How we build a climate adaptation alliance
In her third and last column, Susannah Fisher explores how we could shift perceptions of national interest when it comes to climate adaptation
By Susannah Fisher
The countries who might push hardest now for new approaches are the countries where the safe climatic space will be squeezed, or the ones where fish are moving out of their waters with no new ones moving in, and these are often the ones with little power in the current political and economic system. Within the climate talks, powerful countries can block or delay key topics. Voices on the international stage pushing for new approaches to adaptation need to be strengthened or find new avenues.
A team of researchers looked at how countries had obstructed setting up finance for loss and damage during the climate talks. They showed how countries limited the scope of the conversations and kept loss and damage off the agenda and also pushed to delay any action until the perfect solution was in place.
This division between the rich and poor countries is one that runs deep in the negotiations and in a rough division pits the countries with historical responsibility against the poorer countries now bearing the consequences. In the talks on adaptation this has been about money too, with the rich countries repeatedly failing to give the money they had promised to adapt to climate impacts.
Another tactic used by countries in the system is to delay progress by making everything all talk and no action. I have sat through many UN negotiations in stuffy conference rooms where I wondered who really wanted to make progress.
With an international system built on short-term concepts of national self-interest, it seems unlikely the rich countries will ever agree to talk about rethinking mobility, trade, food and nature in a way that reworks their current advantages to adapt to climate risks. Why would they? Something will need to shift either in the power in the system or in how countries understand their own position in the world.
Build solidarity, not fear
Building the strategic case for how mobility, food, nature and conflict will affect the well-being and security of the rich countries is an important and ongoing part of this story. And this story will need to be told in a way that builds global solidarity rather than increased protectionism and fear. But positions in the global order are not fixed. Countries like the United States will face climate impacts that could reposition their place in the world and how people live their lives.
My holiday reading last year was The Water Knife by Paulo Bacigalupi. The story is set in the south-western states of the US after climate change drastically reduces their access to water. States fight each other for the drawdown rights from rivers, settlements are left to die when their water is cut off and there is a near-total breakdown in law and order as people struggle to get enough water to survive. As the media played stories of the hottest July on record, showing shocking images of the wildfires in Greece and Hawaii, I was engrossed in this tale of a young Texan refugee fighting to survive in a US where the limited water pumps are run by the Chinese and charged in yuan.
It did not seem totally implausible. If the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) does start to slow down, living in the United Kingdom will be a lot less attractive and British migrants might start to wish they had been more sympathetic to others wanting to move.
Climate wedges
Power in the system does not always follow the lines we would expect like size, economic growth and military prowess. It can take many forms. One group of countries who have consistently led the debate on the impacts of climate change are the small island developing states. They are tiny countries by global standards but ones with a huge amount of moral authority and high levels of ambition for climate action.
For example, although the issue of loss and damage was heavily delayed and opposed by more traditionally powerful countries like the US, the developing countries did secure a win in the form of a new fund – something the US and the EU rejected in the conference in Glasgow in 2021 a year before and something a traditional theory of inter-state relationships based on interests and sovereignty would struggle to explain.
And in another example, Vanuatu, a country of 300,000 people, led the global coalition to receive an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice clarifying the rights and obligations of countries under international law related to the impacts of climate change.
The small states shop around to find the best place to wield their influence and authority and find the gaps to push through. We need to find these new spaces to raise ambition on adaptation.
This is an edited extract from Sink or Swim: How the world needs to adapt to a changing climate published by Bloomsbury Sigma on Aug 14 in the UK and coming out in the US on Nov 4.
Susannah Fisher is a principal research fellow at University College London and works as a researcher and advisor supporting governments, cities, international organisations and communities to plan for the impacts of climate change.
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