Climate Change and Risk. Securitization and Emergency in Global Governance

Resumen o Introducción

“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. It refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity.” When such a change was seen in the past as a purely natural event, humankind now recognizes its own influence on the Earth’s ecosystem. Since the 1970s academics and scientists are warning of a Global Warming caused by human activities by several publications like The Limits to Growth (1972). The issue became ultimately the public attention with the release of former US Presidential Candidate Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” honored with an Academy Award in 2006 and the winning of the Nobel Peace prize by IPCC and Al Gore. For the matter of easy understanding I will put Climate Change synonymous to the recent phenomenon of Global Warming. Being a huge challenge for humankind there is a lively debate about the way facing it, mainly in which category of the trilogy politicization, securitization and riskification it falls. For such a categorization it is important to ask for the nature of Global Warming, so whether it is or should be treated as a political issue, a threat or a risk. Is climate change thus governed as a threat or a risk? Can we witness a successful securitization? Or is it more convenient to classify Climate Change into the concept of riskification? After providing the reader with each conceptual framework, I will challenge the theories with the issues of Climate Change. But first and foremost it will be needed to explain the relevance of Climate Change as an issue within security studies.