This special issue reflects on the state and direction of global climate governance ten years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Informed by Michel Foucault’s political thought and the wider field of climate governmentality studies that his work has inspired, we trace the power/knowledge regimes, political rationalities, and many practical tools and techniques that make climate change thinkable and knowable as a political problem. In this introduction, we draw upon the contributions to this special issue to examine how the Paris climate regime reinvents itself to maintain legitimacy amid geopolitical rivalry, rising anti-climate populism, and accelerating climate crises. We identify four practices that work to stabilize this governmental regime by promising future improvements, governmentalizing new frontiers, normalizing overshoot and climate disaster, and funneling climate expertise. We conclude by reflecting on the role and responsibility of global environmental politics scholarship in upholding, resisting, or rewriting this script for international climate cooperation.
Florian Steig, Eva Lövbrand, Angela Oels et al.· Global Environmental Politic...· 0 citations
Climate technologies, “nature tech,” and digital earth infrastructures are now rapidly proliferating as tools to monitor and manage changing environments. Such technologies remake the actors, sites, institutions, and practices involved in environmental governance. They can transplant governance from state to nonstate actors and from public to private institutions. They can also forestall more full-scale social, political, and ecological change needed to address the root causes of climate change. Building on the concept of “cli-mentality” from Steig and Oels (2025), this research article proposes a technology-centric investigation in the form of “techno-climentality” to analyze the consequences of these proliferating devices and infrastructures. Through interview, survey, and case study research on digitalizing forests in locations worldwide, we show how technology-led environmental governance can create unequal power, resource, and knowledge practices, along with transformations in community engagement. Techno-climentality centers on how digital technologies can depoliticize and remove environmental governance from wider accountability, yet also be transformed toward more pluralistic and just practices of governance.
Jennifer Gabrys, Phoebe Hamilton Jones· Global Environmental Politic...· 0 citations