“Already at 1.1-degrees of warming, we are living in an era of unmanageable loss and damage. We on the frontlines are paying the price for decades of wholly insufficient action by those most responsible for the dangerous state of our climate.” (AOSIS’ opening statement at COP27) At the outset of the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) made clear what they wanted to get out of this gathering under the hot November sun of Sharm el-Sheikh. They would not leave Egypt without an acceptable agreement that would reflect their decades long struggle for financial support on loss and damage. And, against all odds, …

As the host of the postponed COP26 climate summit, the UK has set out the ambitious goal to convince all countries to commit to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible within their mandatory climate targets. Reducing overall emissions remains the paramount task of global climate governance. However, an overlooked but defining question concerns carbon accounting—the methodology of how national CO2 emissions are assessed. The conventional territory-related production approach, which has traditionally been used in climate governance, stands in contrast to an often ignored consumption-based approach, which more closely captures emissions embodied in the domestic end-use of energy and goods. This article lays out why the seemingly dull and technical matter of carbon accounting has the potential to become the future stepping-stone for a global consensus on …

Much has been said about the global environmental, economic and leadership consequences of United States President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement but there is also a national security dimension. Trump’s decision ignores an important development in global security centred on climate change. The US had been in a prime position to link climate to international security which, rightly or wrongly, could be leveraged for foreign policy in pursuit of climate security. The US has been a leader in climate security, an approach rivalling climate justice reasoning in climate politics. For much of the history of international climate politics, there has been a dominant discourse of climate justice. Early environmental conferences focused on planetary justice and …