Panel | Whose Climate Security? Order, Nature, People and Publics

Climate change has moved firmly onto the security agenda. Governments, international organisations and civil society increasingly describe it as a threat. Yet the security framing leaves a basic question open. Whose security is at stake? The answer shapes which measures appear legitimate, who is protected and who carries the costs.

The panel addresses that question through four referent objects of climate security, namely the international order, nature, people and publics. Each brings its own priorities and its own dilemmas. Taken together, they show that climate security is not a single agenda but a set of competing claims.

Hosted by SETA in the COP31 Blue Zone, the panel brings together a former minister and scholars from Türkiye working on security and the environment. Mustafa Varank addresses energy security and the critical mineral dependencies of the clean energy transition from the side of industry and technology. Ceren Uysal Oğuz examines the state of the international climate regime after the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement. Senem Atvur discusses the ecological security approach, which takes ecosystems themselves as the referent object of security. Başar Baysal presents findings on how the public and members of parliament in Türkiye perceive climate change as a security issue. The panel connects global debates to the perspective of the host country and asks which framing of climate security can sustain collective action.