Description
The paper explores international perspectives and insights on a) the impacts of the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the broader increase in international conflict since 2022, on global climate politics; and b) the implications of this changed landscape of international conflict for global climate politics going forward. The paper draws on around 40 interviews conducted during late 2025 and early 2026 with mid- and high-level government, multilateral and civil society actors from across the globe, all of whom have been heavily involved in international climate fora, as well as on evidence obtained from recent UNFCCC and related meetings attended by the author. The paper focuses on reporting and mapping the diversity of official and activist, and Northern and Southern, perspectives, insights and experiences, and by interrogating the reasons for this diversity and accompanying uncertainties and silences. It explores these issues around three themes: Ukraine; Gaza; and the future. This paper is the first output of a wider project on the linkages between climate action, war and the transformation of international order.
