THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN SOUTH ASIA

South Asia is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. However, despite its shared vulnerabilities and opportunities for cooperation, the region has adopted a fragmented response to climate change. The South Asian countries have been poorly cooperating at the regional level, as evidenced by the failure of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to spur regional climate cooperation. At the international level, these countries have also not adopted a unified position in global climate change negotiations. In this context, this chapter discusses the climate change-related challenges faced by the South Asian countries and the national-level policies introduced by them to tackle these challenges. It specifically looks at the regional efforts to advance climate action and analyzes the interlinkages between the domestic, regional, and international realms of climate change policy and governance in the South Asian context.