Climate Change and Securitization: the construction of climate deterrence

Abstract

In 2015, climate change is elevated to the same threat level as that of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist attacks in National Security Strategy of United States of America, causing discussions about the construction of one of the biggest threats of the twenty-first century. This research aims to identify facts and events that contributed for climate change to enter the political agenda and safety studies, arising from a securitization process under construction. To achieve so, points interconnected with climate change, security and armed forces, with time frame between 1945 and August 2015 were selected. The corpus, formed by official documents and bibliography from defense and security research centers of America and Europe, was examined using the Copenhagen School proposals of dealing with the securitization process as analysis units. The results indicate: (i) recent inclusion of climate change (list of threats) in major Western security strategies, within a securitization process; (ii) possibilities of climate change become "potential generators of sovereignty deficit", legitimizing future actions; (iii) climate change (such as "military" or "non-military" threat) will have consequences for the armed forces (requiring new skills).