The Disciplinary Discourse: Poor People Under Threat

Although no single climate security discourse clearly dominated the debate, the disciplinary was the most common and influential one in Mexico. Thus, many climate security articulations focussed on the direct physical effects of climate change for poor individuals and constructed their human security as threatened.

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First Traces of the Disciplinary Discourse: Protecting the Planet and Humanity

The initial climate security articulations in the parliament in the early to mid-1990s, primarily constructed climate change as a threat to the global atmosphere or certain ecosystems and often linked the problem to the destruction of the ozone layer (Senado de la República 1993: 74).

Like in US and Germany, the focus hence was on the whole of humanity that was threatened by global climate change. Thus, the main concern was with: ‘[...] the prevention of pollution of the atmosphere […] the universal concern for the future of the human species and the survival of the planet that we cohabit with other peoples and nations’ (Senado de la República 1994b:

14). It was only towards the end of the 1990s that the focus shifted towards concrete human security threats for specific groups of individuals. The main argumentation was that the world would soon be hit by a range of natural disasters such as storms, droughts and sea level rise that would seriously affect especially people that do not live up to the norm of the climate resilient individual (Cámara de Diputados 1998: 14; Senado de la República 2000: 4). Concerning Mexico itself, parliamentary debates often conflated the concerns with climate change with several localised environmental problems such as the contamination of the air and water supplies that constituted a threat to the health of Mexico’s inhabitants (Senado de la República 1998: 19).

The Rise of the Disciplinary Discourse

During the early 2000s, climate security articulations in general only played a minor role in the debates and it was not until the mid-2000s that they reappeared on a broader scale. Compared to only seven clearly securitising debates between 1990 and 2004, the number rose to 23 between 2005 and 2013. From 2005 on, parliamentary articulations highlighted how climate change could seriously worsen slow-onset (e.g. drought, desertification, changed precipitation patters) and rapid-onset disasters (e.g. extreme weather, flooding) and how this eventually would affect Mexico’s populations and economy (Cámara de Diputados 2005a: 157, 2005c:

47). Anew, several speakers conflated climatic change with other pressing environmental problems in Mexico such as air pollution in bigger cities and thus painted a rather broad picture of the problem, in which a degrading environment gradually worsens the life of people on several levels (Cámara de Diputados 2005a: 157, 2005c: 47, 2005d: 185). Additionally, they argued that climate change could contribute to the degradation of natural resources and to the contamination of the air and water supplies, which again would threaten the wellbeing of the people living in Mexico (Cámara de Diputados 2005b: 80).

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When the global climate security debate gathered momentum from 2006 on and the election of Calderón spurred the general climate debate in Mexico, the number of climate security articulations increased considerably. To a large extent, securitisation and politicisation of climate change developed in Mexico alongside each other, which suggests that in this case it was a mutual reinforcement of several factors that eventually increased the attention for climate matters. While Calderón never made the security dimension of climate change his main line of argumentation, some of his speeches point to the implications of climate change for human security, the whole of humanity (Calderón 2010) and especially for the poor (CNN México 2010). Yet, the main arena for the articulation of climate security discourses remained the Mexican parliament. Several parliamentarians constructed climate change as one of the key threats to the human security of poor populations around the world (Senado de la República 2011d: 9, 12). They argued that due to geographical and socio-economic factors, the inhabitants of Mexico were particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change (Cámara de Diputados 2007a: 63, 2007d: 330), making Mexico one of the five most affected countries in the world (Senado de la República 2011d: 8):

Given its geographical location, Mexico is a country that is highly vulnerable to climate related phenomena, which entails significant risks in terms of health, availability of natural resources, protection of ecosystems, infrastructure and security of the population (Cámara de Diputados 2007a: 63; see also Cámara de Diputados 2007c; Senado de la República 2011d).

According to the prevailing disciplinary argumentation, climate change would threaten coastal populations in Mexico (Cámara de Diputados 2007d: 330) and would seriously hamper agricultural activity thereby inciting a ‘crisis of alimentation’ (Senado de la República 2008:

2). It would facilitate the spread of diseases as well as increase the death toll due to heat waves, and would eventually become one of the major threats to the health of the Mexican population (Cámara de Diputados 2007b: 71, 2007c: 205, 2007e: 103).

Recommendations: Supporting and Disciplining Individuals

On the one hand, this prevailing securitisation increased the attention for the direct effects of climate change for poor individuals. Thus, parliamentarians pointed to mitigation measures, for instance the promotion of energy efficiency and other green technologies, but also to initiate several campaigns aimed at promoting a climate conscious lifestyle (Cámara de Diputados 2005b: 79, 2005c: 248, 2005d: 188). In order to protect endangered populations, they also

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frequently highlighted the need for disaster prevention and management schemes (Cámara de Diputados 2011a: 58). On the other hand, these articulations also contributed to normation processes. The prevalent disciplinary discourse constituted the most affected people as highly vulnerable and thus in need of immediate outside support and correction of their dangerous living conditions. Consequently, the Mexican parliament proposed vulnerability assessments to keep track of deviations from the norm and to find measures to alleviate the problems (Cámara de Diputados 2008a: 272, 2008b: 48, 2009a: 108). In relation to this strategy, parliamentarians especially aimed at constructing climate change as health issue and proposed measures to monitor the increase of cases of disease or deaths due to heat waves and to come up with appropriate rules of conduct for endangered individuals (Cámara de Diputados 2007c: 204–

205). One suggestion was to incorporate the Secretaría de Salud / Ministry of Health in the CICC (Cámara de Diputados 2007c: 204) and to integrate climate health issues into the General Law on Climate Change (Cámara de Diputados 2006: 230–231; Senado de la República 2013a).

Moreover, they called for widespread and aggressive educational and publicity campaigns and urged to include these into the General Law on Climate Change (Senado de la República 2013b). The aim was to make people aware of the dangers of climate change and to prescribe appropriate (adaptive and mitigating) behaviour to avoid problematic consequences for human security (Cámara de Diputados 2007d: 332, 2007c: 206, 2007a: 63, 2007d, 2007e:

105). In a move to partly individualise climate protection, these articulations also emphasised that the burden of overcoming the climate problem cannot exclusively lie on the state or on large companies, but that every individual has to contribute to the solution as well (Senado de la República 2011a: 3; see also Paterson and Stripple 2010). Subsequently, parliamentarians proposed a Guía Nacional de la Sustenabilidad / National Sustainability Guide, which would contain detailed instructions how to behave in a climate friendly way to contribute to the sustainable development in Mexico (Senado de la República 2011a: 10).

The Disciplinary Discourse in NGO and Think Tank Reports

Beginning with the Globe Americas Legislators Forum organised by GLOBE International and the World Bank in 2008 in Mexico City (World Bank 2008), the disciplinary discourse also became more important in the argumentations of several non-governmental organisations in Mexico. Above all two groups of organisations were especially active.

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Firstly, Partners for Democratic Change International (PDCI) and its Mexican associates – most importantly the Centro de Colaboracíon Cívica – who published several key reports and organised a dialogue project on climate security in the Cámara de Diputados (which was partly financed by the British Embassy in Mexico). The dialogue project was supposed to increase awareness for the security implications of climate change and to strengthen the coordination between politicians and civil society (Gutiérrez et al. 2009: 10–11; Cámara de Diputados 2008b: 48).

Secondly, the British think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) together with the British Embassy who arranged several public events and published three influential reports on climate security. The overall aim was to influence Mexico’s general climate strategy and especially its upcoming 5^th communication to the UNFCC and the National Security Strategy (Feakin and Depledge 2010; Deheza 2011; Deheza and Mora 2013). Interestingly, people working at RUSI and with the British Embassy on climate security had direct connections to the US climate security debate and hence adopted several arguments of US think tanks for their own reports about Mexico. Elizabeth Deheza, who compiled the second report of RUSI, cited repeatedly from US reports (Deheza and Mora 2013: 10, 20) and in 2013 presented the RUSI work on Mexico at the Washington DC based Wilson Center (Wilson Center 2013). Moreover, the Climate and Energy Security Envoy of the United Kingdom at that time, Neil Morisetti, who was also involved in the RUSI/British Embassy work in Mexico, later became an influential member of CNA’s second Military Advisory Board (CNA Military Advisory Board 2014: iii).

Besides the two most influential groups of actors, several other mostly foreign organisations such as Greenpeace (Greenpeace México 2009, 2010: 2), WWF (WWF México 2010: 2), the German Böll Foundation (Jungehülsing 2010: 3) and Agrifor/EuropeAid (AGRIFOR Consult and Europe Aid 2009: 13) occasionally articulated the disciplinary discourse. However, either did they not make it the main framing of their argumentation or they were not able to generate much attention in the Mexican debate and thus were less relevant for the securitisation process.

The core line of argumentation in the non-governmental articulations of the disciplinary discourse resembled the parliamentary debates. The tenor was that due to its geography and socio-economic preconditions, Mexico and especially its poor population were particularly

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vulnerable towards climate change (CCC 2008: 4; Sánchez Gutiérrez et al. 2009: 8): ‘The most exposed areas are likely to be occupied by the poorer levels of society that cannot afford to live in well-protected and maintained neighbourhoods, and it is these people that will bear the brunt of the associated risks’ (Deheza 2011: 18). Consequently, climate change would make it much more difficult to overcome existing poverty and eventually could reverse past improvements in the fight against poverty and underdevelopment (CCC 2008: 1). As main threats the reports identified the direct physical effects of climate change, hence a whole range of natural disasters that would further decrease the vulnerability of these people: ‘The physical effects […] of climate change, such as hurricanes, droughts, floods, extreme hydrometeorological phenomena, forest fires and heat waves, directly affect the quality of life and increase people’s vulnerability’

(Brodziak et al. 2011: 11; Feakin and Depledge 2010: 9). In more detail, NGO reports identified several slow-onset disasters as problematic. For example, decreasing natural resources (particularly food and water) due to changing climatic variables (heat, drought, changed precipitation patters), sea level rise and the spread of disease due to a warmer or more humid climate. Together these processes would gradually affect the living conditions of Mexico’s inhabitants, could hamper agricultural activity and put food security into jeopardy (Deheza 2011: 8; CCC 2008: 1; Brodziak et al. 2011: 11):

More than 20 million people in Mexico are considered to live under circumstances of food insecurity and between 2008 and 2010 alone, almost 2 million people in Mexico were added to this group. Increasing irregularities in the rainy season brought about by climate change will impact the groundwater level and have a disruptive effect on food production (Deheza and Mora 2013: xv; see also CCC 2008: 1; Feakin and Depledge 2010: 2).

Apart from that, they pointed to a range of rapid-onset disasters such as severe storms, floods or heatwaves that could seriously affect especially poor and indigenous people in Mexico’s southern and rural areas (Deheza 2011: 7; Brodziak et al. 2011: 11). All of these events would eventually become a problem for energy security – which reports occasionally constructed as a problem for Mexico as a whole and for its economy but also as a direct threat to human security in the case of power cuts and hampered supply of items of daily use (Deheza and Mora 2013:

60–62) – and lead to increased migration (Deheza and Mora 2013: 3).

In addition to these fairly straightforward and isolated articulations of the disciplinary discourse, reports also occasionally linked to the sovereign discourse. However, in contrast to

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the US debate, the sovereign argumentation only played a supporting role for the dominant disciplinary discourse and the wellbeing of individuals, as this quote exemplifies:

However, an adversarial reaction could exacerbate existing tensions and social anxiety if things are not resolved, which could, in turn, lead to violent conflict and thus further decrease the quality of life and increase the vulnerability of people (Brodziak et al. 2011:

21; see also Brodziak et al. 2011: 8; Feakin and Depledge 2010: 29; Deheza 2011: vi).

Recommendations: Managing Disasters and Protecting Humans

What were the main counter measures that the analysed reports tried to legitimise by articulating the disciplinary discourse?

Firstly, similar to the German debate, they suggested actions that aimed at mitigating climate change such as increasing energy efficiency or acquiring CDM projects to foster technological development and hence taking climate protection as economic opportunity and as pathway to a sustainable development that would benefit Mexico’s poor people (CCC 2008: 5–6). Secondly, they recommended adaptation measures that would reduce the vulnerability of Mexicans (CCC 2008: 1; Gutiérrez et al. 2009: 11; Deheza 2011: 27). In line with this argumentation they wanted key stakeholders to notice ‘the security dimension of adaptation’ (Feakin and Depledge 2010: 19) and to understand it as an important ‘security imperative’ (Feakin and Depledge 2010: 66) because it could cushion the impacts of climate change on human security. In connection, some reports also stressed the positive value of internal migration as adaptation strategy (Deheza and Mora 2013: xvii). Embodying the concept of normation, a further recommendation was to influence the knowledge and thus the behaviour of the people. Similar to parliamentary debates, to this end NGO-reports suggested several climate education programmes, events and workshops to raise awareness on the issue and to give practical instructions how to behave correctly (Deheza and Mora 2013: xvii;

Deheza 2011: 25). Thirdly, due to the prevalent focus on climate induced natural disasters that would seriously affect the wellbeing of individuals, improving the detection, prevention and management of natural disasters was another key recommendation (Deheza 2011: 27–

28). Thus, reports recommended to further strengthen Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Proteccion Civil (SINAPROC) / National Civil Protection System as well as to improve the financial endowment of the Secretaría de Desarollo Social (SEDESOL) / Ministry for Social Development and disaster funds such as Fondo para la Prevención de Desastres Naturales (FOPREDEN) / Fund for the Prevention of Natural Disasters (Greenpeace México 2010: 57).