“Climate security” as a new paradigm of global governance: Mandate expansion or political instrumentalisation?

The purpose of this study was to examine the process of incorporating climate issues into the concept of “security” as a politically and socially determined phenomenon that influences the transformation of the architecture of international relations and contributes to the formation of new forms of stratification. The study employed a combination of comparative, discursive, and legal analysis, which enabled a comprehensive investigation of the institutionalisation of climate security in global politics. It was established that the evolution of the security concept has progressed from the military-political paradigm of the Cold War to a multidimensional approach that integrates economic, environmental, humanitarian, and climate dimensions. In this context, climate security has emerged as an integral category that combines elements of scientifically substantiated threats and political construction. Analysis of the activities of the United Nations demonstrated that it has provided climate security with universal legitimacy through the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, and other normative frameworks. The European Union has interpreted climate security as the core of its own identity and an instrument of global influence. The United States of America has defined climate challenges through the prism of military power and technological competition, employing laws and presidential executive orders. China, in turn, has integrated climate policy into its own strategies of energy security and economic development, relying on an emissions trading system. Overall, comparative analysis demonstrated that climate security functions simultaneously as a universal framework for global coordination and as a mechanism of new stratification of the international order. It was confirmed that the expansion of the concept of security to the climate sphere serves as an instrument for legitimising new hierarchies, dominated by states with access to finance, technologies, and regulatory standards. Such dynamics are reformatting the international order and forming structural inequalities in the global system. This research can serve as a theoretical and analytical foundation for the further development of international policy strategies that take the climate factor into account in the context of security