Claudia Morsut

This article advances research on ‘collective securitisation’ by theorising how ostensibly separate securitisation processes within different international organisations (IOs) interact and shape each other’s policy outcomes. Focusing on climate change adaptation within the United Nations (UN) and European Union (EU), the study uses an extensive database of documents (1972–2023) and interviews with officials to trace these dynamics. The analysis reveals that the UN initially securitised climate change through a risk-oriented approach emphasising long-term risk management, subsequently influencing the EU’s adaptation policies. Conversely, the EU intermittently reintroduced threat-based framing into the UN, highlighting recursive interactions between these organisations. Findings suggest key moments of cross-organisational influence, notably during the audience acceptance and policy output stages. By incorporating insights from transnational policy learning and norm diffusion, the paper theorises precisely how and when these interactions occur, enriching the analytical framework of Collective Securitisation. This article contributes to understanding how international organisations’ securitisation processes interact and shape climate adaptation policies, emphasising the nuanced interplay between threat-based and risk-based logics.

This study explores the manifestations of riskification in climate change adaptation (CCA) across four European cities, examining the roles of actors, discourses, and tools. Through comparative analysis, it aims to delineate local riskification, identifying similarities and differences among the cases. Three intervening factors – ideational frameworks, organization of government, and actor networks – are assessed to comprehend the amplification or deceleration of riskification processes locally. Findings reveal that ideational frameworks shape responses to climate change challenges within each case, while government organization influences CCA strategies and funding mechanisms. Actor networks play a pivotal role in shaping CCA efforts, including measurement, modeling, and monitoring. Despite commonalities, the analysis revealed that the intervening factors are further conditioned in each specific case, albeit in different ways, by aspects not initially considered: the influence of risk culture, risk memory, and technocratic governance in local CCA in each situation. These nuances produce variations of riskification that are locally distinct but equally depoliticize climate change risks, overshadowing broader societal implications and impeding transformative approaches. In particular, the dominance of riskified CCA approaches with technocratic characteristics and limited urgency may hinder innovative strategies required for addressing complex CCA challenges.

This paper uncovers a local‐level approach to the likely adverse effects of climate change through climate change policies, measures and practices concerning climate change adaptation. The study is sustained by the literature that addresses climate change through a securitization lens, which has identified security discourses on climate change in terms of threat or risk. To understand the origin of local discourse, we have adopted the concepts of translations and translation zones from security studies, allowing us to define encounters between different conceptual expressions of ways to handle threats and risks. In this paper, ‘translations’ mean negotiations of meanings between security, threat and risk, and ‘translation zones’ indicate where these negotiations take place. Discourses are studied in the two Norwegian municipalities of Bergen and Stavanger. Both experience similar consequences of climate change and are bound to follow national laws and regulations for developing adaptive responses. Despite these similarities, translations and translation zones unveil differences in the organisation of adaptation work. Risk discourses thus allow several possible translation pathways, and adaptation remains a distinctly local phenomenon despite commonalities in risk discourse and translation processes.

Climate change is recognized today not just as a pressing and prominent issue on government agendas but also one that has been increasingly ‘securitized’ in a variety of national and global settings. We know little, however, if climate change adaptation, as a subset of climate action, has followed a similarly securitized path. This article addresses that question, exploring not only if climate change adaptation has been securitized but also what type of securitization – threat-oriented or risk-oriented – has emerged. Turning our empirical focus to three national settings of Norway, Sweden, and The Netherlands, we look for signs of securitization as well as whether securitization has been facilitated, shaped, or even blocked by existing governance features in each setting. We use this study to link the securitization literature with environmental governance approaches by building a novel analytical framework. Our findings show some intriguing and unexpected patterns, including evidence of risk-oriented securitization couched nevertheless as ‘business as usual’. We contribute to the growing debate on securitization in environmental governance while also casting new light on national climate change adaptation processes.