Fit for purpose? Climate change, security and IR

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4445339
AutoresMatt Mcdonald (0000-0001-6636-2731, The University of Queensland, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen38
Número3
Páginas313-330
Fecha de publicación2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Relations (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0047-1178 • E-ISSN: 1741-2862
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00471178241268270
OpenAlexW4401061973
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6

As the contributions to this special issue suggest, IR has had a problematic relationship with environmental issues. Indeed it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that IR has treated environmental change almost as a distraction from important concerns of global politics, and gives us few significant resources for understanding these challenges or addressing them effectively. This is perhaps most starkly evident in the subfield of security studies, despite increasing recognition that environmental change warrants consideration as a security issue. This paper examines this engagement with a particular focus on climate change. Ultimately, the paper advances two arguments. First, examinations of the climate change-security relationship located in traditional security studies struggle to come to terms with the nature of the Anthropocene challenge and more specifically with the questions of who needs securing; what the nature of the threat posed is; and who is capable of or responsible for addressing this threat. Second, however, we can see progressive potential in engagement with the security implications of climate change in IR where such scholarship parts ways with traditional accounts of security; does not allow existing configurations of power to define the conditions for thinking about agency and sites of politics; and reflexively and self-consciously draws on insights from beyond the IR discipline. The increasing volume of work consistent with this more critical engagement is grounds for hope for this field of study in engaging productively even with a challenge as complex and significant as climate change

Agency (philosophy) · Anthropocene · Climate change · Environmental ethics · Environmental security · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Security studies · Social science · Sociology · Ecology · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Nuclear Issues and Defense · Transboundary Water Resource Management