New Paper: Sky Wars

[Gideon Futerman]

I recently published a new preprint examining the link of Solar geoengineering and war:
 Sky Wars: Escalation Pathways in the Age of Solar Geoengineering by Gideon Futerman, Peter Rautenbach :: SSRN. 

Brief summary of what we aim to do in the article:
- Provides the most complete literature review of discussions of how geoengineering could cause interstate military conflict to date

- Explain conflict enabling securitisation dynamics with regards to SRM

- Explain an existing archetype for scenarios where SRM could cause war using this theory, hopefully strengthening our understanding of plausible conflict mechanisms

- Propose a new archetype for how SRM combined with countergeoengineering could cause conflict

The abstract is as follows:

As the salience of Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) - also known as Solar Geoengineering - rises, there have been increasing discussions of the possible security and conflict implications of these technologies. This piece looks at SRM through the lens of securitization and how SRM can securitize climate change and related disasters. Critically, SRM can enable climate disasters to be attributed to SRM-deploying actors. By creating a "threatening Other” on which to blame climate change, securitisation and exceptional measures, such as conflict, can be pursued in response to climatic events. Using past work, this piece builds a typology of conflict pathways and explores how the causal mechanisms illuminated by securitisation help explain conflict risk in these scenarios. Finally, with conflict-inducing-securitization in mind, we add a new, unexplored, conflict risk which outlines how conflict could occur in response to counter-geoengineering — a response to SRM which has been seen as an offramp for conflict risk.     

[Renaud de RICHTER]

Dear Gideon,

For the moment I only read the introduction and the conclusion.

It is unclear for me if you compared "how geoengineering could cause interstate military conflict" with "how climate change alone could cause interstate military conflict"?

I didn't find reference to articles such as:

* Bernauer, T., & Siegfried, T. (2012). Climate change and international water conflict in Central Asia. Journal of Peace Research, 49(1), 227-239.

* Scheffran, J., & Battaglini, A. (2011). Climate and conflicts: the security risks of global warming. Regional Environmental Change, 11(Suppl 1), 27-39.

* Breckner, M., & Sunde, U. (2019). Temperature extremes, global warming, and armed conflict: new insights from high resolution data. World Development, 123, 104624.

* Klare, M. T. (2007). Global warming battlefields: how climate change threatens security. Current History, 106(703), 355-361.

* Book: Mazo, J. (2010). Climate conflict: How global warming threatens security and what to do about it. Routledge.

* Book:  Chellaney, B. (2015). Water, peace, and war: Confronting the global water crisis. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

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