The Politics of Climate Security

Introduction

This special issue aims to bring together research at the intersection of climate change and security. While there are contested conceptualisations of the interconnections between climate change and security, there has emerged a scholarly consensus that climate change is a threat multiplier with the potential to worsen existing and future social and political conflicts. This is evidenced by the empirical fact that increasingly frequent extreme weather events across the planet are having devastating impacts on human lives, livelihoods, and habitats, often exposing shortcomings in the existing security mechanisms and infrastructures. Climate change as an existential threat of myriad dimensions has gradually come to inform security policy making both in the domestic and international domains.

Given the increasing manifestation of climate change effects on the natural and human systems, and the varied ways in which states and societies are responding to these challenges, there is a need to bring together scholarship to better understand the complex intersections of climate change and security in its varied dimensions.

This special issue calls for studies of recent climate-related extreme events and their implications for security in different social and political contexts. It seeks insights from case studies and theoretical analyses from across global regions to amplify ideas, narratives, experiences, and state strategies pertaining to climate security. The issue is keen on understanding how climate change impacts are having a bearing on the manifold dimensions of security and how states have perceived or reacted to these new challenges. It aims to shed light on current research trends on the complex and shifting interrelationships between climate change and security, and the attending politics and governance.

List of topic areas

• Climate change and geopolitics 
• Natural disasters, resource crunch and conflicts
• Climate change and Maritime Security
• Climate change, disasters, and gender
• Climate change, law and order, and democracy
• Climate Change and National Security  

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here.

Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to "Please select the issue you are submitting to". 

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else while under review for this journal.

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Key deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 1st October, 2024

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 3rd February, 2025