Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
security' (Weaver 1995: 49). These alternative and more critical discourses effec-
tively seek to rework elements of the classical concept - threat, sovereignty - and
show how they can take on new forms under new conditions, while maintaining
the codes of urgency (1999: 51). They also question existing political priorities
and trade-offs in asking, for example, why governments have adopted a highly
risk-averse and precautionary posture towards some risks (e.g. terrorism) but
not others (e.g. climate change), even though the consequences may be more
catastrophic and more likely in the absence of anticipatory measures (Eckersley,
2009).
Our approach is to show how a human security framework can highlight
the ways in which efforts to enhance national security in conventional terms
can sometimes undermine human wellbeing and ecosystem integrity while also
undermining national security in the longer term (Floyd, 2008; 2010; Dalby,
2009). We will show that Australia's 2009 Defence White Paper and its 2013
National Security Strategy are both vulnerable to this criticism, despite their
brief inclusion of climate change in the list of new security 'threats'.
However, it does not necessarily follow that national security and human
security must be understood as opposing and mutually exclusive ways of
conceiving security, despite their different security referents. National security
may be reframed in ways that also promote human and environmental security in
both Australia and the region. This requires moving beyond a narrow, defence-
focused national security frame that constructs climate change impacts as if they
were external threats arising from outside the nation. This not only obscures
the fundamental drivers of climate change but also leads to the misallocation
of responsibility and to actions (or inactions) that may make matters worse. We
know that the multiple risks of climate change, unlike military threats, are not
deliberately intended (even if they are increasingly foreseeable), that they are
the by-products of activities carried out by both 'us' and 'them' (but in our region
mainly 'us'), and that their resolution usually carries common benefits (e.g.
Deudney, 1990). In order to highlight the different policy implications that flow
from a national
versus
human security frame, compared to a nested national
and
human security frame, we single out for special attention the two iconic issues in
the debate about climate change and security: climate change-induced migration
and climate change and conflict.
Climate change-induced migration
There are no reliable global or regional estimates of the number of people that
might be forced to relocate due to climate change by the end of this century.
According to the International Migration Organization, estimates of large-scale
people displacement from climate change (both internally and internationally)
range from 200 million to 1 billion by mid-twenty-first century (IOM, 2009: 43).
In a Four Degree World, we can expect to see the biggest movement of people in
human history. A significant portion of this movement will occur in Australia's
region, given the vulnerability described above.
