Climate Change and Security

A Security Studies Call for Papers
and Special Issue Proposals

submission deadline:
March 1, 2022

Human-induced climate change is one of the central challenges of our time. A generation ago, scholars actively debated whether “the environment” should be treated as a security issue and began to explore the pathways by which demographic and environmental stress might contribute to, amplify, accelerate, or even fundamentally drive conflict between and within states. Since then, climate change has moved from the margins to the center of national, transnational, and international agendas, and there is not much debate any longer over whether climate change is of import to national security. The relationship between climate and security is a staple of think-tank conversations. The EU’s European Security Strategy first mentioned climate change as a security concern back in 2003, and the EU Commission submitted its first major report to the European Council on “Climate Change and International Security.” US National Security Strategy documents have increasingly recognized climate change as a threat to national security, and the Biden administration gave it renewed emphasis in its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. The US Defense Department announced in January 2021 that it would henceforth “incorporate[e] climate risk analysis into modeling, simulation, wargaming, analysis, and the next National Defense Strategy.” In 2017 China too began to express concern over climate change through the language of security.

Despite immense attention to climate change in the policy world, and despite the issue’s intrinsic importance, scholarship among scholars of international security has not kept pace—at least if the pages of Security Studies and other leading journals are any measure. We wish to give a platform to ongoing cutting-edge scholarship in this arena and to encourage more of it. To that end, Security Studies is issuing a call for both individual papers and special issue/forum proposals at the intersection of climate change and security. Papers and special issues may wish to address, among other questions: how climate changes contributes (or not) to violent conflict, either/both intrastate or interstate; how climate change is (or is not) reshaping conceptions of national security and defense priorities as well as military operations, strategy, and bureaucracy; how climate issues are selectively securitized and with what consequences.

The editors will organize accepted individual submissions on these themes into a special issue or forum. That would not preclude, however, the publication of a guest-edited special issue or forum on these themes. The editors thus welcome both completed individual papers as well as proposals for special issues/forums exploring a wide range of substantive research questions at the juncture of climate change and security.

INDIVIDUAL PAPERS: Please submit full individual papers (not proposals) as regular research articles (via the ScholarOne platform), noting in the cover letter that the paper is for consideration as part of the “Climate Change and Security” initiative.

SPECIAL FORUM/ISSUE PROPOSALS: To submit a special forum/issue proposal, please carefully consult and follow our general special forum/issue guidelines and submit the proposal via email to Editor-in-Chief Ron Krebs. Security Studies deeply values diversity in all its forms, and the editors will be attentive to whether special forum/issue proposals exhibit theoretical and methodological diversity and involve contributors from diverse stages of career and with diverse backgrounds. 

For full consideration as part of this “Climate Change and Security” initiative, please submit both individual papers and special forum/issue proposals by March 1, 2022. Once manuscripts are accepted for review, please be prepared for an expedited review process and a tight revision and publication schedule.

For further inquiries about this initiative, please contact Editor-in-Chief Ron Krebs.