Governing Nature and Global Governance

Abstract

Global climate change challenges many of the structures, processes and practices of the international political community and threatens the key political visions, beliefs and practices that underpin the roles and capacities of core actors. As argued in Chapter 2, the political structures and institutions arising from consensus-based decision-making processes will not achieve effective, efficient or timely international climate change responses (Stern, 2009). While slow responses sometimes arise from a lack of political will, it is more often the case that policy¬makers become caught in uncertainties concerning risk assessments and fluctuating prospects of effectively managing changed practices (Young, 2002). The political impacts of global climate change go beyond the consequences they pose for the forms, locations and distributions of human societies and their centres of production. They challenge core political values and ideals that seem fitting for the most significant set of issues yet to have faced human civilisations. Problematically, the prospect that existing core political values are challenged by global cli¬mate change is a dawning realisation that few political actors readily accept and acknowledge.