Global Environmental Politics amid Geopolitical Turbulence

Abstract: Over the past decade, three overlapping trends have fundamentally reshaped and now characterize the global geopolitical order: the rise of emerging powers, increasing military conflicts, and growing international trade tensions. These features of the global order are deeply connected to global environmental politics (GEP) and governance, as a warming world spurs some aspects of geopolitical change, while the geopolitical dynamics themselves have far-reaching environmental consequences. Given this, we call on GEP researchers to bring geopolitics more fully back into their analyses to better explain the new dynamics of environmental politics and governance in a changing world. We identify four priority areas for future inquiry for GEP scholarship: the race for critical minerals, ecological dimensions of land conquests, the trade–environment nexus in the context of trade tensions and blocs, and the interplay of the rise of authoritarian populism and political polarization and global environmental change.