Description
One, if not the, challenge for international politics in the next fifty years is climate change and climate-related crises. As BISA celebrates its first fifty years, the discipline’s studies on climate-related topics are healthy and important. More focus is required, however, on the international politics of climate change: that is, on how climate now forms an integral part of geopolitical reconfigurations. As one contribution to this focus, this paper considers the UNFCCC processes and whether its multilateral framework for climate action and ambition can hold together with ever-increasing temperature rise, on the one hand, and increasing nationalism and populism, on the other. The absolute need to link climate mitigation and adaptation targets with climate finance and both with an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels is clear. With the expected withdrawal of the US from major multilateral commitments, including the Paris Agreement, what new configuration of international climate leadership can be entertained that will have traction on these two links? A study of both the outcomes of COP29 and preparations for COP30 should help suggest where this new configuration is going to emerge and how politically effective it may be in the context of the changing world order.
