Strategy and justice: managing the geopolitics of climate change

This report focuses on the UK’s foreign, development and economic policies as they relate to climate. In examining the world as it may develop over the next decade in order to illuminate decisions needed in the short term, it argues that governments, including the UK’s new government, should treat climate as a first order geopolitical issue and examines the UK’s role and required actions within this context.

Main messages

• Governments should treat climate change – meaning both the transition to a net zero economy and the impacts of climate change – as a first order geopolitical issue. They must harness geopolitics in the service of the transition and work to ensure that climate change does not increase the fragmentation of the international order. That means putting the complex of climate and transition issues at the centre of statecraft.
• Managing climate-related dependencies on China will be an important geopolitical challenge for the UK and other advanced economies in the next decade. China dominates most of the key technologies and materials of the transition. The UK will face choices between maintaining access to the technologies it needs to power the transition, supporting domestic producers, developing friendly supply chains and aligning with allies.
• Advanced economies are focused on their own climate challenges, paying insufficient attention to what is needed to speed up the journeys of others or to the spillover effects their policies have on the rest of the world, in much of which emissions continue to rise as investment falls far short of needs. Unless remedied, this will delay the transition and make it more disruptive, increase the damaging impacts of climate change and skew costs and benefits to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable.
• For the UK and its close partners, the demands of strategy and justice are broadly aligned. Many emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs) are frustrated and disillusioned with Western governments and the international order they have been instrumental in building; climate change is an important and growing factor.
• The measures necessary to promote the UK’s strategic interests are not only consistent with those to promote justice, particularly for the most vulnerable, but require them. Unaddressed, the ability of the UK and its allies to persuade other countries of their cause, not only on climate but other international issues, will continue to decline – and with it the UK’s standing and influence in the world.
• There is a common misperception among decision-makers that the public will not support the measures necessary to address climate change at home and abroad. In fact, polling and election results indicate that under reasonable conditions there are strong levels of support. Understanding the views of the public and addressing those in the design and delivery of climate-related policies will be as important in the UK’s international policies as in its domestic policies.
• The real if insufficient progress made in addressing climate change over the past 30 years has led to an increasingly clear outlook for the decade ahead. It is a realistic possibility that global emissions will peak soon, largely depending on China’s emissions. But without further action, in particular greater investment in the transition in EMDCs beyond China, the plateau in emissions could last years and the decline be long and slow, with highly damaging effects on human development and potentially on the relations between states.
• Decisions taken in the coming year will affect the outlook for the next decade. By the end of 2024, Parties to the Paris Agreement are due to agree on the finance required to address climate change over the medium term. By early 2025, they are expected to produce their emission reduction plans – so-called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – to 2035.

Structure of the report

• Part 1 considers a world shaped by the impacts of climate change and the transition to a net zero global economy. It addresses the main systems of the transformation and the range of issues that will be impacted by climate change – from conflict to health to poverty. It identifies implications for the UK and makes recommendations for the UK’s international policies.
• Part 2 considers how these factors play out in the world’s regions, and the implications for the UK.
• Part 3 considers the role of the UK in the world in the decade ahead against this background. It examines the UK’s own net zero transition as relevant to its international policies and public attitudes towards the actions necessary to address climate change, before considering the choices this raises for the UK.
• Part 4 summarises the report’s recommendations for the UK.