Climate (In)security: How Latin American Political Actors Capitalize Upon Climate Threats to Secure Foreign Aid

This thesis explores the relationship between climate securitization and foreign aid recipiency in Latin America in order to better understand how political actors may be capitalizing on the threat that climate change poses. It argues that Latin American political actors use existential rhetoric to present climate change as a national security threat not only to their country but to others as well. The incentive to create this rhetorical framing is to increase their foreign aid recipiency by making the argument that they need such aid to address climate threats which will impact the donor country as well (in the form of increased immigration to that country, decreased food exports, etc.). As such, this study hypothesized that the more a country is reliant on foreign aid, the more it is incentivized to talk about climate change as a global existential threat to international audiences. To examine this hypothesis, this study assessed 20 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to determine a presence or absence of climate securitization rhetoric and performed multiple linear regression analyses to test the hypothesis that climate securitization will be correlated with foreign aid recipiency. Despite the rich literature that supports this link, this study finds no statistically significant relationship between climate securitization and foreign aid recipiency among Latin American countries as it appears in their official UN reports, thus fracturing the theoretical assumption that the two variables are related. It suggests a number of theoretical and methodological explanations for this finding, as well as implications for policymakers. These include the belief among Latin American political actors that the countries from which they receive aid (mainly the US) do not regard climate risks as a high priority in their national security agenda (likely due to the "Trump effect'), and as such are not highlighted by the recipient states. The study also suggests additional methods and primary sources to examine these explanations in future studies. In contrast to its main hypothesis, the study does find revealing relationships between climate securitization and GDP per capita, as well as between climate securitization and government type among the Latin American countries examined. This relationship can be explained by the following reasons: 1.) countries that are wealthier can afford to think about long term environmental threats in a more immediate way, a process which is expressed through security-heavy rhetoric; 2.) wealthier countries securitize climate issues to correct for past and present environmental damage which they see themselves as partly holding responsibility for; 3.) wealthier countries that are not reliant on primary good extraction and exportation have a greater incentive to be more environmentally-oriented towards such practices given the desires of their respective citizenries. Finally, the relationship between climate securitization and government type can be explained by the stronger voice that citizens and indigenous communities have in a democratic regime when they are directly affected by such environmental degradations and threats.