The Securitisation of Climate Change in the Australian political-military sector with a comparison to the United States

• Main Author: Thomas, Michael
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: UNSW, Sydney 2016
• Subjects: securitization; climate change; climate security; Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/55933; https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/bitstreams/d2fc9a5a-245e-4188-a916-207bfca60b43/download; https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/18937

This thesis comparatively examines the process of climate securitisation within the Australian and United States (US) political-military sectors between 2003 – 2013. Drawing on established securitisation frameworks (―Copenhagen‖ and ―Paris‖ Schools), the thesis used a combination of software-assisted techniques and manual qualitative content analysis to systematically analyse more than 3,500 speech-acts and strategic policies. Analysis focused on how the political-military sectors contextually and temporally framed climate change and identified which areas of the political-military bureaucracies were active in their climate response. The research found that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was not a climate-securitising actor and that its response to climate change was mediated by the heightened politicisation of climate change. Unlike the US, the ADF failed to adopt substantive climate responses and this led to a minimalist climate strategy. The thesis argues that, in Australia, this constituted a strategic blind spot and identified the difficulties of an avowedly apolitical institution responding to a politically partisan security issue. This situation contrasted somewhat with the US, where a similarly divided body politic nevertheless united to legislate for the US military to analyse and prepare for the national security impacts of climate change. Given a degree of bi-partisan political authority to act, the US military undertook sweeping reviews that resulted in climate change becoming more mainstreamed than occurred in the ADF. By 2013, the US military had published a series of prominent climate change documents that represented the cornerstones of a more enduring strategic response. Beyond politics, the US military had other reasons to act beyond the expectations of the ADF. These included: increasing its force-posture in a climate changed Arctic; securing its global network of bases and infrastructure from climate change; and as an opportunity to consolidate its position as the pre-eminent global ...