Climate security in Southeast Asia: navigating concepts, approaches and practices

Abstract

Climate security is gaining significant traction in global discourses on how to respond urgently to the challenges brought on by climate change. In Southeast Asia, however, the term ‘climate security’ raises concerns about the unintended consequences of securitisation to frame the complex and cross-cutting impact of climate change. This paper examines these concerns against the evolving discourses on climate security. It argues that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN’s) reservations about invoking the language of security on climate change are underpinned by concerns about sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs. The paper also argues that ASEAN’s hesitance to adopt ‘climate security’ downplays the critical need to build regional capacity for anticipatory climate action, including the ability to respond to potential climate-induced conflicts.

Keywords:

• Climate security
• ASEAN
• securitisation
• sovereignty
• peacebuilding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Countries with a national Climate Emergency Declaration (CED) include Bangladesh, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. According to data from Cedamia (2020), the UK declared a national climate emergency on 1 May 2019, and the Republic of Ireland on 9 May 2019, followed by Canada, Argentina, Spain, Austria, France, Malta, Bangladesh, the European Union (in November 2019), Italy, Andorra, the Maldives, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Fiji, then Peru and Vanuatu.

2 In this paper, Southeast Asia and ASEAN are used interchangeably.

3 Established in 1967, ASEAN comprises 10 states: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. Timor-Leste is officially an observer in ASEAN. In November 2022, ASEAN leaders agreed in principle to admit Timor-Leste into the bloc.

4 While tangentially linking climate change to environmental change, Homer-Dixon (1994) argues that environmental degradation could lead to environmental scarcity and could in turn cause the failure of state institutions, leading to high levels of intra-state violence.

5 Oels (2012, 185–205) observes that claims about climate change as a cause of violent conflict remain contested. Other scholars (Campbell and Parthemore 2008; Schwartz and Randall 2003) suggest that connecting climate to security could presage a military response and the logic of exceptionalism, and have instead proposed that desecuritising the climate issue would be a better response.

6 Personal communication with UN and ASEAN officials. The author was a participant in the dialogue which was co-organised and facilitated by an ASEAN body within the APSC pillar. Similar concerns were expressed at the 6th UN–ASEAN regional dialogue (AURED) held in Jakarta in November 2023 to discuss climate change and security, and at a follow-up meeting convened in February 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to propose including climate-related security issues in drafting the ASEAN APSC Post-2025 Blueprint.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mely Caballero-Anthony

Mely Caballero-Anthony is Professor of International Relations and holds the President’s Chair of International Relations and Security Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is also Head of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests include regionalism and multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific, global governance, human security and non-traditional security, nuclear security, and conflict prevention. Her latest books, both single-authored and co-edited, include: Human Security and Empowerment in Asia: Beyond the Pandemic (Routledge, 2023), Covid-19 and Atrocity Prevention in East Asia (Routledge, 2022) and Negotiating Governance on Non-Traditional Security in Southeast Asia and Beyond (Columbia University Press, 2018). She is the author of ‘Conflict Management and Atrocity Prevention in Southeast Asia: making ASEAN “Fit for Purpose”’ (Journal of International Peacekeeping, 2023).