The Governmental Discourse: Risk Groups and Market Mechanisms

While the governmental discourse was an important part of the securitisation of climate change in Germany, it did not appear until the late 1990s and only became more widespread from the mid-2000s on. Overall, the governmental discourse was closely intertwined with the prevailing disciplinary discourse because most of the underlying risk assessments located the high risk-groups and areas in the Global South. However, it has also added several new concepts and practices such as probabilistic assessments, prevention strategies, future oriented scenario planning, a focus on risk groups and, in the spirit of laisse faire, less direct or invasive countermeasures such as market instruments and insurance schemes.

149 Parliamentary Articulations: Constructing Risk Groups

In the early 2000s, parliamentary articulations began to refer to climate change as an overarching global hazard that would gradually increase the risk of extreme weather (Deutscher Bundestag 2007c: 10950), health problems (Deutscher Bundestag 2008d: 21071, 2009a:

24255), flooding, droughts and the extinction of flora and fauna (Deutscher Bundestag 2009a:

24255). Beyond that, they singled out specific risk groups with elevated risk levels. Here, the governmental discourse overlapped with the disciplinary representation of climate change because it specifically constructed developing countries and parts of their populations as high-risk groups, for instance due to a predicted decline in water availability:

In different regions of the world water availability decreases. This reduces agricultural yields. Also in this area one can predict that in parts of the world such as Africa, the Middle East and India, the consequences will be particularly pronounced (Deutscher Bundestag 1999b: 6000).

In difference to the disciplinary discourse, the focus is not on immediate and concrete threats to human security. Instead, the emphasis lies on an aggregate risk analysis that while singling out various high-risk groups or outlier cases, always looks at the broader picture, e.g. at the average risk of the ‘Foucauldian population’. Thus, the early governmental articulations in Germany did not exclusively look at developing countries but constructed specific areas such as low lying coastal regions (Deutscher Bundestag 2004c) as particularly at risk from the adverse effects of climate change. While often located in the Global South – due to geographical but also socio-economic factors –, such high-risk areas were also identified in Germany, for instance in the south-west, at the coasts and in the very east of the country (Deutscher Bundestag 2008d: 21071).

A further important characteristic of the governmental discourse is the focus on economic aspects and the cost-efficiency in the exercise of power. Hence, parliamentary debates frequently began to stress the economic risks of climate change and pointed to the insurance sector that already had started to integrate climate hazards into their risk assessments (Deutscher Bundestag 1999a: 3343, 2003b: 6439). Especially after the publication of the 2006 Stern Report, the economic elements became more important and members of parliament feared that in the long run the financial risks of future adaptation could spiral out of control if mitigation measures in the present were neglected (Deutscher Bundestag 1999a: 3343, 2006:

6184, 2008a, 2008a: 14268).

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To handle the multifaceted risks, articulations in the parliament at first almost exclusively focused on mitigation measures with the aim to lower the overall risk to a tolerable level. Once again, the generation of incentives for energy-efficiency, renewable energy and the export of these technologies were an important part of the debate (Deutscher Bundestag 1999a:

3343, 2003b: 6439). This only made sense given the importance of the flourishing green technology and ‘climate protection’ industry in Germany (Jänicke 2011: 138–139). However, in line with governmental power, less direct measures and market instruments such as emission trading schemes became more important as well (Deutscher Bundestag 2005d: 197, 2007c:

10906, 2004d: 10247). Especially for members of the more market friendly liberal party (FDP) and the conservative party (CDU), the goal was to tackle climate change in an ‘economically sound manner’ (Deutscher Bundestag 2009b: 25879). This was not to be accomplished by top-down state interventions only but had to include cost-efficient economic solutions and the business sector itself: ‘With the emissions trading scheme we have established a market-based systemin Germany and Europe in order to enlist the big companies in our efforts for efficient climate protection.’ (Deutscher Bundestag 2009b: 25878). In this, vein, many debates revolved around fixing and improving the existing EU emission trade system, which had attracted considerable criticism due to the collapse in the prices of emission certificates (Böcher and Töller 2012: 62–63; Deutscher Bundestag 2009b: 25878, 2013b: 31285).

To enhance the general resilience towards the increasingly complex risks of climate change, adaptation measures in risk areas abroad but also at home became an important part of the debates as well, especially since the peak of the climate security debates in 2007 (Deutscher Bundestag 2009a: 24253). These entailed recommendations that focused directly at Germany, for instance a national adaptation strategy (Deutscher Bundestag 2008d: 21071) but also calls to help high risk developing countries with their adaptation efforts (Deutscher Bundestag 2007c: 10950) and to increase their coping capacity. Furthermore, members of parliament began to discuss weather and climate insurance schemes to control and alleviate the – seemingly non-avoidable – risks of climate change (Deutscher Bundestag 2008d: 21070).

Articulations of the Governmental Discourse Outside Parliament

The first scattered articulations of the governmental discourse in reports of NGOs, environmental consulting firms and academics appeared around the turn of the millennium. The 1998 WBGU report on Strategies to Cope with Environmental Risks dedicated a whole chapter to climate change. The report constructed it as a phenomenon that would gradually increase the

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risk in certain areas and groups but also highlighted the considerable degree of uncertainty concerning the exact timing and magnitude (WBGU 1998: 134–135). To cope with these problems it emphasised adaptation measures but also highlighted the importance of the Kyoto protocol as a first step of an ‘international risk management’ system (WBGU 1998: 142).

Furthermore, early articulations discussed different concepts of risk, their applicability to environmental problems (Brauch 2002: 44) and identified several environmental risk factors (Brauch 2002: 57; Carius and Lietzmann 1998: 25, 37). They also singled out specific risk areas and groups, for instance low lying coastal dwellings, large areas in Africa and highly populated regions (Rotte 2001: 13). In this vein, the ‘insufficient insurance level’ in developing countries (Rotte 2001: 14) as well as insurance solutions to alleviate climate risks (Rotte 2001: 41) already played a role in the argumentation.

Having said that, it was not until 2007 that climate risk argumentations and related solutions became more common and influential. Thus, several of the already introduced organisations, especially the WBGU, Adelphi, and the PIK – which had compiled a series of reports under the heading ‘Turn Down the Heat’ together with the World Bank and the NGO Climate Analytics (World Bank et al. 2012, 2013, 2014) –, engaged in the governmental discourse. They feared that climate change would ‘greatly increase the risk of natural disasters’

(WBGU 2008: 3) and similar to parliamentary articulations singled out specific risk groups and areas with elevated risk levels (adelphi 2012: 31; World Bank et al. 2013: xviii, xx). In this respect, they rested on existing scientific findings that: ‘[…] indicate a growing risk for low-latitude regions at quite low levels of temperature increase and a growing risk for systemic global problems above a warming of a few degrees Celsius.’ (World Bank et al. 2012: 43). The high risk areas were low-lying coastal dwellings, often located in higher latitudes (Jakobeit and Methmann 2007: 2–3; World Bank et al. 2012: xvii), but also mid-latitude regions that already experienced water stress and would stand a much higher risk of droughts in the future (Jakobeit and Methmann 2007: 5; World Bank et al. 2012: xvii, 48).

In principle, these risk assessments apply to specific regions or groups in developed countries as well, e.g. predict a higher risk of flooding due to sea level rise in large parts of the Netherlands and some areas in Northern Germany. However, mirroring the parliamentary debates, because of the presumably much lower societal and political coping capacity in the Global South, the focus was especially on developing countries and poor populations (World Bank et al. 2012: 2; Germanwatch et al. 2013: 8): ‘The burden of climate change in the future

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will very likely be borne differentially by those in regions already highly vulnerable to climate change and variability’ (World Bank et al. 2012: 64). Thus, many articulations constructed climate change as a complex long-term risk, which together with existing problems could gradually overstretch the coping capacity of Southern societies (WBGU 2008: 3).

Most reports emphasise that these risks could escalate and reach developed countries.

Thus, the argumentation was closely intertwined with the disciplinary but also partly with the sovereign discourse and entailed the fear that the ‘vulnerable could become dangerous’

(Methmann and Oels 2015; Methmann and Oels forthcoming; Oels 2009) – for instance by migrating towards industrialised countries or by radicalizing themselves – if left unchecked.

All these problems could be further exacerbated by the increase in economic risks that had the potential to undo previous development processes, increase poverty and hence make regions and people even more vulnerable towards the effects of climate change (World Bank et al.

2012: xiv, 17). To plan for such ‘contingencies’ in ‘high-risk areas’ and hence to keep the risk of migration and instability at a tolerable level and to prevent it from spiralling out of control, reports suggested measures such as ‘national resettlement programmes’ that would ensure that such movements would proceed in an ‘orderly fashion’ (WBGU 2008: 127).

Besides these fairly traditional risk assessments, many of the discussions also revolved around non-linear risks and new concepts to cope with the unknown and non-predictable in the case global warming would proceed as fast as predicted (World Bank et al. 2012: 59–60): ‘And most importantly, a 4°C world is so different from the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs.’ (World Bank et al. 2012: ix). In this context, reports cautioned against ‘nonlinear tipping elements in the Earth system’, which, even though unlikely, would have severe consequences and were difficult to prepare for (World Bank et al. 2012: xvii, 61, 2012). In line with the governmental notion of controlling the risks and keeping them at a tolerable level, reports especially cautioned against ‘cascading’ and ‘escalating’ risks (World Bank et al. 2012: 60, 44) that could spiral out of control if not closely monitored.

Governmental Recommendations

To handle these multifaceted traditional and non-linear risks of climate change the focus within the governmental discourse was primarily on what reports called ‘effective risk management’

(World Bank et al. 2012: x). This included not only the identification and the monitoring of

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risks but also to keep them under control without interfering too much in the normal functioning of the global circulation. Thus, as a first step reports suggested: ‘the identification of geographical-climatic risks by means of efficient monitoring systems and technology-supported climatic forecasts’ (WBGU 2008: 186). Beyond that they urged to ‘identify climate-hot-spots’

(GTZ 2008b: 56) and high risk countries in an ‘anticipatory manner’ (GTZ 2008a: 10) by carrying out ‘systematic risk analysis’ (GTZ 2008b: 56) and by conducting scenario planning exercises in order to anticipate and control the future to a certain extent (WBGU 2008: 77–78).

Consequently, the next step was to prevent the escalation of the identified risks and to control them by taking precautionary measures and by increasing the resiliency and coping capacity of the identified risk groups, which included mitigation measures to prevent the worst risks from materialising in the future (WBGU 2008: 6). Thus, ‘avoiding dangerous climate change’

(WBGU 2008: 208) – at least for developed countries – remained at the centre of all recommendations. Yet, in line with governmental power, top-down state regulations were not the weapon of choice to reach this goal. Thus, reports increasingly recommended less direct and invasive measures such as the clean development mechanism or the introduction of

‘internationally tradable quotas for renewable energies’ (WBGU 2008: 208) to control the crucial variables ‘behind the scenes’ (Elbe 2009: 76) in an as cost-efficient manner as possible.

This strategy ensured that the general processes of production, which have led to climate change in the first place, would not have to be disturbed too heavily.

The focus on the seemingly overwhelming and already pressing risks of ‘unavoidable climate change’ (WBGU 2008: 209) and the perceived incalculability of these risks also led organisations to conclude that ‘the case for resilience has never been stronger’ (World Bank et al. 2013: xii) and contributed to emphasising adaptation measures (World Bank et al. 2012:

46). From a governmental power perspective, this strategy can make sense to a certain extent, especially if the high risks groups or outliers are predominately identified at the periphery and if the overall risk for the total population can be kept at a tolerable level through these measures.

In more detail, the suggested adaptation measures included early warning systems for disasters and climate induced conflicts (GTZ 2008b: 11–12; WBGU 2007c: 11–13, 197; Germanwatch et al. 2013: 42) as well as the implementation of surveillance and educational programmes to prevent future disasters (World Bank et al. 2012: xvii; WBGU 2008: 10; Germanwatch et al.

2013: 42). Moreover, reports recommended financial and technological support as well as knowledge transfer for high-risk countries by increasing development aid (GTZ 2008b: 53–54;

WBGU 2007c: 12) and by mainstreaming early warning systems for disasters into development

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programmes (WBGU 2008: 10) to increase the resilience of the affected populations (World Bank et al. 2013: 162). That way reports hoped to considerably decrease the risk for far-reaching catastrophes and thus to bring the outlier cases down to the average risk of the total population (Germanwatch et al. 2013: 53).

A further instrument to keep climate risks at bay and to cope with their incalculable nature was the promotion of climate or weather insurance schemes that played an even greater role in the analysed reports than in parliamentary debates. Thus, reports predicted the considerable growth of the insurance market due to climate change and that the industry would have to significantly stack up their funds for climate induced disasters (WBGU 2008: 71).

Beyond that they recommended to ‘strengthen microsinsurance’ (WBGU 2008: 12), ‘public insurance pools’, ‘catastrophe bonds’ (adelphi and UBA 2013: 97) or ‘insurance against crop failures’ (World Bank et al. 2013: 46, 2014: 26, 225, 228) and to make these instruments part of development cooperation. This would contribute to lowering poverty and vulnerability and thus the risk of certain adverse impacts of climate change (WBGU 2008: 12):

Microfinancing instruments such as microcredits or microinsurance have the potential to make a major contribution to poverty reduction and thus to decreasing the vulnerability of populations in developing countries (WBGU 2008: 211).

While primarily affecting high-risk groups in developing countries, these insurance solution would eventually also benefit developed countries because they had the potential to prevent large-scale migration movements (WBGU 2008: 12, 102, 127). Finally, in response to the diverse risks of climate change, reports also recommended a further integration of climate risk management schemes into Germany foreign policy. In this vein, the emphasis to ‘move from early warning’ to ‘early action in order to prevent future crises and increase security’ (adelphi 2012: 4) increased. Especially Adelphi frequently cooperated with the German Federal Foreign Office to develop a comprehensive ‘climate diplomacy’ (adelphi 2012, 2013) to reduce the risks of climate change and to strengthen the capacity to anticipate potential climate threats in high-risk areas (adelphi 2012: 24).