The United Nation and the threat of climate change : A critical security study of UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement

Abstract: This thesis examines the language of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement through the lens of security. It departs from the observation that the securitized rhetoric on climate change is not matched with the kind of policies such rhetoric would suggest is necessary. Previous research on the impact off raming climate change in security terms have either argued that the security discourse has been rejected and thus also policies such an understanding would entail – or that the paradoxical nature of climate change as a threat (to continue the way we live we most change the way we live) makes a securitized understanding not yield in extra-ordinary policies. I argue that neither of these explanations are sufficient to explain the lack of ‘extra-ordinary policies’ on climate change. Instead, I claim that the reason for the lack of extra ordinary policies regarding climate change is that despite some of its rhetoric about the threat of climate change, the intersubjective understanding between the United Nation and its members expressed in the multilateral environmental agreements is structured in a way not to push a securitized understanding of climate change. By structuring the threat of climate change as threat to human security and development, as well as emphasizing the need for a fairness based approach, the agreements limits what policies are possible.