The public as an audience for the securitisation of climate change: facilitating conditions at the identification stage

Abstract

The literature on the emergence of climate change as a security problem notes the lack of studies of audiences that enable the successful construction of climate change as a security issue. While previous studies consider different types of audiences we focus on public opinion which provides moral support for securitising moves to investigate what individual and country level conditions facilitate individuals to identify climate change as a threat to humanity or a risk to themselves. We do so by analysing public attitudes towards climate security in 24 nations covered by the 2015 Pew Global Attitudes Survey. We differentiate between the logics of securitisation and riskification and different referent objects such as humanity and self. We then identify the patterns of threat and risk perception towards different referent objects in climate security. We find that individuals' personal insecurities translate into perceived personal risk from climate change while perceived threats to humanity from climate change are related to cognitive resources and sophistication.