Climate Security Connects Fragile and Strong States via Cascading Effects: A Review Article

Abstract

During the ongoing decade, the importance of security as a topic has heightened, not least because of the health and broader implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian attack on Ukraine. We have also seen a rapid acceleration in extreme weather events influenced by climate change, including forest fires in Australia, the United States, and Europe; severe flooding in many parts of the world; and extreme heat waves in, for instance, India and Pakistan. These demonstrate how climate change is also increasingly a matter of human and national security. Therefore, climate change as a policy issue and a political topic reaches beyond the remit of sectoral climate or environmental policy. It should be seen as a horizontal cross-government policy area that increasingly affects the security of the whole society.