Rules of Engagement: Critical Dialogues on Climate Security, Water, and Peace

Kelsey Leonard, University of Waterloo (Canada)
Ayesha Siddiqi, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
Gabrielle Daoust, University of Northern British Columbia (Canada)

Mainstream climate security research has long been dominated by positivist frameworks that measure and securitize climate risks through militarized and technocratic logics. Yet such approaches often obscure the relational, feminist, and postcolonial dimensions of climate insecurity, especially where access to water and energy intersects with struggles for peace. This paper reflects on the dilemmas of engaging with power in the context of the water–energy–peace nexus, particularly in conflict-affected regions where access to water and energy is central to survival, livelihoods, and repair. Drawing on feminist, postcolonial, and ecological jurisprudence lenses, we explore how critical scholarship might navigate the “rules of engagement” with militarized institutions without reproducing their logics. Instead, we argue for approaches that center subjects—human and non-human alike—as referents of climate security, while amplifying everyday practices of peacebuilding and relational care. This orientation reframes water and energy not merely as technical inputs for security but as foundations for justice, demilitarized resilience, and planetary healing. By tracing the conditions that have made dialogue with power possible, this paper proposes a critical framework for engaging with security actors in ways that resist securitization while advancing more feminist, postcolonial and ecologically just and sustainable pathways to peace.