Introduction

The subject of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and climate change can be viewed from two perspectives: the security implications arising out of humanity's failure to adequately mitigate climate change, and the council's law and practice to date. Viewed from the first of these perspectives, the council has done amazingly little relative to the magnitude of the dangers we are facing, but viewed from the second perspective—and what the founders of the UN envisaged the council would be addressing—it is arguably surprising that the council has even considered what the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) regime has treated as an issue primarily of sustainable development. This chapter reviews what the council has done to date before considering what the global COVID-19 pandemic might mean for any future response by the council to increasing climate insecurity. The pandemic is possibly yet another major world crisis that was made more likely by climate change. Should there come to be widespread acceptance that the pandemic can be attributed to climate change, it may yet trigger a more far-reaching response by the council to the growing security risks posed by humanity's inadequate response to climate change.

The framing of climate change in global governance

There is a politics to how an issue is framed in global governance. Framing may impact the institutional home within which the issue is addressed, the experts and knowledge brought to bear on policy, and, potentially, the degree of seriousness and urgency associated with the response. The Copenhagen School of security studies has raised awareness that the “securitization” of an issue, through a process by which it comes to be accepted as a security issue as opposed to “only” a political, environmental, or economic one, serves to heighten awareness of and garner support for the issue, to lend a sense of urgency to the need to address it, and then to move the policy response beyond “ordinary” politics to be dealt with in emergency mode. In order for securitization to occur, the relevant “audience” needs to accept the “securitizing move” by which the issue is presented as an existential threat to a valued referent object. There is also a normative dimension to the theory; Ole Wæver preferred that a trend toward full securitization be reversed because of the risk that acceptance of more extreme action would heighten the likelihood of armed conflict.