100

Contemporary ways of thinking about the climatization of public action claim that putting climate change on the agenda causes two sorts of organizational transformations. On one hand, climatization can be the continuation of traditional greening policies. It would then only emphasize or mitigate existing ecological practices, such as the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions or energy transition. On the other hand, it can trigger an important transformation of practices because of the translation of the organizations’ tasks in climate terms. This would particularly be the case of security institutions, which would tend to climatize issues such as migrations for example. This article offers to show that these two approaches are complementary to assessing the level of institutional change caused by putting climate change on the agenda, based on a study of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. Indeed, climatization here is found to be an incremental and differentiated process of constructing climate issues within the defense sector. It is incremental since climatization consists in a series of internal adjustments aimed at incorporating these issues within existing policies. It is also differentiated because several distinct constructions of climate issues can coexist in the same organization, which in turn can lead to overlaps or competition.