Discourses of Resilience in the Climate Security Debate

Abstract

The language of “resilience” features prominently in contemporary climate security debates. While a basic definition of resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb recurrent disturbances so as to retain its essential structures, processes, and feedbacks, I argue that resilience is currently articulated in four distinct ways in climate security discourse. These are strategic resilience, neoliberal resilience, social resilience, and ecological resilience. Most analyses of resilience-based security discourses have hitherto been informed by Foucauldian notions of governing populations at a distance to ensure compliance with neoliberal norms. However, in the climate security field, neoliberal resilience discourses have achieved relatively little salience, while Foucauldian accounts are largely overdetermined, thus obscuring the multiple ways in which resilience is currently articulated. In this article, I identify these disparate resilience discourses through an analysis of recent US and UK government, international organization, nongovernmental organization, and academic climate security literature. I then analyze these discourses in terms of their basic discursive structure and degree of institutionalization to clarify how dominant climate security narratives construct understandings of security and insecurity in contemporary global environmental politics. While strategic articulations are currently most conspicuous, I argue that only social and ecological resilience support long-term human flourishing and ecosystem integrity.

Climate Security and Policy Options in Japan

“…The authors note that the legitimacy of climate security policy has increased because of the response of traditional security actors to climate change. Ferguson (2019) classifies climate security resilience into four categories: strategic, neoliberal, social, and ecological. As actors who securitize each resilience, strategic resilience includes military organizations and thinktanks; neoliberal resilience comprises international organizations; social resilience includes citizens, non-governmental organizations, and researchers; and ecological resilience includes citizen researchers and the IPCC.…”

Integration Conundrums: Framing and Responding to Climate Security Challenges in Development Cooperation

“…Another concept that is perceived by some Sida staff as a productive entry point is "risk". According to them, the risk concept enables a broader interpretation of resilience [56,64], which seems to be in line with what Ferguson labels "social resilience" in the climate security debate [19].…”

“…Research also shows, however, that climate security has become increasingly linked to concepts such as complexity, preparedness, decentralization, empowerment and risk and resilience [18,19]. A fundamental transformative change is perceived as being necessary to protect humans and ecosystems.…”

Rethinking the Climate–Conflict Nexus: A Human–Environmental–Climate Security Approach

“…Increasingly, resilience is deployed in the policy world with a range of conceptualizations, some of which have been criticized as responsibilizing vulnerable individuals and groups to behave as "model neoliberal subjects" (Ransan-Cooper et al 2015, 111). In response, others, such as Ferguson (2014), have sought to disambiguate resilience into separate categories: neoliberal, strategic, ecological, and social. Social resilience is defined as a concept whose fundamental purpose is to "alleviate human vulnerability through systemic transformation to build the capacity of communities to provide their own security."…”