Conceptions of Security in Global Environmental Discourses: Exploring the Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus
Julianne Liebenguth
Abstract
Given the crucial transformations environmental change brings to the structure of contemporary global politics and security, it is necessary to understand how emerging conceptions of environmental security (1) influence the architecture of global environmental governance and (2) reformulate security strategies to meet evolving socio-ecological challenges. This paper explores the water-energy-food (WEF) security nexus – an approach to sustainable development that advocates for innovative, cross-sector planning to overcome natural resource scarcities – as a distinct political domain in which actors utilise security language to describe environmental problems and policy prescriptions. Using content and discourse analysis to interpret WEF security nexus reports, I conclude that this particular policy debate represents a unique departure from other environment-security discourses in that economic productivity is the main referent object rather than countries, individuals, or ecosystems. This deviation, I argue, shifts authority over security away from state-centric institutions towards private sector organisations, resulting in technocratic responses to complex, structural, and unevenly distributed sources of human and environmental risk.