1. Introduction : or how discourses create a climate of complexity -- 2. Out of school : from Copenhagen over Paris into the world -- 3. Securitization deconstructed : towards a consequent poststructuralist framework -- 4. Digging deeper: history and deep structure of climate change and security discourse -- 5. The international arena : a war of all against nothing -- 6. The Euro-Mediterranean region : not in my backyard -- 7. The United Kingdom : complexity, climate security and resilience -- 8. Conclusion : or how to mitigate a climate of complexity.
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
Abstract A growing body of literature studies how expert practices constitute issues such as climate change, migration, or public health as international objects of expertise. The article contributes to this research agenda by highlighting the role of digital visual technologies and infrastructures in the constitution and governance of these international objects. It develops the concept of visual objects and uses it to trace and explain the emergence of a new technological initiative conducted by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the EU: the vision of a 'digital twin Earth' (DTE). The idea behind the DTE is to combine various technologies, including satellite Earth observation, advanced computer models, and AI, to build a digital replica of our planet and thereby govern risks emanating from environmental changes and other global challenges. The article provides a first analysis of the international politics of the DTE. It shows how the visual object of the DTE functions as an attractor of heterogeneous actors and practices involved in the European space policy field thereby temporarily stabilizing this complex assemblage. Finally, it traces how the DTE and its machinic ways of seeing enact the Earth not only as an object of knowledge but also as one of experimentation and intervention.
In: Political geography: an interdisciplinary journal for all students of political studies with an interest in the geographical and spatial aspects, Volume 109, p. 103042
This article furthers the debate on the political implications of the Anthropocene – the most recent geological epoch marked by catastrophic environmental change – by engaging it through the lens of political theology. The article starts from the observation that discourses on the Anthropocene and related political projects are deeply influenced by a linear temporality and a common orientation towards the threat of the end of time. It distinguishes three competing discourses of the Anthropocene, eco-catastrophism, eco-modernism and planetary realism. The article analyses how these discourses invoke and update key symbols, images, and storylines of Christian political theology. Furthermore, it studies how each discourse mobilises these secularised Christian motifs to promote competing planet political projects. Each of these projects develops a different position towards the unfolding planetary crisis and the related threat of the end of time. Eco-catastrophism calls for a planetary emergency management, eco-modernism promotes ongoing experimentation with the planet, whereas planetary realism translates into what could be called a 'realpolitik of resilience'. Revealing the Western theological roots of the Anthropocene and planet politics is essential if the emerging literature on the Anthropocene wants to live up to its promise of pluralising and decolonising IR.
This article furthers the debate on the political implications of the Anthropocene – the most recent geological epoch marked by catastrophic environmental change – by engaging it through the lens of political theology. The article starts from the observation that discourses on the Anthropocene and related political projects are deeply influenced by a linear temporality and a common orientation towards the threat of the end of time. It distinguishes three competing discourses of the Anthropocene, eco-catastrophism, eco-modernism and planetary realism. The article analyses how these discourses invoke and update key symbols, images, and storylines of Christian political theology. Furthermore, it studies how each discourse mobilises these secularised Christian motifs to promote competing planet political projects. Each of these projects develops a different position towards the unfolding planetary crisis and the related threat of the end of time. Eco-catastrophism calls for a planetary emergency management, eco-modernism promotes ongoing experimentation with the planet, whereas planetary realism translates into what could be called a 'realpolitik of resilience'. Revealing the Western theological roots of the Anthropocene and planet politics is essential if the emerging literature on the Anthropocene wants to live up to its promise of pluralising and decolonising IR.
The article furthers the debate on environmental security by highlighting the role of visual technologies such as satellite remote sensing in the construction of threats and risks. It provides a rereading of the critical literature on environmental security through the lens of Actor-Network Theory and argues for understanding environmental security as a form of ontological politics. A theoretical framework around the notion of visual assemblage is developed that accounts for the hybrid, socio-technical character of visual technologies like satellite remote sensing, and shows how these render environmental risks and threats visible, intelligible, and thereby governable. Equipped with this framework, the article traces the development of a visual assemblage of satellite remote sensing from the early days of the Cold War until today and reveals its close co-evolution with environmental security discourses and practices. Three major contemporary remote sensing projects are analyzed to reveal how this global visual assemblage enacts multiple versions of environmental security: as resilience of local populations and ecosystems, as a series of local risk factors that become manageable through market-based risk management, and through a 'meteorology of security' based on the collection, harmonization, and automated analysis of big (environmental) data from multiple sources.
AbstractThe research article critically investigates recent European policy proposals that promote migration as an adaptation strategy to increase the resilience of communities vulnerable to the environmental crisis. Such proposals have been welcomed for breaking with alarmist discourses that framed climate‐induced migration as a threat to national or international security. The present article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by bringing in a fresh perspective that has so far been neglected: the perspective of gender. Drawing on a poststructuralist perspective on gender the article reveals that policy debates on climate‐induced migration take place within highly gendered discourses. Applying this perspective to recent policy reports on climate change, migration and resilience, the article helps to paint a more nuanced picture of the highly criticized notion of resilience. The analysis shows that, on the one hand, resilience thinking helped overcoming a masculinized discourse of security as control. On the other hand, it reproduces a series of 'gender myths' about the role of women in the so‐called Global South.
Current international climate governance from a risk-political perspective points to a paradoxical moment in world risk society. While the probability of negative climate impacts increases and we can see the emergence of a common risk perception among international decision-makers, nation states in the international climate regime fail to agree on effective preventive measures that could mitigate the harming effects of global warming. While at the discursive level climate change is constructed as one of the major risks in the twenty-first century, the focus in international climate governance remains on voluntary measures and market-based instruments. Drawing on discourse theory, this paradox can be explained as the outcome of a discursive struggle in climate politics. Risk, in this perspective, is a political technology to govern the future that is embedded within broader political rationalities. Until 2007, risk management in climate governance was established as a form of advanced liberal government based on individualisation and self-responsibility. The growing consensus on dangerous climate change ultimately reinforces this advanced liberal risk management by presenting climate change as a 'naturalised' de-bounded risk and blurring its socio-economic causes.
"Politik im Rahmen des internationalen Klimaregimes ist ein Balanceakt zwischen intra- und intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit, denn sie muss sowohl den Bedürfnissen der Entwicklungsländer als auch denen der zukünftigen Generationen gerecht werden. Dieser in konstruktivistischer Tradition geschriebene Aufsatz verdeutlicht, dass eine wesentliche Abhängigkeit von internationaler Klimapolitik gegenüber der kollektiven Auslegung des Diskurses über den Klimawandel und das entsprechende Verhalten festzustellen ist. Der Artikel zeigt, wie die Diffusion der Normen und das wechselnde Bild vom Klimawandel die Interessen der Akteure im Rahmen der UN-Rahmenkonvention über den Klimawandel beeinflusst haben. Daraus folgt, dass die Anpassung an veränderte klimatische Bedingungen mehr und mehr als eine akzeptable Strategie der internationalen Klimapolitik gesehen wird. Dies bedeutet ebenfalls eine Schwerpunktverlagerung, weg von der intergenerationellen Gerechtigkeit, als dem normativen Hauptziel der Konvention, und hin zu einem weiter gefassten Ziel von nachhaltiger Entwicklung mit intra- und intergenerationellen Gerechtigkeitselementen." (Autorenreferat)
Politics in the international climate regime is a balancing act between intra- and intergenerational justice, as it has to account for both the needs of developing countries and those of future generations. Following a constructivist approach, this paper argues that international climate politics are heavily dependent upon the way climate change and the appropriate behavior required to prevent it are constructed collectively. The article shows how the diffusion of norms and changing images of climate change have shifted the interests of the actors under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. As a result, adaptation became more and more widely accepted as a necessary step in international climate politics in advancing the strategy of climate change avoidance. This also represents a shift from a focus on intergenerational justice as the main normative goal of the convention, to a broader aim of sustainable development that comprises both inter- and intragenerational justice.
"Politik im Rahmen des internationalen Klimaregimes ist ein Balanceakt zwischen intra- und intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit, denn sie muss sowohl den Bedürfnissen der Entwicklungsländer als auch denen der zukünftigen Generationen gerecht werden. Dieser in konstruktivistischer Tradition geschriebene Aufsatz verdeutlicht, dass eine wesentliche Abhängigkeit von internationaler Klimapolitik gegenüber der kollektiven Auslegung des Diskurses über den Klimawandel und das entsprechende Verhalten festzustellen ist. Der Artikel zeigt, wie die Diffusion der Normen und das wechselnde Bild vom Klimawandel die Interessen der Akteure im Rahmen der UN-Rahmenkonvention über den Klimawandel beeinflusst haben. Daraus folgt, dass die Anpassung an veränderte klimatische Bedingungen mehr und mehr als eine akzeptable Strategie der internationalen Klimapolitik gesehen wird. Dies bedeutet ebenfalls eine Schwerpunktverlagerung, weg von der intergenerationellen Gerechtigkeit, als dem normativen Hauptziel der Konvention, und hin zu einem weiter gefassten Ziel von nachhaltiger Entwicklung mit intra- und intergenerationellen Gerechtigkeitselementen." (Autorenreferat)
