The Securitisation of Environmental Sustainability and its Critical Geopolitics

Abstract

This paper explores the securitisation geopolitics around environmental sustainability, advocating for regional securitisation as a means to address environmental challenges that otherwise complicate traditional security challenges, which are foundational to a regional security complex approach. The global landscape lacks a unified approach to environmental practices, prompting the examination of regional contexts to influence state behaviour and apply a regional security complex model to symbolise this transformation as “Regional Environmental Sustainability Complexes” (RESC). The paper demonstrates that the South Asian Regional Security Complex (SARSC) concept by Buzan has evolved into the broader South Asian Regional Environmental Sustainability Complex (SARESC).