Featured Roundtable: Climate change and emotions: How emotions can explain international politics of climate change

Abstract

The roundtable explores how climate change relates to emotions as social forces in structuring behaviour of the international community and particular actors. As the “emotional turn” in international relations receives increasing attention among the scientists, recent research lacks a deeper analysis on the role of emotions in climate change policy and how it can explain the behaviour of participating actors such as climate change diplomacy, management of increased humanitarian risks or mobilisation for protests against climate change. Even though emotions are usually understood as individual characteristics, emotional turn seeks to expand understanding of international politics by establishing the concept of collective emotions based on the constructivism approach and its structural possibility to embed in groups and institutions. Such assumptions allow us to explore how particular emotions connect individuals into groups and communities as well as structure their response and reaction to the processes of international relations. Based on this framework, the roundtable will discuss climate change-related processes in which the role of emotions can play an important role, namely, how the fear and arms race contribute to climate change or how specific emotions such as anxiety manifest in specific climate change policies and influence actors' response to increasing risks. Moreover, it will be also discussed how particular emotional norms are constructed among the members of security communities and how it facilitates their cooperation which might provide implications for climate diplomacy. Not only does this roundtable seek to enrich the discussions of climate policy by involving an emotional approach, but also to show how emotions can play an important role in various actors' behaviour which can enhance or reduce the risks of climate change.