Climate Emergency and the Future of Civic Space: Learning from the War on Terror

This project seeks to foster understanding of the risks for the future of civic space arising from the ‘emergency’ framing and securitization of the climate crisis and to explore possible openings for preventing or mitigating some of these risks.

Drawing on securitization and security cultures theory and insights from mapping the pathways of the war on terror in the past two decades, the project seeks to forecast pathways to securitization of climate change and identify infection points – moments when significant change in the pathways may occur or become possible.

The aim is to develop an analytical tool and practical resource for activists, funders, epistemic and policy communities concerned with the future of civic space that can assist in identifying critical junctures in the pathways to securitization of the climate crisis at which disruption may be possible and innovation may open up alternative pathways.

The project is funded by the Funders Initiative for Civil Society at Global Dialogue and carried out in collaboration with Civic Futures.

 

Team

Iavor Rangelov is Research Fellow at the CCRG, LSE IDEAS and Co-Founder of the Civic Ecosystem Initiative. He coordinated the ERC-funded research programme Security in Transition at LSE, which pioneered the concept of global security cultures, and the Human Security Study Group which reported to former EU High Representative Federica Mogherini. He has published extensively on human rights in counterterrorism and peace operations, human security, justice, and civil society in fragile and conflict-affected environments. He is the author of Nationalism and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press) and co-editor of The Handbook of Global Security Policy (Wiley Blackwell) and From Hybrid Peace to Human Security (Routledge). Iavor’s current research investigates the phenomenon of ‘civic ecosystems’, the securitization of climate change, and the military contribution to human security.

Marika Theros is Policy Fellow at the CCRG, LSE IDEAS and Co-Founder of the Civic Ecosystems Initiative. She is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and doctoral candidate at LSE’s Department Development of International Development completing a dissertation on the war on terror and the international engagement in Afghanistan. She is the author of numerous publications in the areas of peace and security, civil society and political mobilizations, and human rights in insecure and conflict-affected environments including Afghanistan, the Balkans and Syria. She is co-editor of a Peacebuilding special issue on local agreements in intractable conflicts and co-editor of The Governance of Climate Change (Wiley). Marika’s current research examines political and civic mobilisation, global-local dynamics of violence, and the politics of knowledge production.

Dr Sam Vincent, Research Associate

 

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