‘Carbon, confusion and conflict: global governance implications of theNet-Zero Transition’
in Global Governance and Intl Cooperation: Managing Global Catastrophic Risks in the 21st Century
Eds Richard Falk and Augusto Lopez-Claros (Routledge, forthcoming 2023)
Abstract
This chapter reviews the global governance implications of the Net-ZeroTransition. Over a relatively short period (2015-2021), decades of resistance and denial toclimate change have given way to a simultaneous race and scramble: a race for new technologies and sources of renewable energy and a scramble for the key resources of the future. These will determine who leads, prospers, and suffers in the next era. Net zero pledges andlow carbon strategies are still too unspecific to give a clear sense of their consequences today. But the chapterexamines two major ways the transition will affect international relations and global governance. First, the study identifies a group of states that will experience unprecedented vulnerability and threats to their social stability. Second, as competition grows for new low-carbon materials, technologies, and markets, the transition itself will create new inter-state tensions and conflict. These two patterns will togetherstress test existing multilateral /regional institutions and processes well beyond the climate governance architecture; will prompt reform of the international financial institutions; will require rationalization of the new institutions that have proliferated in recent years; and will likely see additional institutions and state groupings emerge.