Climate Politics: A Theory of Change
Our global commitment to climate action has been guided towards achieving change. In environmental discourse, the focus on change as a concept has been so prominent that it is cemented as a principle of the Sustainable Development Goals. In a spirit of togetherness, developed and developing countries alike, through nationally determined contributions, agreed to set a long-term temperature goal and recognize the possibility of voluntary cooperation, among other ambitions. After collaboratively knitting a climate philosophy, the international system then uses its multilateral organizations to facilitate change through global climate policies. We are certainly familiar with the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”), established in 1992; however, important iterations of climate conferences preceded the UNFCCC, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. These superstructures are testaments to our long-lasting desire to enact change. Through our global commitment to climate action, we have accumulated decades-worth of literature and evidence, merged different fields and disciplines, and analyzed socio-political and economic trends—all to inform high-level decision-making on climate action.
However, the process of enacting change is seldom a straightforward process. Firstly, change can be multifaceted. For example, decision-makers may first acknowledge the reason for change, brainstorm the most effective strategies to foster change, select the vehicles of change, identify the variables potentially influencing the desired outcome, and ultimately act on the change. Secondly, change can be multileveled. Change may occur simultaneously on various levels of governance, often at a different pace. For instance, the effectiveness of a global policy may be contingent on whether it is carried out synchronously in both regional and global climate agendas. Thirdly, change is a cyclical process, whereby assessment periods are required to measure the success of policy changes, and potentially adopt additional strategies to ensure we arrive at the desired outcome.
With the 28th edition of the Conference of Parties (“COP 28”) only a handful of days away, we currently find ourselves at the stage of reassessing global climate policies. Canada and the United States will look to address the effect of climate variability on extreme weather, following the waves of wildfires throughout North America. Europe’s attention is towards devising a long-term strategy for energy security and decarbonization. The Middle East’s focus is on overcoming their hurdles of the energy transition, despite their extensive fossil fuel reserves. With a particularly saturated electoral agenda in 2023, Latin America and the Caribbean (“LAC”) must ascertain how to maintain their climate commitments in the midst of potential political change. If political change occurs, LAC must also deal with change being multileveled. Specifically, LAC must first understand whether its potential political changes affect regional climate policy, to only then determine if a synchronicity can be reached with global climate agendas.
Climate Politics in LAC and the 2023 Electoral Agenda
Historically, LAC’s toughest predicament has been to reconcile its environmental policies with its economic development agenda. Integrating environmental policies into domestic policy was initially met with apprehension mostly by developing countries, including those in LAC. Eventually, LAC adopted a hybrid approach, whereby environmental policies were enacted without hindering economic development, and contemporary LAC policymakers adopt a sustainable lens when formulating economic development agendas. For example, several LAC societies have molded into polycentric regimes, whereby relevant ministries across various levels of governance identify workstreams across sectors and work on common objectives. The Santiago Action Plan, an international practice group represented by several LAC countries and composed of finance ministers tasked to engage in climate action, is the embodiment of such efforts culminating into concrete action plans.
Today, LAC’s climate vulnerability is acknowledged by several indices, including the Caribbean Development Bank’s Vulnerability Index. For example, 10 countries from the region were identified as the top 25 most affected in the world, with climate change effects being most perceptible in agriculture and water, among other sectors. In Mexico, extreme weather events are the main cause of agriculture’s vulnerability. The average land value across the country fluctuated between -42 percent and -54 percent in the last decade, when accounting for rainfall and irrigation. The region-wide decline in water availability in the last decade due to the retreat of glaciers and icefields is also directly related to climate change.
Source: IDB
LAC’s 2023 electoral calendar was hectic, being part of an “electoral super-cycle” that started in 2021; all the region's countries, except Bolivia, will have voted to renew or ratify their presidents. Without diving into the nooks and crannies of each LAC political election in 2023, we will touch on two elections with important implications on the region’s climate policy and political climate.
In Mexico, the two state elections that took place in February 2023 will serve as a litmus test for the 2024 presidential elections, with current President López Obrador’s contradictory climate change policy adding to Mexico’s unknown environmental outlook. In Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo’s has been widely regarded as a transformational step toward inclusive democracy, following the country’s democratic and social deterioration during the last three presidents’ tenures.
Although it is not among the country’s to have undergone an election in 2023, Brazil’s most recent political history is an interesting case to monitor when assessing its political climate. The beginning of President Lula’s third administration was marked by the attack on the constitutional institutions by extremist rightwing factions reportedly affiliated to former President Jair Bolsonaro. In fact, despite Lula’s return to power, Brazil has been battling hyperpolarization, mirrored by a cluster of authoritarian proposals and risks of social unrest in the region.
Despite clear trends across LAC, with pending elections in the region it is still to be determined if we are witnessing the triumph of progressive governments or if the era of rightist governments revival is still upon us. It would be incautious to conjecture the importance of climate politics through the ideology of newly elected regimes; however, the leftist pendulum swing that is currently unfolding in the region may be just another chapter in LAC’s political life. Four years ago, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile, and Colombia were led by right-centrist governments, and subsequently became the product of a voter backlash that ultimately ousted the left-centrist governments that prevailed in the 2000s until the 2010s. That said, an unfavorable political climate inevitably disrupts a regime’s ability to implement rule and govern, which in turn, affects its ability to implement policies.
NDCs as the Bridge Between National and Global Climate Policies
The introduction of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) at the Paris Agreement was undoubtedly the conference’s crowning moment. NDCs embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions; the key being that each country prepares, communicates, and maintains the intended NDCs for a given period. NDCs enabled countries to author, and therefore, control the ways in which they commit to climate action. The infrastructure through which domestic mitigation measures tangibly contribute to global climate policy objectives is, by default, a bridge that reconciles countries’ national climate policies with the global climate agenda.
That said, an intrinsic step of NDCs is coordination between national and global climate policy circles. It is by devising effective implementation of NDCs pledges that we realize how multileveled the process of enacting change can be. As previously echoed, achieving sustainable development in LAC requires a combination of environmental and economic policies, and the needed mainstreaming of climate policy. Finance, planning, and additional relevant ministries must work together to ensure that NDCs become instruments that articulate domestic policy; interlocking climate agendas and leveraging policy coherence across various levels of governance will facilitate the implementation process of global climate policies. For example, the Roofs to Reefs Programme (R2RP) adopted by the government of Barbados is an initiative that integrated climate mitigation and adaptation concerns with social policy by soliciting the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Investment. The goal of the programme is to “improve the resilience of the housing stock and access to water and sanitation while eradicating pit toilets and promoting the use of solar and other green energy options to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.” In so doing, the programme seeks to improve water quality and reduce the volumes and impacts of waste, with the expectation of improving living conditions and terrestrial and marine environments. Through this process, Barbados had to review and assess its architectural and engineering standards, with designated commissions having been assigned to carry out a retrofitting program for vulnerable homes. The Urban Development Commission—one of the social development agencies involved—is executing the project in accordance with international and national standards. This case shows an excerpt of the inner workings of NDCs, specifically the importance of hybrid collaborations and the commitment to the global agenda.
However, it is important to acknowledge that NDC prospects are not encouraging across LAC. For the second iteration of the NDCs in 2021, Brazil was the only country in LAC to not present a more ambitious set of objectives, perhaps a reflection of the country’s political climate mentioned above. Therefore, despite its potential to carry out climate action, NDCs are vehicles of change that can significantly be affected by a country’s climate ambition. Additionally, countries do not have the obligation to achieve NDCs, making it a non-legally binding instrument, with potentially significant implications on countries’ attitude towards climate action.
With COP28 dangerously approaching, it will be insightful to analyze both global and country-specific approaches to change. Equal attention to the effect of political climates on climate politics will also paint a descriptive picture of where we are headed. The strategies used to reconcile the desire for change with the need for change will be under close scrutiny, so to further bulletproof commitments to climate action, and by association, ensure the success of global climate policies.