More worrying climate news. Is our international system still up to today’s challenges?
Earlier this month the EU’s Copernicus research institute revealed that 2025 was the third hottest year on record globally. The first and second hottest years were 2024 and 2023 respectively.
We are dangerously close to crossing the 1.5°C global warming threshold which governments across the world agreed to try to prevent in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.* Yet prospects for the global cooperation that is vital to addressing this global crisis seem to be at an all-time low.
When Donald Trump re-entered the White House just over a year ago, he immediately triggered the 12-month notice period to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. The US government continues to publicly dispute the international consensus that the climate crisis is a global threat of epic proportions. This isn’t the only area where Trump is challenging international institutions and collaborative efforts – read Paul’s recent blog here for more.
Have we given up international climate cooperation?
It’s not just Trump and likeminded world leaders who are casting doubt on international collaborative efforts to tackle climate change. In polling analysis by Global Nation looking at trust in international institutions, just 35% of the global population said their taxes should go towards solving global problems. A larger group, 57%, said that international institutions should have the power to enforce rules on global issues including climate change – just seemingly not with their taxes. Even though that measure shows majority support, it has fallen four percentage points in just the last 12 months. The sense of global solidarity seems to be diminishing.
Perhaps this should not be a surprise. Every year, there appears to be as much media coverage debating whether the UN’s climate negotiations are worthwhile as there is coverage of what is actually being negotiated. The most recent iteration, COP30 in Belem, Brazil, hit the lowest attendance figures for official government representatives since before the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. The US sent 234 delegates to COP29 but 0 to COP30 as Trump changed the country’s direction once again.
Most concerningly of all, young people, who will be the most affected and are therefore often the most worried and compelled to act on climate change, are the least likely to put their trust in these international institutions.
In that same polling, just 33% of people said they felt more like a global citizen than they did a citizen of their own country. This very question sets up an unhelpful dichotomy – that we either see ourselves as British, American or Chinese etc, or we’re global citizens. But we can and should be both.
As Christians we’re called to be citizens of God’s kingdom and to work to bring about that kingdom in our surroundings. However, those surroundings shouldn’t be limited to our towns, cities, regions or country. We are called to recognise the face of God in all humans and as the global ramifications of our actions (or inaction) become better understood we have a duty to do what we can to reduce our impacts on our global neighbours.
How do we turn the tide back towards collaboration?
While we tend to focus on the international systems that are stumbling, it’s important to remember that a lot of successful cooperation is still taking place. Ironically, Copernicus, the very project that allows us to know for certain that we’re rapidly heating our planet and conclude that international cooperation is faltering, is itself a product of international cooperation.
The only reason we don’t have a catastrophic problem with ozone layer depletion is that countries came together in the 1990’s to agree a solution under the Montreal Protocol – a system of international cooperation that is still making advancements today and is often regarded as the world’s most successful environmental treaty. In some ways, it’s a victim of its own success. The fact it was able to quickly begin to remedy the problem with broad global support meant that it dropped out of the public consciousness, and many people forget (or, for those born since, were never taught about) the dangerous potential of an ozone hole.
There are also other ways of doing international collaboration. Much of the discussion around the climate crisis happens in multilateral spaces (meaning everyone can have a say but also often means they can only move as fast as the slowest member) but increasingly, with initiatives like the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, countries have been creating smaller groups that are taking more ambitious commitments voluntarily or bilaterally.
In Global Nation’s analysis, they also talk about “communities of the willing”. They define these as communities of responsible citizens, businesses and civil society groups, including faith organisations and charities that are collaborating and taking more local action. With both these community initiatives and international groupings, the effects ripple outwards into communities and nations not part of these schemes.
History shows that this approach can make an enormous impact, even in the face of apparently immovable forces. One example is the campaign to end the racist apartheid system in South Africa which, in addition to the tireless, brave efforts of in-country campaigners was brought down by an international movement that struggled at first to find global consensus. However, countries surrounding the apartheid state began boycotting goods and wielding their somewhat limited diplomatic power, at times this was costly to their economies and therefore their populations. Gradually companies, individuals and campaign groups in countries across the world joined the boycott. Eventually, many more countries, including the US, backed calls for apartheid to end.
Many individuals and churches are leading the way on building such “communities of the willing” for climate action. As we take action for a cleaner, greener future, through individual lifestyle choices, net zero commitments and programmes such as Eco Church, we show that it is possible to make a meaningful difference on these issues – and that it’s important to us and should be to our governments too.
When it comes to international collaboration, we can’t just leave it to a handful of world leaders or sit and scoff at the seeming inability of countries across the world to agree unanimously on anything; we all have a role to play
*In fact, 2024 was the first year to breach the 1.5°C limit. That doesn’t mean all hope is lost, as the target is measured in multi-year averages and we may exceed 1.5°C briefly only for the climate to settle somewhere just below it – something climate scientists refer to as ‘overshoot’.
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