An assessment of the contributions and limitations of the Aberystwyth school and the Copenhagen school for the analysis of environmental security

Abstract

The end of the Cold War created a contextual change in security studies along with a proliferation of scientific research revealing the pressing impacts of human activities on the environment since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Since then environmental security has been increasingly studied in different ways: as a new field of analysis, as a referent object or a security threat. Recent initiatives like the 2015 UN Climate Conference COP 21 and more frequent and more powerful environmental disasters such as hurricanes, droughts and famines attracted even more scholarly attention for environmental security studies. This thesis specifically aims to assess the contributions and limitations of the Aberystwyth School and the Copenhagen School for the analysis of environmental security. As a result, the Aberystwyth School broadens the research agenda by allowing room for the analysis of different environmental problems experienced by various referents. The school offers bringing about progress and change in the meaning and making of security through politicization and emancipation. However, the cases fall short demonstrating how to reach emancipation at the global level. The Copenhagen School shows how securitization process works and reveals how this process attracts attention, measure, policies and resources to environmental concerns. G ’ f x d understanding of construction of security through urgency, speech acts and state elites, limits the analytical strength of the Copenhagen School for the environmental security analysis.