Securitisation of Climate Change: the Kingsnorth Verdict

When we think of global security, the usual threats that come to mind are terrorism, interstate conflict and weapons of mass destruction. However, scholars of security studies are increasingly embracing more expansive concepts of security which are concerned not only with organised violence but with other threats to the security of people, including environmental damage, food shortages, lack of access to healthcare and suitable accommodation. It is well known that these factors can be causes of violent conflict, from fighting over arable land in a desertified Darfur to water disputes in the Middle East, however there is a growing trend towards viewing issues such as climate change not just as causing security threats, but as security threats in themselves.

'Securitisation' is a word used to describe the process by which issues come to be incorporated into the security agenda. Although non-traditional conceptions of security have more currency in academic circles, they are beginning to surface in policy arenas, prompting speculation about what might be the impacts of securitising climate change. Matters of national or international security remain high on government and IGO policy agendas, receive enviable levels of funding and may justify extraordinary measures where an existential threat is perceived.[1] According to members of the Copenhagen School, a successful act of securitisation is one where an actor convinces a separate audience to accept that a specific matter is a security threat, and in doing so wins the right to use exceptional means to counter it.[2] While this could be a positive move if climate change is addressed with more urgency, critics of securitisation highlight the danger that it can be anti-democratic, increasing the power of militaries and elites to curtail civil liberties, and reducing political contestability of the issues at hand.[3] Just imagine the UN Security Council taking on climate change. 

Ralf Emmers argues that while it is easy to see how governments and militaries could use securitisation to increase their power, it is difficult to see how NGOs such as Greenpeace could employ "an extraordinary measure that goes beyond standard political procedures" to further their aims.[4] However, on 11th September 2008, they did just that. In this case the securitising actor was not a government or military but six Greenpeace protesters and their defence lawyers who convinced a jury of 12 British citizens that climate change poses an existential threat to people from around the world. They were consequently acquitted of causing £30,000 criminal damage to an E.on smokestack in Kingsnorth when five of them climbed it in 2007 to paint "Gordon, bin it" on it, in protest against plans to build a new coal-fired power station there. Calling a range of witnesses, including climate scientists and an Innuit leader from Greenland, the defence argued that the threat posed by a new generation of coal-fired power stations was far greater than the threat to property and security posed by the protesters, which constitutes a lawful excuse for the damage they caused.

Just what these "extraordinary measures" will change is uncertain; Gordon has not responded publicly to the verdict. Nonetheless, that the protesters were convicted of no crime raises the question of what other measures NGOs and other activists can legally take whilst invoking the threats posed by environmental degradation. A binding precedent cannot be set by the Crown Court in British law and so all future cases will be judged individually, however environmental groups expect to make use of the same arguments. The argument in this case focused primarily on damage to property caused by climate change, however the witness statements referred repeatedly to threats posed to people's lives and livelihoods, and the case meets the criteria for an act of securitisation.[5] This suggests that securitisation is not synonymous with militarisation as some might imagine[6], but can be used by members of civil society to advance a progressive agenda.

[1] Ralf Emmers, 'Securitization' in Alan Collins (ed.) Contemporary Security Studies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 112.

[2] See Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).

[3] Alan Collins, 'Securitization, Frankenstein's Monster and Malaysian Education' in The Pacific Review, vol. 18 no. 4 (2005), p. 585; Kyle Grayson, 'Securitization and the Boomerang Debate: A Rejoinder to Liotta and Smith-Windsor' in Security Dialogue, vol. 34 no. 3 (2003), p. 430-1.

[4] Emmers, 'Securitization', p. 114.

[5] See Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, Security, p. 26.

[6] See Grayson, 'Securitization', p. 339, 341.