Chris Methmann

The sky is the Limit: Global Warming as Global Governmentality

The concept of governmentality has gained significant influence among scholars of International Relations. Recently, however, there is a growing literature engaging critically with the notion of a global governmentality. This article seeks to inform this debate with insights from global climate change politics as a paradigmatic case for applying governmentality to global politics. Drawing on an analysis of the Clean Development Mechanism, it makes three arguments, which seek to refine the global governmentality concept. First, governmentality does not necessarily centre on the notion of the ‘population’, but can also function as a governmentality of other ‘technological zones’. Second, the seeming failure of a governmentality in its own terms is better understood within a ‘post-foundational’ framework of depoliticization. Third, governmentality and sovereignty are not mutually exclusive. Instead, the former allows the latter to ‘govern at a distance’. The Clean Development Mechanism illustrates these points perfectly. Although it is based on a global ‘carbon governmentality’, it is able to conduct individual conduct directly. Its apparent failure in terms of carbon emission reductions is in fact a success of depoliticizing climate politics, excluding fundamental social structures. And although it is based on an international treaty, it establishes an advanced liberal government of the climate.

Politics for the day after tomorrow: The logic of apocalypse in global climate politics

The recent global climate change discourse is a prominent example of a securitization of environmental issues. While the problem is often framed in the language of existentialism, crisis or even apocalypse, climate discourses rarely result in exceptional or extraordinary measures, but rather put forth a governmental scheme of piecemeal and technocratic solutions often associated with risk management. This article argues that this seeming paradox is no accident but follows from a politics of apocalypse that combines two logics – those of security and risk – which in critical security studies are often treated as two different animals. Drawing on the hegemony theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, however, this article shows that the two are inherently connected. In the same way as the Christian pastorate could not do without apocalyptic imageries, today’s micro-politics of risk depends on a series of macro-securitizations that enable and legitimize the governmental machinery. This claim is backed up by an inquiry into current global discourses of global climate change regarding mitigation, adaptation and security implications. Although these discourses are often framed through the use of apocalyptic images, they rarely result in exceptional or extraordinary measures, but rather advance a governmental scheme of risk management. Tracing the relationship between security and risk in these discourses, we use the case of climate change to highlight the relevance of our theoretical argument.

From 'fearing' to 'empowering' climate refugees: Governing climate-induced migration in the name of resilience

The concept of resilience was born and grew up in the environmental sciences during the 1970s. After migrating into many other disciplines, resilience is now ‘coming home’ to the politics of the environment in the name of security. The field of climate change induced migration is investigated as a paradigmatic case of environmental security. On a theoretical level, resilience is studied as a governmentality; that is, as advanced liberal government which governs through contingency. On an empirical level, a brief genealogy of environmental migration is presented with a focus on the latest discursive shift towards resilience. It is demonstrated that climate change induced migration was once represented as a pathology to be prevented and, more recently, as an issue of refugee rights. However, the shift towards resilience has reframed the debate. Climate change-induced migration is now presented as a rational strategy of adaptation to unavoidable levels of climate change and the relocation of millions of people is rendered acceptable and rational. The most drastic policy implication of this shift is that the space of the political is eliminated. Climate change is presented as a matter of fact rather than as a social problem that could still be tackled by significant emission reductions and lifestyle changes by residents in the major developed economies.

‘Climate Refugees’ as Dawning Catastrophe? A Critique of the Dominant Quest for Numbers

While the evidence about climate change is increasingly being corroborated, scientific and public interest in the scale and scope of the social changes associated with global warming is constantly rising. This holds especially true for the impact of climate change on patterns of human flight and migration. However, concern with ‘climate refugees’2 often appears to be driven by a certain fascination with catastrophic images and results in a quest for ever larger numbers. Paradigmatic in this regard is the prominent assessment of the Oxford-based researcher Norman Myers who predicted more than 200 million climate-induced refugees by 2050 (Myers 2002). Although this figure is certainly only a rough estimate, it is cited by many reports on the social impacts of climate change. In recent years a number of studies have been added to this literature; their conclusions give ambiguous results about the exact figures, with some of them exaggerating the numbers even further: 50 million by 2010 (UNU-EHS 2005), 50 million by 2060 (UNEP 2008), 250 million by 2050 (Christian Aid 2009), to name but a few (for a complete list see table 16.1). The UN humanitarian affairs office estimates that there are 20 million people displaced by climate-related causes as of today (IDMC/OCHA 2009). It therefore does not come as a surprise that the issue of climate refugees has been put on the political agenda as well, as for instance by UNHCR (Guterres 2008; UNHCR 2009), the “Solana Report” (High Representative and European Commission 2008), the UNFCCC secretariat (UNFCCC 2007), and has even finally become a topic at the UNFCCC climate negotiations (IRIN 2009). Recently, EU development commissioner Karel de Gucht even projected a number as high as 300 million climate refugees by 2010 in his plea for an increase in ODA spending (Raupp 2009).

Securitizing ‘climate refugees’: the futurology of climate-induced migration

This article serves as the introduction to this special issue in Critical Studies on Security. It begins with a brief overview of the academic debate and policy context concerning climate change and human migration. The principal claim is that critical evaluation of the security dimensions of climate change and migration must begin with the epistemological challenge that knowledge about climate change and human migration is speculative and future-conditional. This introductory piece then provides short synopses of each article included in the special issue.

Tracing the spectre that haunts Europe: the visual construction of climate-induced migration in the MENA region

Climate-induced migration (CIM) has become a symbol for the dangers to be expected in warming world. Yet at the same time, this human face of global warming is symbolized through news, magazines reports and maps. Focusing on Western projections of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), this article investigates the political implications of the little visual security nothings that construct CIM in that region. We show that the ingrained European idea of MENA as buffer zone against external dangers is challenged by imaginations of an increasingly complex and uncertainty Mediterranean region. MENA is cast as hotspot of mixing social, political and ecological problems, populated by racialized, helpless and passive victims, exposed to an erratic and dangerous climate change. In the words of Deleuze and Guattari, the nomadic figure of the climate migrant/refugee transforms MENA into smooth space that threatens the striated space of the EU.