Institutionalizing global climate governance: Expertise, sovereignty, and scalar mismatch

Abstract

This article addresses the fundamental tension in global climate governance: the disjuncture between the planetary scale of the climate crisis, as framed by scientific knowledge, and the state-centric approach of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It analyzes the historical-institutional dynamics that have shaped the UNFCCC, drawing on archival materials from the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) and prior meetings to reveal how diverse authorities, forms of knowledge, and geographical norms coalesced to privilege state sovereignty. This early institutionalization embedded enduring asymmetries of power and responsibility, particularly concerning the distribution of burdens and benefits between the Global North and South. These asymmetries continue to hinder the pursuit of climate justice, understood here not as a neutral principle but as a normative framework grounded in historical responsibility, distributive equity, and the rights of affected communities. These structural inequalities limit the potential for more transformative governance that challenges the existing uneven geopolitical order. The article shows how framing climate change as a matter to be addressed by sovereign states, while politically expedient, can sideline alternative paradigms rooted in legal accountability and the regulation of non-state actors. This analysis contributes to contemporary debates on transforming global climate governance to enable more historically and ecologically just responses.