Climate Change and European Security

Richard Youngs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317632610
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It is now commonly asserted that climate change will fundamentally change international relations. It has been predicted that global warming will increase conflict within and between states, intensify food insecurity, menace the global trading system and unleash waves of migration. As a result governments are beginning to incorporate these warnings into their foreign policy initiatives. The appropriateness of their incipient responses needs to be examined in finer detail.

This book looks at the impact of climate change on European Union (EU) security policy. It explores how governments are reconfiguring their geo-strategy and broader international relations in the wake of climate change warnings. The book demonstrates that although many aspects of EU foreign policies have begun to change, 'climate security' is not yet accorded unequivocal or sufficient priority. In doing so, Youngs argues that if climate change policies are to have significant effect they can no longer be treated as a separate area of policy but must be incorporated into the more mainstream debates pertinent to EU common foreign and security policy (CFSP).

This book will be of key interest to students, scholars and practitioners of climate change and policy, energy and environmental policy, EU governance and foreign policy, European studies, international relations, geography, security studies/policy and environmental economics.

1 INTRODUCTION

10.4324/9781315757254-1

It is now commonly asserted that climate change will fundamentally change international relations. A huge amount has been written and researched on the incipient physical impact of climate change. Differences persist over the scale of such effects, but the question is exhaustively analysed. The impact such change is likely to have on the broader challenges of international security is harder to foresee. Predictions are plentiful that global warming will increase conflict within and between states; intensify food insecurity; menace the global trading system; and unleash waves of migration. Many scenarios are painted of climate-induced apocalypse. A concern commonly drawn out in such accounts is that climate impacts will trigger non-linear events, through so-called feedback mechanisms. The challenge lies not only in adjusting to a hotter climate but in preparing to react to unpredictable changes that could feed into geopolitics in a frighteningly precipitous fashion. What this means for the conduct of international relations is profoundly uncertain. It is a question that requires systematic analytical attention and assessment.

Governments are beginning to incorporate the warnings into their foreign policy initiatives and instruments. It is this emergent ‘climate security’ agenda that is investigated in this book. Debates need to move beyond the many warnings of dire consequences ahead; of droughts, uninhabitable swathes of land, climate-induced conflict, mass migrations, food shortages and a general sense of heightened global friction. It needs rather to assess in analytical depth what the impact is on concrete strategies of security and to look in finer-grained detail at the appropriateness of governments’ nascent responses.

This book is about the impact of climate change on European Union (EU) security policy. The focus is on actual policy rather than merely outlining possible future scenarios. Many books and articles have been written assessing how far climate change needs to be conceived as a security question. But few have attempted to chronicle in detail how governments are reconfiguring their geo-strategy in response. The excellent volumes covering the EU’s role in international climate diplomacy still tend to omit any direct analysis of its role more specifically in relation to climate security.¹ Moreover, while the extensive literature on climate change has incorporated a focus on climate-induced conflict and associated debates over adaptation measures, this book goes beyond this standard focus to assess the broader international relations of climate change. I depart from the view that climate change can no longer be deliberated as a separate area of policy but must be incorporated into the more mainstream debates pertinent to EU common foreign and security policy (CFSP). I ask: what in the broadest sense is the EU’s ‘climate security’ policy?

The EU and its member states have formally acknowledged the broader political ramifications of climate change for over a decade. Of course, the Union is widely seen to have taken up the core, mainstream dimensions of the climate agenda with more serious intent than most other countries and regions. Yet, I find that the tangible, climate-sensitive changes to EU foreign and security policies may have many admirable aspects but are not yet extensive. Moreover, changes that have been made exhibit a mix of different strategic philosophies that detract from the clarity and effectiveness of EU initiatives. This book’s key contribution to on-going analytical debates is to look at the level of concrete policy adaption; in doing so it finds that while many aspects of EU foreign policies have begun to change they do not yet accord ‘climate security’ unequivocal or sufficient priority.

Vital questions

The definition of climate security remains fluid and contested. It is defined here as the use of all means – diplomatic, financial, economic, military and technical – to address the security-related challenges presented by climate change. It is widely agreed that climate security requires a broad definition that encompasses human, internal and international security.² This book draws from the widely advocated ‘nexus approach’, a definition which argues that climate change essentially challenges the interstices between markets, resource management, military power and human security.³ In this sense, climate security is categorically not synonymous with militarisation but understood in a broad sense: climate change is likely to affect traditional, defence-oriented definitions of security, but also the broader determinants of stability such as patterns of economic development, alliance-building, the spill-over impact of civil conflicts, migration flows and shifts in relative power balances. This definition seeks a balance: climate security refers to a wider range of policy questions than those of a purely military nature; but it also requires a narrower specification than simply enumerating the physical ramifications of global warming per se.

Official Western definitions seem to give credence to these broadly cast definitions. The US has influentially defined climate change as an ‘accelerant of instability’.⁴ The EU defines it as a ‘threat multiplier’ – that is, as one factor that reinforces many of the existing tensions that present challenges for European security, of both a traditional and non-traditional kind.⁵ The book will unpack the different dimensions of this definition and measure the EU’s policies against its own conceptualisation of climate security.

In doing so, the book speaks to a lively and on-going theoretical debate about the nature of European foreign and security policies. I understand EU strategies in the broad sense of those pursued collectively through European Union initiatives and instruments, alongside those developed nationally by member states; the relationship between these two levels is one factor carefully examined through the different chapters. The book’s conceptual framework counterpoises liberal, cooperative approaches to climate security against more realist, self-help notions of strategic interest. It is pertinent to study the EU as an actor in the climate security debate precisely because it has been in the vanguard of designing more holistic approaches to security. This gives its deliberations over nascent climate security challenges a resonance in the broader global community too. The EU’s hitherto lead role in international climate policy would seem to place it well for influencing a more tightly defined climate security agenda. Weaknesses in the EU’s response would have serious implications both for EU ‘actorness’ and the nature of the reshaped international system.

The scope of policy questions properly related to climate security remains a topic to be investigated. Coverage of ‘the international politics of climate change’ is still invariably taken to refer to the reasons why the United Nations (UN) has not delivered a binding agreement on global emissions.⁶ The literature on ‘climate policy integration’ has burgeoned but this concept has not been applied to EU foreign policy as such.⁷ Projects such as that of the UK’s Foresight centre on the international implications of climate change still define ‘foreign policy impacts’ in a relatively traditional sense of global warming’s consequences for economic growth, health costs and the UN’s ability to deliver climate solutions. Such studies have advanced the strategic debate but remain predictive and prescriptive; they are still in the mode of warning what consequences might follow and urging governments to ‘do something’ to prepare. On their own admission, they do not offer an inventory of measures being adopted or of how foreign policy is actually adapting.⁸

Against this background, the book seeks to advance debate by focusing on two over-riding questions:

First, beyond the now well-established rhetoric, how far is climate security actually prioritised within EU foreign policies?

Second, where the EU has upgraded its climate security policies, in which direction has it moved: has it intensified holistic and cooperation-based approaches or reverted to increasingly defensive and traditional notions of security?

My guiding hypothesis is that we should expect to see an increasingly close match between the EU’s established foreign policy identity and its incipient approach towards climate security. This is the case because the holistic and interconnected challenges posed by climate change magnify precisely those strategic principles that ostensibly form the foundation of the EU’s long-standing and distinctive security identity. The book scrutinises how far EU responses in practice accord to an ideal-type liberal–cooperative framework.

Chapter two offers a very brief overview of what international reports, official documents and academic assessments have said in recent years about the likely effects of climate change. The book does not seek to add to this literature, but merely set the context for an assessment of EU security policies. Chapter three conceptualises the EU’s sui generis identity as a security actor. European foreign and security policy is made up of a complex balance of governance dynamics. It is vital to understand this balance between realpolitik and liberal–cooperative dimensions because it conditions the way in which climate security is operationalised. Understanding EU security governance is essential to explaining the way that EU climate security combines ‘realist–rivalry’ and ‘cooperative’ dynamics. In line with this sui generis security governance, chapter four provides an account of the overarching evolution of EU climate security commitments. Chapter five explores the complex bearings that the EU’s existing climate change and energy policies have had on developing efforts towards a climate security strategy. Subsequent chapters then assess the nature of EU policies in each component part of the climate security agenda: military– defence configurations; conflict resolution strategies; and geo-economic power.

Findings: serious intent, but inchoate in sum

I uncover an impressive range of new substantive EU commitments in the realm of climate security. To some extent, presenting climate as a security issue has galvanised the policy agenda. Climate change has certainly begun to have an impact on the general definition of European security policy. Energy security has traditionally been conceived and dealt with in terms of relations with key oil and gas producers with little geo-strategic dimension evident in climate change adaptation; policymakers have moved to rectify this omission.

However, it remains doubtful that a fully geopolitical EU strategy of climate insecurity has taken shape and been implemented in practice. While statements, studies and conferences have been plentiful, their impact on actual European policies remains less than far-reaching. If anything, the rate of policy innovation has slowed, as since 2011 the EU has been preoccupied with other pressing priorities; many climate security strategies were introduced in the years up to 2010–11 only for their follow-up momentum to falter. The definitional issue is one with which European policy-makers still grapple uncertainly: climate security still means different things to different parts of the EU decision-making machine. While the EU is today more prepared to respond to punctual, climate-induced emergencies, neither governments, EU institutions nor militaries have readjusted their global alliances and partnerships to pre-empt the broader impacts on international order. The EU has begun to tackle select elements of climate security, but has yet to put in place a full-spectrum climate foreign policy.

Neither is it clear that climate change is pushing European security policies in one clear conceptual direction. A glaring paradox presents itself. Climate change is the most dramatic case of an issue that requires deeper international coordination; but it also provides an incentive for self-help survival strategies. Some of the substantive responses adopted by European governments have shifted policies towards more international cooperation, while others have tilted more to zero-sum rivalry. Formally, most EU commitments accord strongly to liberal security approaches, predicated on positive sum multilateral cooperation. There is little evidence that European governments are inclined towards a strongly militarised approach; policy developments do not (yet) seem to have borne out sceptics’ fear that the whole climate security agenda is being manipulated disingenuously by militaries to re-assert ‘hard security’ pre-eminence. Climate change has not been ‘securitised’ in the classic sense of engendering antagonistic, exceptional counter-measures; rather, the EU has been drawn to a more varied form of ‘securitisation-lite’. Yet, a concern is evident among diplomats that climate insecurity may challenge the liberal–cooperative approach in the long term. The EU has inched in ad hoc fashion towards a balance between state security and human security logics in its climate geo-strategy. So far, European governments are hedging their bets, mixing collaborative and competitive strategies – although the degree of commitment to climate security has not been strong enough to push EU foreign and security policy decisively in one direction or the other.

An increasing area of concern is how climate change affects EU strategies in the area of conflict prevention and resolution. The resources devoted to tempering conflicts have increased and more comprehensive policies have taken shape around climate-related tensions. The stated priority has been more assiduously to address underlying governance pathologies in fragile and developing states, on the grounds that climate stresses render containment-based strategies to conflict even more clearly insufficient. Yet responses to ‘climate conflict’ remain underwhelming. There has been little willingness to contemplate military missions; resources dedicated to conflict resolution have remained meagre; and EU development policies incorporate relatively few security-related specificities. A notable shortfall is that deliberations over migration policies have shown little willingness to respond in any constructive way to the prospect of increased climate-induced movements of people.

The shift to low carbon technologies is influencing the balance of geo-economic power between states, and the EU has begun to respond to this nascent re-ordering. International rules governing green technology are taking shape: international power balances will be conditioned by who has this technology and under what conditions, who gains access to it and how. Many policy-makers have designed open-market responses in the belief that the shift to a low carbon economy represents an opportunity for the West to recuperate power vis-a-vis China and other powers. At the same time, a more commercially mercantilistic flavour is evident in relation to European positions on green-related intellectual property rights, international investment regimes, rules of procurement and state subsidies. Tensions between internal renewables development and external cooperation in this area are increasingly apparent. While it would be an exaggeration to suggest that this has engendered conflictual international relations, an incipient sense of rivalry and competition overlay more cooperative EU renewables projects with non-European states.

Many predict that the rising salience of climate security will push the world towards more multivariate forms of governance, as desired outcomes will require networks involving governments, private companies, civil society actors and international organisations. As well as more numerous actors, more experimental and looser processes of governance will be apposite. There is indeed some evidence that the climate agenda has ushered in a slightly more inclusive structure of EU security governance. Policy-makers concur that the politics of climate security must be understood through the lens of new forms of public–private governance, and a plethora of initiatives have been designed to facilitate this trend. However, the influence of such networks in concrete policy decisions remains limited. Civic organisations and businesses have themselves been ambivalent and uncertain over the climate security agenda. It cannot yet be said that their influence is fully factored into concrete EU geopolitical thinking and initiatives. Although a wider net of actors has been included in consultations, it is premature to talk of climate concerns reshaping the qualitative nature of EU security governance.

The book’s concluding chapter expands on these findings and passes more normative judgement on incipient EU climate security policies. I argue that the risk appears less one of the EU having securitised climate change too heavily...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The impact of climate change on security
• 3 The EU’s security identity
• 4 The EU’s climate security response
• 5 EU climate and energy policies: Foundation or diversion?
• 6 Climate and European defence strategies
• 7 Climate and EU conflict prevention policies
• 8 The geo-economics of climate security
• 9 Conclusions
• Index