Reconstructing and interrogating ecological modernisation in global climate governance

Global climate governance has been identified as a significant theme around a wide range of international summits, mechanisms and institutions. On the one hand, the emerging global climate governance tells a very positive trend of international cooperation. This reflects a rising idea of green development and low carbon actions has been adopted within international institutions. On the other hand, global climate governance has been substantially challenged by turbulence in international politics such as nationalism, populism and radical social movements. It is very interesting to explore how this kind of political changes and waves have challenged the fundamental elements of global climate governance. The existing literature has summarised the links and potential conflicts between the neoliberalist international order and global climate governance. But it fails to show how the existing climate governance has been challenged by emerging critical ideologies and political concepts. This research employs the concept of ecological modernisation as a perspective to observe how the neoliberalist approach to global climate governance has been encountering various ideological and conceptual challenges. The main research question is: how have the elements of ecological modernisation inherently adopted in global climate governance been reconstructed and interrogated by emerging critical discourses?