Securitization of Health as a Human Security in the Context of Climate Change in India

Anthropogenic climate change emerged as a multiplying factor that threatens human health by impacting water, food, and air and making living places vulnerable due to violent weather conditions in India. People in India are susceptible to climate change. Consequently, threats to human security have created a psychological fear in their mind. Healthy human resources are critically important for maintaining India's economic growth and ensuring state security. Against this backdrop, this chapter aims to analyse the health impacts of climate change in India through the lens of human security. Further, this chapter addresses how effectively India has incorporated climate change threats to human health into its national security strategies and long-term planning. It allows us to analyse the level of securitization and important functional actors in India that raise the impacts of climate change on human health as a threat to human security. The chapter uses an exploratory qualitative research design to answer the framed objective. The chapter will analyse qualitative data collected from various databases, such as Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The chapter argues that health threats of climate change are significant to India's social, economic, and political fabric of national security. Securitization of health with respect to climate change as a human security issue provides a suitable approach to prioritize the action to tackle this challenge on a priority basis in India.