Climate, Energy and Environment
Our world is transgressing several of the “planetary boundaries” that provide a safe operating space for humanity, threatening the functioning of ecosystems and triggering destructive climate change. Yet, questions of climate change, energy and the environment have still not permeated mainstream academic approaches to political science and international relations.
At GIES, we aim to better understand and problematize the ways in which these interlinked challenges are dealt with across various political systems, create or exacerbate political faultlines, and interact with complex questions around global justice across different policy fields (e.g., development, trade, finance, security, etc.).
One specific area we focus on is the global politics of the energy transition and decarbonization. A second area concerns the nexuses in the EU’s external relations between climate change and environmental policy, on the one hand, and trade and 'development' policies, on the other hand.