The French Armed Forces and Climate Change: Securitisation, Riskification and Climatisation

Over the last ten years, the French armed forces have started to think about climate change and its consequences on national and global politics. On the one hand, the French army began to adapt its equipment, procedures and doctrines to sustainable norms (a “greening” of the military). These efforts peaked in 2008 with the creation, within the Ministry of Defense, of an environmental team in charge of enforcing ecological norms and codes of conduct, on both material and operational levels. On the other hand, the French army started to integrate climate change into their strategic doctrine. Ultimately, this securitisation of climate change goes along with a risk-based approach, in order to anticipate potential climate crisis. In return, this “riskification” of climate change broadens security and extends the French armed forces’ perimeter of action. Based on interviews with French military personnel and archives from the Ministry of Defense, this article investigates the multiple ways the French armed forces frame their activities through a climatic lens. It furthers discusses the relations between these different modes of interaction – securitization, riskification climatisation – and their effects on security practices.