week 12: environmentalist theories of IR

What is global warming?

Refers to the observed increase in global surface temperatures as a consequence of radiative forcing caused by anthropogenic greenhouse missions.

What other issues is climate change connected to in IR?

Development, trade, security and health

Why are the other areas climate change affect significant in debate?

Discourse about:

1. the levels and types of financing developing countries require in order to pay for mitigation

2. Activities they undertake for the benefit of the international community

3. the adaptation measures they have to put in place to protect their citizens from the effects of climate change

4. the financial compensation they are entitled to for loss and damage inflicted by climate change

How do adaptation measures get enforced?

1. trade measures like ‘border tax adjustments’ (goods produced in countries without controls over emissions)

2. Security concerns about climate refugees fleeing from areas of the world subject to sea level rise

3. Impact of climate change exacerbating tensions over access to water and land viable for agriculture → multiplying the threat of war, bringing climate change to the attention of the military establishment.

What was the first major milestone in the history of climate diplomacy and what did it do?

• The UNFCCC (UN FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE)

• It provided a global framework for global action on the issue. It sought to emulate the apparent success of the ozone regime, which produced the Vienna Convention → nature of the problem and basis for remedial action, and subsequently the Montreal Protocol → phase out of o-zone deleting chemicals.

What was the goal set by the UNFCCC

‘Avoiding dangerous interference in the climate system’ , defined as aiming to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

What was something significant that the UNFCCC did in its convention?

It established the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities’ and recognised that developing countries were not in a position to assume obligation to act. Efforts they could make were more dependent on the receipt of aid and technology transfer from Northern countries that were meant to be ‘additional’ to existing aid budgets.

What else did the UNFCC indirectly do?

It drew attention to the severity of climate change increasing, leading to the CoP, Kyoto Protocol, etc.

What was a key setback in the Kyoto Protocol?

The US left because its competitors were not required to reduce their emissions. Hence, the absence of the US galvanised the EU and coalition of less developed countries to create the G77+China, and with Russian ratification of Kyoto Protocol, it was entered into force.

What is anthropocentrism

Putting the human first

What is the realist perspective on environental politics?

“Given their focus on the anarchic state system and state survival, realists argue that states have no incentives to take multilateral or unilateral action to protect the global environment if this puts them at a relative disadvantage to other states” (Eckersley

2024, 460)

What is the neoliberal perspective on environental politics?

“Neoliberal institutionalists ... have shown that states will cooperate and realise absolute gains under well-designed environmental treaties or ‘regimes’” (Eckersley

2024, 461

What do critical theorists argue about environmental politics?

Approaches informed by Critical Theory have “argued that the international economic division of labour between rich and poor countries (or core, semi-periphery and periphery regions) has produced not only unequal economic exchanges, but also ‘unequal ecological exchanges’” (Eckersley 2024, 462)

Why is environmental security significant within IR?

Environmental degradation is a direct

threat to security

- Environmental degradation is an

indirect threat (a cause of conflict,

displacement, etc.)

- Environmental degradation might

exacerbate existing conflicts or

tensions

- Environmental degradation might be

exacerbated by existing conflicts or

tensions

Why is climate change policy so difficult to achieve?

No world government

Special interests – corporations

Economic competitiveness concerns

Short-term thinking by politicians and older voters

Oil producing states opposed many actions

Collective action problem

Technological limitations?

What is the feminist perspective on environmental politics?

misogyny and climate denial are “mutually constituted, with

gender anxiety slithering alongside climate anxiety, and misogynist violence

sometimes exploding as fossil violence” (Daggett 2018, 28)

What is the planetary perspective on environmental politics?

“The planet has long been that space which bears the

scars of human will: in transforming the world into our world, we damaged and

transformed it to suit our purposes. It now demands a new kind of responsibility,

binding environmental justice and social justice inextricably together” (Burke et al.

2016, 500)

What is the multispecies justice perspective on environmental politics?

“multispecies justice rejects three related ideas

central to human exceptionalism: a) that humans are physically separate or

separable from other species and non-human nature, b) that humans are unique

from all other species because they possess minds (or consciousness) and agency

and c) that humans are therefore more important than other species” (Srinivasan

and Kasturirangang cited in Celermajer et al. 2021, 120, emphasis in original).

What actually is multispecies justice 💀

“Multispecies justice is social justice, it (simply) expands subjectivity from the narrow

(male, white, heteronormative, able-bodied) anthropocentrism of theory, politics, policy

and practice to demand ethical recognition of all-being as respect-worthy” (Winter 2022,

255-256)

What is knowledge within multispecies justice?

Knowledge in ecological systems is never complete; it is always changing, emerging, and fraught with uncertainty (far from equilibrium). The whole is greater than the sum of the parts; we humans are simply a part. We are inside the biosphere, and we are participants, for better and (increasingly) for worse. Ecological thinking takes us away from certainty and into probability. Connectivity entails interdependence and brings us into domains of responsibility, accountability, proximity, ethics, and community. These are domains in which many Indigenous people have been living for millennia. There is much to learn, much to be shared.” (Bird 2017, 495, emphasis added)

What are some ways we can achieve climate justice?

- Working against erasure of differences within/between First

Nations peoples globally

- Working against exclusion and marginalisation of Indigenous ways

of being, knowing, and doing

- Acknowledging and reckoning with effects of displacement and

dispossession on Indigenous individuals and communities

“the dichotomy between ‘nature’ and ‘people’ is artificial, itself at the

root of a system that categorizes life into the dominated and the

dominant” (Rodriguez Acha 2019, 246)

What are some examples of indigenous advocacy for climate change at the UN

- United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007)

- Cancun Agreement (1/CP/16) (2010): “enhanced action on adaptation should be undertaken in accordance with the Convention, should follow a country-driven, gender- sensitive, participatory and fully transparent approach, taking into consideration vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems, and should be based on and guided by the best available science and, as appropriate, traditional and indigenous knowledge” (FCCC/CP/2010/7/Add.1, para. 12)

- Paris Agreement (1/CP.21) (2016): “Recognizes the need to strengthen knowledge, technologies, practices and efforts of local communities and indigenous peoples related to addressing and responding to climate change, and establishes a platform for the exchange of experiences and sharing of best practices on mitigation and adaptation in a holistic and integrated manner” (FCCC/CP/2015/10/Add.1, para. 135)

- Bonn Report (2/CP.23) (2017): creation of “local communities and indigenous peoples platform” and “gender action plan”

What does Fischel say about ecocide?

The politics on this pale blue dot, this brilliant blue marble, should make us humble and demand more from us than a construction of human politics from a long-ago century. ... When viewed through a planetary lens, new connections and responsibilities come to the fore. Violence can no longer be contained in studies of inter-state or civil war, but rather must be understood in structural and environmental terms. Ecocide joins genocide as a pressing legal and moral imperative for the international legal system. Justice, and international legal systems that give framework to its realisation, must now reckon with the more than human and deep geological time extending beyond human lifetimes. Biodiversity must be more than the backdrop for human activity, but rather protected for its own intrinsic value” (Fishel 2025, 306-8)