The Climatization of Global Politics Edited by Stefan Aykut Lucile Maertens The Climatization of Global Politics Stefan Aykut Lucile Maertens (cid:129) Editors The Climatization of Global Politics International Politics Previously published in , Special Issue “ ” The Climatization of Global Politics, Volume 58, Issue 4, August 2021 Editors StefanAykut LucileMaertens Humanities Centre forAdvanced Studies Social andPolitical Sciences UniversitätHamburg University of Lousanne Hamburg,Germany Lousanne,Switzerland ISBN978-3-031-17894-8 ISBN978-3-031-17895-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17895-5 ©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s),underexclusivelicensetoSpringerNature SwitzerlandAG2023 Chapters“Theclimatizationofglobalpolitics:introductiontothespecialissue”,“‘Incantatory’gover- nance:globalclimatepolitics’performativeturnanditswidersignificanceforglobalpolitics”,“‘Clima- tizing’militarystrategy?AcasestudyoftheIndianarmedforces”and“ClimatizingtheUNSecurity Council”arelicensedunderthetermsoftheCreativeCommonsAttribution4.0InternationalLicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Forfurtherdetailsseelicenseinformationinthechapters. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained hereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregard tojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. ThisPalgraveMacmillanimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerland AG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Contents The climatization of global politics: introduction to the special issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Stefan C. Aykut and Lucile Maertens ‘Incantatory’ governance: global climate politics’ performative turn and its wider significance for global politics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Stefan C. Aykut, Edouard Morena, and Jean Foyer The climate brokers: philanthropy and the shaping of a ‘US-compatible’ international climate regime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Edouard Morena Reversing climatisation: transnational grassroots networks and territorial security discourse in a fragmented global climate governance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Emilie Dupuits Alternative globalities? Climatization processes and the climate movement beyond COPs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Joost de Moor Preparing the French military to a warming world: climatization through riskification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Adrien Estève ‘Climatizing’ military strategy? A case study of the Indian armed forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Dhanasree Jayaram Climatizing the UN Security Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Lucile Maertens v International Politics (2021) 58:501–518 https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-021-00325-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The climatization of global politics: introduction to the special issue Stefan C. Aykut1  · Lucile Maertens2 Accepted: 17 May 2021 / Published online: 26 July 2021 © The Author(s) 2021 Abstract Climate change now constitutes a major issue in world politics, intersecting with and shaping many other political domains, and wider patterns of social and eco- nomic life. Global climate governance is also no longer restricted to multilateral negotiations under the UN Climate Convention: it increasingly extends beyond the international climate regime to climatize other areas of global politics. This concept of climatization points to a powerful but uneven process of extension, translation, and social coordination, as climate change becomes the frame of reference through which other policy issues and forms of global activism are mediated and hier- archized. This special issue brings together contributions on both theoretical aspects and empirical cases of the climatization process. The introduction sets out a concep- tual framework to systematize these observations and guide further research. First, we identify the preconditions for, and driving forces behind, climatization. We then sketch the contours of an emergent ‘climate logic’ that reshapes affected domains, and examine the wider implications of climatization for global politics. Beyond the climate case, we hope this will provide new ways to observe and understand con- temporary transformations of global society and global governance. Keywords Global climate governance · Paris agreement · Climatization · Securitization * Stefan C. Aykut [email protected] 1 Fellow at the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of Sustainability” Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany 2 Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Institute of Political Studies (IEP), University of Lausanne, Quartier UNIL-Mouline, Bâtiment Géopolis, Office 4550, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 1 Reprinted from the journal S. C. Aykut, L. Maertens Introduction Climate change now constitutes a major issue in world politics, intersecting with and shaping many other political domains, and profoundly affecting wider patterns of social and economic life (Dalby 2016; Vogler 2016). Consequently, global cli- mate governance has become the focal point for a wide array of debates and con- flicts around issues from development and global equity to energy policy, urban planning, security and migration. The annual conferences of the parties (COPs) held under the auspices of the United Nations climate convention (UNFCCC) are thus not only key moments in global climate politics, but also events of wider geopoliti- cal significance. They attract ever more public attention and an increasingly diverse set of actors, while creating political momentum for climate-related issues beyond the climate arena (Kolleck et al. 2017). Climate governance actors and mechanisms thereby extend their sphere of influence by ‘climatizing’ other domains of global politics (Aykut et al. 2017). The concept of climatization points to a powerful yet uneven social process in which climate change is increasingly becoming the frame of reference for the media- tion and hierarchization of other global issues. This does not only, or even primar- ily, result from legal dispositions in climate treaties or formalized linkages between international organizations (van Asselt et al. 2005). Instead, it is often brought about by the work of a myriad of actors and organizations engaging in climate-related activism, building transnational networks, or refracting their issues and objects through a climate lens. These actors may enter the climate arena to lobby for the inclusion of their concerns in climate talks, or to gain access to the symbolic and economic capital associated with the climate regime. They may be driven to include climate concerns in their traditional mandate by political and normative convictions, or on pragmatic or strategic grounds. To encompass this wide array of situations and motives, we define climatization broadly as the process through which an issue, actor or institution is framed as related to anthropogenic climate change and rel- evant to climate politics. More specifically, this frequently leads to the extension of the jurisdiction of climate governance institutions, the inclusion of the climatized issues, actors or institutions in climate policy networks, and their treatment accord- ing to the dominant logics of the international climate regime.1 This special issue examines the process through which climate change is trans- forming global governance, as both an increasingly central issue on the international stage and an increasingly structured policy domain with its specific modes of gov- erning, networks of actors, discourses, and knowledge practices. Collectively, the contributions aim to assess how and why climate change is becoming a dominant frame in international politics. In doing so, they also contribute to understanding the dynamics and drivers of climatization. Speaking to climate governance scholars and researchers in other areas of global politics, it addresses what, in our view, are two major blind spots in the literature. First, existing work on global climate governance 1 This can be conceptualized as a sectorial expansion or ‘globalization’ of the climate problem (Foyer et al. 2017: 5). Reprinted from the journal 2 The climatization of global politics: introduction to the… has argued that a central objective of this governance since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 has been to ‘facilitate’ (Hale 2016) global climate action and ‘orchestrate’ (Abbott 2018) a wider ‘polycentric’ landscape of transnational govern- ance initiatives (Jordan et al. 2018). However, this literature ultimately has little to say on exactly how, where, and why such functionalist desiderata of social coor- dination might actually manifest in practice.2 What social logics and mechanisms are involved? We believe that a focus on climatization as a social process can pro- vide important insights here, by offering a perspective on decentralized coordina- tion around the climate problem that complements functionalist accounts. Second, an important body of work has examined the political agenda-setting processes through which climate change became a politically relevant topic, and the framing contests in its construction as a (global) public problem (Hajer 1995; Trumbo 1996; Pettenger 2007). Scholars have assessed the role of wider political dynamics in the (de)politicization of climate change, and how broader discursive frames have shaped global climate governance (Bäckstrand and Lövbrand 2016). Building on this lit- erature, the articles gathered in this special issue further explore these framing pro- cesses and their implications beyond climate politics as such. In other words, while previous work has mostly considered what politics is doing to climate change, this special issue examines what climate change is doing to (global) politics. To do this, we believe that a wider focus is needed in terms of actors, arenas, and climate-related practices, as well as a more fine-grained understanding of the discur- sive and symbolic dimensions of global (climate) politics. We approach climate gov- ernance as a multi-actor, trans-scalar and nonlinear process of social coordination— enacted through diplomatic practices and performances (Schüssler et al. 2014), in networked relations between state and non-state actors (Bernstein et al. 2010; Betsill and Bulkeley 2004), and through global discourses with normalizing effects on the everyday (Bäckstrand and Lövbrand 2006; Paterson and Stripple 2010). This per- spective foregrounds processes, practices, and discourses (rather than just regimes, international organizations, and legal rules). It examines the diversity of actors and scales involved (rather than just states and international negotiations). And it treats the boundaries of climate governance not as fixed, but as constantly negotiated and enacted by the actors involved. Combining perspectives rooted in international rela- tions, international political sociology, political geography, political ethnography, and science and technology studies, the special issue seeks to contribute to building a stronger theoretical framework to study the extension of the climate realm and the resulting implications for global politics. The articles in this issue make three main contributions to that project. First, they help to further characterize and specify the process of climatization. Focusing on a wide variety of actors, issue areas, and governance scales, they display the diversity of motivations and strategies that drive the climatization process, but also bring out 2 Van Asselt and Zelli (2018: 36), for instance, note that ‘whether and for how long the UNFCCC—the COP or the secretariat—has been an orchestrator is an open question’, and go on to argue that while ‘the international regime has exerted at least some influence’ on transnational climate governance, it remains unclear ‘how much’ and ‘through precisely what causal mechanisms’ this may have happened. 3 Reprinted from the journal S. C. Aykut, L. Maertens shared patterns and mechanisms. One set of papers investigates the role and modes of coordination of non-state actors, with a focus on the climate justice movement (de Moor 2020), transnational indigenous grassroots movements (Dupuits 2020), and philanthropic foundations (Morena 2020). These studies show how civil soci- ety actors enter the climate arena by establishing transnational networks, how they reformulate their political aims and interests by relating them to climate concerns, and how they attempt, with variable success, to shape climate governance debates. Looking at these actors and their mobilizations and framings also sheds further light on the origins of some of the main characteristics of the Paris climate regime. These characteristics are further spelled out in Aykut et al. (2020) analysis of post-Paris climate politics. The authors show that symbolic elements and communicative tech- niques are central features of the new governance approach. Estève (2020) Jayaram (2020) supplement this panoramic overview of actors and policy arenas by focusing, respectively, on the French and Indian armed forces. They identify the drivers and mechanisms pushing for the climatization of the military in both countries, while also pointing to the very selective ways in which military actors frame and address climate change. Finally, Maertens (2021) examines the confrontation of another important international organization, the UN Security Council, with the power of attraction of the climate topic, and characterizes the overlapping dynamics through which the Security Council is progressively being climatized. Second, the articles reveal the ambiguities, frictions and resistances that accom- pany both the diffusion of climate change into other global arenas and the incorpo- ration of new issues into climate governance. Dupuits (2020) shows that climatiza- tion can be reversed when the outcomes of climatizing strategies do not meet the expectations of their initiators. In this case, a transnational grassroots network—the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests—pulled out of climate negotiations when it became clear that they would not be able to advance their agenda on territo- rial security within the UNFCCC. De Moor (2020) highlights resistances to clima- tization, which occur when a climate framing tends to homogenize very different grievances, complicating activists’ efforts to define an alternative ‘globality’. Simi- larly, Maertens (2021) shows that the UN Security Council cannot escape climate discussions despite fierce resistance by some member states. Frictions also appear in Estève’s (2020) account of framing contests over the links between climate change and insecurity, which involve strategies of climatization, securitization, and riski- fication. Jayaram (2020) shows that—partly as a result of such differences in strat- egies—climatization can come in different forms and degrees, often appearing as purely symbolic or strategic, and less often as precautionary or even transforma- tive. This kind of focus on symbolic action and communicative strategies can also be found at the very heart of global climate governance, with its ‘performative’ approach to global climate action (Aykut et al. 2020). Taken together, the contribu- tions provide new conceptual resources to capture the current remodelling of world politics by climate change, drawing out the implications of climatization as a domi- nant framing and highlighting forms of resistance to it. Third, the papers link climatization processes to broader global trends and issues. On the one hand, they draw attention to the multiple ways in which differ- ent domains of global politics connect, interact, and influence each other. The three Reprinted from the journal 4 The climatization of global politics: introduction to the… studies on the intersection between the fields of security and climate change, for example, demonstrate the need to go beyond an exclusive focus on the ‘securitiza- tion’ of climate change (McDonald 2013), using climatization as an alternative or complementary way of theorizing these interactions (Estève 2020, Jayaram 2020, Maertens 2021). On the other hand, the climatization lens also provides new ways to reflect on shifts in global power relations with the rise of soft (Abbott and Snidal 2000), private (Hall and Biersteker 2002), and hybrid (Andonova 2010; Graz 2006) forms of global governance. Morena (2020) shows that US philanthropic founda- tions played a key role in shaping the bottom-up, soft law approach of the Paris climate regime. Aykut et al. (2020) examine how the focus on private action and the importation of management tools into global governance changes how interna- tional agreements are implemented. Non-state actors are also central in de Moor’s (2020) analysis of attempts by the climate justice movement to establish a global space of mobilization and conflict. More broadly, the articles seek to reflect on the central position of climate change in global politics without simply reproducing it. Instead, they shed new light on issues of power and domination resulting from une- qual access to global arenas and governance scales. In doing so they contribute to a deeper understanding of current transformations not only of climate governance, but also of global politics more broadly. In the light of the insights provided by the studies in this issue, we develop six theses: (1) Climatization is a process, not an end state; (2) Climatization is afforded by problem characteristics and rooted in past governance failures; (3) Climatization operates not only through strategic moves, but through a wide variety of practices; (4) Climatization is driven by motives of problem control, adaptation to change, and institutional expansion; (5) Domains affected by climatization reveal a climate logic in the making; (6) Climatization reveals, reproduces, and rearticulates power rela- tions. In the conclusion, we advocate for further research on climatization and its interaction with other contemporary transformations of global governance. (1) Climatization is a process, not an end state Social science scholars have coined various terms which use the suffix ‘-ization’ to draw attention to broad historical dynamics in which one social sphere becomes a dominant force of transformation in other spheres: ‘judicialization’ points to the increasing ‘reliance on courts and judicial means for addressing core moral pre- dicaments, public policy questions, and political controversies’ (Hirschl 2008: 253); ‘financialization’ to the ‘increasing role of financial motives, financial mar- kets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies’ (Epstein 2005: 3); and ‘medicalization’ to the numerous ‘processes through which more and more social issues become framed as medical problems and are responded to through medical frameworks’ (Elbe 2010: 15). Conceiving climatization in such processual terms presents two decisive advan- tages over other notions, such as ‘climate mainstreaming’ or ‘greenwashing’. First, the analytical focus is immediately placed on ongoing changes. The articles in this special issue take an interest in the perpetual renegotiations of the boundaries of the climate realm. Instead of assuming a fixed delimitation of climate politics, they empirically assess its expansion (and sometimes its shrinkage) in specific contexts. This echoes debates among securitization scholars, where the Copenhagen School’s 5 Reprinted from the journal