Liberal environmentalism and climate change in the polycrisis

Non-technical summary Climate change is one of the most salient issues in current international politics. In all but the most optimistic of scenarios, it has the potential to severely impact human life in many parts of the world. Production and consumption patterns under the current liberal economic order contribute significantly to the climate crisis. Yet the norms and ideas that guide climate policy under this order are remarkably persistent in the face of climate change. This article explores why these norms have not yet been challenged, and how theories of international relations help understand the absence of such challenges.Technical summary Multilateral climate policy has institutionalized a set of norms that may be summarized as liberal environmentalism. Liberal environmentalism presumes that economic growth and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive, but prerequisites for each other, thereby connecting the economic order with environmental policy. This article argues that there is a distinct mismatch between the climate crisis and the stickiness of liberal environmentalism. Although the natural system to be governed is in crisis, the political and normative system tasked with governing it is not. The article thus inquires how crises come about by examining why they sometimes do not. It compares theoretical insights borrowed from liberal institutionalism, constructivism, and neo-realism and explores what may be missing from such approaches to fully grasp the nature of crises in international politics. The article finds that liberal environmentalist norms emerged in the 1990s, cascaded in the early 2000s and became institutionalized in the Copenhagen era, culminating in the Paris Agreement. They are likely to remain unaffected by the current polycrisis in international relations, because institutionalized norms are often resistant to change. Liberal environmentalist norms are now deeply embedded in contemporary climate governance, meaning that they can only be challenged through persistent norm entrepreneurship.Social media summary Liberal environmentalism persists in global climate policy because of institutionalized norms and the discursive reproduction of these norms.