Master Thesis

Political Science | International Relations

Name: Elze van Langen

Student ID: 10786201

Supervisor: Dr. L. W. Fransen

Second reader: Dr. F. Boussaid

Date: 11 August 2016

Word count: 19.371

The securitisation of climate change A discourse analysis of the NATO and its member states

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Abstract

Although the representation of environmental concerns in the security agenda is increasingly

recognised, the securitisation of climate change remains a topic of contestation. This thesis

elaborates on the question how the visions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)

and its member states correspond regarding the securitisation of climate change. This research

draws on the analytical framework of Diez et al. (2016) and presents a comparative analysis of

discourses on climate security. The discourses of the US, Germany and the Netherlands are

analysed and complemented with the discourse of the NATO, which touches upon the lack of

attention that has been given to climate security discourses within international organisations

(IOs). This thesis argues that NATO generally constructs climate change as a territorial danger,

which corresponds most with the discourse of the US. Although the leadership role of the US

within NATO can be a plausible explanation for the similarity, it is argued that NATO’s vision

may best be explained by its traditional identity of a military alliance. Despite expressions of

fear for the militarisation of climate change, this thesis suggests that the short-term political

implications of NATO’s vision are limited, since its mandate and policies concerning climate

change are largely vague and undecided.

Cover photo by Isaac Cordal

The cement sculpture is created by street artist Isaac Cordal and belongs to a larger installation called ‘Follow the Leaders’.

The artwork serves as a metaphor for power-mad businessmen who run our capitalist global order. However, after a picture

went viral online, this sculpture was renamed by social media users as ‘Politicians talking about climate change’ (Cordal 2011;

Sullivan 2014).

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Preface

Since several years, I am fascinated by the global issue of climate change. When I started to

read more about this topic for my MA thesis project, I discovered an article by George Marshall

(2014). In an attempt to explain the difficulties for our global society to find a collective

response to climate change, Marshall found the answer in something we all share: our human

brain. The exceptionally amorphous problem of climate change provides us with so many

uncertainties that our human brain is incapable to fully address the issue. It touches upon our

cognitive blind spots, fear of death and perception of threats. This made me realise that climate

change is largely socially constructed, and that the way and to what extent it is perceived as a

security threat can have great political implications. I decided to write my thesis about the

securitisation of climate change, in which I analysed the discourse of the North Atlantic Treaty

Organisation (NATO), an IO which traditionally is not involved with climate change. While I was

still writing my thesis, I applied for an internship at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Within

two weeks I was hired as an intern at the ambassador for international organisations. Hence, I

will continue to work with the NATO and many other interesting institutions. I am looking

forward to the career that lies ahead of me, and I uphold the ambition to work with climate

issues in the future.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor dr. Luc Fransen for his valuable guidance and advice, and

dr. Farid Boussaid for taking the time to read my thesis as a second reader. I would also like to

thank Ariane Berends for her support as a study advisor and involvement throughout the

process. Subsequently, I would like to acknowledge the interview respondents, who provided

me with new insights and information: Rob de Rave (HCSS), Louise van Schaik (Clingendael

Institute), Michel van Winden (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and Wilbert van der Zeijden

(PAX for Peace). Lastly, I would like to thank the people who are close to me and have been of

great support throughout my study.

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Table of contents List of tables and figures 6 Abbreviations 7 1. Introduction 8

1.1. Research topic 8 1.2. Research structure 9

2. Research design 10

2.1. Research question 10 2.2. Analytical framework: Analysing climate security discourses 11 2.3. Research design: Comparative design 11 2.4. Relevance 14 2.5. Outlook: the argument 14

3. Theoretical framework: The securitisation of climate change 16

3.1. The climate-security nexus 16 3.2. The theory of securitisation (Copenhagen School) 19 3.3. The influx of risk into the field of security 21 3.4. Differentiating securitisation: threat or risk? 24 3.5. Analytical framework of climate security discourses 25 3.6. Normative implications of securitising climate change 27

4. The United States and Germany: Territorial versus individual climate security 30

4.1. United States: Climate change as a territorial danger 30 4.1.1. The US and the NATO 30 4.1.2. The general climate debate 30 4.1.3. The securitisation of climate change 32 4.1.4. Political consequences 34 4.1.5. Conclusion 34

4.2. Germany: Climate change as an individual insecurity 35 4.2.1. Germany and the NATO 35 4.2.2. The general climate debate 35 4.2.3. The securitisation of climate change 37 4.2.4. Political consequences 38 4.2.5. Conclusion 39

4.3. Conclusion: Territorial versus individual climate security 39 5. The Netherlands: Climate change as a planetary insecurity 40

5.1. Introduction 40 5.2. The Netherlands and the NATO 41 5.3. The general climate debate 41 5.4. The securitisation of climate change 44 5.5. Political consequences 49 5.6. Conclusion 50

6. The NATO: Climate change and territorial defence 51

6.1. Introduction 51 6.2. A short history of the NATO 51 6.3. The securitisation of climate change 53

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6.4. Political consequences 58 6.5. Conclusion 59

7. Conclusions 60 7.1. Research question: a comparative analysis 60 7.2. Normative implications 61 7.3. Limitations and recommendations for further research 62

References 63

Appendix I: Interviews 70

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List of tables and figures

Figure 1.1: Research structure

Figure 2.1: Hierarchical comparative design

Table 3.1: Important keywords distinguishing between the danger and risk dimension

Figure 3.1: The space of politics and security

Table 3.2: A typology of climate security discourses

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Abbreviations

CCMS Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society

CCPI Climate Change Performance Index

COP Conference of the Parties

DOD US Department of Defence

DPCR NATO Defence Planning Capability Review

EC European Commission

EU European Union

GHG Greenhouse Gases

IO International organisation

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

KNMI Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut

LPF Lijst Pim Fortuyn

NAS Dutch National Adaptation Strategy

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NCA US National Climate Assessment

NGO Non-governmental organisation

NMP Nationaal Milieubeleidsplan

PA NATO Parliamentary Assembly

PBL Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving

RIVM Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu

STC NATO Science and Technology Committee

UN United Nations

UNEP United Nations Environment Programme

UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

UNSC United Nations Security Council

US United States

VROM Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer

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1. Introduction

1.1. Research topic

The changing climate has already started to reshape our world. Droughts, floods, rising sea

levels and water scarcity have made climate change an issue of security policies. The climate-

security nexus is part of the larger context of broadening the definition of security, a

development that has taken place since the 1980s (Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.1)1. The

intensification of the environmental debate and the changing strategic environment has even

brought the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as an intergovernmental military

alliance into the realm of environmental politics (Depledge & Feakin 2012: 80). The most recent

Strategic Concept of 2010 revealed NATO’s concern about the future impact of climate change

on areas of interest to the alliance (NATO 2010: 13). In the run-up to the UN Climate Change

Conference in Paris (COP21) in 2015, NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly (PA) urged the allied

governments to support an ambitious legally-binding global agreement (NATO PA 2015).

While all NATO member countries agree on the likely impacts of climate change on

international security, every single state has a different opinion on how much and which

impacts it might have, as well as to what extent climate change should be integrated in foreign

and security policies (Vitel 2015: 6). There are many possibilities to frame climate change as a

security issue. In other words, the way in which the securitisation of climate change develops,

can have many different outcomes. The reason for this is because climate security discourses

can be important for the legitimisation of certain policies or actions, which normally would not

have been approved when there was no recognition of climate change at all (Diez et al. 2016:

ch.1, 1.2).

Hence, the recognition of climate change by a military alliance that traditionally does

not focus on environmental issues and which conception of security lies within the traditional

state-centric approach, is an interesting but controversial development. The way the NATO as

an international organisation (IO) and its individual members construct climate change as a

security issue, can have normative implications. It can give climate change more prominence

within the political agenda, but it can also expand the military’s policy reach (idem: ch.1, 1.4).

A comparative analysis of the climate security discourses within the United States (US),

1 References of Diez et al. (2016) will not be showed in page numbers, but in (sub)chapters. This is because the eBook version of the source is used, which does not provide page numbers.

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Germany and the Netherlands, as well as within the NATO, can provide a fuller picture on the

different visions and interactions concerning the climate-security nexus.

1.2. Research structure

Following this introduction on the overall research topic and the second chapter of the thesis’

research design, chapter 3 will explain the theories which are useful for an understanding of

the nexus between climate change and security. This part will elaborate on the theory of

securitisation developed by the Copenhagen School and the incorporation of the logic of risk in

securitisation theory, which ultimately will arrive at the analytical framework on climate

security discourses and the normative implications of securitisation. Chapter 4 will elaborate

on the climate security discourses of the US and Germany as two members of the NATO. In

chapter 5, these cases are complemented with an empirical analysis of the climate security

discourse in the Netherlands. The NATO and the way it securitises climate change will be

explored in chapter 6. Consequently, conclusions will be drawn from these different cases in

chapter 7 (figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1: The research structure

•Climate security

•Research design

Introduction

• Securitisation

• Analytical framework of climate security

discourses

Theory•US & Germany

•The Netherlands

•NATO

Analysis

•Conclusions

Combination theory & analysis

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2. Research design

2.1. Research question

In 2010, former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for the alliance to play

a significant role in the global response to climate change (Depledge & Feakin 2012: 80). In

NATO’s most recent Strategic Concept of 2010 was recognised that “key environmental and

resource constraints”, including climate change, “will further shape the future security

environment in areas of concern to NATO and have the potential to significantly affect NATO

planning and operations” (NATO 2010: 13). Although the NATO has received great scholarly

attention, research on the alliance and the way it constructs climate change as an emerging

security challenge is scarcely represented in the literature.

Studies on securitisation have traditionally focused on either a case study concerning a

single country or a global overview, with the danger of failing to reconstruct thorough

securitisation dynamics. Recently, Diez et al. (2016: ch.1, 1.2) addressed this gap by providing

a systematic comparative analysis of discourses on climate change and security in four

countries. The authors developed a six-fold matrix which allowed them to trace securitisations

in more detail than so far has been done. It also clarifies the connections between security,

threat and risk. Furthermore, it makes such securitisations more applicable to empirical

analyses and enables the engagement with the normative debate surrounding securitisation.

This thesis will further elaborate on the analysis of Diez et al. (2016) by assessing the

securitisation of climate change in the Netherlands and comparing it to the discourses in the

US and Germany, which are already analysed by the authors. Although they took the state as

the main referent object in their research, the literature has not yet offered a comprehensive

understanding of climate security discourses within IOs (idem: 726). This research paper aims

to address this gap in the literature by analysing the securitisation of climate change within the

NATO, and by consolidating these findings with analyses of its NATO members the Netherlands,

Germany and the US. This thesis will therefore elaborate on the question:

How do the visions of the NATO and its member states correspond with regard to the

securitisation of climate change?

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2.2. Analytical framework: Analysing climate security discourses

This thesis will use the analytical framework on climate security discourses developed by Diez

et al. (2016), because it provides a recent and comprehensive method to analyse and compare

the securitisation on climate change in different cases. The framework consists of a six-fold

matrix of securitisation with two dimensions. On one dimension it distinguishes between

‘threatification’ (the construction of security as an existential threat) and ‘riskification’ (a more

diffuse logic of security). On the other dimension it distinguishes between three different levels

of referent objects, which climate change is seen to threaten the most: the territorial, individual

and planetary level.

On the territorial level, states are seen as the main referent objects. However, Diez et

al. (2016: ch.2, 2.2) acknowledge that other group entities can also be the referent object, such

as the NATO. This means that the NATO as an alliance with 28 member states can produce

articulations in terms of territorial danger or territorial risk. This argument is supported by

McDonald (2013: 46-47) who argues that IOs play a key role in the provision of security in

international contexts. Since climate change poses a threat to both states and individuals as

components of international society, IOs in general are powerfully advanced in linking climate

change to international security.

Diez et al. (2016: ch.1, 1.3) acknowledge that their comparative research of four

countries might run the risk of methodological nationalism, which might reinforce the

boundaries of states. This is in conflict with the (to a large degree) transnational character of

debates on climate change and the importance of transnational actors in these debates, such

as international expert panels and NGOs. However, they also argue that climate policies

eventually need to be adopted in national contexts in which political debates on climate change

largely take place. The approach in this thesis meets this ambivalent issue by highlighting the

linkages between the national contexts of the Netherlands, Germany and the US with the

international context of the NATO.

2.3. Research design: Comparative design

In this thesis a comparative design is applied in relation to a qualitative research strategy, which

means the research design takes the form of a multiple-case study (Bryman 2012: 74). A case

study can be defined as an intensive examination of a single unit (setting) for the purpose of

understanding a larger number of similar units (Gerring 2004: 341). This can be exemplified as

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the external validity or generalisability (Bryman 2012: 69). Hence, a multiple-case study is a

research design in which the number of cases exceeds one. This research design has been

chosen because this thesis has the ambition of theory-building instead of theory-testing and

uses information-rich cases. The design has the advantage that it allows the researcher to

examine the operation of generative causal mechanisms in divergent or similar contexts (idem:

74).

This thesis will elaborate on the NATO and three member states, namely the US,

Germany and the Netherlands. The US is a relevant case in this study, since it fulfils a role of

leadership within the NATO. From a military perspective, the US is most dominant with its high

military expenditures (approximately 70 percent of total NATO expenditures) (Elshout & Koelé

2016: 10-11). However, its overall performance on climate change can be measured as poor,

concerning its high emission levels and slow adoption of federal climate policies (Diez et al.

2016: ch.3, 3.1). Germany is an interesting case as well, since it has long been hesitant towards

military involvement through the NATO (Carstensen 2016), as well as in its national debate on

climate security. Accordingly, Germany is called an ambivalent forerunner in the field of climate

change. While it is a highly industrialised country with a strong economic performance, it is also

characterised by progressive climate policies (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4).

The climate security discourses within the cases of Germany and the US, mainly

obtained from the secondary source of Diez et al. (2016), will be compared with the discourse

of the Netherlands, obtained from primary sources. The Netherlands has been chosen as a case

because it is seen as a loyal NATO member and is known for its ambition to play a leading role

in environmental policies, though its performance on climate change is far behind Germany

(WRR 2010: 9; Dutch Ministry of Defence 2013: 8; Germanwatch and CAN 2016).

Besides the systematic comparative analysis of the three NATO members, the climate

security discourse of the NATO will be analysed as well. A reason for this is, despite the fact that

climate policies eventually have to be implemented in national contexts, international and

transnational actors are influencing these national debates (Diez et al. 2016: ch1, 1.3). Although

the NATO and the Netherlands will receive special attention in this study, it will not be

appropriate to compare an international organisation on a one-to-one basis with a nation-state.

Therefore, the analysis of the NATO will be positioned above the comparative analysis of the

three member countries (figure 2.1).

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Figure 2.1: The hierarchical comparative design

The combination of data-collection methods is typical for case studies, which makes the

strategy of triangulation appropriate (Eisenhardt 1989: 534). Triangulation in this thesis refers

to an approach that uses “multiple methods of investigation and sources of data” (Bryman

2012: 392). In this study, a discourse analysis on 63 relevant documents has been carried out.

These include policy papers and government reports and statements from the member states’

ministries in the sectors of defence, foreign affairs and the environment, as well as strategic

concepts, treaties and resolutions of the NATO. Reports of research institutes and think tanks

have been analysed, most of them can be found in the Dutch case, such as the ‘Advisory Council

on International Affairs’ (AIV), ‘Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid’ (WRR) and

Clingendael Institute. Also, attention has been given to discursive entrepreneurs through

opinion pieces and autobiographies. Consequently, civil society reports, newspaper articles,

online news articles, and a radio fragment are used to reflect the broader debate.

The choice of the documents is based on their importance, considering the time they

were published and the public and/or political attention they received, and the extent to which

the document links climate change to security. The documents were published in the time span

of 1949 until 2016, but most of them find their origin between 1988 and 2016. The evident

explanation for this is that the amount of publications increased due to the increased attention

for the environment. Discourses can be defined as ‘selective representations of complex

phenomena’ that traverse the conventional boundaries of different disciplines (Fairclough

2013: 3-4). In order to reconstruct the broader debate, discover linkages between actors and

find certain motivations behind securitising moves, semi-structured interviews have been

conducted with several policy-makers and experts within the field of climate change and

security.

NATO

The Netherlands

Germany(Diez et al. 2016)

United States(Diez et al. 2016)

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2.4. Relevance

This thesis wishes to make an empirical as well as a theoretical contribution. Empirically this

thesis aims to provide a better understanding of how the NATO frames the emerging security

challenge of climate change and to what extent this corresponds to the securitisation of climate

change of its members, considering the Netherlands, Germany and the US. Theoretically this

thesis aims to contribute to the debate about securitisation and elaborate on the underexposed

aspects of the literature by using the analytical framework of Diez et al. (2016: ch.1, 1.2). The

aim is to develop a better understanding of the logic of risk and its relationship with security,

and of the effects of the related languages on political decision-making (idem: ch.2, 2.1).

There are many possibilities to frame climate change as a security issue and these

different discourses are of importance for the legitimisation of certain policies, such as military

security policies. Therefore, it is relevant to analyse discourses on climate security and to assess

its normative implications. Whether these discourses can be perceived as a good or a bad thing,

“depends on the exact ways in which the securitisation of climate change unfolds” (Diez et al.

2016: ch.1, 1.2). When such a discourse brings climate change on the political agenda and thus

facilitates political decision-making, it can be a good thing. But when such a discourse helps to

expand the military’s policy reach and neglects climate policy, it can be a bad thing as well. How

this takes place is in turn a consequence of several structural factors, such as the influence of

discursive entrepreneurs or the historical evolution of a political institution (ibid.).

The way the NATO and the Netherlands as a NATO member construct climate change

as a security issue, can thus matter in the legitimisation of policies. In this sense, the question

of whether the linkage of climate change and security is a good or a bad thing depends on how

the securitisation of climate change in these cases unfolds. In comparatively analysing the

NATO as an international alliance and three of its member states, it is possible to assess to what

extent the climate security discourse of the NATO corresponds to the discourses of its members

and what further conclusions can be drawn.

2.5. Outlook: the argument

This thesis shows that the vision of the NATO with regard to the securitisation of climate change

corresponds most to the climate security discourse of the US. Both actors generally frame

climate change in terms of a territorial danger, while Germany primarily constructs the issue as

an individual risk and the Netherlands generally frames climate change as a planetary risk.

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Although the reason for the similar discourses of the NATO and the US touches upon the

leadership role of the US within the alliance, this thesis argues that NATO’s vision is largely

influenced by its traditional identity of a military alliance which is built on the principle of

collective territorial defence.

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3. Theoretical framework: The securitisation of climate change

This chapter will elaborate on the theories concerning climate change and security. After the

development of the climate-security nexus is discussed, the theory on securitisation developed

by the Copenhagen School is explained. This theory on the narrow conceptualisation of security

forms the basis for the rest of the chapter, in which the incorporation of risk as a broadening

of the securitisation theory is described. Subsequently, attention is given to the analytical

framework on climate security discourses developed by Diez et al. (2016). The chapter

concludes with the normative implications of the securitisation on climate change.

3.1. The climate-security nexus

The growing appeal of ‘climate security’ in international politics represents a recent and

sufficiently successful introduction of concerns about the environment into the security

agenda. Despite this increased recognition, the nexus between environmental change and

security continues to be a topic of contestation (Trombetta 2008: 585). First, Trombetta (2008:

585) argues that environmental problems are often overruled by ‘more urgent threats’. This

can actually be understood as the perceived urgency of threats, since the human brain tends

to recognise visible and recent threats, such as terrorist violence, as more urgent. Widely

shared by cognitive psychologists, climate change is an exceptionally amorphous problem. “It

provides us with no defining qualities that would give it a clear identity: no deadlines, no

geographic location, no single cause or solution and, critically, no obvious enemy” (Marshall

2014).

Second, the contestation remains whether the environment can be considered as a

security issue (Trombetta 2008: 585). This refers to the debate on security studies between the

‘traditionalists’ and the ‘non-traditionalists’. The traditional conception of security is supported

by political realists, who argue that security is centred around the military threat and the use

of force. They take the state as the referent power-exercising object (Biswas 2011: 2). The

increasing attention for the international economic and environmental dimensions from the

1970s and the rising concerns on identity issues and transnational crime during the 1990s

contributed to the dissatisfaction about the military and nuclear focus of security imposed by

the Cold War. This generated the debate about the conceptualisation of security, in which the

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traditional notion of security was increasingly criticised by its insufficiency to explain emerging

threats (Buzan et al. 1998: 2; Biswas 2011: 2).

Political scientists including Ullman (1983); Jahn, Lemaitre and Waever (1987); Nye and

Lynn-Jones (1988); Brown (1989); Matthews (1989); Nye (1989); Haftendorn (1991); Crawford

(1991) and Tickner (1992) explicitly argued for a widening of the concept of security (Buzan et

al. 1998: 2). The incorporation of the environment into the realm of security initially appeared

to be a reasonable idea, since it could increase the political relevance of environmental

problems (Trombetta 2008: 586). According to Buzan (1991: 433) “environmental security

concerns the maintenance of the local and the planetary biosphere as the essential support

system on which all other human enterprises depend.” Others welcomed the concept since it

emphasises different values like ecology, ‘globality’, and governance over values like identity,

territoriality and sovereignty, traditionally associated with the nation-state. Yet others

mentioned that environmental security could analytically contribute to a better understanding

of new typologies of vulnerability and the associated potential for conflict (Trombetta 2008:

586).

Traditional security analysts opposed this development by arguing that the progressive

widening of security endangered its intellectual coherence, incorporating so many issues that

its essential meaning became void (Buzan et al. 1998: 2). This argument implied concerns about

the possible evocation of “confrontational practices associated with the state and the military

which should be kept apart from the environmental debate” (Trombetta 2008: 586). These

concerns encompassed the possibilities of generating new competencies for the military -the

militarisation of the environment rather than the greening of security- or the rise of

nationalistic attitudes to protect the national environment. Moreover, security could

undermine the cooperative efforts in order to deal with environmental problems, introducing

a zero-sum rationality in which winners and losers could be created. Similar objections centred

around the southern perception of environmental security as a security discourse of northern

countries (ibid.).

As the debate between the traditionalists and the non-traditionalists went on, the

concept of environmental security slowly gained popularity. In April of 2007 the issue of climate

change was discussed for the first time in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Although

state representatives remained divided over whether climate change and, more generally,

environmental degradation could be considered as a security issue (Trombetta 2008: 586),

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narratives about environmentally induced conflicts entered decisively onto the world stage. In

that same year, the violence in Darfur was attributed to a combination of resource scarcities,

demographic pressures, and climate change by influential actors such as the United Nations

Environment Programme (UNEP) and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

Well-known security pundits like Thomas Homer-Dixon and Jeffrey Sachs shaped the

academic and even popular discussion by emphasising the connection between environmental

degradation and violent conflict. Along with these climate conflict narratives came other

predictions about the threat of so-called ‘climate refugees’ (Trombetta 2008: 592; Hartmann;

2013; 47). Research on environmental conflict and the corresponding narratives created an

intense academic debate in which not only the empirical validity of claims and methodologies

were addressed, but also the normative implications. Critics argued that the debate eliminated

the responsibility of developed countries, represented people in the Third World as villains, and

attempting to frame environmental problems in terms of national security (Trombetta 2008:

593; Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4).

Trombetta (2008: 593) argues that the climate security debate has shown two

tendencies which can be translated into two discourses. The first one is influenced by a national

security discourse with an emphasis on conflicts and population displacement, in which the

threat to global order and stability has gained prominence. While this discourse is largely

informed by reactive and defensive measures, the second discourse challenges these security

practices by outlining the inadequacy of military responses and preparation in dealing with

environmental issues. Instead, it shifts the attention to the concept of vulnerability and

suggests the promotion of both mitigation and adaptation to environmental change. It argues

that preventive measures to ensure safety and resilience provide the best results.

These two aspects – one inspired by reactive measures, and the other by preventive

measures - are both present in climate security discourses of western countries (idem: 594).

These aspects can be connected to two important concepts within the securitisation of climate

change: the concept of threat and the concept of risk. These terms will receive more attention

in the next paragraphs, in which theories on the social construction of security will be explained.

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3.2. The theory of securitisation (Copenhagen School)

The narrow definition of security finds its traces in realism, which can be identified as the

mainstream approach in security studies. Realists tend to see environmental degradation as an

issue of ‘low’ politics rather than a matter of ‘high’ politics, such as security. Constructivists and

poststructuralists deliberately received more support by challenging this narrow perspective.

They argue instead for a non-traditionalist approach of security, suggesting that threats are

socially constructed (Trombetta 2008: 587).

The theory of securitisation, developed by the Copenhagen School and mainly

associated with the research of Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, is considered as “[t]he most

innovative and thoughtful attempt to conceptualise the social construction of security issues”

(ibid.). From a social-constructivist perspective it examines how problems are transformed into

issues of security by differentiating security and the securitisation process from its purely

political stance (Buzan et al. 1998: 4-5; Biswas 2011: 3). The theory is relevant in this debate

because it investigates the implications of widening the security agenda and gives specific

attention to environmental problems. Furthermore, it has been influential in the academic and

political debate, since it warned for the risk of framing environmental issues in security terms

(Trombetta 2008: 587-588).

The Copenhagen School argues that in the securitisation theory objective threats do not

exist. Instead, any issue can go through a process of securitisation, in which it is transformed

into a security issue. This happens through a speech act, a discursive process in which an issue

is constructed by a political community as an existential threat. An issue only becomes

securitised when it is accepted as a threat by the audience in wider society. As such, this

transformation does not necessarily mean that a real threat prevails, but that the issue is

framed in such a way that the perception of a security threat is created. As a consequence, the

method of dealing with the issue will be transformed (Trombetta 2008: 588; Biswas 2011: 4).

As such, securitisation can be perceived as a more extreme form of politicisation.

According to Buzan et al. (1998: 23-24) a public issue can be placed on a spectrum ranging from

non-politicised, through politicised, to securitised. In other words, an issue can be completely

absent in public debate and decision, through being part of public policy, to being presented as

an existential threat. The latter phase of securitisation gives rise to emergency measures and

justifies actions that are outside the normal boundaries of political procedure. In a security

analysis three types of units are involved, in which a distinction is made between referent

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objects (things which are seen as threatened from existence with a legitimate claim to survival),

securitising actors (actors who securitise issues by indicating a referent object as existentially

threatened), and functional actors (actors who neither are the referent object nor the

securitising actor, but who are affecting the decisions in a certain sector) (idem 1998: 35-36).

However, according to Trombetta (2008: 588) the Copenhagen School’s theory on

securitisation has problematic consequences. Although a political community has the decision

whether or not to securitise an issue, “[o]nce an issue is securitised the logic of security

necessarily follows”. This logic brings with it a set of practices which are associated with the

traditional logic of security, suggesting a zero-sum understanding of security and an ultimate

form of antagonism (ibid.; Trombetta 2014: 136). It allows for emergency measures that go

beyond otherwise binding rules (Buzan et al. 1998: 5). The broadening of the security agenda

can therefore have dangerous consequences, since this rationality of security will spread to

other contexts from which it previously had been excluded (Trombetta 2008: 589).

Alongside the problematic consequences in the theory of securitisation, the process of

securitisation does not seem analytically accurate when applied to environmental issues (ibid.).

The most notable peculiarities that the Copenhagen School identified in the environmental

sector can ironically be associated with the amorphous problem of climate change. The theory

of securitisation is associated with the inscription of enemies and issues governed by decrees

rather than democratic procedures (Trombetta 2014: 136). However, the Copenhagen School

argues that environmental securitisation has not been successful (Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4),

since “few appeals to environmental security have mobilised exceptional measures or inscribed

enemies in any context” (Trombetta 2008: 589).

Yet other authors such as Trombetta (2008), Brauch (2009), Brzoska (2009) and Parsons

(2010) criticise this argument and clearly recognise securitisation processes, especially in the

field of climate change (Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4). Bourbeau (2015: 384) criticises the

securitisation theory for underdeveloping and undertheorising the scale or variation of

securitisation. Although a large amount of research has been done on the absolute distinction

between securitised and un-securitised issues, no further differentiation is made when an issue

has entered the security realm. As such, he argues that security is mainly perceived as a one-

size-fits-all concept. Consequently, previously mentioned authors say we need to contextualise

securitisation: “that what the Copenhagen School considers the inherent ‘grammar’ of

securitising moves is merely one form of securitisation prevalent in military sectors and western

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contexts” (Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4). According to these authors Buzan et al. have a too narrow

definition of securitisation, hence they look at climate change discourses through a lens that

keeps them from seeing securitisation.

In the climate security debate, such a contextualisation of climate change has led to the

explanation of a diversity of versions of securitisation. Although these theories have

contributed to our understanding of securitisation mainly by differentiating between various

referent objects of security, they are still relatively close to the Copenhagen School formulation

and remain largely theoretical in nature (ibid.). Diez et al. (2016) recently developed an

analytical framework which proposes a more deductive way of distinguishing climate security

discourses by creating two dimensions. The first dimension includes different levels of referent

objects, while the other addresses the conceptualisation of risk in the climate security

literature. The scholars argue that the literature largely ignores or does not draw systematically

on the notion of risk (idem: 431). In order to distinguish climate security discourses in a

systematic way, this thesis will use their framework, which will be discussed later in this

chapter. First will be elaborated on the concept of risk.

3.3. The influx of risk into the field of security

One of the long-established criticisms of the Copenhagen School by authors belonging to the

so-called Paris School, comes from a presumed ‘sociological’ approach of securitisation. This

has led to a flourishing literature on the growing relevance of risk in security practices. The

criticism pointed to the failure of Buzan et al. to “see the emergence of security framing through

day-to-day bureaucratic practices and routines, as well as diffuse forms of power in

decentralised networks, including private actors such as the insurance industry” (Diez et al.

2016: ch.1, 1.4). In light of the growing awareness surrounding the uncertainty and complexity

of contemporary threats, scholars, bureaucratic planners and insurance brokers are

increasingly using the concept of risk in order to conceptualise current security dynamics, as

well as ‘resilience’ as a strategy of societies and individuals to prepare for endogenous or

exogenous shocks as situations of risk (ibid.; Trombetta 2008: 590; Bourbeau 2015: 375; Diez

et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4).

Although the risk-security literature often uses the term ‘securitisation’, it effectively

implies that the logic of the security field has already been transformed. Corry (2012: 241-243)

distinguishes two groups of risk theorists who share assumptions about the logic of security,

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but reach different conclusions with regard to the generation of risk and the way it is dealt with.

The first group draws upon the theory of world risk society developed by sociologist Ulrich Beck.

Risk society can be defined as a social scenario, a scenario which describes the transformation

process of late modern society into its probable result: a risk society (Rasmussen 2001: 289;

Beck & Holzer 2007: 3). This (western) society is increasingly confronted with the unwelcomed

side effects of successful modernisation, which nobody completely understands and which

results in a diversity of possible futures (Giddens 1999: 3; Beck & Holzer 2007: 3). As such, it is

a society that is increasingly concerned with the future (and with security), which generates the

conception of risk. The idea of risk is associated with the will to control, and particularly with

the aspiration to control the future (Giddens 1999: 3).

In a risk society external risks are transformed into manufactured risks, since they are

created by the progression of human development (idem: 4). According to Beck this happened

through the process of ‘reflexive modernisation’, in which risks have become the consequences

of modernisation itself instead of the consequences of a lack of modernity, as was the case in

the industrial society (Bulkely 2001: 432-433). Since most situations of manufactured risk are

inherently ambiguous and reflexive, responsibility can neither easily be assumed nor attributed.

This applies both to circumstances where risk is an energising principle (financial markets), and

where risk needs to be limited (health risks, or ecological risks) (Giddens 1999: 7-8). As such,

the ecological risk of climate change is perceived as a paradigmatic example in Beck’s theory of

risk society, since environmental problems can hardly be assigned to one particular source or

actor and its sources as well as its experiences transcend temporal, spatial and social limits

(Bulkely 2001: 432; Matten 2004: 378).

The second group of risk theorists is inspired by French philosophers such as Foucault

and Bourdieu. For them, “risk is neither a modernist tool for calculating insurance premiums

nor a vain pretence at being in control of the uncontrollable global age, but is itself a particular

rationality of government that works to legitimate certain technologies of power” (Corry 2012:

242). They show how logics of risk facilitate increasing securitisation of populations by focusing

on the institutions and practitioners of security, bringing new domains of human life under

governmental control. In this way risk is not an inevitable feature of a macro-sociological

transformation. Rather, risk is used purposively as a strategy by institutions as a mode of

‘governmentality’ in order to secure their role as providers of security and protection and to

mask some of their failures (Bigo 2002: 65).

23

Foucault developed the concept of governmentality in 1977 which summarises the

concerns about the working of the government. The neologism consisting of ‘govern’ and

‘mentality’ points to the processes of governing and the mentality of a government as the way

of thinking about how the governing happens. It is thus a rationality (a practice) and an art of

(a way of thinking about) government (Foucault et al. 1991: 2-3). Theorists on risk and

governmentality are pessimistic about the situation of populations and discuss the normative

implications of securitisation (Corry 2012: 243). One example is the securitisation of climate

change in the US in 2009, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched its Center on

Climate Change and National Security. Hartmann (2013: 46) argues that the linkages between

climate change, conflict, and natural disasters produced by the defence interests of the US, do

not only threaten a distortion of climate policy, but also further militarise development and

humanitarian assistance.

Despite the different assumptions, both groups of risk theorists argue that security is

not an objective ‘good’ as it is for realists. Instead, they follow the Copenhagen School in

considering security issues as socially constructed and changeable. They both argue that

security is increasingly being thought of in terms of risks rather than threats. Although for

different reasons, both groups are concerned about the ever-expanding security agenda which

they see as partly driven through the concept of risk. Therefore, they ask primarily the question

of ‘what does security do?’ rather than ‘what should security do?’ (Corry 2012: 243).

This thesis will follow these arguments and will draw primarily on the perspective of the

second group, who’s assumptions correspond to what Eckersley (2004: 9) categorises as critical

constructivism: a combination of critical theory and constructivism. Critical constructivism

critically questions the internal, rather than the external, norms and values existent in

understandings and practices in modern society. For the analytical ambition of this thesis the

approach can be used as a method to unmask contradictions, tensions and hidden forms of

powers within and between ideas and practices in climate security discourses. Furthermore,

critical constructivism can help to explore changes in thought and practice which may help to

identify the normative implications of securitisation (idem: 8).

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3.4. Differentiating securitisation: threat or risk?

Although in the literature there is no single definition of risk, several features are common to

most conceptualisations. Risk presents a relatively long-term potential threat that is typified by

a radical uncertainty and leads to a more diffuse sense of anxiety. Risks are often perceived as

manageable, and “invite the calculation of the incalculable” (Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4). In

contrast, security threats are direct, existential and urgent, for example the drowning of islands

or violent resource conflicts. Security threats are inclined to be identifiable or even

personifiable (such as certain practices, a specific country or group of people), whereas risks

are often more diffuse and lead to more diffuse referent objects (potentially risky behaviour,

risk-areas or risk-groups) (ibid.). Hence, risk policies are focused on precaution, and

programmes on risk-reduction intent to increase the resilience of a referent object (Corry 2012:

245). Where threats are uninsurable because they lead to devastation, risk is typically the

object of insurance (Diez et al. 2016: ch.1, 1.4).

When a risk is invoked as an existential threat and insurance is no longer possible, a

security logic sets in. Such a logic demands emergency measures in order to prevent the threat

from occurring under any circumstances. In contrast, a risk-based approach constitutes of

mitigation to the possible consequences of climate change (ibid.) and adaptation to changing

conditions and new risks (O’Brien 2012: 667). Considering the features of the conceptualisation

of risk, it appears to be an appropriate way of framing the threats caused by climate change.

Corry (2012) made a contribution to the identification of threats by distinguishing between

‘securitisation’ and ‘riskification’ as two opposing logics of security. The scholar links

securitisation to the direct defence of a referent object against an existential threat, while he

refers riskification to the governance of a referent object in order to control ‘conditions of

possibility’ for damage against it. Thus, riskification focuses on the probable harm and requires

a different mentality of governing than securitisation (Corry 2012: 256).

Although Diez et al. (2016: ch.1, 1.4) largely agree with this characterisation of security

and risk, they argue that risk is “a variation of security rather than a category separate from it”.

According to these scholars, this argument is not only supported by the fact that risk is generally

classified under security considerations, but is also backed by the historical development of the

security-risk debate. Therefore, their analytical framework distinguishes between riskification

and ‘threatification’ which they see both as variations of securitisation. In this way securitisation

forms a continuum on which risk and danger as two poles can intersect. This supports the

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argumentation that in climate security discourses arguments on risk can include references to

existential threats for the purpose to bolster argumentative force (ibid.).

The inclusion of risk results in an enlargement of the scope of security, whereas the

original formulation of the Copenhagen School relies on a strict distinction between normal

politics and securitisation. While literature on climate change policy has provided essential

insights into different logics of securitisation, the problem that this widening runs counter to

the dichotomous theory of Buzan et al. is largely ignored. The analytical framework posed by

Diez et al. (2016) therefore comprises politicisation as a third process next to the two

possibilities of securitisation: threatification and riskification. In this way it is possible to

conceptualise the area between politics and security as another continuum. As a consequence,

political arguments can have both a securitising and a politicising effect (idem: 494).

3.5. The analytical framework of climate security discourses

Central to the analytical framework of Diez et al. (2016: ch.2, 2.1) is a two-dimensional

conceptual matrix, which on one dimension distinguishes between threatification and

riskification as two versions of securitisation. On the other dimension, the matrix consists of

three different levels of referent objects. Consequently, the matrix covers six categories of

climate security discourses which are all able to change the nature of politics (idem: ch.2, 2.2).

By adding the logic of risk to the field of security, Diez et al. (2016: ch.2, 2.1) ask how this will

change the security realm, what the relationship is between risk and security and if the related

languages differ in their effects on political decision-making. Although these questions are not

necessarily new, the authors argue they have not been answered in a fully comprehensive and

consistent manner. This paragraph will elaborate on the theoretical considerations of the

framework.

Diez et al. (2016: ch.2, 2.1) argue for a re-conceptualisation of politics, security and risk,

in which risk is seen as a sub-category of security and in which the concept of securitisation

(Copenhagen School) is re-labelled as ‘threatification’. While the scholars recognise that risk

also calls upon threats, threatification increases the urgency of those threats. It therefore refers

to the extreme threats of the Copenhagen School’s securitisation process, summarised under

the label ‘danger’ (table 3.1). Subsequently, Politics, Risk and Danger are developed as poles of

a triangle in which political debates stretch out. Dependent on its articulation, an issue can be

‘threatified’, ‘riskified’ or ‘politicised’ (figure 3.1). In the latter form the political relevance of

26

the issue is increased without referring to a threat. An issue can also be ‘de-securitised’ and

thus ‘re-politicised’ when its invocation of security is weakened in either form (ibid.).

Table 3.1: Important keywords distinguishing between the danger and risk dimension (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.1)

Figure 3.1: The space of politics and security (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.1)

Besides the distinction between the two types of securitisation, there is the second dimension

consisting of three levels of referent objects which are based on existing literature on climate

security: the territorial, individual and planetary level. The territorial level is based on the

environmental conflict discourse with the conceptualisation of the state as the main referent

object. However, territorial articulations may also be assigned to other group entities. Central

in this level is the defence of a specific territorial order. In contrast, the individual level comes

from the environmental security discourse which is closely linked to human security. In this

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case the referent object is the individual or a global society of individuals. Consequently, the

planetary level comes from the ecological security discourse with its holistic and cosmological

outlook. Here it is the planetary ecosystem that is threatened, or the biosphere as a whole

(idem: ch.2, 2.2). These three levels of referent objects combined with the two logics of

securitisation form a typology of six categories of climate security discourses. These are

summarised in table 3.2, in which illustrations of typical speech acts are provided as an

example.

Table 3.2: A typology of climate security discourses (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.2)

3.6. Normative implications of securitising climate change

The Copenhagen School considers the closures to the political debate and hence the

constraints to deliberation as the most important normative concern of securitisation. There

may also be other less formal normative implications, such as the purposive closure to the

debate by discursive entrepreneurs. Although several authors raised their concerns about the

normative consequences of securitisation, not all types and stages of securitisation are

necessarily ‘bad’. Securitisation in for instance its first stage leads to an opening up of the

political agenda, which is clearly not harmful. In order to estimate whether the other stages are

‘bad’ depends on a consideration of various normative concerns and an assessment of the kind

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of measures that are taken by taking into account the specific context (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2,

2.5).

In light of the debates about the morality of securitisation, the differentiation of the

various climate security discourses of Diez et al. (2016: ch.2, 2.5) gives rise to the question of

“whether some forms of securitisation may be normatively preferable to others.” This is

particularly the case when comparing the articulations of risk and danger and considering the

different levels of referent objects in the analytical framework. Some theorists argue that a risk-

based approach may be less problematic than a securitisation based on danger, since it does

not necessarily imply emergency measures as anticipated by the Copenhagen School (Corry

2012: 255). However, others say that exceptional precautionary measures can be legitimised

in a risk-based articulation, in the case of uncertain and incalculable risks. A third argument,

coming from the Paris School, even highlights the idea of hidden securitisations in riskifications

which also have their dangers.

Despite these somewhat ambiguous propositions, at the diagnostic and prognostic level

there are significant differences between risk- and danger-centred discourses. Yet, it is

important to recognise that “the goal of risk-based measures is not to eradicate the risk

completely but to manage and govern it, and to contain it at a tolerable level” (Diez et al. 2016:

ch.2, 2.5). The normative question that arises here is: ‘tolerable for whom?’ This has mainly to

do with the difference between industrialised countries (dominant in climate security debates

and connected to mitigation and adaptation) and developing countries (mostly seen as

endangered but very much neglected from a western perspective in terms of mitigation).

When assessing the different levels of referent objects, some remarks can be made by

questioning if some are normatively more preferable. On the territorial level, climate

securitisation in terms of national security conceptions and conflicts between states or groups

can be highly problematic. In a positive way, the discourse helps to bring climate change on the

agenda of coalitions that would normally not have taken climate change seriously, such as the

UN Security Council or the NATO. However, it can also distract the attention from efforts of

climate change mitigation to rather adaptation measures and interferences in countries at risk,

which can ultimately take the form of military intervention (ibid.; Hartmann 2010: 241). But in

the end, it depends on the time and the context whether a territorial securitisation can have

positive or negative consequences (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.5).

29

The individual level seems to be more suitable for climate security discourses, since the

pitfalls of the territorial level can be avoided (Detraz & Betsill 2009: 307). In a positive way, the

individual discourse focuses on the people who are most vulnerable to climate change and

stays away from national security conceptions based on the traditional state-centred security

logic. Nevertheless, individual securitisation has the danger that the ones seen as vulnerable

are becoming the ones who are dangerous themselves. For instance, when climate change

threatens poor populations in developing unstable countries in their human security, it

becomes easy for securitising actors to make a dangerous territorial argument. This argument

can focus on failing states, terrorism and large-scale migration movements, which in turn can

lead to concerns of national security for industrialised countries (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.5).

The discourse of the planetary level can be perceived as the least problematic, because

it underlines the interdependency of the whole international community and its surrounding

ecosystem. It calls for the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) and for sustainable measures

in economic activity. However, the planetary approach might be too weak to produce a policy

output that can be considered as successful, and has difficulties in producing the same degree

of attention compared to arguments with a clearer referent object. Moreover, the discourse

has a thin line with the ambiguous framing of climate change in the past and can therefore be

dismissed as unworldly and naïve. The Kyoto Protocol which aims at a reduction of GHG

emissions and its doubtful success is an example of this discourse (ibid.).

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4. The United States and Germany: Territorial versus individual climate security

This chapter will elaborate on the dominant climate security discourses within the US and

Germany. While the US constructs climate change as a territorial danger, in Germany are

individual framings dominant. In both cases, the relationship between the member country and

the NATO is briefly explained, followed by an elaboration on the general climate debate, the

securitisation of climate change and the main actors in the debate, the political consequences

and a short conclusion. This chapter is based on secondary sources, in which the book of Diez

et al. (2016) is used as the main source and guide for further research of the cases of the

Netherlands and the NATO.

4.1. The United States: Climate change as a territorial danger

4.1.1. The United States and the NATO

Since the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, the US has been a leading country of the

NATO. The current US defence expenditures are twice as much as European expenditures and

count for 70 percent of the total NATO expenditures (Elshout & Koelé 2016: 10-11). From a

purely military perspective, one can say the US is capable of independent military action and

therefore does not need its European allies (Erdmann 2013). However, the need and value of

the NATO has been firmly established within the national strategy and army doctrine of the US

for years (Schmidt 1994). The NATO serves not only as an important source of stability and

economic prosperity, but NATO allies also contribute in a fundamental way to the legitimacy of

American foreign policy. Furthermore, in a world which is increasingly dominated by different

power blocks such as Russia and China, the alliance forms a powerful basis of mutual

democratic values and economic interests (Erdmann 2013; De Rave 2016).

4.1.2. The general climate debate

The US is usually seen as a stumbling block to an international treaty in which the reduction of

GHG emissions is presented. The country is by far the largest contributor of emissions in history

with 339,174 metric tons or 28 percent between 1850 and 2007 (Diez et al. 2016: ch.3, 3.1).

Although China has now surpassed the rate of US emissions, the US can still be seen as one of

31

the largest emitters per capita (World Bank 2013). “The high emissions output and the slow

adoption of meaningful federal climate legislation or international commitments have led to

the US ranking in the lower regions of most international climate policy tables” (Diez et al. 2016:

ch.3, 3.1).

Although the overall climate performance of the US can be seen as poor, from the late

1960s the environment became a great policy concern in the country. Due to a vigorous

environmental and scientific advocacy community and the implementation of progressive laws,

the US evolved into an environmental forerunner (idem: ch.3, 3.2). After years of political and

public awareness of climate change, in the late 1990s support for firm environmental regulation

increasingly disappeared and more sceptical attitudes towards climate change took over the

domestic political landscape (Grundmann & Scott 2014: 222). This trend consolidated during

the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009). Increasing opposition against environmental

and climate policies came from both Congress with anti-environmental Republicans and an

effective non-governmental lobby in which the business community was particularly showing

its stance (Diez et al. 2016: ch.3, 3.2).

After Democrat Barack Obama was elected as President in 2009, climate issues made

their entry again in the top of America’s political agenda (Vig 2013: 98-102). Obama argued for

‘a new era of global cooperation on climate change’ and his statements were backed by a

Democratic majority in Congress and more support from the public and even the business

community. However, this optimistic picture was short-lived due to “the failed UNFCCC

negotiations in Copenhagen in late 2009 and the Democrat’s defeat in the Senate in the mid-

term elections of 2010, and later in the House of Representatives” (Diez et al. 2016: ch.3, 3.2).

In the following years Obama’s attempts to push for climate legislation and invest in renewable

energies did not succeed.

Nevertheless, climate change remained on the agenda, due to the contribution of

domestic advocacy efforts, international pressure, greater media coverage and climate friendly

policies set by individual states such as California. In 2014, reports from the National Climate

Assessment (NCA) and think tank CNA highlighted the seriousness of climate change and its

consequences for US security (ibid.). Although on emission levels the US still performs poorly,

the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) has recently discovered positive signals. Where

in 2015 the CCPI ranked the US on place 46, this changed in 2016 to place 34. This mainly comes

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from the CCPI policy ranking, in which the US climbed from place 35 to 12 partly due to its

efforts towards international climate negotiations (Germanwatch & CAN 2016).

4.1.3. The securitisation of climate change

Diez et al. (2016: ch.3, 3.3) distinguish the debate on climate security in the US in two phases:

the first phase in the 1980s and 1990s centred around environmental security on a planetary

and individual level, while the second phase from the mid-2000s focused solely on climate

change as a territorial danger. Early arguments in the 1970s on climate security mainly focused

on issues such as food security and sea level rise, which can be categorised in the planetary and

individual level. Although these arguments were overshadowed by the Soviet threat, after the

Cold War non-traditional security issues gained more attention. The lack of a clear enemy gave

room to ‘new discourses of danger’, in which climate change slowly became one of the most

serious environmental security concerns.

Until the 1990s, the general focus on climate change was more international and framed

as a planetary or individual danger in order to claim the need for an international climate

regime. While statements of climate change as a planetary or individual danger were often

conflated with the destruction of the ozone layer and later with global warming, these

articulations gradually became more cautious and were rather described in long-term risks. This

representation led to difficulties in the mobilisation of more support in public and political

circles. Together with the increasing impact of climate sceptics and their campaigns against

binding agreements to combat climate change, the general climate debate as well as the

climate security debate lost prominence in the late 1990s.

After Bush was elected as President in 2001 and the ‘war on terror’ started ensuing from

the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the so called ‘soft’ climate issues were almost

excluded from the US security sector. While funding was cut, executive orders were reversed,

institutions were renamed and important personnel replaced, opposition and dissatisfaction

with Bush’s moves eventually helped the second phase of the climate security debate to

emerge. The appearance of a study in 2003 commissioned by Andrew Marshall, an influential

defence adviser of the US Department of Defence (DOD), marked the beginning of the

territorial danger discourse in the US (ibid.). The report stated in an alarming way that climate

change “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern”

(Schwartz & Randall 2003: 3).

33

Because this report was in variance with the official stance of the Bush administration

on climate change, it had limited political impact. However, it paved the way for a broad range

of climate security studies which significantly reduced the amount of planetary references.

Climate change increasingly became a topic of US national security and its image from being an

abstract, distant and global environmental concern transformed into an issue with immediate

consequences for US security. Hence, the Bush administration was put under pressure by the

opposition to give climate change considerable political attention. Together with the fourth

assessment report of the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (IPCC), this created

awareness of climate change and its security implications among the general public and within

military and political circles (Diez et al. 2016: ch.3, 3.3).

When Diez et al. (2016: ch.3, 3.4) took a closer look to the climate security discourses

within Congressional debates and think tank reports in the US, they saw 2007 as the year in

which the territorial danger discourse gained prominence. “The most common articulation

presents US national security as threatened by the direct physical and the indirect socio-

economic and political effects of climate change” (ibid.). The installations and training

procedures of the US military were mentioned as mainly threatened by the direct dangers of

climate change. An important CNA report in 2007 depicted climate change as a ‘threat

multiplier’ that could exacerbate instability and conflict in states which were already fragile.

Within this discourse, climate change could not only further destabilise certain regions, but

could also lead to the spread of terrorist ideologies and even nuclear war. In this way, the

connections between climate change and military interventions were easily made (ibid.).

Among influential actors in the US, Diez et al. (2016: ch.3, 3.5) discovered that

environmental NGOs are since the turn of the millennium relatively absent in climate security

discourses. Instead, security think tanks largely influence the debate. This is because in the US

experienced politicians and high-ranked military officers are often employed in these think

tanks. Also, think tanks facilitate the heavy workload of active politicians by providing policy

concepts and talking points. Besides this thin line with the government, think tanks maintain

good connections with the media and with other non-governmental actors. Hence, they are

able to provide cover for government actors who wish to go public with a new and perhaps

provocative view.

Not only institutions, but also individual actors can be discursive entrepreneurs in such

a debate. Actors such as Kurt Campbell, Sherri Goodman, and Geoffrey D. Dabelko actively

34

engaged in reframing climate change as a national security issue. The engagement of the

military in the climate security debate was an important part of their strategy, since the military

enjoys an extremely good reputation in politics and among a large amount of the US public.

Environmental NGOs kept away from the climate security debate, partly because of their lack

of expertise in the security field and partly because they did not want to damage their

environmental and liberal image. Another unusual feature in the second debate in the US was

the lesser involvement of research institutions or scientists, especially in comparison with

Germany. The catchy and policy-oriented language of think tanks received much more

attention, since they construed the complex scientific argumentation into political language

and received great prestige as security experts (ibid.).

4.1.4. Political consequences

According to a think tank expert, “the climate security debate has not scored a goal but has

moved the ball a bit across the field” (Diez et al. 2016: ch.3, 3.6). Three important political

consequences underlie this debate. First, the climate security discourse enabled politicians,

regardless of their political stance, to speak about climate change without having the fear to be

labelled, and thus bridged the gap between the liberals and the conservatives. Second, climate

change received increased attention and caused the issue to enter the realm of high politics,

which contributed to more initiatives on climate legislation. Furthermore, the debate had a

strong effect on the American defence, security and intelligence sector and its focus changed

from mitigation to adaptation measures (ibid.).

4.1.5. Conclusion

The securitisation of climate change in the US underwent a transformation from an emphasis

on planetary and individual risk in the 1980s and 1990s to a focus on arguments of territorial

danger from the mid-2000s. The security think tanks were highlighted as the most important

actors in the second debate, since their national security conceptions gained incredible

attention within policy circles and among the wider public and because of the strong reputation

of the military. The predominant territorial danger discourse particularly affected the security

and defence sector and tended to a political approach of adaptation.

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4.2. Germany: Climate change as an individual insecurity

4.2.1. Germany and the NATO

West Germany became a member of the NATO in 1955, when its status as an occupied country

came to an end. With Germany’s reunification in 1990, the “former German Democratic

Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany in its membership of NATO” (NATO 2016c).

Germany’s membership played an important role in NATO’s enlargement with the inclusion of

Central and Eastern European democracies (NATO 2016d). In line with its foreign policy

consensus as a ‘civilian power’ after the Second World War, Germany has long maintained a

restrained approach towards military involvement. In the alliance it depended on US leadership

in the fields of military policy and ‘hard power’ (Overhaus 2004: 551; Carstensen 2016).

Germany spent in 2015 1,18 percent of its GDP on the military, which is under the 2 percent

norm of the NATO and even less than its expenditures in 2014 (NATO 2016e). However,

Germany recently committed to enhance its military role in the NATO, partly as a consequence

of the unease about Russian assertiveness (Carstensen 2016).

4.2.2. The general climate debate

While the US is depicted as the fallen forerunner in climate policies, Germany is a significantly

different case and rather seen as a forerunner, though an ambivalent one. “Germany has been

a consistent advocate of binding international climate agreements, passed various rounds of

legislation to curb CO2 emissions and reduced emissions to a considerably higher extent than

many other countries” (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.1). The country managed to decrease its

emissions by 26 percent between 1990 and 2012, and thus performed better than its original

reduction aims of 21 percent set in Kyoto. In this way Germany helped to accomplish the

reduction targets of the European Union (EU) (Werland 2012: 55). Accordingly, with a 22nd

place, Germany takes a high position in the CCPI (Germanwatch & CAN 2016).

However, during the 1950s and 1960s Germany’s rapidly growing economy led to

perceptible environmental pollution and the country lagged far behind on environmental

protection. In this time, the US introduced new environmental policies. Together with the UN

Conference on the Human Environment in 1972 held in Stockholm, this provided an important

drive for German environmentalism. Reports such as the ‘Limits to Growth’ developed by the

Club of Rome and the UN Brundtland report strongly influenced the German environmental

36

debate (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.2). Such political occurrences resulted in growing

environmental awareness among the German public, which subsequently demanded

appropriate government response (Feindt 2002; Roth & Rucht 2008). In the 1970s and 1980s

various movements contributed to the formation of actors such as as the Green Party and

Greenpeace Germany, which led to more changes in policy and government institutions (Diez

et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.2).

Scholars have recognised, with the ambivalences of Germany’s policies in mind, that its

position toward climate protection can best be characterised by extremes. Krück et al. (1998:

2) argue that from the late 1970s the country transformed from a laggard to a leader ‘almost

overnight’. Core concepts such as ‘sustainable development’ and ‘ecological modernisation’

began to prevail over the ‘limits to growth’ model and materialised in policies. After Germany’s

reunification in 1990, environmental issues became inferior to other political issues, such as

social and economic concerns. However, with its reputation as a civilian power, Germany

carried on in supporting international efforts to tackle climate change. In 1998, a new coalition

government between Greens and Social Democrats overcame the relative stagnation in climate

policymaking. The coalition initiated a program of ecological modernisation, which led to a big

progression in Germany’s energy and environmental policies (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.2).

After a new coalition government (CDU/CSU-SPD) was elected in 2005 with Angela

Merkel as chancellor, Merkel decisively continued to support Germany’s role of international

leadership in climate policies (ibid.). However, the ambivalence of its policies is still present.

Despite the significant cuts in emissions and investments in renewable energy, it is unlikely that

Germany will meet its own CO2 reduction target in 2020. The decrease in emissions has slowed

down remarkably since 2000, and between 2011 and 2013 carbon emissions even rose (Clean

Energy Wire 2015; Burck et al. 2012: 5). Also, some contradictory developments played a role,

such as the withdrawal from the production of nuclear energy which actually led to an increase

in the importance of coal (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.1). However, a few days before the

Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris of the UNFCCC, environmental minister Hendricks

started to advocate for the phase out of coal until 2035/2040. It is expected that this will

influence the environmental future of Germany (Germanwatch & CAN 2016).

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4.2.3. The securitisation of climate change

Since the emergence of the first debates on environmental security in the 1970s, discourses of

individual danger and risk together with planetary framings of security have been dominant.

Because of its Nazi past, the German military has suffered from a bad reputation and has been

a topic of contestation among the general public. Together with a long-established

environmental concern, an influential Green Party, a strong scientific community as well as an

active civil society sector, this has resulted in a context in which, in contrast to the US, the

discourse on territorial danger has not flourished (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.1).

Diez et al. (2016: ch.4, 4.3) separate the climate security discourse in Germany in two

periods. The first phase of climate security discourses started from the 1970s and lasted until

the mid-1990s. These discourses were characterised by “the depletion of the ozone layer, the

‘Limits to Growth’ debate, and the invocation of a ‘climate catastrophe’” (ibid.). Particularly,

the debate called for the need of behavioural change in order to save human society from

environmental dangers. From the 1980s, the securitisation of climate change functioned as an

agenda-setter and resulted in advanced policies to decrease carbon emissions. Although these

policies were equivocal, such a trajectory in a firmly industrialised country with a powerful car

industry showed the success of securitisation.

In the course of the climate security debate, parliamentarians and scientists increasingly

used the narrative of ‘climate catastrophe’. Although not everybody believed in these dramatic

framings, the call from scientists to create governmental research groups was immediately

heard. In 1987, the ‘Enquete Commission for Preparation for the Protection of the Atmosphere’

was established in order to investigate the status of the atmosphere and to propose protection

measures in national or international contexts (ibid.). The commission, which consisted of nine

parliamentarians and nine scientific experts, indicated the strong influence of science in the

German debate on climate change (Altenhof 2002). Largely due to the commission’s work,

political attention for climate change increased and reached its peak with the first COP of the

UNFCCC in 1995 in Berlin.

Although the second phase was still characterised by framings of individual danger

which were occasionally combined with planetary articulations, the narrative of global warming

came much more into focus. In the early 2000s new discursive entrepreneurs appeared. The

security think tank Adelphi emerged as one of the most import actors. “The securitisation of

climate change in Germany is a consequence of the voices of a multitude of actors and

38

coalitions from different sectors such as science, civil society, bureaucracy, government and

the media” (Diez et al. 2016: ch4, 4.4). The German debate is much more predicated upon

scientific findings and the international climate debate with references to for instance the IPCC

and the World Bank, when compared to the US. Due to its broad basis in society, individual

entrepreneurs such as in the US case were not that visible (idem: ch.4, 4.3).

After the discouraging Copenhagen Summit in 2009, a change in discourses occurred

when most actors in science and civil society stopped in articulating ‘horror scenarios’ in order

to achieve policy change. Instead, various discursive entrepreneurs started to aspire the

promotion of a certain ‘good global citizen’ stance (ibid.). This attitude actually fitted “into a

broader discourse of guilt in German political culture after the Second World War” (Berger

2012). This is in line with Germany as a ‘civilian power’ whose foreign and security policy is

often depicted as peaceful and restrained. Individual and planetary risk articulations are most

appropriate in this context, which leave no room for emergency measures and the inclusion of

the armed forces in climate policy (Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.3).

4.2.4. Political consequences

The Federal Foreign Office is seen as the main authority to address climate change in Germany,

whereby development policy and preventive security are regarded as most important in

avoiding an increase of the dangers and risks connected to climate change. Securitisation in

Germany achieved great political attention for climate change, combined with framings of the

‘climate catastrophe’ Germany continued to set high emission reduction targets. The German

debate has not only influenced the domestic energy politics (retraction of nuclear energy and

great investments in renewable energy), but also affected foreign and development policy. In

contrast, the effects on military planning were limited since the German Federal Armed Forces

have only published two reports on the security threat of climate change until now. The

increased framings in terms of individual and planetary risk led the German government to

involve the insurance industry into the climate security debate, by supporting the creation of

certain finance mechanisms that cover “the increased risks of 500 million individuals through

climate change by 2020” (Diez et al. 2016: ch4, 4.5).

39

4.2.5. Conclusion

The German climate security discourse consisted of individual, and to a lesser extent, planetary

articulations. From the mid-1990s, individual risk has been specifically dominant, but

articulations often mixed risk and danger together. A multitude of discursive entrepreneurs

played a role in the securitisation process, in which scientific organisations and NGOs have been

incredibly influential compared to the US. Furthermore, the historically tarnished status of the

military resulted in the relative absence of territorial discourses and thus a very limited role for

the military in the climate security debate. Instead, Germany focused on developmental

policies by helping developing countries with sustainable development and climate adaptation,

as well as the economic opportunities that come from a reorientation towards climate

adaptation and mitigation policies.

4.3. Conclusion: The United States and Germany: Territorial versus individual

climate security

The climate security discourse in Germany opposes the securitisation of climate change in the

US. While the US mainly draws on the territorial danger discourse in especially the second

phase, in Germany individual security, with a focus on risk, prevailed. In Germany, a great

diversity of discursive entrepreneurs was involved in the climate security debate. After the

Second World War, Germany’s image as a civilian power resulted in a strong influence of NGOs

and scientific organisations. Its military suffered from a bad reputation, which prevented the

emergence of a territorial discourse. In contrast, the powerful reputation of the US army and

the dominance of security think tanks (represented by politicians and military officers) in the

US climate security debate, created the perception of climate change as a danger to national

security. When comparing the performance on combating climate change, the US is running

far behind Germany. The countries differ strongly on the output of GHG emissions as well as

the implementation of climate policies and the commitment to international agreements.

40

5. The Netherlands: Climate change as a planetary insecurity

5.1. Introduction

The Netherlands is connected to climate change in a unique way. A few facts about this country,

where 26 percent of its land surface is below sea level and 59 percent is prone to river flooding,

reveal that an expected sea level rise critically threatens the nation (PBL 2008). The Netherlands

perceives itself as part of a global whole where all humans are interdependent and must share

solutions. This social identity strongly influences the country’s actions (Pettenger 2007: 68).

Although the domestic unrest in the early 2000s negatively affected the Dutch climate agenda

and the struggle with reducing its GHG emissions continues (idem: 63), the Netherlands

currently seems to strive again for global leadership in climate policies (idem: 51).

The Dutch climate security discourse connects to its identity; climate change is mainly

framed as a planetary or individual risk. The country recently committed to the EU’s request to

develop a comprehensive climate change adaptation strategy, which will be announced in

2016. Together with plans to integrate climate change into security policy, the Netherlands has

a chance to better its position on the CCPI. Due to the limited success in the reduction of

emissions, the country is ranked at place 35 (compared to place 40 in 2015), which is just behind

the US (place 34) and far behind Germany (place 22) (Germanwatch & CAN 2016).

In this chapter, the relationship between the Netherlands and the NATO is briefly

described, followed by an elaboration on the general climate debate, the securitisation of

climate change, the political consequences and a short conclusion. The analysis of the Dutch

climate debate is largely based on the work of Pettenger (2007). In this book, called ‘The Social

Construction of Climate Change: Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses’, she dedicates a

chapter to the formation of climate change policy in the Netherlands from the 1980s (idem:

13). This source is used in order to explain the general development of the Dutch climate

debate, and because it provides a good structure for a discourse analysis of securitisation. For

this analysis, publications of relevant actors in the climate debate are used, ranging from Dutch

ministries, (government) research institutions, think tanks and discursive entrepreneurs.

41

5.2. The Netherlands and the NATO

The Netherlands is one of the founders of the NATO and considers the alliance as the keystone

of its security policies. The small country acknowledges that it is not able to guarantee its own

safety. Therefore, it strives for intensive military cooperation with similar states and a strong

European Union (WRR 2010: 9; Dutch Ministry of Defence 2013: 8). Recently, the NATO

criticised the Dutch armed forces for their insufficient capabilities and contribution to NATO

forces. Through the ‘NATO Defence Planning Capability Review’ (DPCR), the NATO expressed

its concerns about the Dutch defence budget and the readiness of the armed forces. European

NATO members spend on average 1,43 percent of their GDP on defence. The Netherlands is

with 1,14 percent far below average (De Volkskrant 2016). Minister of Defence Jeanine Hennis-

Plasschaert stated that until now, the defence budget is increased with half a billion euros and

that improvements are being made, although it will take multiple years to make the Dutch

armed forces sufficiently capable again (Radio Een Vandaag 2016).

5.3. The general climate debate

A culmination of several processes contributed in the late 1960s to a growing environmental

concern among the Dutch public. Although the rapid economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s

had led to higher material living standards than before, it also started to raise doubts among

an increasing number of people about the immaterial quality of life (Cramer 1989: 103). In the

early 1970s, as in Germany, public concern in the Netherlands was further evoked through the

report of the ‘Limits to Growth’ issued by the Club of Rome and the UN Conference on the

Human Environment in Stockholm (ibid.; Diez et al. 2016: ch.4, 4.2). Most Dutch political parties

started to recognise environmental issues such as pollution and environmental degradation.

This resulted in the legislation of various environmental laws and regulations and the

establishment of a special department in 1971, which is currently called the ‘National Institute

of Public Health and the Environment’ (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu - RIVM)

(Cramer 1989: 103).

In 1972, the Dutch government provided for the first time a proper overview of Dutch

environmental policy in the ‘Urgence Memorandum on the Environment’ (‘Urgentienota

Milieuhygiëne’) (VROM 2001). In this period, a large amount of environmental action groups

was created in order to influence government policy or mobilise the public, such as the ‘Dutch

Society for the Preservation of the Waddensea’ (Landelijke Vereniging tot Behoud van de

42

Waddenzee) in 1965 and the ‘Environmental Defence League’ (Vereniging Milieudefensie) in

1972 (Cramer 1989: 103-105). However, the socio-economic stagnation that set in after the oil

crisis in 1973 had a clear impact on Dutch society. A growing unemployment rate combined

with a government confronted with a shrinking income from taxes and increasing social welfare

expenditures, led to a further economic slowdown. This changed the idealistic mentality of

people towards the environment, and political concern and response decreased (idem: 107-

108; Dijkink & Van der Wusten 1992: 7).

In the late 1980s the publication of two documents had a significant impact on

environmental consciousness and policymaking in the Netherlands. The first document was the

Brundtland Report published by the UN in 1987, which introduced the concept of ‘sustainable

development’. In 1988, the second document was produced by the RIVM called the ‘Concern

for Tormorrow’ (‘Zorgen voor Morgen’) (Pettenger 2007: 55). This report provided the first

national outlook in which an alarming prediction was made about future environmental

problems. Furthermore, the publication marked the beginning of nature and environmental

planning which was first executed by the RIVM and is currently done by the ‘Netherlands

Environmental Assessment Agency’ (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving – PBL). The impact

of the two reports, together with severe weather events in the late 1980s, led to the formation

of the first ‘National Environmental Policy Plan’ in 1989 (Nationaal Milieubeleidsplan – NMP1)

(ibid.; RIVM 2013). The NMP1 serves as an ambitious and comprehensive plan which is created

to guide policymaking in the future. The plan did not only show the leading role of the Dutch

government in defining and addressing environmental degradation (top-down perspective),

but was also in itself a global pioneering expression of environmental policy and even served as

a source of inspiration for other states and organisations, such as the EU. Since its adoption,

“the national plans have served as guides for all subsequent governmental policies and laws,

and precipitated five major changes2 in political perspective” (Pettenger 2007: 56-58).

Scientific information plays an important role in the rise of Dutch environmental

consciousness and self-awareness of the country’s own contribution to climate change (idem:

60). The reports of the IPCC are seen as the most fundamental sources of knowledge about

climate change. Both the ‘Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute’ (Koninklijk Nederlands

Meteorologisch Instituut – KNMI) and the PBL use IPCC reports (PBL & KNMI 2015). While the

2 Due to the length of this chapter, these changes will only partly be discussed. Many of the principles initiated in NMP1 were maintained and strengthened through subsequent versions of the NMP (Pettenger 2007: 58).

43

Dutch recognise their responsibility in this debate, this acknowledgement is challenged by the

material realities of its GHG emissions and its energy-intensive developed society. Compared

with other European states, the Netherlands produces a significant amount of GHG emissions

per capita and even saw this level increasing in the period between 1990 and 2000.

Consequently, the country reconsidered its goals and policies around the reduction of

emissions to set a more realistic timetable (Pettenger 2007: 60-61).

In 1998, the Netherlands joined the EU to sign the Kyoto Protocol. In 1999 and 2000 it

produced documents considering domestic and international climate measures: Part I and

respectively Part II of the ‘Climate Policy Implementation Plan’. The Dutch government

encouraged these measures globally by hosting the COP6 in The Hague in 2000. However, the

optimism of the government and the Dutch citizens “about a multilateral approach to climate

change was severely wounded when the meeting failed to come to agreement on measures to

meet the Kyoto Protocol Goals” (idem: 61). The subsequent meeting in Bonn also failed because

of the withdrawal of the US and its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol. Although the newly

published NMP4 in 2001 showed the Dutch conviction to progressively reduce its emissions in

an international and EU-based response, this optimism quickly faded when Dutch politics and

society started to experience a transition (ibid.; VROM 2001: 33).

The elections in 2002 combined with several disturbing events disrupted the generally

stable flow of politics in the country and reduced the citizen’s trust in the democratic

government (Pettenger 2007: 63; Hendriks et al. 2012: 133). Ten days before the elections on

6 May 2002, Pim Fortuyn, popular leader of the extreme right party ‘Lijst Pim Fortuyn’ (LPF),

was murdered by a white man who was supposed to be a green activist (Pennings & Keman

2002: 4). A week after the assassination, LPF Chairman Peter Langendam stated: “the bullet

came from Left” (Halsema 2016: 102). He blamed the leftist parties - Fortuyn’s political

opponents - for the incitement of hatred and specifically proclaimed environmental party

‘Green Left’ (‘GroenLinks’) as responsible for the violence. Gradually, murderer Volkert van der

Graaf was identified by Fortuyn’s heirs and the public as someone who belonged to GroenLinks.

While in fact he did not have any ties with the party, GroenLinks’ reputation transformed from

“a welcome opposition party to an undesirable political player” (idem: 114).

The hatred against GroenLinks and leftist parties in general caused the Dutch population

to lose interest in the issue of climate change. In 2004, the already nervous Dutch were again

startled by the assassination of film director Theo van Gogh, carried out by an Islamic extremist.

44

Since Van Gogh was a good friend of Fortuyn and had similar populist ideas, his murder drew

the focus of the national debate to issues of migration and terrorism (Pettenger 2007: 63;

Halsema 2016: 107). Concurrently, progressive environmental policy decreased with the

election of a more conservative government. “As the State Secretary for the Environment,

Pieter van Geel said: ‘It is nostalgia to profile the Netherlands as the leader it might once have

been in the area of environmental issues’” (Pettenger 2007: 64).

However, from 2004 the Netherlands started to reinvent its climate policies and

attempted to retake its role as European environmental leader. It placed great importance on

the EU to promote its climate policies. With the ‘Climate Policy Evaluation Memorandum 2005:

On the way to Kyoto’ (‘Evaluatienota Klimaatbeleid 2005: Onderweg naar Kyoto’), climate

change officially returned on the Dutch policy agenda (idem: 64-67). In 2007, the Dutch

government established the ‘Second State Delta Committee’ with the impetuous storm surge

of 1953 in mind. The committee provided advice on the protection of the Netherlands against

the expected effects of climate change, such as more rainfall and sea level rise (Verduijn et al.

2012: 469). The suggestions had several policy results, such as the ‘Delta Program’ in which

important steps were being taken to make the country more climate proof.

Following the request from the European Commission (EC) to all member states to

propose a comprehensive climate adaptation strategy by 2017, the Dutch government

announced the ‘National Adaptation Strategy’ (NAS) for 2016. Where the Delta Program

focuses on water-related themes, the NAS focuses on all sectors that will feel the impact of

climate change, such as agriculture, energy and infrastructure. Furthermore, the consequences

of global climatic effects for the Netherlands will be described (Kennisportaal Ruimtelijke

Adaptatie 2016). This global view is further reflected in the ‘Planetary Security Conference’,

which was hosted by the Netherlands in The Hague in November 2015. The initiative of Bert

Koenders, Minister of Foreign Affairs, provides an international platform for the discussion of

the impacts of climate change on security (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015: 5).

5.4. The securitisation of climate change

The development of the Dutch environmental policies in general can be typified by a shift in

focus from direct and subsequent action to prevention and planning (VROM 2001: 20). The

environmentalist movement which rapidly expanded from the late 1960s carried out a

cosmological worldview in which “they opposed developments that visibly attacked the

45

‘organic foundations of the life-world’” (Cramer 1989: 101-102). In this period, a planetary

danger discourse prevailed and led, through the publication of documents such as the ‘Limits

to Growth’ report, to further public and political concern (idem: 103). After a period of socio-

economic stagnation in the Netherlands and decreasing attention for the environment, the

Brundtland Report (1987) and the Dutch RIVM document ‘Zorgen voor Morgen’ (1988) raised

new environmental awareness (Pettenger 2007: 55).

Since the Brundtland Report introduced the concept of sustainable development, it has

become one of the primary norms in climate change policy in the Netherlands. The Dutch

define this norm as “economic development that places equal emphasis on the economy and

the environment, and as requiring economic, political, and social processes to be changed

today to avoid passing pollution problems to future generations” (idem: 52). The norms of

‘Stewardship’, ‘Equity’, the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’ and the ‘Precautionary Principle’ embody

the Dutch definition of sustainable development (ibid.). These principles can be found in the

RIVM report, which was produced in order to explore the long-term environmental

consequences for the Netherlands in a global context (RIVM 1988: 8). It signifies the growing

need for a risk-based approach, while framing climate change as a planetary issue:

“As environmental issues are becoming more widespread, a global and structural preventive approach is urgently

necessary. Climate change and ozone depletion can cause globally significant risks for the environment and public

health and can have extensive damaging consequences. This means that the current generation is expected to let

the long-term benefits of measures outweigh the costs that will be incurred in the coming decades” (idem: 28).

The year of 1989 is seen as the year that environmental consciousness reached its highest

point, in which the Dutch government emerged as the leading actor in addressing

environmental degradation (Pettenger 2007: 57). The emergence of green parties and pressure

groups and the general greening of politics occurred more or less at the same time (Dijkink &

Van der Wusten 1992: 10). In her Christmas message, Queen Beatrix called for a Dutch

response in terms of a planetary danger:

“The earth is slowly dying… We human beings ourselves have become a threat to the planet. Those who no longer

wish to disregard the insidious pollution and depredation of the environment are driven to despair” (Pettenger

2007: 57).

46

The publication of the NMP1 in that same year, urgently titled ‘Choose or Lose’ (‘Kiezen of

Verliezen’), marked the beginning of a significant transformation in Dutch environmental policy

(ibid.). The report resulted from joint policymaking between the former ‘Ministry of Housing,

Spatial Planning and Environmental management’ (‘Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en

Milieubeheer’ – VROM) and four other ministries, which showed the need for coordination of

environmental planning in overlapping policy fields (idem: 56). The publication focused on the

so-called ‘approach to risk’, in which a remarkable attempt was made in making risks

quantifiable and which laid the groundwork for environmental effect-oriented policies (VROM

1989).

“The approach to risk should help to ensure that risks regarding its nature and scope become clearer and better

comparable, also for the population. Too often, only the undesirable effects are taken into account, while the

chance of the occurrence of these effects is neglected” (idem: 12).

In this period, climate change was variously depicted as a planetary danger or risk, though the

NMP1 showed the increasing dominance of the planetary risk discourse (VROM 2001: 20):

“The international acceptance of the Dutch strategy will further be promoted. Agreement on policies and policy

principles at the international level reinforces the Dutch policy and promotes the control of transboundary risks.

This strategy represents a new challenge for a renewed effort to promote the safety and thus to harmonize human

activity and the environment, the ecological suitability” (VROM 1989: 27).

In 2001, the fourth version of the NMP, the NMP4 titled ‘One World and One Will: Working on

Sustainable Development’ (‘Een Wereld en een Wil: Werken aan Duurzaamheid’) came out

(VROM 2001). The publication presented a broader and more future-oriented vision, in which

seven environmental problems were discussed that international society faces over the period

to 2030. The report shows the continuation of the planetary discourse in the Netherlands,

combined with articulations on the individual level:

“Climate change threatens the security and health of people in many different ways, as well as the stability,

diversity and survival of natural ecosystems” (VROM 2001: 49).

While this quotation tends towards the threatification of climate change, the overall document

fits more in a discourse of risk, referring to scenario planning and the credible establishment of

47

the Precautionary Principle (VROM 2001; Pettenger 2007: 62). However, the Dutch

environmental conviction was still very much in tension with the well-established norm of

Economic Efficiency and its merchant identity. Moreover, the NMP4 was published during a

time of Dutch political transition and economic recession, which eventually did not prove very

successful. The country was incapable to meet its goal of a 3 percent reduction in GHG

emissions to 1990 levels by 2000 and the Dutch mind was quite damaged after the failures of

the COP6 and the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. These developments led to a loss of

interest in climate change among the Dutch public (Pettenger 2007: 63-64).

A few years later, the Climate Policy Evaluation Memorandum 2005 was published and

marked a return of climate change on the Dutch policy agenda (idem: 67). The report showed

the increased attention for climate adaptation next to mitigation, and argued that more

attention needed to be drawn to risks of flooding and other effects of climate change in future

spatial policy (VROM 2005: 31-32):

“In the Netherlands, adaptation has recently been given a higher place on the political agenda. The Netherlands

is most vulnerable to climate change impacts on water and adaptation in this area is obviously the most

developed” (idem 31).

Subsequently, in 2008, the Second State Delta Committee announced suggestions on how to

defend the country against the water-related impacts of climate change. Although no real crisis

occurred, “the committee managed to create awareness and set the agenda for climate

adaptation policy and the issue of safety in Dutch water management” (Verduijn et al. 2012:

469). It succeeded by using several framing strategies, in which it used the story of the Dutch

delta identity, generated a sense of collectiveness and urgency, and created a crisis narrative

(ibid.).

“Our Committee’s mandate is therefore unusual: we have been asked to come up with recommendations, not because a disaster has occurred, but rather to avoid one” (Veerman 2008: 7).

This quotation marks the riskification of climate change, because the committee acknowledges

the undeniable and uncertain consequences of climate change and stresses the need for flood

risk management (Verduijn et al. 2012: 476). Although the report unites the Netherlands as a

48

(territorial) risk area, the articulations of risk refer to human security and place the Netherlands

within the global community. Hence the speech acts are individual and planetary.

In July 2008, former Dutch Minister of Defence Eimert van Middelkoop requested

advice at the AIV on the “likely implications of climate change for the international security

situation over the next twenty years”, as well as the implications for the international role of

the Dutch armed forces. This report, called ‘Climate Change and Security’, was one of over forty

research requests from the Ministry of Defence, which would all be used for drawing a future

plan for the Dutch military (AIV 2009: 3). This highlights the growing awareness that also the

military was no longer able to neglect the possible impacts of climate change as a ‘threat

multiplier’. The AIV report refers to reports from the IPCC, KNMI and the EU, as well as papers

that consider the need for climate mitigation and adaptation (AIV 2008) and the proposition of

a proactive approach to risks (WRR 2008).

The identification of climate change as a potential security threat is in Dutch public

documents largely limited to the inclusion of climate change in analyses concerning the

changing security environment. However, increasing consideration has been given to

anticipation on climate risks, such as disaster risk reduction (Van Schaik et al. 2015: 35). The

‘International Security Strategy’ of 2013 acknowledges climate change as a ‘new’ issue that

increasingly dictates the international security agenda (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013).

In 2010, climate change has been included in the Defence report ‘Explorations: Guidance for

the Armed Forces of the Future’ (‘Verkenningen: Houvast voor de krijgsmacht van de

Toekomst’). It identifies climate change as one of the eight driving forces of possible insecurity

for the Netherlands and discusses the future role of the Dutch armed forces (Dutch Ministry of

Defence 2010). The report addresses the need for climate proof defence materials and

versatility of the military in for instance natural disasters, abroad but also inland:

“Sea level rise may threaten towns in the coastal regions of the Netherlands, as well as the supporting

infrastructure of port facilities and oil refineries. Reliance on the armed forces for assistance can arise in case of

flooding” (Dutch Ministry of Defence 2010: 82).

Van Schaik (2016) argues that the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs seem to consider

climate change as a security threat, but that thus far it has not been specifically operationalised

in security policies. However, the Dutch integrated approach of defence, development and

49

diplomacy offers potential for the integration of climate change into security policy. A first

attempt of this was made in an update of the Dutch international security strategy, in which

framings of planetary risk were dominant (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2014; Van Schaik

et al. 2015: 35-36):

“Problems regarding climate, water and raw materials can cause or exacerbate conflict and should therefore be

part of early warning systems. Building a resilient population in rural and densely populated areas against the

effects of climate change is the challenge for the coming decades and fits within a forward-looking foreign policy.

The Netherlands can take responsibility for a liveable and sustainable world by using its knowledge and expertise

in order to help prevent instability elsewhere” (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2014: 17).

Subsequently, the Planetary Security Conference was organised by the Dutch government to

create political awareness and involvement for the implementation of an integrated climate

agenda (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015). It showed the willingness of the Dutch to play

a leading role (Van Winden 2016). The danger dimension of climate change and the presence

of the military at the conference demonstrated a tendency towards threatification (Van Schaik

2016). However, the risk dimension seems to become more dominant in Dutch climate security

discourses, which is supported by the supporting reports of the forthcoming NAS (PBL 2015a;

PBL 2015b):

“The National Adaptation Strategy could be perceived as a national business case: a project plan with the

objectives of the adaptation strategy, the required investments, the consequences of the possible

implementation, the risk analysis, and a long-term planning” (PBL 2015a: 109).

5.5. Political consequences

The Dutch government can be seen as the leading actor in the climate security discourse, the

role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seems to become increasingly important. Individual

discursive entrepreneurs hardly played a role in the climate security debate. A growing number

of reports on climate security describe the global effects of climate change on the country,

which shows the planetary level of the Dutch discourse. According to the Dutch, climate change

transcends national boundaries and therefore calls for an international and integrated

approach (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2013). The Dutch approach of defence,

development and diplomacy, for which the country is known internationally, presents a way to

50

integrate climate change in development and security policies (Van Schaik 2014: 36; Van Schaik

2016).

In normative terms, the planetary security discourse can be perceived as the least

problematic of the different levels, because it underlines the interdependency of the

international community and its surrounding ecosystem. At the same time, the planetary

approach has difficulties in producing an adequate degree of attention and does often lead to

weak and unsuccessful policy outputs (Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.5). This refers to the integration

of climate change in Dutch security policies that thus far has not been specifically developed

(Van Schaik 2016). However, in recent years more sectors have become involved in climate

policy, including the military. The Netherlands took an important step with the organisation of

the Planetary Security Conference, which reflects the Dutch global view and tradition to

maintain the international legal system (Van Winden 2016). Although the climate security

discourse consisted of articulations in terms of danger, the overall development in the

Netherlands can be seen as a move towards a planetary riskification of climate change.

5.6. Conclusion

The climate security discourse in the Netherlands resembles more with the German discourse

on the individual and planetary level than with the dominant territorial security discourse in

the US. In the Netherlands, planetary framings prevail, combined with articulations on the

individual level. This relates to the Dutch recognition that the Netherlands forms part of a global

whole and is largely dependent on other countries in for example trade and the military. The

Dutch discourse from the 1960s until now can generally be typified by a development in which

climate change is increasingly perceived as a risk, in which precaution, scenario planning and

risk reduction are of growing importance. These measures, together with initiatives such as the

Planetary Security Conference, show the growing Dutch commitment and ambition to play a

global leading role on the issue of climate change.

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6. The NATO: Climate change and territorial defence

6.1. Introduction

Since the NATO first recognised the environment as a security issue in 1969, the alliance has an

ambivalent vision on climate change (Risso 2016: 3). Especially since the end of the Cold War,

the alliance has continuously confirmed its broadened approach to security. Although NATO

has increasingly announced its commitment to address climate change, its mandate and

policies concerning the issue remain vague and largely undecided (Korteweg & Podkolinkski

2009: 59). This can be explained by the fact that NATO is a community of many different states

in which a common ground for climate change is hard to reach. Another explanation is the

traditional military identity of the alliance, which is struggling with its own commitment to a

broader non-traditional approach to security (Van der Zeijden 2016).

Hence, the dominant climate security discourse is strongly connected to NATO’s original

mission: the collective defence of its own territory. Although the alliance recognises climate

change as a threat-multiplier, articulations about the connection between climate change and

security are often centred on clear threats to its security environment such as instability,

conflict and migration (NATO/CCMS 1995: 38). It therefore largely constructs climate change

as a territorial danger. Despite this expressed urgency, climate change has since Russia’s

annexation of Crimea been largely overshadowed by the immediate military threat of Russia

(NATO 2014; De Rave 2016; Van der Zeijden 2016). As shown in this chapter, this recent

reorientation of NATO and its members does not mean that its attention for climate change

has disappeared, but it indicates NATO’s struggle with this amorphous problem.

In this chapter, NATO’s history is briefly described, followed by an elaboration on the

alliance’s securitisation of climate change, the political consequences and a short conclusion.

This chapter is based on the analysis of internal documents published by NATO, such as

Strategic Concepts, research reports, speeches and press statements, as well as documents

about NATO from external actors.

6.2. A short history of the NATO

The NATO was created as part of a broader attempt to serve three purposes: “deterring Soviet

expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North

American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration” (NATO

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2015a). On 4 April 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington by twelve states

from North-America and Europe; Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the

Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Canada and the US. The members agreed

on the united efforts for collective military defence and the maintenance of peace and security.

Article 5 is considered as the most important part of the treaty, in which the NATO members

agreed on the mutual defence in case of an armed attack by any external party against one or

more of the members (NATO 1949).

Given the accomplishment of NATO’s primary mission with the collapse of the Soviet

Union, fundamental questions about whether the alliance is still necessary or relevant have

emerged (Weinrod 2012: 1). Furthermore, in the fields of International Relations and Security

Studies, the politico-strategic identity and actions of the NATO are among the topics which

received the most controversy. NATO’s evolution in the past decennia, concerning the fall of

the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 attest to the ongoing

demand for a comprehensive and clear understanding of NATO’s role. After 1989 the NATO

started a process of reorientation which had approximately two consequences (Ciut 2002: 35;

De Rave 2016).

Alongside NATO’s traditional role concerning the territorial defence of its members, the

alliance started to conduct so-called ‘out-of-area’ operations in order to create security at a

distance. These operations were often connected to new security-related issues such as cyber

defence, counterpiracy, counterterrorism, missile defence, energy security and climate change.

This development runs parallel with the reorientation of several national armed forces,

including the Dutch and German armed forces. Cuts in military expenditures (referred to as the

‘peace dividend’) and the creation of mobility were important factors in this development,

whereby the heavy military means were partly or completely replaced by lighter versions that

were more suitable for out-of-area operations in for instance Afghanistan (Weinrod 2012: 1;

De Rave 2016).

Since its establishment, membership of the NATO has increased from 12 to 28

countries. Currently, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Georgia as partner

countries have declared the ambition to NATO membership (NATO 2015b). In recent years the

alliance also developed security and politically based partnerships with a significant amount of

nations in Europe, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, as well as with international

organisations such as the African Union, the UN, and the World Bank (Weinrod 2012: 1). The

53

NATO also established bilateral structured relationships with Russia and Ukraine, but since the

Russia-Ukraine conflict, cooperation with Russia has been suspended while cooperation with

Ukraine has been intensified (idem; NATO 2016a; NATO 2016b).

Furthermore, Russia’s annexation in Ukraine in 2013, the first annexation since the

Second World War, can be seen as a wake-up call for the NATO. It caused the member countries

to realise that the security environment on the East and the South had changed and that this

required a change in NATO’s strategy. Particularly, the downing of the passenger flight MH17

of Malaysia Airlines caused by the violence in eastern Ukraine, brought the conflict closer to

the allies (NATO 2016a; De Rave 2016). These developments have recently led to a shift which

focuses on the largest reinforcement of NATO’s collective defence since the Cold War.

Currently, sixteen European member countries have agreed to increase their defence

expenditures.

The changing security environment on NATO’s borders was the central theme of the

NATO summit on 8 and 9 July 2016 in Warsaw. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg presented

the alliance’s attitude towards Russia in the words ‘defence’, ‘deterrence’ and ‘dialogue’. He

announced that NATO’s focus will be on the collective defence of its territory: “We have to

adapt to a world which has by all means become more dangerous” (Elshout & Koelé 2016).

6.3. The securitisation of climate change

The NATO recognised security challenges related to the natural environment for the first time

in 1969, when it initiated the ‘Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society’ (CCMS).

Together with the Science Committee, the CCMS was launched in order to become a key

component of NATO’s ‘third dimension’, in addition to its military and political dimensions. The

swift pace of industrialisation and economic transformations resulted in the fact that all NATO-

countries had to face air and water pollution, industrial waste problems and urbanisation. In

this time, criticism increased among wide sectors of the public about the damaging economic

effects on the environment. The CCMS provided a forum where NATO-members and partner

countries could cooperate and share knowledge on health, social and environmental issues. It

was meant to bring new life to the alliance, both in the engagement with themes far outside its

traditional scope and in the media attention it received to regain public support (NATO/CCMS

1995: 34; Risso 2016: 3-9).

54

The launch of the CCMS was therefore an attempt to respond to the public’s concerns,

as in the US, Germany and the Netherlands. But it also marked a crucial step towards a new

strategic concept of the NATO, in which the label ‘environment’ introduced subjects such as

crisis management and disaster relief. The work of the CCMS could be seen as “an attempt to

redefine the security concept of the alliance and the idea of what constituted a threat. It was a

first tangible sign that the alliance was moving towards a different kind of defence, which was

not only military defence but defence of their populations and their wellbeing.” (Risso 2016:

11). In the end of the 1970s, experts recognised the success of the CCMS in the past years, in

which the general focus seemed to have moved from territorial to individual security with more

focus on risk. Hence, NATO’s redefined discourse on security became more similar to especially

German and Dutch discourses, because of more recognition for an individual and risk-based

approach. But with the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 by the Soviet Union, NATO’s attention

quickly shifted back to military defence and the CCMS began to suffer from a lack of political

support (idem: 28-29).

After the Cold War with the disappearance of the Soviet threat, NATO’s state

representatives recognised the need for a strategic transformation. The alliance increasingly

identified non-traditional security threats in an enlarged regional and global context, similar to

planetary articulations in the US, German and Dutch discourses, and exemplified in the new

Strategic Concept of 1991 (NATO/CCMS 1995: 38):

“But what is new is that, with the radical changes in the security situation, the opportunities for achieving Alliance

objectives through political means are greater than ever before. It is now possible to draw all the consequences

from the fact that security and stability have political, economic, social, and environmental elements as well as

the indispensable defence dimension” (NATO 1991).

This security concept broadened NATO’s mission to cooperation with Eastern countries,

promotion of political stability and democracy, and mitigation of environmental problems.

Following the US DOD, the NATO recognised the link between environmental issues, stability

and conflict (Butts 1993: 6-7).

In occasion of the Plenary Meeting of the NATO in Washington D.C. in 1995, the CCMS

launched a pilot study called ‘Environment and Security in an International Context’. The pilot

study, co-chaired by the US and Germany, presented “the relationship between environmental

change and security at the regional, international, and global levels” (NATO/CCMS 1995: 34). It

55

demonstrated that the NATO was seeking for a solution on how to combine the environment

with security, which tended to a riskification of climate change:

“Its main goal is to elaborate conclusions and recommendations to integrate environmental considerations in

security deliberations and to integrate security considerations in national and international environmental policies

and instruments. These conclusions and recommendations are guided by the principles of sustainable

development and a precautionary approach, emphasizing preventive measures and strategies” (ibid.).

However, the CCMS report actually revealed many articulations which fit into a territorial

danger discourse. The assessment of the links between the environment and security showed

a strong emphasis on conflict and violence. Furthermore, the report indicated the linkage

between the original treaty and the non-traditional threat of the environment, and therefore

demonstrated that the NATO is still connected to the traditional (military) conception of

security:

“With reference to Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, any issue can be brought before the Alliance for the

purpose of consultation with other Member States when one Member State perceives the territorial integrity,

political independence or security of any of the Member States is threatened. This could conceivably include an

environmental issue (NATO/CCMS 1995: 38)”.

In order to anticipate on the further security and political developments since the Strategic

Concept in 1991, NATO state representatives agreed on a new strategy in Washington D.C. on

NATO’s 50th anniversary in 1999. The alliance again highlighted its broad approach to security,

and put more emphasis on taking account of the global context and the importance of

developing an effective cooperation with regional and international institutions, such as the UN

and European institutions. This resulted in a shift of NATO’s discourse from a territorial to a

planetary focus on climate security (NATO 1999).

In that time, the main security challenge of the alliance was located outside its territory,

albeit in its direct neighbourhood; the Balkans. It therefore adopted a policy for the execution

of ‘out of area’ operations, which led the NATO-countries to slowly transform their armed

forces into so called ‘expeditionary’ forces. From the 2000s, the US climate security discourse

slightly started to transform in a territorial danger discourse with the US as driving force of the

global expansion of NATO’s operations, with “ISAF in Afghanistan, the counter-piracy operation

56

in the Gulf of Aden and the Iraq training mission” (Korteweg & Podkolinkski 2009: 6). The

expansion of these ‘out of area’ operations has been the subject of notable friction between

NATO’s members. When considering the role of NATO in responding to climate change, this is

a significant issue “because it is precisely these kinds of operation that are most likely to expand

if NATO is called to intervene in climate-related disaster and conflict zones in the coming

decades” (Depledge & Feakin 2012: 81).

The Strategic Concept of 2010 is the first concept in which the NATO explicitly mentions

climate change as affecting areas of NATO’s concern. These areas could belong either to its

territory or to its global operations. Thus, the alliance’s climate security discourse was largely

centred on the territorial danger discourse:

“Key environmental and resource constraints, including health risks, climate change, water scarcity and increasing

energy needs will further shape the future security environment in areas of concern to NATO and have the

potential to significantly affect NATO planning and operations (NATO 2010).”

In that same year, former NATO Secretary General Rasmussen stated that the NATO could

function as an important forum for international dialogue on the security-related challenges of

climate change. Although he says the alliance’s policy on climate change has not been entirely

developed, NATO could be involved on the basis of “three words: consultation, adaptation, and

operation” (Rasmussen 2010). Consultation refers to the intensification of international

dialogue with other institutions, the scientific community and NGOs. Adaptation means that

the alliance must seek to reduce its carbon footprint of its forces in order to adapt to security

challenges of climate change. Operation means the recognition that NATO’s forces can be the

‘first responder’ to the consequences of climate change, thus addressing its impacts directly

(ibid.). Again, NATO’s traditional role in terms of military operation was linked to the non-

traditional phenomenon of climate adaptation.

In 2014, NATO state representatives gathered in Wales for one of the most important

summits after the Cold War. One year after the Russian annexation of Crimea, the Russian

threat was the first topic on the summit’s agenda. The increased attention on Russia’s

aggression led to criticism about the lack of attention that was given to climate change.

Although the alliance continued to acknowledge the security threat of climate change in the

Wales Summit Declaration, it did not offer revisions by using the exact same statement as in

NATO’s last Strategic Concept (NATO 2010; NATO 2014; Yeo 2014).

57

While Russia demanded most of NATO’s attention, climate change lingered in the

background and seemed to receive more attention in the run to the UN COP21 in Paris. On 20

March 2015 a Special Report called ‘Climate Change, International Security, and the way to

Paris 2015’ was published by the NATO PA’s Science and Technology Committee (STC)’. The

NATO PA, which is institutionally segregate from NATO, stressed the need for more attention

for climate change on NATO’s agenda:

“No matter the outcome [of the Paris COP21], the Assembly, and this Committee in particular, should continue to

serve as a forum for climate change discussions among legislators of the Euro-Atlantic community. This is essential

to mobilise public support and political impetus. The Committee and Assembly should also continue to push that

climate change is included more visibly on the political agenda at NATO (Vitel 2015: 11).”

While the previous citation is full of good intentions, it shows how difficult it is for an alliance

consisting of a diversity of states to present it as one influential actor in climate change policies.

Another quote supports this finding:

“While all NATO member states agree that climate change can impact international security, individual states'

opinions vary on how much and what kind of impact it might have, or how integrated climate change goals should

be in their foreign and security policies” (idem: 6).

On 12 October 2015 the NATO PA adopted resolution 427 on ‘Climate Change and International

Security’, in which it urged the member governments in seven points to negotiate on a

successful agreement at the COP21 in Paris, and to recognise risks related to climate change in

their security and foreign policies. It further called upon the support of the ‘Green Defence

Framework’ which NATO adopted in 2013 in order to contribute to climate change mitigation

(NATO PA 2015). Similar statements were made by Deputy Assistant Secretary General for

Emerging Security Challenges Jamie Shea, who represented the NATO during a speech at the

Planetary Security Conference in The Hague in November 2015:

“My sense is that when it comes to involving a security community like NATO, the debate has started, but it is still

in an embryonic stage. I will do my best from inside the organisation to push things ahead, but I need your support

and your pressure from outside the organisation to convince us that this is something that is fundamental for our

future security” (Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2015: 26).

58

His argument confirms the vagueness and indecisiveness of NATO’s mandate and policies

concerning climate change. It shows the complexity of the issue for a coalition which consists

of 28 different states which all have different visions. In this sense, the dominant territorial

danger discourse of the NATO can be explained by the great influence of the US, which also

frames climate change as a territorial danger. However, the territorial danger discourse is firmly

connected to NATO’s original mission, which is the collective defence of its own territory. The

amorphous problem of climate change, that provides the alliance with no obvious enemy, is a

complicated phenomenon for a traditionally military alliance.

Korteweg and Podkolinkski (2009: 59) argue that NATO links the main concerns

identified with climate change to specific crises, such as state failure, as well as the melting

Arctic as a geopolitical space. “In this sense, climate change is considered to be a catalyst for

other threats and NATO focuses on the threat rather than the catalyst” (ibid.). It is therefore

not a surprise that NATO frames climate change primarily as a territorial danger. The NATO will

always look through a ‘military lens’ to security threats and will naturally use the capabilities it

has (Van der Zeijden 2016). Hence, NATO’s vague and largely undecided mandate regarding

climate change reveals the struggle with the perceived urgency of the climate threat and with

its own identity. This is exemplified in the following statement, especially through the

ambiguous word ‘fight’:

“We face many challenges. Some can be solved. Some must be fought. But if we want a more secure world, there

is one fight we must avoid. Fighting the planet. Climate change will pose security challenges for us all. Together,

we can meet them. Fight the planet, and we all lose. Peace and Security, that’s our mission (NATO 2009)”.

Obviously, climate change is currently overshadowed by the military threat of Russia, the

‘enemy’ that was ironically an important reason for NATO’s establishment.

6.4. Political consequences

NATO officials Shea and Rasmussen can be considered as important norm entrepreneurs, next

to certain NATO departments such as the ‘Science for Peace and Security Programme’ (merger

between the CCMS and the Science Committee) who stress the need for more involvement of

NATO in the climate debate (Risso 2016: 30). On the other hand, The NATO strongly tends to

perceive immediate threats that require emergency measures as more urgent. Russia’s

59

annexation of Crimea and its recent military assertiveness is such an example that clearly

overrules an amorphous threat-multiplier like climate change. Although in the past decennia

the NATO has increasingly voiced the security threat of climate change, its mandate and policies

concerning the issue remain largely undetermined (Korteweg & Podkolinkski 2009: 59).

When considering the general territorial danger discourse of the NATO, some argue that

this is a positive development, since it helps to bring climate change as a serious policy concern

on NATO’s agenda (Van Schaik 2016; Van Winden 2016). However, such a discourse can also

be problematic, because it is closely linked to national security conceptions and conflict.

Expressions from NATO related to climate change have led to criticism from actors such as ‘PAX

for Peace’, that charge the alliance with broadening its remit. They argue that the alliance will

use the accessible capabilities for any security issue, hence they fear the militarisation of

climate change (Rasmussen 2010; Diez et al. 2016: ch.2, 2.5; Van der Zeijden 2016). However,

since Russia is at the moment NATO’s greatest concern and its policies on climate change

appear to be vague, it is expected that the short-term political consequences of NATO’s

territorial danger discourse remain limited.

6.5. Conclusion

The overall climate security discourse of the NATO comes closest to the discourse of the US, in

which climate change as a territorial danger prevails. This is not a great surprise, since the US

has been the leading country of the alliance since its establishment. While the NATO in the past

decennia increasingly voiced the need to address the security threat of climate change and has

tried to put more emphasis on the risk dimension in terms of crisis management and disaster

relief, its dominant discourse remains based on the threatification of climate change. This is in

line with NATO’s military identity and main purpose of collective defence, in which a focus on

immediate threats to its territorial environment is the common denominator.

60

7. Conclusions

7.1. Research question: a comparative analysis

This thesis has elaborated on the question:

How do the visions of the NATO and its member states correspond with regard to the

securitisation of climate change?

By employing the analytical framework on climate security discourses of Diez et al. (2016), this

thesis argued that NATO’s vision on climate change can generally be described as a climate

security discourse of territorial danger. Besides NATO’s vision, the visions of its member states

with regard to the securitisation of climate change vary among each other. Primarily based on

the research of Diez et al. (2016), the dominant climate security discourse of the US can be

specified as a territorial danger, while in Germany the discourse is generally based on individual

security with a focus on risk. Based on primary sources, the discourse in the Netherlands

appears to relate to planetary security, also with an emphasis on risk.

Consequently, the vision of the NATO corresponds most closely with the vision in the

US, both actors experience climate change as a territorial danger. The climate security

discourses of Germany and the Netherlands are more different from NATO’s vision. Two

explanations underlie this conclusion. First, the US has a considerably greater influence on the

policies of the NATO than the European countries. An important example is that US defence

expenditures count for 70 percent of the total NATO expenditures and are twice as much as

the expenditures of all European members together. Second, the territorial danger discourse

of the NATO corresponds with its traditional role as provider of peace and security for its

members, based on the principle of collective military defence. In the case of a non-traditional

security issue such as climate change, the alliance will look from its own (military) perspective

and will use the accessible capabilities to react.

Drawing on these results, this thesis aims to contribute to an understanding of climate

security discourses within IOs, which is identified as a gap in the literature. With regard to the

first explanation considering the great influence of the US in the NATO, a climate security

discourse can be the result of one or more powerful actors within such an IO. However, this

61

thesis argued that NATO’s climate security discourse of territorial danger can best be explained

by its traditional identity of a military alliance. Although NATO has during the years increasingly

announced its commitment to address climate change, its mandate and policies concerning the

issue remain vague and largely undecided. This shows the struggle of the traditionally oriented

NATO with its commitment to a broader non-traditional approach to security. Hence, according

to this research a discourse within an IO can largely depend on factors such as its traditional

mandate, historical evolution and political identity.

7.2. Normative implications

This thesis has provided a comparative analysis of the climate security discourses of the NATO

and its member states, which enables the engagement with the normative debate surrounding

securitisation. By linking theory and analysis, NATO’s territorial danger discourse may be

perceived as problematic. The alliance is built on the traditional notion of (military) security.

Therefore, the principle of collective defence is automatically linked to any security issue. As

such, climate change can be a legitimisation for NATO to interfere in countries at risk, which

can ultimately take the form of military intervention.

While some express the fear of militarisation, others rather see NATO’s involvement in

climate change as a positive development. It is positive in the sense that a large coalition takes

climate change seriously, and that NATO’s military strength can be of great help in for instance

natural disasters. The territorial danger discourse in the US has also resulted in positive

consequences; it brought climate change into the realm of high politics and bridged the gap

between liberal and conservative politicians. However, scholars such as Hartmann also criticise

the US discourse, since it links climate change, conflict and natural disasters, which in turn

threatens the distortion of climate policy and militarises development and humanitarian

assistance.

The fear of policy distortion and militarisation is of less importance in the climate

security discourses of Germany and the Netherlands. The general German discourse of

individual risk stayed away from national security conceptions. The historically tarnished status

of the German military resulted in a very limited role in the climate security debate. Instead,

the debate positively influenced domestic energy politics and focused on the people who are

most vulnerable to climate change through foreign and development policy. The Dutch

planetary discourse with a growing influence of risk is also less problematic than the territorial

62

articulations of the NATO and the US. It emphasises the interdependency of the international

community and its surrounding ecosystem. However, this discourse provides difficulties for the

Dutch to maintain the political attention for climate change, and to not end up in ambiguous

and ineffective policy outputs. Consequently, the short-term normative implications of NATO’s

territorial danger discourse may be perceived as limited, considering its undetermined

mandate and policies on climate change and the military threat of Russia.

7.3. Limitations and recommendations for further research

Although this research has been carefully conducted, given the limited time frame it is

inevitable to identify research limitations. Firstly, the number of NATO member states which

have been examined could have been increased. This would have made the comparative

analysis more complete and the results more credible. Secondly, in order to keep within the

time limit and required length of the research paper, a selection of the most important and

diverse documents has been made. However, it is possible that not all types of relevant

publications have been equally included. In future research, more attention can be given to

actors that are less influential in direct terms, such as civil society actors.

The same argument can be made for the number of participants that have been

interviewed. Although these were four persons originating from different backgrounds and

working in different sectors of society, a larger number would have probably given more

information about the evolving climate security discourses. Furthermore, the style of

interviewing might have influenced the integrity of the answers of the interviewees and the

interpretation of their responses, since several interviews have been conducted via Skype or

over the phone.

In order to further address the identified gap in the literature concerning climate

security discourses within IOs, future research could be conducted with other global

institutions than the NATO, such as the EU. By using a similar method of comparative analysis

between an IO and its member countries, more insights could be drawn from the origin and

characteristics of climate security discourses within IOs. Furthermore, it can also provide a

better understanding of an institution in general. However, the question remains to what

extent discourses of IOs can be generalised, since such organisations may differ considerably in

their origin, structure and mandate.

63

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Appendix I: Interviews

Interviewee: Rob de Rave

Organisation: The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS)

Profession: Colonel and strategic analyst

Type of interview: Personal

Date: 8 June 2016

Interviewee: Louise van Schaik

Organisation: Clingendael Institute

Profession: Coordinator EU in the World/ Senior Research Fellow

Type of interview: Phone

Date: 10 June 2016

Interviewee: Michel van Winden

Organisation: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Inclusive Green Growth Department

Profession: Strategic Policy Advisor, organiser of the Planetary Security Conference

Type of interview: Phone

Date: 9 June 2016

Interviewee: Wilbert van der Zeijden

Organisation: PAX for Peace

Profession: Program manager Defence and Security Policy

Type of interview: Skype

Date: 8 June 2016