Environment (DP IB Global Politics: HL): Revision Note

Environment in global politics

A set of topic areas is presented for the study of global political challenges to facilitate your explorations. These should not be seen as fully discrete or disconnected topics, but rather as overlapping areas of study that can contribute to understanding and addressing global challenges.

You can conduct an in-depth study of two of the topic areas-for example, security and health-or you may choose to explore the interconnections of multiple topic areas based on a selected case study.

• Environmental challenges are among the most pressing issues in contemporary global politics

• They are inherently transboundary - the actions of one state can directly affect others, regardless of borders

• They operate at every level - global (the atmosphere, oceans, polar regions), regional (transboundary pollution, shared rivers), national (emissions and land-use policy) and local (the direct impacts on communities)

• The relationship between economic development and environmental protection is one of the most contested in global politics - and the political fault lines tend to run between states that industrialised early and those still pursuing development now

Why environment is a global political challenge

• Environmental problems transcend national borders

  • No single state can address climate change, ocean pollution or biodiversity loss alone

• The causes of environmental damage are often concentrated in wealthy, industrialised states

  • However, the effects fall most heavily on poorer, less developed states — creating profound questions of justice

• Economic growth and environmental protection are frequently seen as conflicting priorities

  • Particularly by developing states that argue they should not bear the costs of damage caused historically by developed states

• The tragedy of the commons

  • Resources shared by all (the atmosphere, the oceans) tend to be overused because no single actor bears the full cost of their exploitation

• Environmental challenges interact with — and intensify — every other area of global politics, from security to migration to health (see Climate change as a threat multiplier below)

Key terms and concepts

Types of environmental challenge

1. Global commons issues

• Problems affecting shared resources that belong to no single state

• The atmosphere, the high seas and the polar regions are global commons - no state has sovereignty over them, yet all states contribute to their degradation

• Governing the global commons requires multilateral cooperation, which is difficult to sustain

2. Transboundary pollution and resource conflicts

• Pollution originating in one state that crosses borders and affects others

• Competition over shared natural resources - water, land, fisheries, minerals - is increasingly a source of interstate tension

• Water conflicts in particular are projected to intensify significantly as climate change reduces freshwater availability

3. Environmental degradation in developing states

• Deforestation, soil erosion, desertification and overextraction of resources are all driven by economic pressures

• Developing states often face a tension between the right to pursue economic development (as wealthier states did) and pressure from the international community to adopt greener practices

4. Climate-related displacement

• People forced to move because of rising sea levels, drought, flooding or extreme weather

• Distinct from refugees in international law - there is currently no legal status for climate refugees

• Raises urgent questions about state responsibility, border policy and human rights

A useful analytical lens: common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR)

One of the most productive ways to read an environment case study is through CBDR - particularly any case involving climate negotiations, treaty obligations, or disputes about who should bear the costs of environmental action. It won't be the right lens for every case, but it has analytical traction on most of them.

CBDR is the central principle of international environmental law. It holds that while all states share responsibility for addressing environmental challenges, developed states bear greater obligations because:

• They industrialised first and produced the majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions

• They have greater financial and technological resources to address environmental problems

• Developing states should not have to sacrifice economic growth to solve a problem they did not primarily cause

Origin and influence

• CBDR first appeared in the 1992 Rio Declaration and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

• It has shaped every major climate agreement since, including the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015)

Source of political tension

• Developed states, particularly the USA, have resisted legally binding obligations that do not apply equally to major developing emitters such as China and India

• Developing states argue that historical injustice must be recognised before they accept binding commitments

• The Paris Agreement attempted to balance these tensions through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) - each state sets its own emissions targets rather than accepting externally imposed ones

Loss and damage

• A related debate concerns loss and damage - whether developed states should compensate developing states for environmental harm they can no longer prevent

• This was formally agreed at COP27 (2022) but the detail of how payments will work remains contested

A useful process model: climate change as a threat multiplier

• Climate change rarely causes political conflict on its own

• Instead it often acts as a threat multiplier - intensifying other political challenges, including security, poverty, health and forced displacement

• Where this dynamic is at work, tracing the cascade below shows how an environmental shock works its way through the political system

• It pairs naturally with CBDR - CBDR addresses who is responsible for environmental damage, the threat multiplier addresses how that damage produces political consequences

• Water scarcity is where political consequences begin

  • Unlike most resources, water is non-substitutable and geographically fixed, so failing supplies quickly become zero-sum competition between farmers, cities and neighbouring states

• Food insecurity follows as harvests fail and prices spike

  • The poorest are hit hardest

  • Governments face an unsustainable choice: subsidise food and drain reserves, or let prices rise and face public anger

• Economic pressure sets in as tax revenues fall precisely when demands on the state rise

  • Subsidies, emergency imports, and debt destabilise currencies and crowd out investment, eroding the state's capacity to deliver basic services that sustain its legitimacy

• Social unrest emerges as legitimacy breaks down

  • Latent grievances, such as ethnic tension, regional inequality and elite distrust, organise around hunger and precarity

  • Crucially, context determines outcome: the same drought hits a resilient democracy very differently than a fragile state with a history of exclusion

• Displacement accelerates the cascade

  • People move first to cities, then across borders, responding not to rainfall figures alone but to the whole chain of failed harvests, lost livelihoods, and state failure

  • The distinction between climate migrant, economic migrant and refugee becomes almost impossible to determine

• Border tension closes the loop geopolitically

  • Receiving states face service pressures

  • Shared rivers and aquifers become sites of inter-state competition

  • Borders harden

  • In the worst cases, conflict follows between states whose relationship was already strained

• Instability undermines the very institutions needed to manage future drought

  • Irrigation falls into disrepair, agencies lose funding, corruption in water allocation grows

  • The society becomes more vulnerable to the next shock, not less

  • This is what distinguishes a threat multiplier from a simple cause-and-effect chain

Current and recent environmental challenges

• Environmental challenges in the contemporary world take many forms and affect states at every level of development

• The cleanest analytical cut for the IBDP framing is to separate damage to natural systems from the direct impacts those changes have on people

Pressures on natural systems

• Climate change - rising global temperatures, extreme weather events and sea level rise caused by greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. ongoing debates about whether states are meeting their Paris Agreement commitments)

• Deforestation - the large-scale clearing of forests, particularly in tropical regions, releasing carbon and destroying biodiversity (e.g. rapid deforestation in the Amazon region of Brazil)

• Resource depletion - the overexploitation of fisheries, minerals and agricultural land (e.g. overfishing in the South China Sea affecting food security across the region)

Direct impacts on people

• Water scarcity - competition over freshwater resources, intensified by population growth and climate change (e.g. the dispute between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile)

• Environmental displacement - people forced to move due to rising sea levels, drought or extreme weather events (e.g. low-lying Pacific island states facing permanent inundation)

Actors and stakeholders

• When researching a case study on environment, students should identify a range of actors and stakeholders:

  • Nation-states

    • Set national environmental policies

    • Negotiate international agreements

    • May resist environmental obligations to protect domestic economic interests

  • The UNFCCC

    • The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

    • The main international framework for climate negotiations, including the annual COP (Conference of the Parties) summits

  • The IPCC

    • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    • Provides scientific assessments used to inform international policy

  • Environmental NGOs

    • E.g. Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth

    • Advocate for stronger environmental policies, conduct research and mobilise public opinion

  • Multinational corporations (MNCs)

    • Major contributors to environmental damage through industrial activity

    • Also increasingly active in green technology investment

  • Social movements

    • E.g. Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion

    • Use direct action and public pressure to demand environmental action

  • Indigenous communities

    • Often the most directly affected by environmental degradation

    • Increasingly recognised as key stakeholders in international environmental negotiations

  • Scientific institutions

    • Provide the evidence base for environmental policymaking

    • Findings are sometimes disputed by political actors with economic interests

Example case studies

• The following examples illustrate the kinds of case studies students could develop for this topic area

Links to earlier course content

• The environment topic area connects to all four areas of the IB Global Politics course

Links to the other HL topic areas

• A case study on environment will frequently connect to other HL topic areas - identifying these links is essential for question 3