Transnational Governing at the Climate–Biodiversity Frontier: Employing a Governmentality Perspective

Abstract

Transnational governance initiatives (TGIs) are increasingly recognized as central actors in the governing of climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet, their role in linking these domains has yet to be explored. As the climate crisis comes to be increasingly interlinked with the loss of biodiversity, such initiatives are increasingly combining this challenge of climate change with action on biodiversity loss through the deployment of nature-based solutions, with significant consequences for the ways in which the nature problem and its solutions are framed and implemented. Employing a governmentality approach, this research reveals two overarching rationales by TGIs of biodiversity as a means to climate change and biodiversity loss as “asset-at-risk” that are rendered governable through myriad techniques “at a distance” and “in proximity.” By revealing how biodiversity is made to fit with the climate arena, this research finds that these governable biodiversity spaces could generate rather regrettable solutions along these shifting and unfolding climate–biodiversity frontiers.