Mark Carney’s observation at Davos of a “rupture” in international affairs is often misunderstood.
Immediate headlines focused on his observation that the move to more power-based diplomacy was a belated recognition of evolving geopolitical realities since the Cold War.
Less remarked upon was his prediction that if transactional great power politics was allowed to prevail the world “will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable”.
His warning was that the lure of muscular geopolitics can lead step by realist step to the destruction of the institutions necessary to order competition & align necessary cooperation.
But Carney’s final point was that this outcome isn’t inevitable. There is an alternative which preserves the benefits of international cooperation and which the “middle powers” of the world can create if they invest the leadership, resources and imagination needed.
What Carney didn’t mention was that action on climate change already provides a practical example of how transformational cooperation can work in a more fragmented world.
The climate regime has evolved through geopolitical turbulence
The climate regime has grown against a background of geopolitical disruption. The USA has been effectively out of, and often actively hostile to, the climate regime for 16 of the past 30 years. One consequence is that while producing 26% of world output the USA only represents 14% of the fast-growing global clean technology economy.
Despite these political headwinds, climate change has a strong claim to be the most ambitious & effective global cooperation regime of the past three decades. Collective action has halved projected levels of temperature change in 2100, increased clean investment 600% in the last decade, driven renewable energy to overtake coal as a share of global electricity, and provided over $800bn in aggregate official climate assistance to developing countries since 2013.
Ever since the USA failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, climate leadership has been driven by a pragmatic coalition for ambitious action which has the European, Vulnerable Country and Small Island Developing States groups at its heart. This “High Ambition Coalition” was critical to delivering the stronger than expected outcomes at Paris 2015 & Glasgow 2021. But international climate leadership has also emerged from many other countries, including South Africa brokering the Durban Mandate which underpinned the legally binding Paris Accords and the UAE in delivering a landmark agreement on global energy transitions in 2023.
Over the last three decades the climate regime has expanded from a narrow treaty with binding commitments for developed countries to a universal agreement where all countries have agreed a common goal, committed to continually reduce emissions, provide transparency of their actions and provide support for developing and vulnerable countries in reducing emissions and adapting to, and recovering from, climate change.
Beyond COP – mapping the global climate architecture
But the climate regime is much more than its formal treaty commitments. Perhaps its biggest innovation has been to build an impressive architecture of cooperative action and partnerships around the formal UNFCCC structures through three distinct avenues:
- Supporting national climate action through international partnerships like NDCP that helps over 100 countries prepare their Paris climate targets and plans, provision of support for long term climate plans and networks helping embed strong climate governance into parliaments and independent climate advisory bodies.
- Reforming the broader international system to support climate goals and be resilient to climate change. The 2015 Paris Multilateral Development Bank commitment resulted in a tripling of climate finance to developing countries to $85bn pa in 2024, and further action driven through the G20 led MDBs to pledge at COP 29 to reach $120bn pa by 2030.
- Creating an ecosystem of global leadership partnerships that push the boundaries of climate action and technology through government, business and stakeholder collaboration. COP 30 at Belem recognised over 470 initiatives which are aligned inside a reformed “Action Agenda” to support implementation of agreed multilateral targets.
Since Paris in 2015 there has been rapid growth in partnerships led by mayors, businesses and civil society which have played a vital role in mainstreaming climate action across the economy. Since the Glasgow COP in 2021 there has been a particular expansion of government-led partnerships such as the Powering Past Coal Alliance which brings together a leadership group of over 50 countries, plus sub-national jurisdictions, to collaborate in phasing out coal power.
Glasgow also saw the COP evolve into a new type of leaders’ summit, with groups of countries committing to everything from phasing out international coal and fossil fuel finance to the launch of multi-billion Just Energy Transition Partnerships. Further work by coalitions of countries looking to move away from oil & gas resulted in the Santa Marta Conference in 2026.
Governments have convened new processes to drive integration of climate issues into financial regulation, central banks and finance ministries. A coalition of over 400 national development banks with $23 trillion in assets is also working to align with climate action. A host of government-backed international climate investment funds have been created from the EU’s Global Gateway, to China’s Green BRI, Japan’s GX fund and UAE’s Alterra.
Beyond the energy agenda the Cool Coalition is addressing both the warming impact of HFCs and access to affordable cooling. There has been a rapid growth in coalitions addressing heavy industry emissions from the Climate Club to the Belem Green Industrialisation Declaration.
The often-neglected area of climate adaptation has seen leadership groups such as the Climate and Development Ministerial which were key to creating a new IMF multi-billion fund to support countries impacted by climate change. Voluntary coalitions have driven climate early warning support, extreme weather insurance and access to data and analysis via the WMO.
Building a stronger climate regime after the rupture
The multi-layered international architecture of climate action built in the last 15 years is unprecedented in scale and scope, but a massive scale-up of climate implementation is still needed to minimise overshoot of the 1.5C Paris goals and prevent the worst climate risks.
But calling for more “implementation” or “scale-up” can also be deceptive. It implies we just need to deliver solutions we already understand, just faster.
But the next stage of climate action will require radical political, governance, regulatory, market & technology innovation to overcome deep seated barriers to change that have defeated traditional international cooperation approaches for decades.
Scaling up clean energy investments in developing countries by six times, incentivising unprecedented investment in economic and social resilience for the most vulnerable, transforming grids, cities & infrastructure & delivering new affordable solutions across the world at scale in construction, agriculture, food systems, nature restoration and circularity.
In fact, we have a double innovation challenge.
We need innovation in cooperation architectures to deliver the next wave of climate solutions and build confidence so all countries will increase their climate targets in the next Paris cycle in 2030.
We also need innovation in climate alliances and diplomacy to deliver this change at a time when Leaders are distracted, public support for cooperation is falling and traditional processes for aligning global leadership such as the G7 & G20 do not work for climate action.
There are four core changes needed to deliver more effective cooperation in the new context:
- Cement COP as a top-level Summit: the Paris, Glasgow and Dubai COPs showed how well-designed convenings of Leaders could drive stronger agreements inside and outside the formal negotiations. In the absence of traditional summit venues, the climate COP needs to take more weight as a moment for Leaders’ action starting in Antalya this year.
- Build new coalitions for global climate reforms: the US administration has mobilised to aggressively push back against integrating climate priorities into international institutions like the International Maritime Organisation, IEA and World Bank. New coalitions are be needed not just preserve past progress but drive forward the deeper reforms needed across the international system to support Paris implementation. This may require difficult trade-offs with broader foreign policy relationships and objectives.
- Focus and drive existing climate partnerships: we have a – perhaps too – rich architecture of climate partnerships which need rationalisation and stronger political investment to deliver better outcomes. One platform for this is to utilise the growing global network of climate action weeks as points to drive action through the year and engage more strongly with the private sector and national institutions. This year London Climate Action Week is hosting over 290 events which are part of the official Action Agenda, aiming to support COP 31 outcomes such as energy transition and electrification, resilience finance, zero waste, methane, green industrialisation, nature and oceans.
- Redesign climate cooperation institutions: with official aid being cut in most developed countries there is a need for radical reforms to improve the impact and leverage of remaining spending. This includes wider use of instruments like guarantees, hybrid capital and Special Drawing Rights to leverage more affordable financing. Countries should share their cutting-edge expertise from both the public and private sector as seen in Denmark on green industry and the Netherlands on flood defence. This should be part of a broader reform of core partnership models including new approaches such as country platforms for accelerating climate investments and more two-way knowledge sharing and investment.
Cooperation must also go beyond helping countries to reach their climate goals. Countries need to see how they will prosper as part of the new global clean economy by being part of shifting supply chains in manufacturing, heavy industry, minerals, agriculture, fashion etc. As African Leaders have made clear, climate objectives must be integrated into broader trade and resilience partnerships which create economic opportunities for a broader group of countries.
The last thirty years has built a powerful regime for driving global climate action. Most of these coalitions, institutions and partnerships do not depend on great power approval or complete consensus to make progress. They do depend on focused leadership and smart diplomacy by those countries who see their core interests in driving faster climate action.
As Carney emphasised, in this volatile global context it becomes easy for decision makers to focus on short term and transactional decisions, missing the longer-term impacts on national interests such as energy security, food security and economic competitiveness. To avoid climate objectives being overlooked they must be structurally integrated into broader geopolitical decisions and relationships, priorities and investments at the national security council level.
It is not enough to argue for multipolar world in principle; that is now a geopolitical fact. The question is can this multipolar world deliver the change needed for climate safety and will countries invest the leadership needed to make this work?
If climate remains a declaratory game at COP which just recycles arguments based in the very different political & economic realities of the 1990s then we will all lose. Progress requires realigning alliances inside and outside COP to prevent disrupters having a veto on progress and investing in the partnerships which are delivering practical solutions and real investment. The disruption of the international order is a real challenge to the climate regime, but its evolution through previous turbulence means it already has much of the architecture needed to deliver. Climate can be a pioneer in demonstrating how to build win-win global outcomes in a multipolar world. But this will only happen if “middle power” leaders are prepared to invest in taking control of their climate, energy & economic destinies.
