External power dynamics and international climate governance in a crises-constrained world

This paper explores equity in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations during a time of multiple overlapping global crises. Drawing on a combination of semi-structured interviews and a roundtable with key negotiators and observers engaged in the UNFCCC process during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a collaborative ethnographic study and social media analysis on the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), we find that inequities within the UNFCCC process reflect the broader social and geopolitical inequities at international and intranational levels. Multiple intersecting crises reinforce and compound these inequities for particularly marginalized and vulnerable groups and slow progress in tackling climate change in an equitable manner. Applying a critical climate justice lens, we show that in order for the climate negotiations to be resilient to global crises, the process needs to go beyond a surface-level attempt at achieving justice through representation and move towards a more active shifting of power to poor and climate-vulnerable countries and populations.