From Climate Change and Security Impacts to Sustainability Transition: Two Policy Debates and Scientific Discourses
Since the climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 global climate diplomacy faces a ‘climate paradox’ as reflected in the policy declarations by the G8 to reduce their greenhouse gases (GHG) by 80 % by 2050. Several countries failed to implement their leg
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From Climate Change and Security Impacts to Sustainability Transition: Two Policy Debates and Scientific Discourses Hans Günter Brauch
Abstract Since the climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 global climate diplomacy faces a ‘climate paradox’ as reflected in the policy declarations by the G8 to reduce their greenhouse gases (GHG) by 80 % by 2050. Several countries failed to implement their legal GHG reduction obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. A ‘climate paradox’ is a result of the dominant Hobbesian ‘business-as-usual’ climate and security policies. Since 2004 the physical and societal impacts of climate change were ‘securitized’ in the policy debates in the context of international, national and human security. Since 2007 the scientific discourse on climate change and security emerged, where in the social sciences several approaches are distinguished: (a) qualitative vs. quantitative approaches; (b) scenario analysis; (c) scientific modelling; (d) discourse analysis and (e) causal analysis. In 2009, the UN Secretary General in a report on the climate change security nexus referred to climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ prevailing in the security debate and to climate change as a ‘threat minimizer’ pointing to proactive transformative policies towards sustainability. This chapter briefly reviews both debates arguing that the security consequences of climate change may be countered by strategies and policies aiming at sustainability transition.
Keywords Climate change and security discourse Climate paradox Global climate change Hobbesian policy Security impacts Sustainability transition
H. G. Brauch (&) Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS), Alte Bergsteige 47, 74821 Mosbach, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Oswald Spring et al. (eds.), Expanding Peace Ecology: Peace, Security, U. Sustainability, Equity and Gender, SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace 12, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-00729-8_2, The Author(s) 2014
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H. G. Brauch
2.1 Introduction: Two Alternative Discourses This chapter reviews two parallel policy debates and scientific discourses dealing with the societal impacts of climate change reactively by addressing them as security dangers and proactively as opportunities to realize a sustainable development path. This chapter argues that to overcome the paralysis of global climate diplomacy since 2009 a departure from the prevailing and reactive BAU approach is needed that resulted in a ‘climate paradox’. Oswald Spring and Brauch (2009) pointed to an alternative vision of a ‘‘fourth sustainability revolution’’ that requires major changes in the ‘worldview’ of scientists, in the ‘mindset’ of policymakers, in the ‘culture’ of citizens and consumers, and in climate-conscious forms of local, national and international governance (Held et al. 2011, 2013). The first debate addresses possible security consequences of the present global climate po
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