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Who has responsibility for addressing the security implications of climate change? States and the United Nations justify their existence on the promise of providing security. Yet, although the national and international security implications of climate change are increasingly acknowledged, incorporation of climate change in national security planning or institutional arrangements is far from universal, while debates in the UN Security Council about its role in addressing climate change have been characterized by contestation. This article examines key debates about the responsibilities these institutions have for providing security in the face of the threats posed by climate change, examining the extent to which these institutions accept responsibility for providing security in these contexts. Drawing on Toni Erskine's notion of institutional moral agency, the article examines a 2017 inquiry into the national security implications of climate change in Australia, and the September 2021 UN Security Council debate on the international security implications of climate change. These two case studies explicitly focus on the question of institutional responsibility – of the Australian Government and the UN Security Council respectively – for addressing the threat of climate change. In both cases these institutions stop short of accepting responsibility for providing security in the face of climate change, with limited policy responses or institutionalization as the result. With the security implications of climate change increasingly apparent, and increasingly recognized by these (and other) actors, the failure to accept responsibility raises potentially significant questions about the legitimacy of these institutions themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security implications of climate change are increasingly acknowledged in academic scholarship and in national security strategy documents. Climate change has also increasingly featured in UN Security Council (UNSC) debates since the first discussion of this topic in 2007. However, the UNSC has yet to agree a resolution formally recognizing its own role in addressing the implications of climate change for international security; a draft resolution on this issue was voted down in late 2021. Examining the statements and contours of 2021 debates preceding this vote, this article points to fundamental impediments to such a resolution, with the position of opponents (Russia, China and India) suggesting intractable obstacles linked to different visions of world order. While opponents' stated concerns about the UNSC's role in addressing climate change find some support in existing scholarship, the authenticity of claims made by opponents is called into question by the internal inconsistency of these arguments, the gap between stated concerns and foreign policy in other contexts, and the broader foreign policy interests and identities of these states. These factors present key impediments not simply to a UNSC resolution, but arguably to international action consistent with the urgency of the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it possible to imagine the deployment of geoengineering in the service of ecological security? Ecological security––a concern with the resilience of ecosystems––appears to caution against forms of intervention that might serve to change and/or undermine the functionality of ecosystems. Yet ecosystem functionality is already challenged by processes associated with climate change, and some degree of climate change is already locked in. This paper examines this challenging but important issue. After defining ecological security and noting varied forms of geoengineering, the paper explores the opportunities for––and challenges of––imagining geoengineering in the service of ecological security, especially in the context of solar radiation management. While arguing that it is possible to conceive a role for geoengineering in the service of ecological security, this must be contingent on extensive research supporting deployment and must be tempered by restraint and a commitment to precaution, humility, reflexivity and dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author responds to the analysis of his book "Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security." Topics include the author's clarification of the aims of his book, his arguments on the concerns raised by researcher Tor Benjaminsen such as his suggestion that the book might have benefited from engaging more directly with debates about climate justice, and the author's account of agency in ecological security in his book.

The devastating bushfires of late 2019/ early 2020 in Australia placed the country firmly in the international spotlight. The unprecedented scale, number and severity of these fires drew attention to the role of Australia's changing climate and the broader process of climate change. It also triggered debates about the link between climate change and security, not least given concerns over the deployment of military resources in response and the existential nature of the threat to people and ecosystems. This paper examines the climate change-security relationship in the Australian context. It examines how climate change and security are related before assessing the extent to which this connection is reflected in current policy and practices in Australia. The paper concludes by reflecting on whether the bushfire crisis of 2019–20 is likely to precipitate a major change in policy settings, practices and public debate on climate change and security in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Australia have struggled to generate and sustain public concern about climate change. If debates about climate policy can be viewed as sites of contestation between competing actors, Australia’s environmental NGOs have found it difficult to compete against countervailing forces that have sought to shape public attitudes to climate action and the contours of policy responses. While to a significant degree this reflects the power of those forces and the sentiments of the government of the day, there is also a case to be made that some of Australia’s most prominent environmental NGOs have appeared wedded to strategies inconsistent with building or sustaining public support for action or guiding policy responses. How have Australia’s largest environmental NGOs engaged climate politics, and why has this engagement taken that form? Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology provides unique insight for coming to terms with the multifaceted nature of the constraints, opportunities, and drivers of political action, from the context of climate politics to the forces behind Australian NGOs’ engagement with that politics, and the limits of that engagement. Bourdieu’s work also suggests possible avenues for more effective forms of political communication on climate change in the Australian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Global climate change has been increasingly defined as a security threat by a range of political actors and analysts. Yet as the range of voices articulating the need to conceive and approach climate change as a security issue has expanded, so too has the range of ways in which this link has been conceptualized. This article systematically maps different approaches to the relationship between climate change and security as climate security discourses, divided here between national, human, international and ecological security discourses. In exploring the contours of each, the articles asks how the referent object of security is conceptualised (whose security is at stake?); who are conceived as key agents of security (who is responsible for/able to respond to the threat?); how is the nature of the threat defined; and what responses are suggested for dealing with that threat? Systematically mapping these alternative discourses potentially provides a useful taxonomy of the climate change–security relationship in practice. But more importantly, it serves to illustrate how particular responses to climate change (and the actors articulating them) are enabled or constrained by the ways in which the relationship between security and climate change is understood. The article concludes by suggesting that the most powerful discourses of climate security are unlikely to inform a progressive or effective response to global climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, I explore the Australian Government's approach to international cooperation regarding global climate change from its emergence as an international political issue in the late 1980s to the present. In particular, I reflect on the ethical assumptions underpinning Australia's approach, and the ethical arguments invoked to justify Australia's stance on climate change. I argue that Australia's position has regressed from support for the central ethical principles (here defined as distributive and retributive justice) underpinning the climate change regime to an ultimate rejection of these principles. This regression is concerning for what it tells us about the Howard Government's conception of ethical responsibility in global politics. Further, and in light of the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, it is concerning given its potential to undermine meaningful international cooperation on a complex but pressing environmental issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]