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ABSTRACT
Climate change is increasingly acknowledged as a threat to states and societies, and several international organizations are now seeking to respond to climate-related security risks. The EU’s comprehensive approach to security suggests that the Union is particularly well-suited to respond to such risks, but the EU has not yet developed a coherent policy. This article addresses the gap between discourse and policy outcomes by exploring how practice shapes EU climate security policy. It provides unique insights based on practitioners’ accounts of the work being done in the European Union External Action Service to align various EU foreign policy tools and instruments in order to address climate-related security risks. A key finding is that a community of practice is emerging on climate security in the EU, but it is characterized by overlapping and conflicting practices relating to climate diplomacy, development, and security and defence.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Camilla Born, Björn Fägersten, Karl Gustafsson, Björn Jerdén, Florian Krampe and Gunilla Reischl for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. The anonymous reviewers of Journal of European Integration also provided critical feedback that helped improve the paper. The usual disclaimer applies. The research upon which the paper draws has been conduct within the research program on Climate Change and Security at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. While the literature on the EU in the field of climate security is in its early stages, there is a vast literature on the role of the EU in international climate negotiations, see among others Oberthür (Citation2011), Parker, Karlsson, and Hjerpe (Citation2017).
2. Schatzki (Citation2002, 75) describes this as ‘practical intelligibility’ or that which makes sense for a person to do in a given situation, which is not the same thing as that person thinking and feeling that doing so is necessarily the normatively right thing to do (see also Bourdieu Citation1990).
3. It should be noted that various research strategies and techniques can be used to study how practices shape policies in international and regional organizations (see e.g. Bueger Citation2014; Pouliot Citation2015; Bicchi and Bremberg Citation2016).
4. On 9 November 2017 a policy hub organized by the European Parliament on ‘Security and climate change: challenges and possible policy options for the EU’; on 20 November 2017 the Brussels Dialogue on Climate Diplomacy on ‘Enhancing Climate Diplomacy in a Changing Political Environment’; and on 22 November 2017 a public hearing at the European Parliament on ‘The security dimension of climate change: what implications for EU Common Security and Defence Policy’.
5. Members of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left party group in the European Parliament (GUE/NGL) criticized the report for ‘wrongly focus[ing] on repressive and military counter-measures whilst advocating further EU-militarisation’ (EU Citation2012, 13).
6. Interview #8.
7. Such as Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO), Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA), Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), and Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV).
8. Interview #5; #1.
9. Interview #9.
10. Interview #2; #3; #8.
11. Interview #10; #11; #12.
12. Interview #1; #7.
13. Interview #7.
14. Interview #7; #2; #3.
15. Interview #11; #12; #13; #14.
16. Interview #11; #12.
17. Interview #3.
18. Interview #7.
19. Interview #9.
20. Interview #7.
21. Interview #9.