Governing the End - The Making of Climate Change Loss and Damage

"Climate change is increasingly accepted as a global emergency creating irrevocable losses for the planet. Still, different countries experience these losses differently. Reaching even inadequate political agreements is fraught with contestation. Governing the End untangles the complex relationship between deteriorating environmental conditions, high politics and the everyday practices of diplomacy, focusing on the United Nations' agreement to address "loss and damage" and subsequent battles over implementation. Vanhala looks at the different assumptions and strategic framings that poor and rich countries bring to bear and asks why some norms emerge and diffuse while others fail to do so. The book is based on ethnographic observation of five years of UN meetings and negotiations, as well as more than 150 interviews with diplomats, policymakers, UN secretariat staff, experts and activists. It explores explicit political contestation, as well as the more clandestine politics that have stymied implementation and substantially reduced the scope of compensation to poor countries. In doing so, it elucidates the successes and failures of international climate governance. Vanhala shows that it matters materially how ideas are constructed and then institutionally instantiated"--

About the author

Lisa Vanhala is professor of political science at University College London. She is the author of Making Disability Rights a Reality?: Disability Rights Activists and Legal Mobilization and coeditor of Governing Climate Change Loss and Damage: The National Turn.

Product details

• Authors: Lisa Vanhala, Lisa Vanhala
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 06.10.2025
• EAN: 9780226842967
• ISBN: 978-0-226-84296-7
• No. of pages: 248
• Series: Chicago Series in Law and Society; Chicago Law and Society
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; Globalization, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Environmental Policy, POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / General, LAW / Environmental, International Relations, Environmental policy & protocols, Environment law, Environmental policy and protocols