External power dynamics and international climate governance in a crises-constrained world

ABSTRACT

This paper explores equity in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations during a time of multiple overlapping global crises. Drawing on a combination of semi-structured interviews and a roundtable with key negotiators and observers engaged in the UNFCCC process during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a collaborative ethnographic study and social media analysis on the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), we find that inequities within the UNFCCC process reflect the broader social and geopolitical inequities at international and intranational levels. Multiple intersecting crises reinforce and compound these inequities for particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups and slow progress in tackling climate change in an equitable manner. Applying a critical climate justice lens, we show that in order for the climate negotiations to be resilient to global crises, the process needs to go beyond a surface-level attempt at achieving justice through representation and move towards a more active shifting of power to poor and climate-vulnerable countries and populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical climate justice
• power dynamics
• climate negotiations
• UNFCCC
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Net zero is achieved when any emissions produced by human activities are counterbalance by removing carbon from the atmosphere. “Net zero” has been critiqued as a form of “greenwashing” – allowing countries and companies setting these targets to continue to pollute while relying on carbon offsets to offset their emissions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Stockholm Environment Institute.

Notes on contributors

Anisha Nazareth

Anisha Nazareth is an Associate Scientist at SEI US. Her work focuses on the interactions between climate crises and global and local structural inequalities.

Dayoon Kim

Dayoon Kim is a Research Associate at SEI Asia. She works on climate migration, gender equality and disaster risk reduction as well as other climate change research focused on gender and social equity.

Zoha Shawoo

Zoha Shawoo is a Scientist at SEI US. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection between climate change, inequality and sustainable development. She also works on climate finance, including loss and damage finance and climate finance coordination in developing countries.