International politics and construction of climate security by small island developing states: Maldives and Samoa form broader meanings of security

Abstract

This research investigates Small Island Developing States' (SIDS) discursive formation of national and foreign policy narratives on climate change as a security concern. It recognises SIDS have played an important role in promoting comprehensive approaches to climate security at the United Nations Security Council debates - these included considering multi-sectoral climate-related threat factors and comprehensive security provisions, including collaborative (whole-of-government) governance approaches to address them. For this thesis, climate security is defined as the ability of states or communities to address and build resilience against climate change in achieving sustainable development, self-sufficiency, and national security. Although it recognising SIDS' engagements in the Security Council debates, the main objective of this thesis is not to analyse their international (climate security) narratives, but instead to present an analytical framework to investigate and portray a domestic construction of climate security by SIDS - using the Maldives' and Samoa's experience - and to explain the domestic narratives driving these countries' national and foreign policy on climate change as a security issue.

This thesis asserts that domestic construction helps to make better sense of why SIDS' claim for broader meanings of security becomes important for the Security Council's climate debates, or securitising climate at the international level, and why a comprehensive approach to problem-solving is important in addressing the impacts of climate change on national and international peace and security. In this respect, in adopting a constructivist approach to international relations and security studies, this thesis identifies, analyses, and explains the discourses and identities constitutive of policy narratives that have shaped the climate threat identification and problem-solving approaches adopted in Maldives and Samoa. This thesis analyses the formation of climate policy as a national crisis, threat categories impacting the countries' capacity to achieve sustainable development, and the meaning of security in their island contexts concerning those threats. In that, the intersubjective aspect of the discursive formation of identities and interests explains the interconnectedness or constitutive function of domestic and international policy narratives of states. The domestic interests associated with policy narratives concerning the security implications of climate change can explain both their national and foreign policy drivers.

This thesis concludes that the Maldives' and Samoa's cases assert that SIDS become important stakeholders in developing intersubjective narratives to incorporate more holistic and comprehensive aspects of problem-solving into the international peace and security discourse concerning climate change. The Maldives' and Samoa's policy discourses and identities forming climate security narratives, analysed in this thesis, provide a practical framework to explain this.