How can climate change be dealt with at a regional level? The issue is rather complicated. A normative solution is that climate change affects nation-states indiscriminately, and there is no other option but to cooperate beyond statist lines. States ought to leave behind their narrow self-interests and look at the larger problem that affects them overall.
However, despite the risks, climate change hardly enforces regional cooperation. In fact, in certain cases, the fear of diluting territories and frontiers makes states more rigid about cooperating at a regional level. A principal issue is the problem of collective action. If we assume that states only prioritise their self-interests and operate rationally, there is a case of the tragedy of the commons. An issue that affects everyone belongs to no one in particular. Take the case of marine pollution. The seas belong to no one in particular and everyone in general. In such cases, setting institutional patterns is not easy. Some states will always feel that they are doing more while some would free-ride. Why should they then disproportionately overburden themselves? Then there is the argument of historical responsibility. Shouldn’t states that have exploited nature historically and caused the crisis in the first place be more responsible now than the others? This is followed by a capability argument. Why not ask the states with more technological know-how to step up?
Interestingly, even when states face the same set of risks, are poised together historically, and armed with similar capabilities, climate cooperation is not easy. Consider the case of the Bay of Bengal region. Severe cyclonic storms in the Bay of Bengal region are becoming a recurring phenomenon. Rising sea levels are pushing into coastal regions of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. What explains the lack of a climate mitigation framework?
With states where sovereignty issues are sensitive and the Otherisation of communities strong, climate issues are swiftly converted into issues of security. Take, for instance, the nature of India-Bangladesh ties. Migration is a contentious issue laden with the insider-outsider debate, problems of infiltration, and the radicalisation of borderlands. For India and Bangladesh, migration is seen from the conventional lens of security. Even if the term, ‘climate refugees’ or ‘climate migrants’, are used by states, they tend to avoid the discussions from a rights-based perspective. Rather these terms invoke a sense of fear, creating a further division between geographically perceived stable and vulnerable regions. It underlines the future possibility of a climate apocalypse when people from vulnerable regions would invade the borders of the more stable. Climate migrants, when and if they cross international borders, are seen as potential carriers of ‘climate conflict’ rather than being displaced because of the conflict in the first place.
These two paradigms —the state-centric order and the emerging (dis)order of climate change — stand opposed to each other. Consequently, meaningful regional responses to climate change are elusive. It remains to be seen what, as climate change intensifies, would the states do, given that national strategies are not always enough.
There are several possible scenarios. First, powerful states might enforce a structure of collective action. However, the structure might not be collaborative but hierarchical. Second, states might have horizontal cooperation between themselves in a limited manner. States tend to deal with climate change like they do with conventional security matters, leaving the community behind. A good example is the use of armed forces in mitigating exercises rather than using local and community-driven solutions to build resilience. Third, the most common of the responses is when states come together to form institutionalized reactions but their effectiveness and political will remain questionable.
Climate change is a reality; but so is the other — stark— reality that states are the dominant actors in the world order.
Udayan Das is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, St Xavier’s College (Autonomous)
