Integrated Global Governance on Climate Security

Climate security risks are becoming increasingly paramount in global governance. Given their trans-boundary nature, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) play an important role in addressing them. This paper starts from the assumption that climate security risks are complex and trans-boundary political issues that require integrated governance approaches across issue areas to deal with them effectively. Integrated governance across IGOs or across issue areas within IGOs may help avoiding inconsistencies or creating synergies. However, little is known about the nature and scope of existing integrated governance approaches. More specifically, we need to better understand how policy integration is pursued, within which institutional structures it takes place, and whether there is a systematic variation in IGOs and policy sectors where integration occurs. This study aims to fill this shortcoming in the existing literature. It provides an ambitious and comparative first mapping of integration in global climate security governance, asking when, how and which IGOs engage in integration. Theoretically, it develops a conceptual framework based on previous literature on environmental policy integration, climate policy integration, and interaction management. Empirically, this study maps integration within global climate risks governance over time and across a large number of IGOs in diverse issue areas (health, migration, food security, etc.). Analyzing IGOs’ policy reports, programs, joint projects, among others, the study seeks to uncover the levels and structures of how climate risks are integrated into policies, and whether there is further integration across issue areas, for example a nexus of health, migration and climate policies. The results have important implications for the theory of policy integration and fragmentation in global environmental governance. Moreover, the paper promises a central empirical addition to the literature on global climate security governance through the first large-N mapping of institutional integration trends, providing a database on global climate security governance that will be of value to both scholars and practitioners.