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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Climate Change: A Threat to National, Regime, and Human Security

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Human Security

Abstract

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December 2009, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) emphasized the different responsibilities of First and Third World countries in tackling climate change. Once again, ASEAN refused to commit to greenhouse gas emission targets. The Association and its members acknowledge that climate change poses complex and comprehensive threats to the state, the economy, and individuals. Yet it views climate change through the lens of a depoliticized and “ASEANized” notion of human security and a narrow interpretation of energy security. Focusing more on state- and regime-security than individual security, ASEAN’s fragmented version of human security emphasizes socioeconomic and human development rather than democracy and human rights. This chapter demonstrates that due to the complex nature of climate change and its novel character, as well as due to ASEAN’s specific view of climate change, regional cooperation remains limited or is conducted by a subgroup of members, e.g., with regard to haze problems. Yet there remains hope for a more robust approach – due to pressures from the international community and the Southeast Asian civil society as well as from Indonesia which has assumed a double leadership role as advocate for human security and adaptation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The authors concur with the Freedom in the World Index 2010 which labels Indonesia as the only “free” democracy in Southeast Asia. The Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand are regarded as partly free, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam as not free (cf. Freedom House 2010; Köllner 2008).

  2. 2.

    Already in the human rights debate in the early 1990s, many East Asian governments have highlighted the economic and social rather than the political rights. At the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 2003, Indonesia, Singapore, and China argued that political rights are a luxury that can only be afforded once a country has reached a certain stage of development. Beijing stressed the right to development which is in the state-oriented East Asian region a right of the governments, not the individuals (cf. Tatsuo 1999 and Donnelly 1999).

  3. 3.

    For more information see http://haze.asean.org.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Alfred Gerstl

  2. University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Belinda Helmke

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  1. Alfred Gerstl
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Correspondence to Alfred Gerstl .

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  1. , School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, 11800, Malaysia

    Benny Teh Cheng Guan

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Gerstl, A., Helmke, B. (2012). The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Climate Change: A Threat to National, Regime, and Human Security. In: Teh Cheng Guan, B. (eds) Human Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1799-2_7

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