Abstract
The nexus between Climate Change and security has obtained much relevance in the 21st century. Climate Change is perceived to be a source of insecurity that has the potential to exacerbate existing security threats. Climate Change is thus viewed as a ‘threat multiplier’ and a source that can induce violent conflicts when viewed through the lens of Environmental Conflict Discourses. Environmental Conflict Discourses (ECD) link traditional security concerns to the environment. ECD prioritizes the security of the state over the human populations engaging in conflict and also identifies migration as a trend that can aggravate the environmentally induced conflict. ECD asserts that groups within society will likely engage in conflict once natural resources deplete due to environmental degradation. Resource scarcity and the conflict that ensues because of climate-induced environmental degradation may force people to move across borders and become potential ‘Climate Refugees’. ECDs however, lack widespread empirical evidence to support the claim of a direct causal link between Climate Change, conflict and migration. It can be argued that ECDs have played a more substantial role in the imaginative geographies of fear about climate refugees which have informed policies to securitize Climate-Induced Migration (CIM).
By Chelsea Mai
Environmental Conflict Discourses and the framing of Climate-Induced Migration as a Security Threat
It is believed that the current climate crisis will most certainly lead to a wave of global migration [1]. The idea stems from wider mainstream narratives that seek to identify the causal link between Climate Change, conflict and migration [2]. Emphasis is made on the imminent mobility of millions of Climate Refugees across borders to the Global North from conflict-torn countries in the Global South where resource scarcity prevails. ECD narratives assert that climate change diminishes and alters the distribution of resources such as water, food and land “which in turn trigger violent conflict and, as a consequence, migration” [3]. The ‘degradation narrative’ also links environmental change with conflict arguing that the poor who live in ‘Third Worlds’ degrade their environments and are then forced to “migrate elsewhere as ‘environmental refugees’, where they will strain resources and cause political instability [4].
ECD assumes that Climate Refugees will strain resource stocks and cause conflict in receiving states. ECD can be said to portray Climate Refugees as “referent subjects, the entity that is threatening [to the state which is] the referent object, the entity that is threatened” [5]. Framing CIM as a security threat overlaps between immigration security and environmental security. Therefore, states seek to justify strengthening border management and control regimes to prevent waves of so called ‘Climate Refugees’ from entering their territories. Climate Refugees are thus viewed as a threat to national security requiring the state, the securitizing actor, to securitize ClM as a way to keep Climate Refugees in their countries of origin.
ECD coupled with the degradation narrative provides the assumption that Climate Refugees can cause the same resource pressure on receiving states that pushed them to migrate in the first place; therefore, Climate Refugees are seen as a threat and an inevitable source of conflict in the territory of the receiving state. Abel et. al (2019) argues that CIM leads to conflict in refugee receiving states asserting that “the arrival of climate migrants can put pressure on infrastructure, services and the economy of the receiving area, leading to competition over resources, especially when the resources are scarce” [6]. These arguments would align with the ECD, but ECD narratives lack evidence to support the claims that a link exists between climate change, migration and conflict. Brzoska and Fröhlich (2016) highlighted that “there is no scientific study that has empirically established the links between climate change, conflict and migration and identifies the causal pattern in a convincing manner, partly due to the inherent complexity of the task”[7]. Migration is a complex process and it would prove difficult to determine whether Climate Change is the sole cause of human migration across state borders.
The Imaginative Geographies of Fear and the Securitization of Climate Induced Migration
ECDs arguably lack widespread evidence to support the claim of a direct nexus that exists between Climate Change, resource scarcity, conflict and migration. However, ECD has played a substantial role in the narratives that inform the imaginative geographies of fear about Climate Refugees. It is the imaginative geographies of fear that have informed policies to securitize CIM in the Global North. The imaginative geographies of fear describe
the ways in which other places, peoples, cultures, and landscapes are represented in discourse and action by another group. The imaginative geographies produced—whether conversations, art, media reporting, travel writing, academic articles, intelligence reports—reflect the preconceptions and desires of their creators, and are reflective of the power between these authors and the subjects of their imaginings [8]
In Western countries, particularly after 9/11, there has been the ease in which “foreigners, described in various different ways (migrant, refugee, etc.), [are] added to insecurity discourse, with the effect of heightening the perceived seriousness of [their] threat” [9]. Climate Refugees from the Global South have not been an exception to the threat narratives because ECD links their arrival in receiving states to conflict and instability. It is this imaginative fear that “black and brown bodies crossing national borders” [10] will inevitably lead to conflict that causes states, especially those in the Global North to view their mobile bodies as inherent threats. Baldwin and Erickson (2020) provide an explanation to the imaginative fear of ‘black and brown bodies as threatening by arguing that the Anthropocene is ‘inescapably racial’ and that it is a “white public space’: a space which ‘erases the differential histories and relationships that have led to current environmental crises” [11]. The racialization of climate induced migration omits the destructive impact that colonization and capitalism have had on the environment. [12]
According to White (2011) “Securitization is an active process, - one that identifies a threat, specifies its character, taps into a “social imaginary” of fear, and crafts a response that is robust and effective in enhancing safety” [13]. ECD has played a role in the ‘social imaginary fears’ about CIM. ECD purports that Climate Change cause’s resource scarcity which subsequently and inevitably leads to conflict and migration and it builds the assumption that Climate Refugees will transfer these insecurities across borders as they move. In addition, when ECD is understood alongside the environmental degradation narrative these discourses cast an image of millions of poverty-stricken Climate Refugees fleeing their countries of origins to escape climate induced conflict caused by resource scarcity. Climate Refugees are seen as harbingers of insecurity who will likely induce resource scarcity and conflict in the receiving states of the Global North. Chaturvedi and Doyle argued that “as imaginative geographies of threatening incremental climate change seek embodiment in the figure of a ‘climate migrant’, new walls/borders of otherness (both mental and physical) are being erected and in the process, the old ones are reinforced” [14]. ECD is also very state-centric so its discursive power taps into the imaginative geographies of fears about the perceived threat of Climate Refugees to state security. In this regard, it can be said that “imaginative geographies are often deployed at the service of power- political- policing practices of the institutions of statecraft” [15]. ECD helps to fortify imaginative geographies of fears about Climate Refugees into a tool for the state to justify securitizing CIM.
Conclusion
Environmental Conflict Discourses and the imaginative geographies of fear inform a security-oriented response to Climate Induced Migration. ECD links conflict, resource scarcity and migration together to frame CIM as a major security threat even without substantial evidence to support this claim. More importantly, it is the discursive power of ECD that has played well into the imaginative geographies of fear about climate refugees. The imaginative geographies of fear reveal the racialization of CIM as the ‘brown and black bodies’ of Climate Refugees crossing borders are viewed as entities of conflict and insecurity. Imaginative geographies of fear are thus a tool of statecraft that informs and justifies the securitization of CIM.
Bibliography
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See Homer-Dixon, T. (1999). Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: Princeton University Press and Reuveny, R., 2007. Climate change-induced migration and violent conflict. Journal of Political Geography and Climate Change Conflict Volume 26, 656–673.
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Ibid.2019, pp 239
Brzoska,M.,Fröhlich,C.(2016). Climate Change, Migration and Violent Conflict: vulnerabilities, pathways and adaptation strategies. Migration and Dev. 5, 190-210
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White G. (2011) Climate Change and Migration: Security and Borders in a warming world. Oxford. Oxford University press.
Gonzalez C. (2020) Climate Change, Race and Migration. Journal of Law and Political Economy Volume 1(1)
Baldwin A., Bruce E. (2020) Introduction: Whiteness, coloniality, and the Anthropocene. SAGE Journal Volume 38(1) 3-11.
Ibid, 2020, pp 7
Ibid, 2013, pp 7
Doyle T., Chaturvedi S. (2015) Climate Terror: A critical Geopolitics of Climate Change. Basingstoke, Hampshire. Palgrave Macmillan
Ibid., 2015, pp 113
