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Climate change is challenging established ideas about borders, territorial security, and regional governance in South Asia. Rising temperatures, floods, droughts, sea-level rise, water stress, and ecological degradation are already affecting livelihoods, mobility, health, and access to essential resources. Because rivers, ecosystems, and patterns of human movement rarely follow political boundaries, these effects often extend beyond the territory of any single state. This raises questions not only about state security, but also about the everyday security of communities living in vulnerable, interconnected border regions.
This panel’s objective is to enquire how climate change is reshaping the relationship between borders, mobility, and regional security, and whether thinking in terms of human security-rather than territorial security alone -can open new ways of understanding cooperation in South Asia. How are states responding to climate-induced migration and displacement? How are border communities experiencing changing access to land, water, food, and livelihoods? What happens to sovereignty and territorial governance when environmental pressures cross political boundaries? And can shared vulnerabilities create openings for cooperation despite ongoing geopolitical tensions?
The panel welcomes theoretical, comparative, and empirical papers on climate and human security, environmental migration, border governance, transboundary resource-sharing, disaster management, climate displacement, climate justice, regional institutions, and climate diplomacy. Contributions engaging with inequality, livelihood loss, community experience, and local or transnational governance responses are particularly encouraged.
Drawing on international relations, comparative politics, environmental politics, human security studies, migration studies, and climate governance research, Peace Studies the panel asks a central question: when do share environmental pressures deepen territorial control and regional division, and when can they instead create space for cooperation, shared governance, and a more people-centred approach to regional security?