The science of climate security and conflict is replete with controversies.Yet the increasing vulnerability of politically fragile countries to thesecurity consequences of climate change is widely acknowledged. Althoughclimate conflict reflects a continuum of conditional forces that coalescearound the notion of vulnerability, how different portrayals ofvulnerability influence the discursive formation of climate conflictrelations remains an exceptional but under-researched issue. This papercombines a systematic discourse analysis with a vulnerability interpretationdiagnostic tool to explore (i)?how discourses of climate conflict areconstructed and represented, (ii)?how vulnerability is communicated acrossdiscourse lines, and (iii)?the strength of contextual vulnerability againsta deterministic narrative of scarcity-induced conflict, such as thatpertaining to land. Systematically characterising climate conflictdiscourses based on the central issues constructed, assumptions aboutmechanistic relationships, implicit normative judgements and vulnerabilityportrayals, provides a useful way of understanding where discourses differ.While discourses show a wide range of opinions "for" and "against"climate conflict relations, engagement with vulnerability has been lesspronounced – except for the dominant context centrism discourse concerned about humansecurity (particularly in Africa). In exploring this discourse, we observean increasing sense of contextual vulnerability that is oriented towards aconcern for complexity rather than predictability. The article concludes byillustrating that a turn towards contextual vulnerability thinking will helpadvance a constructivist theory-informed climate conflict scholarship thatrecognises historicity, specificity, and variability as crucial elements ofcontextual totalities of any area affected by climate conflict.
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