Beyond internal conflict: The emergent practice of climate security
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343320971019 |
| Author | Joshua W Busby |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Viewpoints |
Beyond internal conflict: The emergent
practice of climate security
Joshua W Busby
LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Austin-Texas
Abstract
The field of climate and security has matured over the past 15 years, moving from the margins of academic research
and policy discussion to become a more prominent concern for the international community. The practice of climate
and security has a broad set of concerns extending beyond climate change and armed conflict. Different national
governments, international organizations, and forums have sought to mainstream climate security concerns empha-
sizing a variety of challenges, including the risks to military bases, existential risks to low-lying island countries,
resource competition, humanitarian emergencies, shocks to food security, migration, transboundary water manage-
ment, and the risks of unintended consequences from climate policies. Despite greater awareness of these risks, the
field still lacks good insights about what to do with these concerns, particularly in ‘fragile’ states with low capacity and
exclusive political institutions.
Keywords
climate change, climate security, environmental security, human security
During a visit to the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu in
2019, UN Secretary-General Anto
´nio Guterres wrote on
Twitter: ‘We must stop Tuvalu from sinking and the
world from sinking with Tuvalu’ (United Nations,
2019). Guterres underscored the existential risks of cli-
mate change for low-lying island countries. In so doing,
the Secretary-General demonstrated that practitioners
have a more expansive set of concerns than whether
climate change leads to violent conflict, the primary
focus of much academic research (Gleditsch, 2021).
Climate-related internal conflict still remains a central
focus for practitioners. That said, we still know little
about how to prevent climate-related conflicts from
starting or how to stop them once they start, though
academics have more understanding now of risk factors.
Both the practice and study of climate security (or cli-
mate security, for shorthand) need to develop more les-
sons of what works to diminish conflict risks and wider
threats to human security. To understand where the
practice of climate security should go, this essay is
divided into three parts: first, the suite of climate security
challenges policymakers have identified; second, a short
overview of the emergent practice of climate and
security; and third, how policy can be made more effec-
tive going forward.
The challenges
The emergent practice has identi fied a broad suite of
climate security challenges, ranging from the operational
implications for specific military bases to the existential
challenges for some countries and regions. The links
between climate change and internal conflict – both civil
wars and communal conflicts – still have a central place
in the conversation as evinced by several United Nations
Security Council resolutions for ongoing conflicts in
Africa. A 2015 report for the G-7 identified seven
sources of what they described as ‘compound climate-
fragility risks’, climate risks that when combined with
other sources of state fragility can lead to negative con-
sequences including local resource competition, liveli-
hood insecurity and migration, extreme weather events
and disasters, volatile food prices and provision,
Corresponding author:
busbyj@utexas.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2021, Vol. 58(1) 186–194
ªThe Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343320971019
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