Global Governance Responses to Climate Security Risks

Abstract

Why are some global governance institutions (GGIs) more responsive to climate security risks than others? Recent years have seen worsening humanitarian crises and political conflict related to climate change. Devastating hurricanes and floods have plagued the Caribbean, North America and South Asia, while drought and desertification have worsened hunger in the Sahel and the Middle East. To address such problems, states are increasingly relying on GGIs such as the East African Community (EAC), World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Yet GGI responses to climate security risks vary extensively in terms of how ambitious, legitimate, and effective they are. Some GGIs are highly active in promoting and funding new organizations or forms or collaboration to tackle climate security risks, such as the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC) set up by several GGIs in and outside the UN system. Other GGIs simply mention climate security risks in their documents or reports, such as the UNSC that has paid limited attention to climate issues in its preventive diplomacy and peace-keeping operations. How can we account for this mixed record in GGI responses? How do GGI responses vary across issue areas such as conflict, development, disaster risk management, health, and migration? Are there identifiable factors that make GGIs more or less engaged, and GGI action more or less legitimate and effective? What limits are GGIs facing in terms of their mandates to address climate security risks? What are the underlying preferences of GGIs with regard to how far climate security risks should be addressed? How politically salient are climate security risks in GGIs? To what extent do traditional security organizations such as NATO or the UN Security Council deal with climate change, and should they engage more? This panel promises to break new ground by bringing together papers that are innovative in four main respects. First, the papers develop a range of potential explanations of the sources and qualities of GGI responses to climate security risks, testing these explanations in ambitious research designs across a broad range of GGIs, issue areas, and types of responses (e.g. rhetorical statements, policies, legalizations, funding mechanisms). In this respect, the panel covers GGIs from multiple issue areas affected by climate security risks (development, health, environment, food governance, and water governance, among others). Second, the papers make use of a variety of rigorous methods bringing a broad range of research traditions to environmental social science, including critical analysis, large-scale expert surveys, elite opinion surveys, and time-series cross-sectional analysis. The panel brings together a group of researchers at different levels of seniority working on the sources of global climate security governance from different epistemological, theoretical, and methodological angles, as well as a discussant with excellent and complementary expertise on the topic. The panel is of interest to scholarship on climate security, global governance, and effectiveness in International Relations and environmental social science.