Article Politics and Space

EPC: Politics and Space

2019, Vol. 37(8) 1471–1488
Securitization of climate ! The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/2399654419834018
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instrumental ends
can backfire

Jeroen Warner and Ingrid Boas

Wageningen University, Netherlands

Abstract
In national and international arenas, climate change and its impact are often framed as a grave
global security threat, causing chaos, conflict and destabilising countries. This framing has, how-
ever, not resulted in exceptional measures to tame the purported threat. This article examines
the workings of such attempts at climate securitization and interrogates its lack of success in
galvanizing exceptional action. We do so informed by two cases, which both point to the instru-
mental nature of these attempts to securitise climate change, often with the intention to use
alarming framings to promote rather mundane actions. Also, both cases show that the strategic
nature of the speech acts and the aim to make them sound highly dramatic, makes audiences
sceptical, thereby weakening their success. Our first case sketches how the United Kingdom’s
Foreign and Commonwealth Office framed climate change as an existential security threat with a
view to enrolling other countries to promote collective climate action. Whilst partially successful
on an international level, key audiences – the BRICS countries – remained unconvinced, and the
discourse lost support at the domestic level. Likewise, the Dutch Delta State Advisory
Commission securitized climate to instil a sense of urgency in the domestic target audience.
While initially generating blanket support for the costly spatial Delta interventions it advocated,
the mood soon turned. Both cases show that while the tendency to ‘securitize’ climate may be on
the rise, instrumental securitization can easily backfire like a ‘policy boomerang’, reinforced by
parallel economic and political changes.

Keywords
Climate change, securitization, UK, The Netherlands, Delta Plan

Corresponding author:
Jeroen Warner, Disaster Studies, Social Sciences Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, Wageningen 6706 KN,
Netherlands.
Email: jeroen.warner@wur.nl
1472 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

Introduction

Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and
animals will have died. The trouble will come when they try to migrate into new lands, however.
That will bring them into armed conflict with people already living there. Nor will it be an occa-
sional occurrence. It could become a permanent feature of life on Earth. (Lord Stern, author of the
Stern Review, quoted in McKie, 2013)

The economic, ecological, food and energy crises are only a smattering of the parallel crises
unfolding in political discourse since 2008 (Jhagroe and Frantzeskaki, 2016). The present
contribution focuses on how states have tried to ‘sell’ one such crisis, the ‘climate crisis’, to
intended key audiences, both in the international arena and at home. Calling a crisis how-
ever will only bring a mandate for action if it resonates with a target audience. As the above
quote reflects, the societal consequences of climate change is presented as a global environ-
mental (mega-)crisis (Endter-Wada and Ingram, 2012). Its implications will not be confined
to the Global South, as it can spiral out of control and as a ‘threat multiplier’ have impact
all across the globe. That is the main storyline Western politicians and policy-makers are
prone to using to ‘sell’ the ‘climate crisis’, to intended key audiences, both in the interna-
tional domain and at home. For this task, we apply securitization theory, a major strand in
current European security studies, with contributions from crisis studies. A crisis can open a
policy window (Birkland, 2009; Buzan et al., 1998; Cohen et al., 1972; Kingdon, 1984; Klein,
2007; Lowry, 2006; Pralle, 2009). A ‘securitising move’ seeks to lift an issue into an untouch-
able space of urgency, over and above politics.
This ‘selling’ of climate change through framing it as a security issue has, however, not
yet resulted in exceptional measures that cross the boundaries of the normal. A fair amount
of literature has already been written to help explain this lack of success (e.g., Methmann
and Rothe, 2012; Trombetta, 2008). Few however provide an in-depth empirical account of
this. In this article we therefore offer two cases to inform our argument. In line with secu-
ritization analysis we explore the mechanics of crisis framing, the audience, and the resonance
that the frame had, as well as its development over time: the UK addressing climate security
in the UN Security Council and the State Advisory Commission on Deltas (‘Delta
Commission’) seeking support in the Netherlands for drastic measures to address sea-
level rise. Both cases demonstrate the instrumental nature of climate security framings.
Precisely their instrumental nature helps to explain why these speech acts are not translated
into exceptional measures: First of all, we find those engineering the narratives are aiming
for relatively mundane actions, rather than endorsing exceptional ones. Second, and most
important of all, because the dramatic and scary climate security frames come across as
strategic and calculated, their audiences receive even the more mundane endorsed actions
with much scepticism, or even reject them outright.
We chose two European cases, as that is where much of the climate securitization orig-
inated from (Boas, 2015; Trombetta, 2008). Both states have manifested as active climate
norm entrepreneurs in the policy arena in the early 21st century. The UK has been amongst
the frontrunners in forging and endorsing the concept of climate security on an international
level (Boas, 2015; Boas and Rothe, 2016; Sindico, 2007). In contrast, the Dutch climate
security debates were initially more focussed at the domestic level, though in recent years the
Netherlands has also been using a security frame for its external diplomacy. We examine
both cases from early 2000s but running into the early 2010s showing real-life attempts at
climate securitization. The UK case study is based on primary document analyses and 28
Warner and Boas 1473

in-depth interviews – both with ‘securitizers’ in the UK and ‘audiences’ in one of the UK’s
key target countries, India. The interviewees include both public servants in the
Environment and Foreign Affairs ministries, and environmental and security-based
NGOs and think tanks. The Dutch case is based on documentary review as well as
conversations with public servants and researchers.1
We follow Boin (2004) and Boin et al. (2009) in considering crises as politically con-
structed, meaning that certain events are considered crises while others of equal gravity are
not. Security concerns and risk assessments tend to be about what might happen. We worry
about them before they happen, seeking a ‘way out’ in anticipation of a potential crisis to
retain a sense of agency.2 This may incite would-be securitizers to crank up the alarm to get
heard, invoking apocalyptic visions of climate-induced violence and mass displacement. But
the danger of crying wolf remains: the threat may fail to materialise. As the cases illustrate, if
the point is pressed too hard, it fails to resonate with its intended audience and the discourse
of fear ‘boomerangs’ (van Buuren and Warner, 2014a).
The remainder of this article will first briefly introduce the concern with climate security
and the multidisciplinary ‘discovery’ of discursive threat construction as a lever to
legitimise exceptionality, lifting an issue ‘above politics’. Two cases may serve to illustrate
the workings of climate securitization, its apparent lack of success and its unintended effects.
A discussion and conclusion end the contribution.

Securitization and crisification

After the Cold War, the global security agenda changed radically. The traditional focus on
military threats was losing its dominance. Security organizations, such as NATO and the US
defence establishment, broadened their activities to include a range of issues traditionally
classified as ‘low politics’ (Trombetta, 2008). Violent environmental conflict was promised
among the new security wars identified. At the same time, European studies made a
constructivist turn (‘t Hart, 1993), indicating that threats are not objective, measurable
phenomena, but constructions in the minds of policymakers and the public.
Buzan et al. (1998) introduced3 the concept of securitization to theorise this same
phenomenon. Their publication ‘Security: A New Framework for Analysis’ laid the ground-
work for the securitization theory that we now refer to as the Copenhagen School.
Presenting an issue as an existential threat, allows for the endorsement of exceptional
measures to deal with the identified threat (Buzan et al., 1998). Securitization, then, is a
security frame in which an issue is presented and dealt with as a matter of top security.
Framing is nothing exceptional in policy arenas (Lindseth, 2005), but securitization theory
stipulates that the successful framing of an issue as existential – a securitizing move – has
major consequences for how it is handled. Rules, procedures and accountability may be
sidelined to an extent that otherwise would be inadmissible.
A move for securitization can fail: security discourse needs to be staged: it needs to be
spoken in an appropriate setting, from a position of authority (Buzan et al., 1998).
The power to declare or ignore an emergency however extends beyond public officers.
The popular press likewise takes it upon itself to declare crises, forcing politicians to take
action. Experts (Paglia, 2018) and NGOs may also declare a crisis on behalf of humankind,
assuming a moral authority. Even the marginalised can ‘speak security’ (Aradau, 2004).
Political dissidents or social movements may for instance seek to raise awareness for certain
insecurities (Wilkinson, 2007). Saying or enacting ‘security/catastrophe’ however does not
make an issue one of security unless it is accepted by its intended audience (Buzan et al.,
1998: 25). In fact, officially calling a crisis an existential security issue is not enough: the
1474 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

crisis needs to be declared successfully, that is, such that is followed up by extraordinary
action. The securitizing move thus needs to resonate with its intended audience(s) such that
the intended audiences are ‘touched’ by it and moved to act on it. The security frame
resonates more if the threat has also been faced in the past and this terror can be invoked
again, such as saying ‘dikes’ evincing destructive historic floods in the Netherlands (Buzan
et al., 1998).
Links between the Copenhagen school of security studies and the domain of crisis studies,
rooted in public administration, have been surprisingly rare. Narby (2009) and recently
Paglia (2018) expressly applied the securitization network to crisis, coining the term ‘crisi-
fication’. Crisis is an important ‘signifier of threat’: labelling situations as crises and emer-
gencies, using the rhetoric of calamity, lifts them out of the ordinary and signals the need for
quick action, bypassing customary political avenues.
It has often been noted that a crisis is not only a threat but also an opportunity, as
expressed in its Chinese symbol (危机). Boin et al. (2009) pick up on this when they argue
that the same phenomenon can be framed as (a) an apocalypse; (b) business of usual; or (c)
an opportunity to radically change course. These different crises narratives may be in com-
petition when something undesirable happens or is feared to happen. A crisis can be a
‘focusing event’, opening a policy window that can be used to insert a certain agenda,
jumping the customary queue in policy agenda-setting (Birkland, 2009; Lowry, 2006).
This assumes we are not powerless in the face of crises; crisis may bring welcome change
and fast-track what Kingdon has called ‘solutions in search of a problem’. There may be a
(collective or particular) interest in pushing that window open or open it wider when ajar;
the work cut out for skilful ‘policy (or norm) entrepreneurs’ (Carter and Childs, 2017;
Kingdon, 1984; Warner, 2010).
Boin’s approach opens the door to an analysis in which presenting threats as catastrophic
may even be (seen as) instrumentalized for ulterior, political (or moral) ends. Up to a degree,
crises can be constructed, manufactured through representing the event as catastrophic, or
non-catastrophic, or backgrounded. As a result, the authority of the narrator of the frame
may also be questioned, as being driven by political rather than security motives (Boas,
2015). As argued by Czarniawska-Joerges and Joerges (1988: 189), a frame or a narrative is
more effective when not ‘perceived as “objectively existing” and not as a label coined by
Mr(s) X’. There is, therefore, political capital in presenting a security issue and its solution
as a national or even global rather than a particular concern, even if they are.
Strategic, instrumentalized, discourse has been actively analysed in organization and
administrative studies (Fincham, 2002; Lindseth, 2005; Vaara et al., 2004; Warner and
van Buuren, 2011). It provides particular insight into the role of policy-makers, politicians,
diplomats, managers, in making strategic usage of narratives or of certain frames to endorse
policy or management strategies. Policy actors engage in strategic labelling and construction
of narratives to sell, legitimise, or to make sense of a certain policy strategy (Fincham, 2002;
Lindseth, 2005; Vaara et al., 2004; Warner and van Buuren, 2011). Actors in the policy
arena have to take care, however, not to overstate their doomsday discourse, or for that
matter their reassurance, so as to prevent a discursive ‘boomerang’ (Warner and van
Buuren, 2011).
The assumption that framing can be actively instrumentalized to resonate with particular
audiences to obtain a particular outcome suggests a kind of ‘social marketing’ targeting
particular publics needed for their legitimization. The speaker calculates what metaphors
and arguments are most likely to persuade the intended public, to legitimise coercive
Warner and Boas 1475

measures that are impossible in normal times. Seeking to have a situation or event declared
as a crisis may be perceived as serving humanitarian but also utilitarian, political instru-
mentality, to tackle the deficiencies in the status quo ante (Boin et al., 2009) and to enable
measures that are unfeasible in normal times, calling a crisis to force change. Looking into
two cases of attempted active climate securitization, the UK and the Netherlands, we find
the security frames boomeranged. Why did a successful securitization effort fail to pay off?

Climate change as a global crisis

Davoudi (2014) shows how the social understanding of nature moved from nature-as-
clockwork (Enlightenment) through nature-as-finite (Club of Rome, 1970s), through
nature as risk (1990s) to discourses of global danger and insecurity caused by nature.
The author traces the rise of ‘climate securitization’ back to a conference, ‘The Changing
Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security’ in Toronto in 1988, which portrayed the
consequences of climate change as only second to nuclear war. Since the 1990s climate
change has often been presented as a global crisis, an existential threat to human civilization,
a planetary catastrophe (Paglia, 2018). Yet, unlike an aggressive force out to conquer for-
eign territory, climate change is a special domain of emergency, that of ‘threats without
enemies’ (Prins, 1993). As argued by Methmann and Rothe (2012: 328), climate is depicted
as an external threat, with impacts coming suddenly, ‘from the outside’.
Issues of risk and security ‘can provoke strong emotions, legitimise extraordinary prac-
tices, and lead to practices that are otherwise indefensible’ (Davoudi, 2014: 371–372).
Environmental securitization however is an uncertain domain for securitization (Buzan
et al., 1998; Trombetta, 2008). In climate change, the burden of proof to legitimize securi-
tization is especially tricky. While a clear majority of the academic community considers
anthropogenic climate change sufficiently proven, its invisibility as a source of anticipated
catastrophes that have yet to happen, cannot easily compete with visible weather events in
the ‘attention economy’ (Hamblyn, 2009). Other publics, then, are not convinced, as has
become clear for instance under the Trump administration. Moreover, there is no ready
consensus within the academic community on a clear and present nexus between climate
change, violent conflict and/or migration (Adams et al., 2018), and if there is, that it can be
successfully averted through a particular course of action.
The lack of ‘full closure’ has not stopped some from trying to securitise climate change.
But overstressing the security dimension risks reducing democratic accountability (Coaffee
et al., 2008). Some scholars have indeed warned for a security discourse to induce aversive
policies, such as a larger role for the military to cope with feared effects of global warming
like climate migration (Hartmann, 2010). Indeed, issues that can harm military capability,
are more likely to become securitized than those that cannot (Fidler, 2007).
Not only is climate a ‘threat without an enemy’ (Prins, 1993) but also lacks a ‘hero’ to
save the day. Armed forces can defeat an invading enemy, a SWAT team can neutralise a
terrorist, ICT experts can intercept a hacker, civil engineers and water managers can stop the
flood, but no single actor can stop climate change. A pitfall of climate securitization there-
fore is that of instilling a sense of ontological insecurity in the intended audience rather than
rallying support. Presenting an apocalyptic picture without a ‘way out’ upsets people’s basic
sense of security and trust in the world around them. ‘Insecuritizing’ them (Bigo, 2002)
instils a feeling of helplessness in the recipients of the message, a perceived lack of agency,
leading people to ignore the issue and hide behind a false sense of security in their home and
1476 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

community (Harries, 2008). The way out becomes the domain of more mundane techno-
cratic practices. ‘[A]pocalyptic climate change is articulated as overstraining the capacity of
political actors, and thus as ruling out exceptional measures and passing responsibility to the
“political machine” (. . .)’ (Methmann and Rothe, 2012: 324). The security discourse on
climate change has not resulted in successful securitization in the sense of having led to
exceptional measures being accepted and implemented (Corry, 2012; Methmann and Rothe,
2012; Oels, 2012). Instead, it ‘is so exaggerated that it prompts the opposite: routine and
micro-practices of risk management: mitigation as precautionary risk management, adap-
tation as investing in preparedness, and security not as pre-empting but as a combination of
the former two’ (Methman and Rothe, 2012: 337).
In adding to these scholarly analyses, our study interrogates the question of failed climate
securitization through an in-depth empirical account. It hereby further contextualizes and
situates arguments provided by others, such as Methmann and Rothe (2012), and points to
further explanatory factors that thus far have received less attention. Indeed, both cases point
to the rather instrumental character of the securitizing moves by political actors to ‘sell’
climate policy and explain why this has not benefited their success amongst the core target
audiences. The next section will examine such discursive strategies on climate change and
security through the case of the UK’s climate diplomacy in the international policy arena in
the late 2000s. Thereafter, our second case traces the genesis, ‘marketing’ and resonance of a
national plan to make the Dutch delta climate-proof. A comparison between the two (see
Table 1) looks at the key elements of securitization – an existential threat and the ‘only way
out’, the degree to which this resonated and was responded to by key audiences.

UK: Securitization as a diplomatic strategy

The UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) has been
amongst the leading actors in the attempt to securitize climate change, both within the
UK and abroad (Boas and Rothe, 2016; Trombetta, 2008). The FCO hatched the idea to
hold a first-ever fully devoted debate on the topic of climate change in the UN Security
Council in 2007 and actively pushed for it to happen (Boas, 2015; Sindico, 2007).
A security frame got introduced in the FCO’s work around the time that the Labour
Government was positioning the issue of global warming as one of high profile (Sinha,
2010). Climate change became central in the FCO’s environmental diplomacy drive in the
early 2000s (FCO, 2004, 2005) in response to Prime Minister Tony Blair who made it a key
priority at the UK’s presidency of the G8 and the EU in 2005 (Blair, 2004, 2005). The
agency set out to convince the international community that climate change was an impor-
tant and urgent matter to be addressed in the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC), with a focus on world-wide mitigation action (Ashton, 2011: 7;
FCO, 2013: 11). A security frame for climate change policy was seen as an effective way
to achieve these aims, resonating with wider strategic thinking in the Labour Government
(Blair, 2004; Cabinet Office, 2009; PM’s Strategy Unit, 2005). As argued by John Ashton,
head of the UK’s Environmental Policy Department from 2000 to 2002, and the FCO’s
Special Representative on Climate Change from 2006 until June 2012: ‘It seemed to us. . .-
that if you wanted to push up ambition and urgency in responding to climate change, then it
would be a good idea to make the climate security discourse more prominent in the broad
debate’.4 This crisis narrative warns of climate-related conflicts and mass climate migration
amplifying the negative consequences of inaction on climate change mitigation. Ashton view
was that the only way to convince foreign governments of the need to act was through
Warner and Boas 1477

influencing the domestic political conditions, as these inform a government’s politi-

cal agenda:

When a negotiator goes off to a UNFCCC negotiation, what really matters is their mandate and
their mandate comes from domestic politics. You cannot change those alignments and mandates
by the negotiation itself. You have to get into the domestic politics.5

Once other states themselves realised the salience of climate change, they would also become
more constructive at the negotiation table. Exemplifying the security implications of unman-
aged climate change could be effective in reaching that endeavour:

It is like the old water wars debate. Arguing that climate change is going to cause
security problems helps you to gain more international attention. This in turn can
generate pressure on states to make the difficult compromises needed to agree on a successful
post-Kyoto Framework.6

In 2009 the FCO even instated its own Climate Security Team, dedicated to the task of
promoting the concept for its climate diplomacy. As argued by the Head of the FCO’s
Climate Security Team:

In my team, we look at a strategy to raise awareness of the security risks of climate change to
other countries, with the hope that we can influence political conditions around negotiations on
a UNFCCC deal on reducing global emissions.7

At the time, the FCO’s efforts well resonated with a range of other NGO reports, media and
political statements portraying climate change as a looming threat. For example, the UK
Government’s chief scientific advisor described climate change as ‘a far greater threat to the
world’s stability than international terrorism’ (BBC, 2004). UK-based think tanks and
NGOs had released reports about climate security, warning of the implications for conflict
and migration (e.g. Smith and Vivekananda, 2007). This provided a conducive space for the
FCO to develop and actively use the security rationale (Trombetta, 2008: 594–595).
The FCO’s securitizing move became most prominent when Margaret Beckett became
Foreign Secretary in 2006. She set out to make climate change a top priority in the UK’s
foreign policy,8 with the Copenhagen UNFCCC Conference of December 2009 approach-
ing. Climate change became an official strategic priority for the FCO under the banner of
‘delivering climate security’ (FCO, 2007: 70) and Beckett actively promoted a security nar-
rative on climate change on an international level, raising the issue in Berlin, India, Mexico,
the US and in the UN Security Council (see FCO, 2007: 71). The debate at the UN Security
Council was particularly considered a high profile move. The debate was aimed to grasp the
attention of heads of states and to create additional momentum to make action on climate
change a key priority. It functioned as part of a wider diplomatic strategy by the FCO
towards the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen. As argued by Beckett (2007) herself:

when people talk about security problems they do so in terms qualitatively different from
any other type of problem. Security is seen as an imperative not option. . ..So understand and
flagging up the security aspects of climate change has a role in galvanizing those governments
who yet have to act.
1478 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

The debate also managed to attract other state actors to the issue of climate security.
Germany for instance provided clear support to the discourse by initiating the second
UN Security Debate fully focussed on climate change, held in July 2011 (UNSC, 2011).
The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have actively promoted the climate security
discourse since the 1990s, also in the Security Council debates. For example, Papua New
Guinea has argued that global warming is ‘as likely to cause massive dislocations of people
as past and present wars’ (UNSC, 2007: 28), drawing on images of millions of climate
refugees destabilizing international security. The FCO identified such fellow nation states
as ‘message multipliers’ with whom it sought to collaborate to strengthen and spread
the discourse.9
By strengthening the climate security coalition, more pressure was put on those states still
needing to make ambitious mitigation commitments during the UNFCCC negotiations on
the post-Kyoto Framework. The primary countries the FCO targeted at that time were the
US and the emerging developing countries (FCO, 2007: 71). But these emerging countries
were precisely those overtly rejecting the security narrative on climate change, criticizing the
move to discuss climate change in the Security Council during the UN Security Council
debates on climate change in 2007 and 2011, and expressing great scepticism regarding
alarmist security framings on climate change. To counter the security discourse on climate
change, the Brazilian delegation for instance argued: ‘. . .utmost caution must be exercised in
establishing links between conflict and the utilization of natural resources or the evolution of
climate on our planet’ (UNSC, 2007: 20). Similar comments were made by other emerging
countries, such as China and India, and received support from other developing countries
who see climate change as a matter of sustainable development (Boas, 2015; Sindico, 2007).
In particular, emerging giants with no special voting powers in the UN Security Council,
such as India and Brazil, have been highly sceptical of these moves and preferred climate
change to be discussed in fora where they do have decision-making power. In the 2011
debate, Brazil, Russia, India and China, generally expressing scepticism with respect to a
security framing of climate change, showed consideration with the precarious situation of
developing small island states (SIDS). The four BRICS countries however accused the West
of intending to change the terms of the debate by lifting climate change to the level of the
UN Security Council (Boas, 2015) – a clear case of ‘venue shopping’ (Pralle, 2009). In India,
for instance, it triggered distrust and a defensive position towards the UK’s intentions,
adding to a tense negotiation climate. In the words of the former Indian Prime Minister’s
Special Envoy on Climate Change, ‘the security argument put forward by the West is an
attempt to deflect attention away from what they need to do themselves’.10 In 2013, the UK
together with Pakistan tried to convene another formal UN Security Council debate on the
subject, which was however blocked by Russia and China (King, 2013). The debate still
happened but in an informal setting under the so-called ‘Arriaformula’. In 2015, another
‘Arriaformula’ debate was held, then initiated by Spain and Malaysia (Werrell and Femia,
2015). Thus while some emerging developing countries continue to oppose the idea, others,
such as Malaysia and Pakistan, shifted to the side of the securitizers, suggesting an increas-
ing disagreement on the subject amongst the leading countries of the G-77 group. Whilst the
Small Island States actively raise the security argument in the UN Security Council, there is
dissent at home as to whether this is the appropriate frame. For instance, small-island state
populations resist the associated helpless image of drowning islands producing so-called
‘climate refugees’ (Farbotko and Lazrus, 2012).
In addition, the alarmist climate security narrative was also unable to maintain a support
base within the UK itself in recent years. The tide turned when the Conservatives came to
power in 2010 and gave the promotion of climate action in the UNFCCC a lower level of
Warner and Boas 1479

priority. The focus turned more to other crises, which were experienced more directly at
home, such as the economic crisis and Brexit. In the 2010 National Security Strategy and the
2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the striving for a multilateral deal on climate
change mitigation was only mentioned once (Cabinet Office, 2010: 18), without employing a
security narrative to promote efforts towards such action. The policy constituency within
the UK had eroded, making space for alternative and related framings (see Boas and Rothe,
2016, for details).

The Delta Commission: Keeping the Dutch delta safe

Its low-lying, densely populated territory makes the Netherlands highly vulnerable to flood-
ing. More than half its territory is prone to river and coastal flooding. For the Western
Conurbation in which much of the population lives, including the cities of Amsterdam,
Rotterdam and The Hague, horizontal large-scale evacuation in the event of a major
flood is illusory.
In response to the disastrous storm surge in February 1953, claiming nearly 2000 Dutch
lives, not to mention fatalities in Belgium and the UK, the Dutch decided to invest heavily in
infrastructural coastal protection works, which has – at least until now – kept the
Netherlands dry up until now. In the early 1990s, however, the underlying rationale for
the flood security standards came undone as climate became an issue in Dutch professional
water management circles, both in terms of sea level rise and increased river peaks due to
glacier snowmelt (Kwadijk, 1993). Two consecutive riverine near-floods in the early 1990s
had served as wakeup calls of the latter, legitimising the fast-tracking of new structural river
interventions by way of an emergency law (1995–1997). At the same time, it opened a
window of opportunity for ‘green engineering’, rehabilitating widening rivers for safety
but also restoration of natural, cultural and landscape values instead of building more
flood defences.
After the turn of the millennium however there was a deeply felt sense within the pro-
fessional water community in the Netherlands that this greening went at the expense of
safety; as the memory of the flood disaster faded, security was dangerously skidding down
the level of priorities. The responsible politician, Schultz, who had no roots in the public
works domain, had shaken up standing advisory committees dominated by civil engineers.
From 2004, items started to appear on national TV invoking existential threats. Well/known
natural-science professors started to work the media to stem the tide.11 In a low-lying
country traumatised by major historic flood events, bringing the flood issue to the table
can be expected to resonate (Buzan et al., 1998: 27–28).
In 2004, the US Pentagon released a scenario in which the Dutch administrative capital,
The Hague, was ravaged by a climate change-induced flood. In 2005 moreover, the havoc
wreaked by Hurricane Katrina in and around New Orleans, widely explained as a ‘climate
disaster’, put flooding in deltas in the news as a focusing event that helped put climate
variability on the agenda (sensu Pralle, 2009). A high-level delegation led by the Dutch
Water Minister visited New Orleans soon after, concluding that 100% safety is impossible
to realise and the country needed to clean up its act.
A national advisory committee, the Dutch Delta Commission, was instated in 2006.
It was presided over by former Agriculture Minister and Wageningen University CEO,
Prof Veerman, and consisted of representatives from the domains of politics, science, engi-
neering and civil service (Boezeman et al., 2013). In September 2008, it presented its con-
clusions on national TV with great fanfare. Several discursive elements were mobilized for
maximum impact. For one, the name of the commission and the film introducing the
1480 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

accompanying ‘media show’ (Oomkes, 2008) harked back to the original Delta Commission
instated after the destructive 1953 flood, which claimed more than 1800 lives in the
Netherlands and made thousands homeless. But where the first delta commission presented
a blueprint for flood defence, the second commission crafted a vision rather than a plan
(Verduijn et al., 2012).
The Commission also stretched its mandate. Rather than concentrating on the coasts, it
presented a vision for the whole country. Rather than a range of scenarios, it only opted for
extreme sea level rise overtopping the Dutch dikes; instead of a range of policies, it gave one
option (Verduijn et al., 2012; Van Buuren and Warner, 2014b). The main idea was effective
– to give the Dutch population ‘stomach-aches’ over climate change-induced sea level rise.
To make that happen, the commission projected an extreme, unprecedented flood and
already in the run-up to its report invoked the 1953 flood and Hurricane Katrina as fearful
examples. The narrative invoked a rhetoric of war in which water is the eternal enemy,
rather than contrasting the earlier ‘living with the river’ invocations.
At the same time the commission suggested a way out: if the Dutch was to invest 1 billion
euros each year for all of the next century in coastal and river defences, it would be safe even
in the worst case. In this context, we can appreciate that the commission had advised against
renewal of floodplain zoning: the report’s key message was that the Dutch can build wher-
ever they like, because they have the know-how and technology to be safe.
At first, the Commission’s report met with blanket support and acclamation among
parliamentary parties and in the press after its launch on 3 September 2008. Then an
Amsterdam aquatic ecologist broke the spell with a letter to the Editor in the progressive
Volkskrant quality daily, followed by scathing commentaries and op-eds from
Wageningen12 and Delft-based academics. These responses expressed a strong sense that
the committee had ‘exaggerated the numbers and purposefully neglected the uncertainties
that surround predictions about climate change’ (Verduijn et al., 2012). It went way beyond
the IPCC ‘07 assessments or the “KNMI ‘06” (Dutch Met Office) scenarios (Katsman et al.,
2011, quoted in Vink et al., 2012). While KNMI had been consulted on the various scenarios
stemming from the 2006 models13; the commission however decided to only consider an
extreme sea-level rise scenario. The report assumed extra sea water expansion beyond the
commonly assumed 20 cm/century, arriving at a 1.35 m scenario. The Met Office director,
Wilco Hazeleger, came out saying this scenario is as unlikely as no change at all, and at any
rate was based on as yet unpublished calculations. The commission had a different rationale:
to show that even in the most far-fetched climate scenario, the country could sleep safely
(Veerman and Fresco, 2008). It also committed the country committed to long-term invest-
ment, which did not go down well with a liberal parliamentarian, Neppérus, who claimed
the funding of the plan unduly hypothecated future generations.
Some claimed the committee’s interest in ‘blue’ and ‘green’ technology completely
bypassed community resilience: people do not really feature in the recommendations (De
Vries and Wolsink, 2009). Delft engineers however felt the report was not structurally
focused enough, pandering to faddish ‘green engineering’ trends. Unlike the original Delta
Committee, the second commission only involved one engineer, a geologist (prof. Stive).
Climate securitization legitimized environmental values playing hopscotch, paid from public
money that was only intended for security: EUR 700 million in dikes would have done the
trick while EUR 2.4 billion was being spent to make space for the river. The Commission’s
advice would multiply this ‘contaminated’ budget for the future (Rijcken, 2008).
What killed the securitising move’s domestic initial impact was the economic crisis hitting
the Netherlands three months after the report’s public presentation, while the subsequent
political landslide slowed much of its momentum. The next elections brought no workable
Warner and Boas 1481

Table 1. Comparison of climate securitization, United Kingdom and Netherlands cases.

UK NL

Securitising move Existential threat: Appealing to hard Existential threat: Coastal and riverine
security concerns (e.g., climate flooding þ drought extremes due to
change produces violent conflict extreme climate change
or mass migration) Only way out: long-term funding for
Only way out: mitigation of GHG (green) infrastructure
emissions, transition to Climate change
low-carbon economy
Resonance In BRICS: scepticism In media and parliament: maximum
Sympathy with SIDS In science: scepticism
Desecuritising move Do not exaggerate Do not exaggerate
from opponents Venue shopping
Political dynamics Change to centre-right Change centre-right government, rise
over time government, backgrounding of populist climate change negation,
of climate diplomacy even erasing climate change from
policy documents

parliamentary majority. The centre-right coalition that took office needed the support of a
rightist populist party PVV, scornful of climate concerns, to prop up the minority govern-
ment. In exchange, it had banned ‘climate change’ banned from all policy documents.
In the next government coalition, climate policy was somewhat restored, but the Delta
Commissioner’s mandate was reduced and budgetary promises were deferred. There is little
institutional backing and budget for non-structural options (van Buuren et al., 2016). Levees
are considered more effective than any other combination of disaster risk reduction policies;
any alternative is delusional (Jongejan et al., 2012). In that unpropitious context, it is
remarkable how much of the original ideas have stood up in its implementation – taking
place largely outside the limelight, and clearly shorn of the politics of urgency.
While the Dutch delta plan was being implemented, energies concentrated on the inter-
national scene. An alliance between the Public Works ministry and the Foreign Office was
forged, whose ministers happened to get on well despite contrasting political affiliations.
Following a shift from ‘aid’ to ‘trade’ and a desire for prominence in multilateral diplomacy,
the Netherlands first launched the Global Water (Water Mondiaal) programme, then started
to focus on a number of deltas in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mozambique, Vietnam,
South Africa, Colombia and Myanmar. The delta concept resonated in the Bangladesh and
Vietnam Delta Plans. Yet while Bangladesh successfully presents itself as the poster child of
climate change and thus echoed and amplified Dutch climate securitization, this did not
obtain work for other deltas. While trading on Dutch renown as world-class water manag-
ers, Dutch delta fears needed to be repackaged and transformed in the case of Vietnam,
climate fears did not resonate much and ‘planning’ means something entirely different there
(see Zegwaard, 2016). The successful ‘export’ of the delta plan model may well have been
due to the pragmatic downplaying of the climate threat.

Concluding discussion
A securitizing move involves an existential, life-and-death threat and its corollary: an
extraordinary course of action as the only way out. Both case studies discussed here
(Table 1) show a dramatic securitising move, where climate change was presented as the
1482 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

source of great potential crisis that will harm us all, unless we take urgent action – either for
mitigation (the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) or for adaptation (adjusting to cli-
mate impacts). In the UK case, the FCO warned about the security implications of untamed
global warming – such as climate conflict or mass climate migration – to persuade the
international community, and in particular the emerging economies, to mitigate their emis-
sions to prevent these potential security threats. In the Dutch case, the security framing
legitimized considerable interventions in the form of dike reinforcement, river rehabilitation
and defence infrastructure, raising the level of Lake IJssel in the Central Netherlands, dig-
ging a bypass, and moving huge amounts of sand around (‘Building with Nature’). A special
Delta Fund and Delta Commissioner added to the special pleading to counter the climatic
threat. By reducing the number of scenarios and options, and successfully controlling the
‘staging’ (Hajer et al., 2010) of its public launch, the Delta Commission almost seems a
textbook example of turning the logic of ‘choice’ into one of ‘necessity’ (Verduijn et al.,
2012). In the end however the mandate of the Commissioner and the extent of intervention
was seriously curtailed.
Our analysis helps us to further explain discrepancies in climate securitization processes.
Once successfully placed on the policy agenda, its effect has been lacklustre in both cases.
Whilst endorsing an exceptional discourse, in both cases the securitizers ultimately sought to
endorse ‘a rather piecemeal and technocratic approach’ (Methmann and Rothe, 2012: 324).
The UK FCO’s securitising move was strategic and instrumental. Instead of purposefully
endorsing, exceptional measures such as military intervention and martial law, the agency
sent apocalyptic warnings to raise the urgency of mitigation measures. Even its actions
within the UN Security Council seemed mundane, although clothed in alarmist discourse
considered excessive by India and other BRIC countries, risking the further polarization of
the climate debate in the international arena. The FCO primarily used the Council as a
platform for raising further awareness, rather than to actually institutionalize climate
change within the UN Security Council, which would have been a more exceptional
move. The Delta Commission did not call for drastic action either. Instead, the
Commission aimed to secure long-term year-on year funding and legitimacy for infrastruc-
tural investments, and was successful in that striving, if in a watered-down form. In many
other countries, a commitment to infrastructural funding up to 2200 would be considered
absurd. Attrition and erosion inevitably took their toll, but the plans essentially still stand.
Thus, in line with arguments advanced by scholars such as Trombetta (2008), Corry (2012)
and Methmann and Rothe (2012), we note the urgent action promoted here is within the
everyday realm of climate policy: the mitigation of GHG emissions via carbon markets,
technological innovation without major implications for the world economy and raising
flood defences against potential sea-level extremes.
Our cases furthermore demonstrate the instrumental nature of these securitizing moves,
as carefully planned and developed within policy settings. As the interview quotes from the
UK case in particular show, the FCO employees promoting the narrative were instrumen-
tally using its argumentative value for their climate diplomacy efforts, making it integral to
their climate communication strategy. However, both cases illustrate that security language
can but does not necessarily help to increase the urgency of climate action, particularly if it
comes across as strategic. In the words of one Indian interviewee, interviewed in relation to
India’s position as audience to UK’s efforts in the UN Security Council: ‘If you want policy
to be changed you [will] have to tell people: this is the challenge and this is the policy
response for it and it has to be believable’.14 Instead, the FCO’s securitising move fuelled
further distrust amongst key target audiences within the UN Security Council debates. It
made emerging countries more sceptical of the UK’s intentions on climate change and felt
Warner and Boas 1483

pressured through scare stories that were unfounded. The lesson from this case, then, is that
a framing has to be genuine and valid for it to be convincing and successful amongst an
already sceptical audience. Furthermore, as the Dutch Delta case demonstrated, apocalyptic
discourses risk fuelling public disengagement with climate change and promote a sense of
fatalism or scepticism leading ‘to denial of the problem and disengagement with the whole
issue in an attempt to avoid the discomfort of contending with it’ (O’Neil and Nicholson-
Cole, 2009: 371). In this case, the dramatic imaging of climate change fuelled a sense of anti-
environmentalism and scepticism regarding the likelihood of extreme weather impacts, such
as severe and sudden storms and sea-level rise (see also Bettini, 2013: 69; Hulme, 2009: 213;
Lowe et al., 2006). Exaggerating the gravity of the crisis, the Delta’s commission risked
losing its credibility and playing into the hands of hard-line populist scepticism. In both
cases, the security frame backfired like a ‘policy boomerang’ (van Buuren and Warner,
2014a). To conclude, the analysis illustrates that particularly in the domain of climate
change, where the future remains uncertain and many of discussions focus on issues of
risks and potentialities (Corry, 2012), successful securitization is complex. An audience is
not easily persuaded when hearing that something is an urgent threat – such a discourse
needs to resonate with a context giving some indication that the doom scenario might come
true. The debate on climate change and security is in many respects ‘dominated by its
futurology’ (Baldwin et al., 2014: 121), making it an easy target for politicians to play on
but also a difficult one to successfully securitize. When there are multiple audiences, chances
are that not all will accept the securitization, which obtains for both cases. Given the lack of
an immediate threat, the time element inexorably works against climate securitizers. The
‘affect’ of climate change (Protevi, 2009) moreover was short-lived as climate change became
out-securitized by economic and immigration concerns in both countries. Climate issues
however have bounced back; these days it seems to have returned to the global agenda
again, as the plight of Syrian refugees has been framed by some as the shape of things to
come in a warmer world (Le Page, 2015). Likewise, natural disasters are increasingly ‘clim-
atized’ (Grant et al., 2015; Oels, 2012).
Climate security discourse, then, appears to be resilient, attaching itself with the political
‘mood’ and state of the political game du jour. For it to remain on national and international
agendas however, its advocates should be well aware of the danger of ‘overselling’.

Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments, considerably sharpening our argument.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
1. Two of these held together with Dr D. Roth from Wageningen University.
1484 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

2. We are partial to Slovic’s (1999) ‘weaker constructivist’ dictum, echoed by Balzacq (2005), ‘danger
is real, but risk is socially constructed’. This in contrast with ‘strong’ constructivists, for whom
whether or not a situation is a crisis is a social decision.
3. For security studies, that is, the word had already enjoyed a long existence in the financial domain.
4. Telephone interview, John Ashton, 31 January 2012.
5. Telephone interview, John Ashton, UK Special Representative for Climate Change (from June
2006 to June 2012), 31 January 2012.
6. Telephone interview, FCO Official, 24 March 2011.
7. Interview, Head of the FCO’s Climate Security Team, 8 March 2011, London.
8. Interview, Margaret Beckett, 23 November 2011, London.
9. Based on interviews held in the FCO conducted in 2011 and 2012. See also Ashton (2011) on the
need to use narratives to strengthen coalitions in the UNFCCC (see p. 10, 12).
10. Interview with Indian Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, 16 August 2011, Delhi.
11. Well-known Delft professors, Vrijling and Stive, successfully promoted climate change up the
national political agenda in the Netherlands, while De Vriend criticised the neglect of climate
change in the Washington Post (van Rijswoud, 2012). A Wageningen environmental scientist, Prof
Vellinga, called for a new Delta Commission.
12. The present article’s first author was involved in this episode, publishing in Dutch various news-
papers with various co-authors.
13. Based on the experts it consulted, the commission considered ‘0.65–1.30 m in 2100 and 2–4 m in 2200
as plausible. In contrast, the KNMI ‘06 scenarios ad projected 0.35 up to 0.85 m for 2100, without
autonomous soil subsidence estimated by the Committee to be 0.10 m in 2100’ (Boezeman et al., 2013).
14. Interview with Samir Saran, Senior Fellow and Vice President, Observer Research Foundation, 13
August 2011, Delhi.

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Jeroen Warner is an Associate Professor of Disaster Studies at the Sociology of

Development and Change group at Wageningen University. Much of his work concerns
the politics and political construction of (hydrologic) disaster. He recently coordinated a
1488 EPC: Politics and Space 37(8)

European Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action, EDUCEN, on urban disaster
and culture and received a CAPES ‘Science without Borders’ Scholarship on the same theme
to be Special Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo.

Ingrid Boas is an Assistant Professor at the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen

University. Since 2007, she has worked on environmental change and human migration,
studied from the angles of governance, discourse, and human geography. In 2016, she was
awarded a personal grant (VENI) by the Netherlands Scientific Organisation to study this
topic in the context of the digital age. She holds a PhD in international relations, obtained at
the University of Kent, UK, on the securitization of climate migration, funded by the UK
Economic Social Research Council. Ingrid’s work has appeared in journals such as Global
Environmental Politics, Environmental Politics, Sustainability Science, and Geoforum.