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Climate change and maritime security narrative: the case of the international maritime organisation

Climate change and maritime security narrative: the case of the international maritime organisation Both climate change and maritime security are currently ranking high on states’ and international organisations’ political and governance agendas. However, academics and practitioners alike have hardly tackled the actual interlinkages and dependencies between the two issues. Taking the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as a case study, this article pioneers the use of corpus linguistic method to unravel the nonexistence of a narrative linking climate change impacts and the occurrence of maritime criminality despite some connections in practice. However, direct narrative links between climate change and migration as well as migration and maritime security were found, which can point at an indirect link between climate change and maritime security. The article concludes on the implications of these findings for academics and practitioners alike. The latter are encour- aged to reflect on their current narrative in a bid to contribute to a better acknowledgement of the existing links between the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems and aspects of maritime security. . . . . . Keywords Global warming Maritime criminality Migration IMO Discourse Corpus linguistics Introduction Africa in 2007/08 has also strengthened this trend. This has resulted in a growing narrative emphasising the need to control Since the turn of the twenty-first century, political actors such as ocean space (Germond 2015), which translates into maritime states and international organisations have developed and pro- security practices by states and international organisations, such moted a discourse that links climate change and security (e.g. as counter-piracy and counter-human smuggling operations, Commission of the European Communities 2009; UN Security maritime surveillance and the adoption and implementation of Council 2007; Department of Defense 2015). The extent, sig- dedicated norms and regulations. nificance and practical implications of this discourse have gen- Despite the existence of a narrative on climate change and erated many academic studies (e.g. Parsons 2010;Scott 2008, security and a narrative on maritime security at the highest level 2012; Trombetta 2008;Von Luckeet al. 2014;onthe actual of decision-making, there is currently no known/visible narrative links between climate change and security, see notably Barnett linking climate change impacts and the occurrence of maritime 2003; Barnett and Adger 2007; Gemenne et al. 2014; Gleditsch criminality. Academics and practitioners alike seem to have 2012;Hsiangand Burke 2014; Scheffran et al. 2012). At the somewhat neglected the actual interlinkages between the two sets same time, the expansion of the security agenda and 9/11 have of issues. In other words, the links and dependencies between generated fears about the power of nuisance of non-state actors climate change and maritime security have not been the focus of operating at sea, such as terrorists, pirates, smugglers and even many studies (rare examples include Cordner 2010;Jasparro illegal fishers (e.g. African Union 2012; Council of the 2009; Jasparro and Taylor 2008; Kaye 2012; Mazaris and European Union 2014; French Government 2015;HM Germond 2018;Rahman 2012; Rahman and Tsamenyi 2010). Government 2014). The upsurge of piracy at the Horn of Against this backdrop, this article aims to unravel the extent to which this narrative is indeed absent from political dis- courses or whether there are embryonic signs of its devel- * Basil Germond opment. To clarify this matter, we carry out a hybrid cor- b.germond@lancaster.ac.uk pus and discourse analysis of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) public documents/website (c.f. meth- Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster odology section for a justification of the case study). University, Lancaster LA14YL, UK 2 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 The main research question consists in searching the extent been researched for at least 60 years. It was first introduced to which a narrative linking climate change and maritime as a technical term by Firth (1957), who later defined colloca- security/criminality can be found in the IMO textual produc- tion as Bstatements of the habitual or customary places^ (Firth tion. Then, if this narrative exists, how is the relationship 1968: 181) of a given word. To date, Firth’s view that collo- conceptualised/presented? Can we find some ‘vectors’ linking cation is a frequent co-occurrence of patterns of two lexical climate change and maritime criminality, such as coastal pop- items has been widely accepted by corpus linguists (e.g. ulations’ vulnerability or sustainable development? If it does Sinclair 1991;Hoey 1991; Stubbs 1995;Hunston 2002; not exist, then how to explain the absence of such a discourse? McEnery et al. 2006). How does the conceptualisation of climate change on the one As this study aims to look at how strongly climate change hand and of maritime security on the other hand contribute to is linked to maritime security in the IMO textual production this lack of interlinkages in narrative? The findings will con- (c.f. below for a discussion of the building of the corpus), it is tribute to the academic effort consisting in fostering the rec- fundamental to examine how frequent node words of one ognition of complex interlinkages between climate change group co-occur with node words of another group (e.g. cli- and maritime security, while helping practitioners reflecting mate change vs. maritime security) in the corpus collected. In on their priorities and on the extent to which they frame their other words, the connections between individual collocates responses to the two issues in a separate way. should be determined. We have manually created a dataset with all documents and webpages containing references to both climate change (or Methodology global warming) and maritime security (or maritime criminal- ity, piracy, illegal fishing, etc.). As the discussions which con- A corpus linguistics approach has been considered as the most nect security and the maritime domain beyond naval develop- relevant approach for the research question, since it allows ments only started at the turn of the new millennium (Bueger demonstrating narrative trends beyond the existence of dispa- 2014;Germond 2015), we have only included documents and rate sentences and in a systematic way, reducing Bthe rich webpages dated after year 2000. Some documents, which chaos of language [to its] boiled down extract^ (Scott and were irrelevant to the study and created ‘noise’, have been Tribble 2006: 6). Quantitative data such as frequency lists manually removed from the corpus: technical guidelines, pro- and statistics can be extracted from the dataset, which allows motional documents, organisational procedures, policies, and demonstrating the existence or absence of narrative patterns action plans, lists of internet links to sources of information and highlighting their particular linguistics characteristics. and Powerpoint presentation slides. The final corpus contains Billions of words can be processed meaning that the entire 1419 documents and webpages, with a total of 3,705,927 to- ken textual production of a given actor can be analysed, revealing s obtained. For the purpose of this analysis, Btoken^ is patterns that would hardly be discernible otherwise. roughly equivalent to Bword^. The corpus of this study is sourced from the published IMO After the corpus has been constructed, we carried out a documents (freely available on the organisation’s public manual qualitative analysis on a sample of randomly selected website). We chose this organisation because the IMO is the files from the corpus, so as to identify and select a list of leading international institution which deals with maritime relevant node words relating to climate change or maritime affairs. It has interests and competencies in both climate security. We also found a few common words of non-criminal change at sea and in maritime security issues. The IMO de- maritime issues, i.e. pollution, accident and environmental scribes itself as Bthe global standard-setting authority for the protection, to serve as the control group. These node words safety, security and environmental performance of internation- are listed in Table 1. al shipping. [Its] main role is to create a regulatory framework In the starting phase, we formed all possible word pairs by for the shipping industry that is fair and effective, universally pairing a node from the climate change group and a node from adopted and universally implemented^ (IMO website-About). the maritime security group. For example, climate change and In other words, the IMO is a regulatory and policy setting maritime security, climate change and unlawful acts, global institution. Both Bsustainable maritime development^ and warming and piracy, etc. As a control measure, we also paired Bmaritime security^ are ranked high on its agenda (ibid). up nodes from the climate change group with nodes from the Therefore, the IMO website is a suitable and representative non-criminal group. Collocations of these control pairs were source for a small-scale pioneer research project like the pres- examined as well. ent study, which explores the linkages between climate change To proceed with corpus analysis, we used LancsBox, and maritime security. which is a newly developed software and one of the very To investigate these linkages, we looked at the collocations few corpus linguistics tools which supports the investigation of the node words, i.e. the search words, related to these two of collocation in context, i.e. collocation networks. It visual- issues. The concept of collocation in corpus linguistics has ises the collocations in the form of graphs of the network of J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 3 Table 1 Selected node words ‘Climate change’ group ‘Maritime security’ group Control group relating to climate change or maritime security Climate change* Maritime security* Pollution* Climatic change Maritime cyber security Maritime accident* Global warming Maritime cyber risk* Marine environmental protection* Maritime criminality Unlawful acts* Piracy* Armed robbery* Human trafficking* Smuggling* Illegal fishing Counter-terrorism* Node words with an asterisk are the restricted ones words that collocate with each node word; by this means, the security issues. We started by independently analysing the relationship between a node word and its textual environment main collocates of climate change and maritime security,so canberevealed(Brezinaetal. in prep; Brezina et al. 2015). as to get a picture of both narratives separately. We then tried Few other corpus linguistics tools, for example Wordsmith to find out how climate change and maritime security were Tools (http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/), also enable the interrelated including through an indirect link between climate building of collocation networks. However, the process change and maritime security such as via the discussions of involves mainly manual comparison of the associations (illegal) migration. The complete methodology is summarised between the keyword and its collocates (ibid). LancsBox, on by the organigram of Fig. 1. the other hand, builds the networks automatically and therefore is ideal for the present study, which investigates Data and analysis predominantly the collocation networks formed by the two groups of node words relating to climate change and We first used the GraphColl function of LancsBox to search maritime security. It enables us to have an insight into for the collocates of each node word listed in Table 2. lexical interconnections between the two topics. GraphColl visualises how strong the collocation is, how fre- Based on the word pairs of Table 1, we first identified quent the collocates appear, as well as the position of the collocates to each node, which are the words that co-occur collocates. This was performed in three steps: with the node. We then used the mutual information (MI) statistic to choose the most pertinent words nodes by selecting Step 1: Collocates of climate change a cut-off frequency of 5, a cut-off statistical value of 6 and a span of ± 5 words regardless of punctuation. The cut-off fre- Figure 2 shows the visualisation of the collocates of climate quency is the number of times the token appears in the corpus change. Collocates which are closer to the node word are for it to be included in the graph. For this study, any token with stronger than the ones that are further apart. Collocates a frequency below 5 is considered too rare to be taken into with a darker colour in the dot are more frequent than the consideration. The collocates must be within a span of five ones with a lighter colour. The positions (R or L) of the words to the left or right of the keyword. The associate mea- collocates on the graph echo their positions on the concor- sure MI score is a common measurement tool used in corpus dance lines as well. Concordancing is Ba means of accessing linguistics. It is used for this research because it favours a corpus of text to show how any given word or phrase in the strongly related low-frequency collocates (e.g. displacement, text is used in the immediate context in which it appears^ risk, etc.) over highly frequent but loosely associated col- (Flowerdew 1996, p.87). A concordance line is a line from a locates (e.g. the, in, of, etc.). Application of the method text of the corpus which contains the node word to be studied. described above led to remove from the search nodes of Data show that climate change in the IMO narrative is mainly Table 1 those with none or very few collocates. The final associated with (1) institutional processes/frameworks node words retained are asterisked in Table 1. (e.g. <cop>, <conference>, <unfccc>, <framework>, <united Finally, using LancsBox GraphColl function, we investi- nations>) and (2) policy requirements/settings (e.g. <adap- gated whether the narrative demonstrates a causality link (or at tation>, <mitigation>, <address/addressing>, <responding>, least a link) between the impacts of climate change at/or from <reduce>, <combat>, <urgent>). This fits with the technical the sea and the occurrence of maritime criminality/maritime discourse adopted by international organisations in the field of 4 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Fig. 1 Diagram of the corpus linguistics methodology used (The column designed as Group 1, resp. Group 2, resp. Control group represents the Maritime security group, resp. the Climate change group, resp. the Non- criminal maritime issues control group. The column ‘Steps chart’ displays the successive steps of the method to obtain a list of common collocates.) environment and development (e.g. Ferguson 1990)aswellas impact on human security via health and food supply issues. a tendency to favour short-term, problem-solving approaches. Also, extreme weather events and disasters can damage the Four interesting collocates appear when it comes to nega- maritime economy and negatively impact on food security tive impacts of climate change: <disaster>, <gender>, <dis- (Allison et al. 2009). The reference to gender issues may well placement> and <migration>. Disaster may refer to the effects point at the supposed gender dimension of the impacts of of climate change on natural ecosystems but also on human climate change, i.e. women are either more vulnerable to these systems, since an increased frequency of natural disasters (es- effects or, on the contrary, better prepared to respond to these pecially in the poorest regions of the world) can negatively changes (for a critical discussion of these propositions, see Table 2 Statistics of the Position Collocate MI score Frequency (coll.) Frequency (corpus) collocates of climate change R warming 12.37 17 30 R adaptation 11.96 18 42 Rcop 11.79 11 29 R unfccc 11.64 12 35 R mitigation 11.46 26 86 R degradation 11.41 12 41 L paris 10.50 22 141 L mitigate 10.40 15 103 L atmospheric 10.24 10 77 R displacement 9.62 6 71 Ldebate9.34 15 215 Lcombat 9.30 11 163 L disaster 9.04 7 124 R impacts 8.99 17 311 R goal 8.44 9 242 L urgent 8.32 6 175 L responding 8.17 5 162 L gender 8.06 6 210 L framework 8.02 36 1294 Only collocates with MI > 8 are shown. Underlying data source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 5 Fig. 3 Graph for the collocates of maritime security Fig. 2 Graph for the collocates of climate change (All network graphs presented in this article correspond to computer screenshots as they are displayed by the LancsBox software. Underlying data are from the IMO (3) generic calls for action and cooperation/coordination (e.g. public website.) <enhanced/enhancing> <guide/guidance> <harmonized>, <implementing>, <improving>, <respond>, <strengthening>, Arora-Jonsson 2011). Displacement and migration are inter- <supporting>). The only collocate to another node word from the maritime security group is <counter-piracy>. Statistics of esting collocates, since, represented as potential negative out- comes of climate change, they can point towards an indirect collocates of maritime security can be seen in Table 3. The investigation of collocates of the node word human link between climate change and maritime security narratives, which will be further discussed below. trafficking (also from the maritime security group) shows that <migrant/s> and <migration> are the most frequent collocates Table 2 lists statistics of the collocates of climate change. The ‘Position’ column shows whether the collocate is located (besides <smuggling>) (c.f. Fig. 4 and Table 4). Unsurprisingly, <migrant> is among the most collocated words to human on the left or right of the node word climate change on aver- trafficking. This points to the fact that migration is both related age. ‘Frequency (corpus)’ shows the total frequency the col- locate appears in the corpus. ‘Frequency (coll.)’ shows the to climate change and to maritime security in the IMO narra- tive, which will be further discussed below. frequency of its collocation with the node word climate change. It is worth noting that the collocates are arranged in descending order of significance, given by the MI scores. We Step 3: Common collocates between climate change and each can see that the 10 most strongly collocated words are indeed a node word related to maritime security mixture of institutional processes (i.e. <cop>, <unfccc>), pol- icy requirements (i.e. <adaptation>, <mitigation>, <miti- The third step consisted in looking for direct narrative links gate>) and negative impacts of climate change (i.e. between climate change and maritime security. This was done <warming>, <degradation>, <displacement>). This mirrors by looking at the common collocates between the node word findings from Fig. 2. climate change and each node word related to maritime security (words with an asterisk in Table 1). An example of Step 2: Collocates of maritime security visualising common collocates between two node words can be seen in Fig. 5 (counter-terrorism). The second step consisted in analysing the collocates of the A list of common collocates was found regarding climate node word maritime security (c.f. Fig. 3). It appears that change and each node word relating to maritime security, i.e. maritime security in the IMO narrative is mainly associated maritime security,aswell as maritime cyber risk, unlawful with (1) the need to develop or improve relevant institu- acts, piracy, armed robbery, human trafficking, smuggling tional frameworks (e.g. <contractors/contracted>, <diplo- and counter-terrorism (c.f. Table 5). However, there appeared matic>, <fund>, <guards>, <imo-led>, <multi-agency>, to be very limited direct narrative links between climate <mschoa> (Maritime Security Center Horn of Africa), change and maritime security. <private/privately>, <regime>, <workshop>, (2) policy As can be seen in Table 5, only eight common collocates settings (e.g. <compliance>, <definition>, <education>, between climate change and maritime security were found in <guidance>, <innovation>, <legislation>, <register>), and the entire corpus of the IMO. Most pairs had only one 6 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Table 3 Statistics of the collocates of maritime security Position Collocate MI score Freq (coll.) Freq (corpus) R msf 11.44 9 9 R1(h 11.29 9 10 R table-top 10.96 5 7 L balancing 10.95 57 80 R pmscs 10.66 7 12 R freedom 10.43 57 115 L sub-division 10.32 11 24 L multi-agency 10.16 7 17 R msc/circ.1072 9.76 5 16 L vietnam 9.76 19 61 L enhancement 9.75 54 174 L enhance 9.56 226 835 L underpinned 9.52 5 19 R contractors 9.32 11 48 Fig. 4 Graph for the collocates of human trafficking L imo-led 9.30 5 22 L trelawny 9.15 9 44 trafficked) by sea (Jasparro and Taylor 2008;Kaye 2012), thus Rxi 9.02 8 43 a link to maritime criminality and maritime security issues. R msc.159(78 9.01 5 27 Figure 6 shows a graph of common collocates between L a.924(22 8.96 5 28 climate change and migration. In addition to the direct collo- L pertaining 8.91 19 110 cation between climate change and migration, common collo- R trust 8.84 35 212 cates do not indicate any more precise connection with mari- R horn 8.80 22 137 time security. Building on this, Fig. 7 shows the concordances R mschoa 8.73 14 92 of some common collocates (i.e. <displacement>, <degrada- R pmsc 8.68 15 102 tion>) between climate change and migration adding a qual- L heightened 8.52 9 68 itative insight. Examples of concordance tend to corroborate L innovation 8.41 17 139 R operative 8.34 12 103 Table 4 statistics of the collocates of human trafficking R counter-piracy 8.18 10 96 Roffering 8.15 5 49 Position Collocate MI score Freq (coll.) Freq (corpus) R contracted 8.12 19 190 L alien 13.16723 9 49 L central 8.06 42 438 R unreported 12.93395 5 32 Only collocates with MI > 8 are shown. Underlying data source: IMO R smuggling 12.34633 34 327 public website L victims 12.18575 12 129 R migrant 10.57933 15 491 common collocate. Logically, one of the node word pairs, R dumping 10.08845 5 230 climate change and maritime cyber risk, had no common col- R illegal 9.597995 8 517 locates at all. The rare common collocates show a common L problems 9.50698 6 413 emphasis on the institutional framework (<UN>, <united na- R migrants 8.554325 9 1199 tions>, <framework>, <global>) and on the need to do some- L international 8.343891 7 1079 thing in a proactive way (<combat>). The most relevant common R incidents 7.58569 7 1825 collocate (also found in Tables 3 and 4) was found in the climate R un 7.574194 5 1314 change and human trafficking node word pair: <migration>. L migration 7.536172 11 2968 Indeed, as mentioned above, migration (and displacement) is also L including 6.638122 11 5531 a collocate of climate change. Thus, the only occurrence of an L against 6.357774 6 3664 indirect link between climate change and maritime security can L group 6.335426 5 3101 be found via migration. The literature has suggested that climate L Oil 6.151764 5 3522 change (negatively) impacts on food security and population well-being, then potentially generating (illegal) migration Lines in italics refer to the most frequent collocates. Underlying data or human trafficking, with migrants travelling (or being source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 7 Fig. 5 A graph of common collocates between climate change and counter-terrorism Collocates of counter- terrorism only Common collocates between climate change and counter- terrorism Collocates of climate change only the existence of indirect links between climate change and change and maritime security. Figure 8 and Fig. 9,for maritime security via potential increased migration, although example, present the concordance lines of combat,acom- concordances also refer to land migration. mon collocate of climate change and armed robbery/ We then took a closer look at the concordance lines of each smuggling. None of the concordance lines show a link common collocate, in order to find further possible links between climate change and armed robbery/smuggling, between climate change and maritime security. Once again, beyond the fact that the word <combat> is anyway used the concordance lines of the eight common collocates did in two different lexical contexts, i.e. dealing with the not show evidence of narrative links between climate threats posed by real criminals versus dealing with the negative impacts of climate change. On the other hand, however, links were observed between Table 5 List of common collocates of climate change and node words of maritime security climate change and the node word pollution in the control group, which contains the node words related to non- Node word Common collocate Frequency (coll) security (i.e. safety) maritime issues. As we checked the con- cordance lines of the common collocates presented in Fig. 10 Maritime security contribute 10 (i.e. <reduce>, <harmful>, <responding>, <warming>, <envi- Maritime cyber risk –– ronment>, <atmospheric>), climate change and pollution Unlawful acts framework 7 were both linked to harmful environmental effects. For exam- Piracy combat 39 ple, Fig. 11 shows the concordance lines of environment,a Armed robbery combat 12 common collocate of climate change and pollution, in which Human trafficking migration 11 climate change is directly addressed as a threat to the environ- Smuggling combat 12 ment, in the same way pollution is. This confirms that there Counter-terrorism united 11 seems to be a stronger narrative link between climate change nations 11 and non-security maritime issues, although connections be- UN 10 tween climate change and other node words in the control global 14 group (i.e. marine environmental protection and maritime Underlying data source: IMO public website accident) are not strong according to textual data. 8 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Fig. 6 A graph of common collocates between climate change and migration (We needed to consider a large number Collocates of of collocates before shared items migration only appear. This speaks to the weakness of the narrative link between concepts but also hinders readability. However visual distinction between individual collocates is not required in statistical methodologies such as corpus linguistic. Such figures are Common collocates visual representations of the complexity of lexical between climate change interconnections.) and migration Collocates of climate change only Fig. 7 The concordance lines of <displacement> and <degradation> as a common collocate of climate change and migration. Underlying data source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 9 Fig. 8 The concordance lines of combat as a common collocate of climate change and armed robbery. Underlying data source: IMO public website Discussion and conclusion the impacts of climate change on natural systems, such as a loss, or change in, marine biodiversity, can then reverberate on hu- Using corpus linguistic methods, textual data show that, ex- man, social and political systems, via economic slow-down, cept for the indirect link between climate change and maritime food insecurity, natural disasters, extreme weather events, forced security via migration/displacement, the IMO narrative does displacements, vulnerability of coastal populations as well as the not encapsulate the interlinkages between climate change and synergistic impacts of these processes. This can in turn increase maritime security. Despite having interests and responsibility the incentive to engage in maritime criminal activities (e.g. ille- in offering solutions to tackle both climate change and mari- gal fishing, piracy, human smuggling) as well as increase the time security, the IMO does not seem to narratively represent risk of illegal immigration (e.g. Allison et al. 2009;Cinneretal. the two issues (and the impacts of the two issues) as something 2012; Cordner 2010;Jasparro 2009; Jasparro and Taylor 2008; linked or something that could potentially be linked, except Kaye 2012; Mazaris and Germond 2018; Perch-Nielsen et al. indirectly in the case of climate change-induced migration. It 2008; Pomeroy et al. 2016;Rahman 2012;Rahmanand is worth noting that findings might be limited by the following Tsamenyi 2010;SuárezdeViveroand Mateos 2017). methodological constraint: the span of ± 5 (chosen in order to So long as actors tasked to tackle climate change concen- stay within typical linguistic structures and to reduce noise) trate on mitigation and adaptation (something that the IMO does not take into account a potential narrative between cli- narrative seems to put forward), and so long as they do not mate change and maritime security that might be developed include a reflexion on the impacts of damaged or threatened across entire paragraphs. natural systems not only on food security, income and living This reveals the need to start serious discussions with the help conditions but also on the occurrence of (maritime) criminality, of both natural scientists and social/political scientists in a bid to an important element of the puzzle will be missed. Our analy- initiate a reflexion on the existence of links and dependencies sis has shown that this lack of interlinkages in narrative may be between the two issues. The existing literature has shown that due to the very conceptualisation of climate change on the one Fig. 9 The concordance lines of combat as a common collocate of climate change and smuggling. Underlying data source: IMO public website 10 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Fig. 10 Common collocates between climate change and pollution Collocates of pollution only Common collocates between climate change and pollution Collocates of climate change only hand and of maritime security on the other hand. In both cases, involving issues at the societal level, whereas maritime textual data shows that the vocabulary employed to conceptu- security is conceptualised as a series of illegal practices that alise the two issues is very technical, ranging from institutional must be tackled, certainly explains the current lack of narrative processes and frameworks, to policy requirements and set- linking the two issues. The origin of this technicality can be tings, to generic calls for action and coordination. The specific traced back to the IMO’s traditional role which is to improve framing of climate change within institutional processes and the safety of the maritime shipping industry. In this policy settings rather than a cause/consequence process organisational context, climate change and maritime security Fig. 11 Concordance lines of environment, a common collocate of climate change and pollution. Underlying data source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 11 Vulnerability of national economies to the impacts of climate change issues are likely to be associated to threats to maritime ship- on fisheries. Fish Fish 10:173–196 ping, hence the problem-solving/technical approach of the Arora-Jonsson S (2011) Virtue and vulnerability: discourses on women, IMO consisting in setting up rules, regulations, guidelines gender and climate change. Global environ. Change 21(2):744–751 and agenda as well as promoting multilateral responses to Barnett J (2003) Security and climate change. Glob Environ Chang 13:7– transnational threats. This also seems to fit with the Barnett J, Adger WN (2007) Climate change, human security and violent Btechnocratic and industry-oriented^ nature of the IMO secre- conflict. Polit Geogr 26:639–655 tariat discussed by Campe (2009: 144). Brezina V, McEnery T, Wattam S (2015) Collocations in context: a new Our findings have practical implications for both aca- perspective on collocation networks. Int J Corpus Linguis 20(2): 139–173 demics and practitioners. This article reveals the need for ac- Brezina V, Timperley M, Gablasova D, McEnery T (in prep) #LancsBox: ademics to find ways to conceptualise these dependencies A new-generation corpus analysis tools for researchers, students and between climate change and maritime security and to quantify teachers the synergistic links between the two issues. It is crucial to Bueger C (2014) Piracy studies: academic responses to the return of an work on better integrating indicators reflecting ecological risk ancient menace. Coop Confl 49(3):406–416 Campe S (2009) The secretariat of the international maritime organiza- (e.g. extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity, velocity of tion: a tanker for tankers. In: Biermann F, Siebenhüner B (eds) climate change), social vulnerability (e.g. capacity to adapt), Managers of global change: the influence of international environ- exposure to impacts (e.g. localization on the global grid), eco- mental bureaucracies. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 143–168 nomic consequences of climate change as well as maritime Cinner JE, McClanahan TR, Graham NAJ, Daw TM, Maina J, Stead SM, Wamukota A, Brown K, Bodin Ö (2012) Vulnerability of coastal criminality indexes. Practitioners will benefit from such sci- communities to key impacts of climate change on coral reef fisher- entific advances, but they are also invited to move beyond an ies. Global Environ Change 22(1):12–20 institutional processes/policy setting narrative so as to further Commission of the European Communities (2009) White Paper: account for the interlinkages between climate change and mar- Adapting to climate change: Towards a European framework for itime security. 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Climate change and maritime security narrative: the case of the international maritime organisation

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Springer Journals
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Copyright © 2018 by The Author(s)
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Environment; Environment, general; Sustainable Development
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2190-6483
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10.1007/s13412-018-0509-2
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Abstract

Both climate change and maritime security are currently ranking high on states’ and international organisations’ political and governance agendas. However, academics and practitioners alike have hardly tackled the actual interlinkages and dependencies between the two issues. Taking the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as a case study, this article pioneers the use of corpus linguistic method to unravel the nonexistence of a narrative linking climate change impacts and the occurrence of maritime criminality despite some connections in practice. However, direct narrative links between climate change and migration as well as migration and maritime security were found, which can point at an indirect link between climate change and maritime security. The article concludes on the implications of these findings for academics and practitioners alike. The latter are encour- aged to reflect on their current narrative in a bid to contribute to a better acknowledgement of the existing links between the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems and aspects of maritime security. . . . . . Keywords Global warming Maritime criminality Migration IMO Discourse Corpus linguistics Introduction Africa in 2007/08 has also strengthened this trend. This has resulted in a growing narrative emphasising the need to control Since the turn of the twenty-first century, political actors such as ocean space (Germond 2015), which translates into maritime states and international organisations have developed and pro- security practices by states and international organisations, such moted a discourse that links climate change and security (e.g. as counter-piracy and counter-human smuggling operations, Commission of the European Communities 2009; UN Security maritime surveillance and the adoption and implementation of Council 2007; Department of Defense 2015). The extent, sig- dedicated norms and regulations. nificance and practical implications of this discourse have gen- Despite the existence of a narrative on climate change and erated many academic studies (e.g. Parsons 2010;Scott 2008, security and a narrative on maritime security at the highest level 2012; Trombetta 2008;Von Luckeet al. 2014;onthe actual of decision-making, there is currently no known/visible narrative links between climate change and security, see notably Barnett linking climate change impacts and the occurrence of maritime 2003; Barnett and Adger 2007; Gemenne et al. 2014; Gleditsch criminality. Academics and practitioners alike seem to have 2012;Hsiangand Burke 2014; Scheffran et al. 2012). At the somewhat neglected the actual interlinkages between the two sets same time, the expansion of the security agenda and 9/11 have of issues. In other words, the links and dependencies between generated fears about the power of nuisance of non-state actors climate change and maritime security have not been the focus of operating at sea, such as terrorists, pirates, smugglers and even many studies (rare examples include Cordner 2010;Jasparro illegal fishers (e.g. African Union 2012; Council of the 2009; Jasparro and Taylor 2008; Kaye 2012; Mazaris and European Union 2014; French Government 2015;HM Germond 2018;Rahman 2012; Rahman and Tsamenyi 2010). Government 2014). The upsurge of piracy at the Horn of Against this backdrop, this article aims to unravel the extent to which this narrative is indeed absent from political dis- courses or whether there are embryonic signs of its devel- * Basil Germond opment. To clarify this matter, we carry out a hybrid cor- b.germond@lancaster.ac.uk pus and discourse analysis of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) public documents/website (c.f. meth- Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster odology section for a justification of the case study). University, Lancaster LA14YL, UK 2 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 The main research question consists in searching the extent been researched for at least 60 years. It was first introduced to which a narrative linking climate change and maritime as a technical term by Firth (1957), who later defined colloca- security/criminality can be found in the IMO textual produc- tion as Bstatements of the habitual or customary places^ (Firth tion. Then, if this narrative exists, how is the relationship 1968: 181) of a given word. To date, Firth’s view that collo- conceptualised/presented? Can we find some ‘vectors’ linking cation is a frequent co-occurrence of patterns of two lexical climate change and maritime criminality, such as coastal pop- items has been widely accepted by corpus linguists (e.g. ulations’ vulnerability or sustainable development? If it does Sinclair 1991;Hoey 1991; Stubbs 1995;Hunston 2002; not exist, then how to explain the absence of such a discourse? McEnery et al. 2006). How does the conceptualisation of climate change on the one As this study aims to look at how strongly climate change hand and of maritime security on the other hand contribute to is linked to maritime security in the IMO textual production this lack of interlinkages in narrative? The findings will con- (c.f. below for a discussion of the building of the corpus), it is tribute to the academic effort consisting in fostering the rec- fundamental to examine how frequent node words of one ognition of complex interlinkages between climate change group co-occur with node words of another group (e.g. cli- and maritime security, while helping practitioners reflecting mate change vs. maritime security) in the corpus collected. In on their priorities and on the extent to which they frame their other words, the connections between individual collocates responses to the two issues in a separate way. should be determined. We have manually created a dataset with all documents and webpages containing references to both climate change (or Methodology global warming) and maritime security (or maritime criminal- ity, piracy, illegal fishing, etc.). As the discussions which con- A corpus linguistics approach has been considered as the most nect security and the maritime domain beyond naval develop- relevant approach for the research question, since it allows ments only started at the turn of the new millennium (Bueger demonstrating narrative trends beyond the existence of dispa- 2014;Germond 2015), we have only included documents and rate sentences and in a systematic way, reducing Bthe rich webpages dated after year 2000. Some documents, which chaos of language [to its] boiled down extract^ (Scott and were irrelevant to the study and created ‘noise’, have been Tribble 2006: 6). Quantitative data such as frequency lists manually removed from the corpus: technical guidelines, pro- and statistics can be extracted from the dataset, which allows motional documents, organisational procedures, policies, and demonstrating the existence or absence of narrative patterns action plans, lists of internet links to sources of information and highlighting their particular linguistics characteristics. and Powerpoint presentation slides. The final corpus contains Billions of words can be processed meaning that the entire 1419 documents and webpages, with a total of 3,705,927 to- ken textual production of a given actor can be analysed, revealing s obtained. For the purpose of this analysis, Btoken^ is patterns that would hardly be discernible otherwise. roughly equivalent to Bword^. The corpus of this study is sourced from the published IMO After the corpus has been constructed, we carried out a documents (freely available on the organisation’s public manual qualitative analysis on a sample of randomly selected website). We chose this organisation because the IMO is the files from the corpus, so as to identify and select a list of leading international institution which deals with maritime relevant node words relating to climate change or maritime affairs. It has interests and competencies in both climate security. We also found a few common words of non-criminal change at sea and in maritime security issues. The IMO de- maritime issues, i.e. pollution, accident and environmental scribes itself as Bthe global standard-setting authority for the protection, to serve as the control group. These node words safety, security and environmental performance of internation- are listed in Table 1. al shipping. [Its] main role is to create a regulatory framework In the starting phase, we formed all possible word pairs by for the shipping industry that is fair and effective, universally pairing a node from the climate change group and a node from adopted and universally implemented^ (IMO website-About). the maritime security group. For example, climate change and In other words, the IMO is a regulatory and policy setting maritime security, climate change and unlawful acts, global institution. Both Bsustainable maritime development^ and warming and piracy, etc. As a control measure, we also paired Bmaritime security^ are ranked high on its agenda (ibid). up nodes from the climate change group with nodes from the Therefore, the IMO website is a suitable and representative non-criminal group. Collocations of these control pairs were source for a small-scale pioneer research project like the pres- examined as well. ent study, which explores the linkages between climate change To proceed with corpus analysis, we used LancsBox, and maritime security. which is a newly developed software and one of the very To investigate these linkages, we looked at the collocations few corpus linguistics tools which supports the investigation of the node words, i.e. the search words, related to these two of collocation in context, i.e. collocation networks. It visual- issues. The concept of collocation in corpus linguistics has ises the collocations in the form of graphs of the network of J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 3 Table 1 Selected node words ‘Climate change’ group ‘Maritime security’ group Control group relating to climate change or maritime security Climate change* Maritime security* Pollution* Climatic change Maritime cyber security Maritime accident* Global warming Maritime cyber risk* Marine environmental protection* Maritime criminality Unlawful acts* Piracy* Armed robbery* Human trafficking* Smuggling* Illegal fishing Counter-terrorism* Node words with an asterisk are the restricted ones words that collocate with each node word; by this means, the security issues. We started by independently analysing the relationship between a node word and its textual environment main collocates of climate change and maritime security,so canberevealed(Brezinaetal. in prep; Brezina et al. 2015). as to get a picture of both narratives separately. We then tried Few other corpus linguistics tools, for example Wordsmith to find out how climate change and maritime security were Tools (http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/), also enable the interrelated including through an indirect link between climate building of collocation networks. However, the process change and maritime security such as via the discussions of involves mainly manual comparison of the associations (illegal) migration. The complete methodology is summarised between the keyword and its collocates (ibid). LancsBox, on by the organigram of Fig. 1. the other hand, builds the networks automatically and therefore is ideal for the present study, which investigates Data and analysis predominantly the collocation networks formed by the two groups of node words relating to climate change and We first used the GraphColl function of LancsBox to search maritime security. It enables us to have an insight into for the collocates of each node word listed in Table 2. lexical interconnections between the two topics. GraphColl visualises how strong the collocation is, how fre- Based on the word pairs of Table 1, we first identified quent the collocates appear, as well as the position of the collocates to each node, which are the words that co-occur collocates. This was performed in three steps: with the node. We then used the mutual information (MI) statistic to choose the most pertinent words nodes by selecting Step 1: Collocates of climate change a cut-off frequency of 5, a cut-off statistical value of 6 and a span of ± 5 words regardless of punctuation. The cut-off fre- Figure 2 shows the visualisation of the collocates of climate quency is the number of times the token appears in the corpus change. Collocates which are closer to the node word are for it to be included in the graph. For this study, any token with stronger than the ones that are further apart. Collocates a frequency below 5 is considered too rare to be taken into with a darker colour in the dot are more frequent than the consideration. The collocates must be within a span of five ones with a lighter colour. The positions (R or L) of the words to the left or right of the keyword. The associate mea- collocates on the graph echo their positions on the concor- sure MI score is a common measurement tool used in corpus dance lines as well. Concordancing is Ba means of accessing linguistics. It is used for this research because it favours a corpus of text to show how any given word or phrase in the strongly related low-frequency collocates (e.g. displacement, text is used in the immediate context in which it appears^ risk, etc.) over highly frequent but loosely associated col- (Flowerdew 1996, p.87). A concordance line is a line from a locates (e.g. the, in, of, etc.). Application of the method text of the corpus which contains the node word to be studied. described above led to remove from the search nodes of Data show that climate change in the IMO narrative is mainly Table 1 those with none or very few collocates. The final associated with (1) institutional processes/frameworks node words retained are asterisked in Table 1. (e.g. <cop>, <conference>, <unfccc>, <framework>, <united Finally, using LancsBox GraphColl function, we investi- nations>) and (2) policy requirements/settings (e.g. <adap- gated whether the narrative demonstrates a causality link (or at tation>, <mitigation>, <address/addressing>, <responding>, least a link) between the impacts of climate change at/or from <reduce>, <combat>, <urgent>). This fits with the technical the sea and the occurrence of maritime criminality/maritime discourse adopted by international organisations in the field of 4 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Fig. 1 Diagram of the corpus linguistics methodology used (The column designed as Group 1, resp. Group 2, resp. Control group represents the Maritime security group, resp. the Climate change group, resp. the Non- criminal maritime issues control group. The column ‘Steps chart’ displays the successive steps of the method to obtain a list of common collocates.) environment and development (e.g. Ferguson 1990)aswellas impact on human security via health and food supply issues. a tendency to favour short-term, problem-solving approaches. Also, extreme weather events and disasters can damage the Four interesting collocates appear when it comes to nega- maritime economy and negatively impact on food security tive impacts of climate change: <disaster>, <gender>, <dis- (Allison et al. 2009). The reference to gender issues may well placement> and <migration>. Disaster may refer to the effects point at the supposed gender dimension of the impacts of of climate change on natural ecosystems but also on human climate change, i.e. women are either more vulnerable to these systems, since an increased frequency of natural disasters (es- effects or, on the contrary, better prepared to respond to these pecially in the poorest regions of the world) can negatively changes (for a critical discussion of these propositions, see Table 2 Statistics of the Position Collocate MI score Frequency (coll.) Frequency (corpus) collocates of climate change R warming 12.37 17 30 R adaptation 11.96 18 42 Rcop 11.79 11 29 R unfccc 11.64 12 35 R mitigation 11.46 26 86 R degradation 11.41 12 41 L paris 10.50 22 141 L mitigate 10.40 15 103 L atmospheric 10.24 10 77 R displacement 9.62 6 71 Ldebate9.34 15 215 Lcombat 9.30 11 163 L disaster 9.04 7 124 R impacts 8.99 17 311 R goal 8.44 9 242 L urgent 8.32 6 175 L responding 8.17 5 162 L gender 8.06 6 210 L framework 8.02 36 1294 Only collocates with MI > 8 are shown. Underlying data source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 5 Fig. 3 Graph for the collocates of maritime security Fig. 2 Graph for the collocates of climate change (All network graphs presented in this article correspond to computer screenshots as they are displayed by the LancsBox software. Underlying data are from the IMO (3) generic calls for action and cooperation/coordination (e.g. public website.) <enhanced/enhancing> <guide/guidance> <harmonized>, <implementing>, <improving>, <respond>, <strengthening>, Arora-Jonsson 2011). Displacement and migration are inter- <supporting>). The only collocate to another node word from the maritime security group is <counter-piracy>. Statistics of esting collocates, since, represented as potential negative out- comes of climate change, they can point towards an indirect collocates of maritime security can be seen in Table 3. The investigation of collocates of the node word human link between climate change and maritime security narratives, which will be further discussed below. trafficking (also from the maritime security group) shows that <migrant/s> and <migration> are the most frequent collocates Table 2 lists statistics of the collocates of climate change. The ‘Position’ column shows whether the collocate is located (besides <smuggling>) (c.f. Fig. 4 and Table 4). Unsurprisingly, <migrant> is among the most collocated words to human on the left or right of the node word climate change on aver- trafficking. This points to the fact that migration is both related age. ‘Frequency (corpus)’ shows the total frequency the col- locate appears in the corpus. ‘Frequency (coll.)’ shows the to climate change and to maritime security in the IMO narra- tive, which will be further discussed below. frequency of its collocation with the node word climate change. It is worth noting that the collocates are arranged in descending order of significance, given by the MI scores. We Step 3: Common collocates between climate change and each can see that the 10 most strongly collocated words are indeed a node word related to maritime security mixture of institutional processes (i.e. <cop>, <unfccc>), pol- icy requirements (i.e. <adaptation>, <mitigation>, <miti- The third step consisted in looking for direct narrative links gate>) and negative impacts of climate change (i.e. between climate change and maritime security. This was done <warming>, <degradation>, <displacement>). This mirrors by looking at the common collocates between the node word findings from Fig. 2. climate change and each node word related to maritime security (words with an asterisk in Table 1). An example of Step 2: Collocates of maritime security visualising common collocates between two node words can be seen in Fig. 5 (counter-terrorism). The second step consisted in analysing the collocates of the A list of common collocates was found regarding climate node word maritime security (c.f. Fig. 3). It appears that change and each node word relating to maritime security, i.e. maritime security in the IMO narrative is mainly associated maritime security,aswell as maritime cyber risk, unlawful with (1) the need to develop or improve relevant institu- acts, piracy, armed robbery, human trafficking, smuggling tional frameworks (e.g. <contractors/contracted>, <diplo- and counter-terrorism (c.f. Table 5). However, there appeared matic>, <fund>, <guards>, <imo-led>, <multi-agency>, to be very limited direct narrative links between climate <mschoa> (Maritime Security Center Horn of Africa), change and maritime security. <private/privately>, <regime>, <workshop>, (2) policy As can be seen in Table 5, only eight common collocates settings (e.g. <compliance>, <definition>, <education>, between climate change and maritime security were found in <guidance>, <innovation>, <legislation>, <register>), and the entire corpus of the IMO. Most pairs had only one 6 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Table 3 Statistics of the collocates of maritime security Position Collocate MI score Freq (coll.) Freq (corpus) R msf 11.44 9 9 R1(h 11.29 9 10 R table-top 10.96 5 7 L balancing 10.95 57 80 R pmscs 10.66 7 12 R freedom 10.43 57 115 L sub-division 10.32 11 24 L multi-agency 10.16 7 17 R msc/circ.1072 9.76 5 16 L vietnam 9.76 19 61 L enhancement 9.75 54 174 L enhance 9.56 226 835 L underpinned 9.52 5 19 R contractors 9.32 11 48 Fig. 4 Graph for the collocates of human trafficking L imo-led 9.30 5 22 L trelawny 9.15 9 44 trafficked) by sea (Jasparro and Taylor 2008;Kaye 2012), thus Rxi 9.02 8 43 a link to maritime criminality and maritime security issues. R msc.159(78 9.01 5 27 Figure 6 shows a graph of common collocates between L a.924(22 8.96 5 28 climate change and migration. In addition to the direct collo- L pertaining 8.91 19 110 cation between climate change and migration, common collo- R trust 8.84 35 212 cates do not indicate any more precise connection with mari- R horn 8.80 22 137 time security. Building on this, Fig. 7 shows the concordances R mschoa 8.73 14 92 of some common collocates (i.e. <displacement>, <degrada- R pmsc 8.68 15 102 tion>) between climate change and migration adding a qual- L heightened 8.52 9 68 itative insight. Examples of concordance tend to corroborate L innovation 8.41 17 139 R operative 8.34 12 103 Table 4 statistics of the collocates of human trafficking R counter-piracy 8.18 10 96 Roffering 8.15 5 49 Position Collocate MI score Freq (coll.) Freq (corpus) R contracted 8.12 19 190 L alien 13.16723 9 49 L central 8.06 42 438 R unreported 12.93395 5 32 Only collocates with MI > 8 are shown. Underlying data source: IMO R smuggling 12.34633 34 327 public website L victims 12.18575 12 129 R migrant 10.57933 15 491 common collocate. Logically, one of the node word pairs, R dumping 10.08845 5 230 climate change and maritime cyber risk, had no common col- R illegal 9.597995 8 517 locates at all. The rare common collocates show a common L problems 9.50698 6 413 emphasis on the institutional framework (<UN>, <united na- R migrants 8.554325 9 1199 tions>, <framework>, <global>) and on the need to do some- L international 8.343891 7 1079 thing in a proactive way (<combat>). The most relevant common R incidents 7.58569 7 1825 collocate (also found in Tables 3 and 4) was found in the climate R un 7.574194 5 1314 change and human trafficking node word pair: <migration>. L migration 7.536172 11 2968 Indeed, as mentioned above, migration (and displacement) is also L including 6.638122 11 5531 a collocate of climate change. Thus, the only occurrence of an L against 6.357774 6 3664 indirect link between climate change and maritime security can L group 6.335426 5 3101 be found via migration. The literature has suggested that climate L Oil 6.151764 5 3522 change (negatively) impacts on food security and population well-being, then potentially generating (illegal) migration Lines in italics refer to the most frequent collocates. Underlying data or human trafficking, with migrants travelling (or being source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 7 Fig. 5 A graph of common collocates between climate change and counter-terrorism Collocates of counter- terrorism only Common collocates between climate change and counter- terrorism Collocates of climate change only the existence of indirect links between climate change and change and maritime security. Figure 8 and Fig. 9,for maritime security via potential increased migration, although example, present the concordance lines of combat,acom- concordances also refer to land migration. mon collocate of climate change and armed robbery/ We then took a closer look at the concordance lines of each smuggling. None of the concordance lines show a link common collocate, in order to find further possible links between climate change and armed robbery/smuggling, between climate change and maritime security. Once again, beyond the fact that the word <combat> is anyway used the concordance lines of the eight common collocates did in two different lexical contexts, i.e. dealing with the not show evidence of narrative links between climate threats posed by real criminals versus dealing with the negative impacts of climate change. On the other hand, however, links were observed between Table 5 List of common collocates of climate change and node words of maritime security climate change and the node word pollution in the control group, which contains the node words related to non- Node word Common collocate Frequency (coll) security (i.e. safety) maritime issues. As we checked the con- cordance lines of the common collocates presented in Fig. 10 Maritime security contribute 10 (i.e. <reduce>, <harmful>, <responding>, <warming>, <envi- Maritime cyber risk –– ronment>, <atmospheric>), climate change and pollution Unlawful acts framework 7 were both linked to harmful environmental effects. For exam- Piracy combat 39 ple, Fig. 11 shows the concordance lines of environment,a Armed robbery combat 12 common collocate of climate change and pollution, in which Human trafficking migration 11 climate change is directly addressed as a threat to the environ- Smuggling combat 12 ment, in the same way pollution is. This confirms that there Counter-terrorism united 11 seems to be a stronger narrative link between climate change nations 11 and non-security maritime issues, although connections be- UN 10 tween climate change and other node words in the control global 14 group (i.e. marine environmental protection and maritime Underlying data source: IMO public website accident) are not strong according to textual data. 8 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Fig. 6 A graph of common collocates between climate change and migration (We needed to consider a large number Collocates of of collocates before shared items migration only appear. This speaks to the weakness of the narrative link between concepts but also hinders readability. However visual distinction between individual collocates is not required in statistical methodologies such as corpus linguistic. Such figures are Common collocates visual representations of the complexity of lexical between climate change interconnections.) and migration Collocates of climate change only Fig. 7 The concordance lines of <displacement> and <degradation> as a common collocate of climate change and migration. Underlying data source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 9 Fig. 8 The concordance lines of combat as a common collocate of climate change and armed robbery. Underlying data source: IMO public website Discussion and conclusion the impacts of climate change on natural systems, such as a loss, or change in, marine biodiversity, can then reverberate on hu- Using corpus linguistic methods, textual data show that, ex- man, social and political systems, via economic slow-down, cept for the indirect link between climate change and maritime food insecurity, natural disasters, extreme weather events, forced security via migration/displacement, the IMO narrative does displacements, vulnerability of coastal populations as well as the not encapsulate the interlinkages between climate change and synergistic impacts of these processes. This can in turn increase maritime security. Despite having interests and responsibility the incentive to engage in maritime criminal activities (e.g. ille- in offering solutions to tackle both climate change and mari- gal fishing, piracy, human smuggling) as well as increase the time security, the IMO does not seem to narratively represent risk of illegal immigration (e.g. Allison et al. 2009;Cinneretal. the two issues (and the impacts of the two issues) as something 2012; Cordner 2010;Jasparro 2009; Jasparro and Taylor 2008; linked or something that could potentially be linked, except Kaye 2012; Mazaris and Germond 2018; Perch-Nielsen et al. indirectly in the case of climate change-induced migration. It 2008; Pomeroy et al. 2016;Rahman 2012;Rahmanand is worth noting that findings might be limited by the following Tsamenyi 2010;SuárezdeViveroand Mateos 2017). methodological constraint: the span of ± 5 (chosen in order to So long as actors tasked to tackle climate change concen- stay within typical linguistic structures and to reduce noise) trate on mitigation and adaptation (something that the IMO does not take into account a potential narrative between cli- narrative seems to put forward), and so long as they do not mate change and maritime security that might be developed include a reflexion on the impacts of damaged or threatened across entire paragraphs. natural systems not only on food security, income and living This reveals the need to start serious discussions with the help conditions but also on the occurrence of (maritime) criminality, of both natural scientists and social/political scientists in a bid to an important element of the puzzle will be missed. Our analy- initiate a reflexion on the existence of links and dependencies sis has shown that this lack of interlinkages in narrative may be between the two issues. The existing literature has shown that due to the very conceptualisation of climate change on the one Fig. 9 The concordance lines of combat as a common collocate of climate change and smuggling. Underlying data source: IMO public website 10 J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 Fig. 10 Common collocates between climate change and pollution Collocates of pollution only Common collocates between climate change and pollution Collocates of climate change only hand and of maritime security on the other hand. In both cases, involving issues at the societal level, whereas maritime textual data shows that the vocabulary employed to conceptu- security is conceptualised as a series of illegal practices that alise the two issues is very technical, ranging from institutional must be tackled, certainly explains the current lack of narrative processes and frameworks, to policy requirements and set- linking the two issues. The origin of this technicality can be tings, to generic calls for action and coordination. The specific traced back to the IMO’s traditional role which is to improve framing of climate change within institutional processes and the safety of the maritime shipping industry. In this policy settings rather than a cause/consequence process organisational context, climate change and maritime security Fig. 11 Concordance lines of environment, a common collocate of climate change and pollution. Underlying data source: IMO public website J Environ Stud Sci (2019) 9:1–12 11 Vulnerability of national economies to the impacts of climate change issues are likely to be associated to threats to maritime ship- on fisheries. Fish Fish 10:173–196 ping, hence the problem-solving/technical approach of the Arora-Jonsson S (2011) Virtue and vulnerability: discourses on women, IMO consisting in setting up rules, regulations, guidelines gender and climate change. Global environ. Change 21(2):744–751 and agenda as well as promoting multilateral responses to Barnett J (2003) Security and climate change. Glob Environ Chang 13:7– transnational threats. This also seems to fit with the Barnett J, Adger WN (2007) Climate change, human security and violent Btechnocratic and industry-oriented^ nature of the IMO secre- conflict. Polit Geogr 26:639–655 tariat discussed by Campe (2009: 144). 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Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences – Springer Journals

Published: Aug 2, 2018

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