas Diez - The Securitisation of Climate Change: Actors, Processes and Consequences

This book provides the first systematic comparative analysis of climate security discourses.

It analyses the securitisation of climate change in four different countries: the USA, Germany, Turkey, and Mexico. The empirical analysis traces how specific climate security discourses have become dominant, which actors have driven this process, what political consequences this has had and what role the broader context has played in enabling these specific securitisations. In doing so, the book outlines a new and systematic theoretical framework that distinguishes between different referent objects of securitisation (territorial, individual and planetary) and between a security and risk dimension. It thereby clarifies the ever-increasing literature on different forms of securitisation and the relationship between security, risk and politics. Whereas securitisation studies have traditionally focused on either a single country case study or a global overview, consequently failing to reconstruct detailed securitisation dynamics, this is the first book to provide a systematic comparative analysis of climate security discourses in four countries and thus closes an empirical gap in the present literature. In addition, this comparative framework allows the drawing of conclusions about the conditions for and consequences of successful securitisation based on empirical and comparative analysis rather than theoretical debate only.

This book will of interest to students of climate change, environmental studies, critical security, global governance, and IR in general.

Thomas Diez is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tbingen, Germany. He is author/editor of numerous books, including, most recently, A Different Kind of Power? The EUs Role in International Politics (2014).

Franziskus von Lucke is Researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tbingen, Germany.

Zehra Wellmann is Researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Tbingen, Germany.

Series Editor: J. Peter Burgess, PRIO, Oslo
The aim of this book series is to gather state-of-the-art theoretical reflection and empirical research into a core set of volumes that respond vigorously and dynamically to the new challenges to security scholarship.

The Geopolitics of American Insecurity
Terror, power and foreign policy
Edited by Franois Debrix and Mark J. Lacy

Security, Risk and the Biometric State
Governing borders and bodies
Benjamin J. Muller

Security and Global Governmentality
Globalization, governance and the state
Edited by Miguel de Larrinaga and Marc G. Doucet

Critical Perspectives on Human Security
Rethinking emancipation and power in international relations
Edited by David Chandler and Nik Hynek

Securitization Theory
How security problems emerge and dissolve
Edited by Thierry Balzacq

Feminist Security Studies
A narrative approach
Annick T. R. Wibben

The Ethical Subject of Security
Geopolitical reason and the threat against Europe
J. Peter Burgess

Politics of Catastrophe
Genealogies of the unknown
Claudia Aradau and Rens van Munster

Security, the Environment and Emancipation
Contestation over environmental change
Matt McDonald

Securitization, Accountability and Risk Management
Transforming the public security domain
Edited by Karin Svedberg Helgesson and Ulrika Mrth

Commercialising Security
Political consequences for European military operations
Edited by Anna Leander

Transnational Companies and Security Governance
Hybrid practices in a postcolonial world
Jana Hnke

Citizenship and Security
The constitution of political being
Edited by Xavier Guillaume and Jef Huysmans

Security, Emancipation and the Politics of Health
A new theoretical perspective
Joo Nunes

Security, Technology and Global Politics
Thinking with Virilio
Mark Lacy

Critical Security and Chinese Politics
The Anti-Falungong Campaign
Juha A. Vuori

Governing Borders and Security
The politics of connectivity and dispersal
Edited by Catarina Kinnvall and Ted Svensson

Contesting Security
Strategies and logics
Edited by Thierry Balzacq

Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security
Peace anxieties
Edited by Bahar Rumelili

Biopolitics of Security
A political analytic of finitude
Michael Dillon

Security Expertise
Practice, power, responsibility
Edited by Trine Villumsen Berling and Christian Bueger

Transformations of Security Studies
Dialogues, diversity and discipline
Edited by Gabi Schlag, Julian Junk and Christopher Daase

The Securitisation of Climate Change
Actors, processes and consequences
Thomas Diez, Franziskus von Lucke and Zehra Wellmann

The Securitisation of Climate Change is a welcome and important contribution to the literature. The authors provide detailed empirical analysis of the way securitisation practices play out in a range of national settings, and make the important point that the different forms of linking climate change and security are crucial to the types of practices securitisation encourages. In the process, this book not only provides much-needed empirical depth and theoretical nuance to literature on climate security, it also makes a broader contribution to debates about the construction of security and the normative implications of this construction in international relations.

Matt McDonald, University of Queensland, Australia

In addressing the great challenge of our time, The Securitisation of Climate Change brings unprecedented analytical sensitivity, nuance and breadth to the politics of climate change. Reflecting the fascinating diversity of securitisations exposed in their comparative study, the authors compellingly advance the conceptual and ethical frontiers of securitisation theory.

Stefan Elbe, University of Sussex, UK

The Securitisation of Climate Change is a great read for anyone seeking to understand how and why climate change gets connected to ideas of security. Cross-country comparisons provide a sophisticated look at the variation in ways that climate change security links are made by actors in different political, economic and social contexts. The authors provide some much-needed depth to existing debates while remaining accessible to readers.

Nicole Detraz, University of Memphis, USA