Chapter 7 - Responsibility and Climate Change

Summary

The international legal and institutional structure around climate change ascertains that the responsibility to react to the phenomena lies predominantly with states. Although states play a vital part in addressing climate change, these structural constrains leaves limited room for alternative actors to take action to react to the problem. This chapter proposes looking at responsibility in world affairs as a political concept; a political concept that reconstitutes norms, practices, and actions in a manner that advances new ways to mitigate climate change. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s conceptualisation of political responsibility, and the activism of non-state and substate within the UNFCCC, we suggest that political responsibility gives agency and space for different actors within the international community to engage in practices that help advance the climate change agenda. This, we further suggest, constructs a common community in which various actors undertake political action in order to influence policymaking.