Governing the Climate in the Paris Era: Organized Irresponsibility, Technocratic Climate Futures, and Normalized Disasters

Journal article : Review

Foucauldian governmentality studies of climate politics have established themselves as a vibrant field of research, illuminating the power‐knowledge‐formations inherent in governing climate change. Synthesizing the contributions of climate governmentality studies since 2015, we provide a critical assessment of the technologies of government and the resulting visibilities and identities in the context of the Paris Agreement. Our reading of the current “cli‐mentality” reveals a much higher continuity from the Kyoto era to the Paris era than generally assumed by dominant IR approaches. The cli‐mentality of the Paris era radicalizes the neoliberal approach of the Kyoto era while extending its reach into more policy sectors. The responsibilisation of states, sub‐state actors and individuals obscures root causes of the climate crisis and reproduces key elements of the socio‐economic and political order. The dominant problematisation of climate change in both academia and policymaking narrows down the solution space for climate politics and forecloses transformative approaches. Climate mitigation mobilizes neoliberal self‐governance through nationally‐determined contributions while obscuring unequal historical responsibilities. Adaptation is organized in depoliticized processes of preparing for presumably inevitable climate futures. This is reinforced by climate finance which employs financialisation and de‐risking to mobilize additional private capital. Climate‐related loss and damage funding is rendered as charity, foreclosing liability and reparation claims. Future research should examine (1) how the dominant cli‐mentality is resisted and challenged by social movements and climate litigation, (2) if and how it is stabilized through the global economic order and its regulations, and (3) which globally varying effects the cli‐mentality has.

Authors: Steig, F; Oels, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Article number: e70001
• Publication date: 2025-03-02
• Acceptance date: 2025-01-23
• DOI: 10.1002/wcc.70001
• EISSN: 1757-7799
• ISSN: 1757-7780
• Language: English
• Keywords: international relations; Paris agreement; discourse; governmentality; climate politics
• Subtype: Review