Role of Small Islands in UN Climate Negotiations: A Constructivist Viewpoint
Athaulla A. Rasheed
International Studies, 2019, vol. 56, issue 4, 215-235
Abstract:
This article is about small island developing states (SIDS) and their role in the United Nations (UN) climate negotiations. It presents a discussion about how a constructivist model of foreign policy analysis and international system design can be used to explain the impact of climate ideas of SIDS on UN climate system. The SIDS have been in the UN climate negotiations since the 1980s, committed to a climate agenda with clear ideas about the challenges they face and the type of solutions they seek from the international policy community. In this respect, this article seeks to explain that climate ideas shared among SIDS have established an intersubjective understanding to promote a compelling common voice at international climate negotiations, which is based on an island vulnerability identity. These ideas have shaped the policy thinking and interests of climate negotiators to design institutional frameworks that have given special consideration to SIDS. It concludes that this observation represents a disproportionate impact of SIDS. Despite the weak material powers for being small islands, their climate agenda has influenced the UN system design to address their concerns.
Keywords: Small island developing states (SIDS); climate change; United Nations climate negotiations; constructivism; international relations; foreign policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020881719861503 (text/html)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:intstu:v:56:y:2019:i:4:p:215-235
DOI: 10.1177/0020881719861503
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in International Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().