Plan Across Borders

Abstract

This chapter looks at promising regional cooperation efforts to de-escalate tensions heightened by climate change. Tackling problems like pandemics or climate change within the framework of traditional jurisdictional boundaries means that policymakers continue to treat these challenges like matters of domestic or local concern, rather than the transboundary threats that they are. Breaking down these barriers requires deep focus on cross-border solutions. For example, the climate change problem of “too little and too much water” demands transboundary consideration of evolving conditions in river basins and ocean fisheries. Risk reduction efforts that stretch across regions also offer good avenues for building disaster preparedness, including stockpiling, creating insurance risk pools, setting up systems for regional climate forecasting and early warning, and re-energizing multilateralism. Likewise, the most urgent transborder challenge of all, climate-induced migration, calls for ever greater global cooperation—not less.