Geopolitics in the Era of Globalisation: Mapping an Alternative Global Future by Yogendra Kumar

Author:Yogendra Kumar [Kumar, Yogendra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, History & Theory, Commentary & Opinion, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000178067
Google: LMzxDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52993252
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-09-16T09:28:47+00:00

This is the paradigm which is summed up in terms of methodological conundrums to understand the power transition dynamics in the NIC’s GT 2030 report in the preceding discussion32 on writings on geopolitics and IR theory.

Climate change

According to a Pew Global Attitudes survey (spring 2015),33 54% of respondents said that they thought climate change is a ‘very serious problem’, 51% of respondents said that it is ‘harming people now’, and 40% of respondents said that they were ‘very concerned’ that it will ‘harm (him/her) personally’. The potential for global cooperation would be tested by complex systemic risks presented by climate change, increasing stress on environmental and natural resources, and a deepening connection between human and animal health. Climate change is seen as being behind extreme weather events affecting crop failures, forest fires, and infrastructure degradation; setbacks in global economic inter-linkages; migration; etc. Climate change is affecting sea-level rise, storm surges in coastal areas, ocean acidification, permafrost and glacial melt, air quality, and precipitation patterns. The phenomenon is already imposing significant costs on mitigation and adaptation efforts; there are already forecasts about heavy costs for the private sector. The environment, biodiversity, and natural resources are also coming under stress in several ways, including in the form of air pollution, severe water shortages, melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctica, and the degradation of topsoil: about a third of the world’s soil is currently degraded at a rate 40 times faster – increased from 10 to 20 times (estimated by GT 2030) – than the rate of formation of the new soil.34 The Fifth Assessment Report (September 2013) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts in the highest emission scenario, with 2000 AD as the base year, a 4.5°C rise in surface temperature by 2100 AD, based on Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, related to greenhouse gas concentration, and a 1°C rise, within the same time frame, based on the lowest emission scenario of RCP 2.6. What is more significant are the peaks (higher than average) and valleys (lower than average) in the growth trajectory, since these are probable indications of the snapshots of future climatic conditions, suggesting the possibility of more sudden, dramatic shifts with attendant economic and ecological consequences.35 The effects of the climate change phenomenon would not be globally uniform and would depend considerably on the institutional capacities at the national government and multinational levels. The 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement target of limiting the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level (latter half of the nineteenth century) and of keeping it ‘well below’ 2°C above the benchmark is itself regarded by the scientific community as aspirational, given the current carbon emission rate: ‘(b)y 2030, the carbon emissions trajectory will be cast, determining the century’s climate outcome’.36

Some of the more recent authentic reports about the state of the climate change phenomenon suggest the enormity of the task ahead and inadequate efforts to cope with it. The last IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.

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