Geoscience Reference
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with the liberal
cooperative model have themselves been limited by their lack of
truly security-related logic. The EU has progressed further in addressing human
security vulnerabilities through its adaptation-orientation funding initiatives than it
has in tackling the broader international relations of climate security. This is not to
advocate any kind of hard-power, realpolitik approach. Quite the contrary; it is to
suggest that the EU
-
cooperative aspirations still require greater poli-
tical security commitment and tenor if they are to be fully realised.
Notwithstanding the tilt towards positive-sum solutions, European governments
are hedging between deeper international cooperation and self-reliance. Policy
outcomes certainly do not yet appear wholesale to re
'
s own liberal
-
ect arguments that the only
way to guarantee security in a world ravaged by extensive warming is through the
'
'
solution. European policy-makers formally reject this argument, arguing
that it would be neither feasible nor desirable to pull up the barricades and
disconnect from the international system. There has certainly been no massive
redirecting of military resources
lifeboat
against a
climate-scarred world. Yet elements of EU policies do suggest that governments
are at least leaving open the option for some greater degree of self-reliance and the
need for a more rivalry-based geopolitics. While to some extent this is under-
standable and may even prove wise, it means that policy outcomes often exhibit an
uneasy commingling of the rivalry and cooperative frameworks.
This is seen most notably in the nature of migration policies. It is true that cli-
mate change is not the major factor driving a tightening-up of EU migration rules.
But it does feed into and magnify existing pressures against open borders. The EU
has not been willing to recognise any putative legal category of environmental
refugees. There is also a sceptical view of European climate
towards
'
defending the homeland
'
nancing: many dip-
lomats themselves fear that this remains too limited to serve strategic ends and is
increasingly directed at containment-oriented adaptation projects that are unlikely
to help lay the foundations for long-term security. In both these areas, policy
outcomes cannot powerfully be explained by a form of su
ciently broad climate
security deliberation, either in a rivalry or cooperation mode.
European policy-makers are acutely aware of the dangers that climate change
presents to con
ict dynamics in fragile states and societies. Climate change is judged
to augment the importance of
ict prevention and resolution. Yet, in
practice the climate security agenda has not yet ensured a quantitatively greater EU
commitment to con
'
doing
'
con
ict prevention. Nor has it had any major qualitative impact on
the way in which the EU approaches con
ict prevention. While there is little evi-
dence that climate security concerns have caused any signi
cant diversion of gov-
ernance-oriented funding into, for example, defensive migration controls, neither has
it given a spur to policies aimed at underlying causal dynamics. Where resources and
diplomacy have been drawn away from liberal
-
institutionalist to containment-based
