Geopolitics of Decarbonisation: Towards an analytical framework

An increasing number of scholars and political analysts draw our attention to the fact that the necessary decarbonisation of the global economy, changing the world as we know it, will impact international affairs and geopolitics. But do we agree on what geopolitics of decarbonisation is (not)? How can we look at this area of inquiry more systematically? What developments and causalities does it encompass?

Geopolitics and decarbonisation are broad topics which have inspired much academic and policy thinking, but less attention has been paid to how exactly they interrelate. Decarbonisation processes are embedded in international dynamics and in turn change resource geographies and geopolitics. In this background paper, we suggest a way to structure these links between the two concepts, drawing on existing literature, in order to help define geopolitics of decarbonisation as a field of inquiry and identify pertinent questions about future trends.