ABSTRACT

This concluding chapter to this study of state powers on global climate change (GCC) summarizes many of the basic findings made in the preceding chapters. To address GCC, collective action will be required of the major state powers along with states throughout the developed and the less developed world. The negotiations within the UN framework over the last several years have provided an important tool for the search for a common set of strategies on GCC. There is an unequal sharing of political power between developed and developing countries, that provided initial barriers to a cohesive international strategy, which may be mitigated by the less hierarchical, self-determined obligations in the Paris Agreement. However, a focus on state security concerns could deprive needed resources, as well as undercut the strategies based in needs for human security, those of mitigation, adaptation, and capacity building, that will be needed to address GCC. In this GCC is reframing various state and international institutions’ understandings of human security. This chapter argues that a reframing of the understandings of human security in the context of GCC could draw lessons from the concept of sustainable development.