“Sinking islands” and the UNSC: Five modalities of mobilising science

Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, the Maldives and other small island developing states in the Pacific are often incorrectly called “sinking islands.” With their highest points just a few meters above sea level, they face adverse impacts from climate change and especially sea level rise, which can cause them to disappear entirely or make their territory uninhabitable. After rather frustrating negotiations on other fora, the representatives of those states asked the UN Security Council to deal with their perilous situation in 2007. On the one hand, some countries used scientific argumentation to justify the introduction of this new security agenda. On the other hand, prominent UNSC members such as China and Russia, supported mainly by rapidly developing large countries, rejected it, arguing that the Security Council did not have the expertise to solve environmental problems. Since then the islands have echoed their plight to the UNSC in 2011 and 2015. This paper determines what roles individual countries ascribe to “experts” and “science” during UNSC negotiations. It examines how the authority of “experts” was exploited, which allowed certain countries to strike the issue of those islands from the UNSC agenda by calling for a more “scientific approach,” while others used “science” to widen the concept of security. The analysis of empirical data confirms the theory of Berling's three modalities when referring to science. Those modalities can be further extended by Foucault's conception of “will to truth” as a method of exclusion, and Chandler's theory of “empire in denial” as a way of evading responsibility, while maintaining power.