Highlight 9/2025: Multilateralism in Tackling Climate Change: A Path Toward Collective Action
Guliko Kurdgelashvili, 17 January 2025
« The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything ». – Albert Einstein
Did you notice the dramatic change in weather for the last few years? Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing humankind, and its effects are being felt on every aspect of our lives. Soaring temperatures, extreme weather events, sea-level rise are direct results of the emissions of greenhouse gases by human activities. Such challenges prompt global solutions and no nation can address climate change alone. But multilateralism has become the focus of innovation among nations in the world, a forum for making the needs of this crisis globally seen and offers platforms to negotiate, to share resources and align policies. According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) 2024 year is confirmed to be the warmest year on record globally. The first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level. As Mauro Facchini, Head of Earth Observation at the Directorate General for Defense Industry and Space, European Commission, says “With science, innovation and flagship programs in Earth Observation such as Copernicus, we can make informed decisions to mitigate and adapt to climate change”.
Collective action is only possible through multilateralism, allowing for a global negotiation space, financial support and technology sharing to mitigate climate change. Most of these efforts revolve around the annual COP conferences, hosted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Each of these conferences gathers representatives from almost 200 countries along with civil society, academia and private sector stakeholders.
COP conferences are important for negotiations and updates of international agreements. Countries stepped up by committing to phase down coal and scaling up renewable energy investments at COP26, showcasing the ability of COP to push nations toward Ambitious climate action. The Global Stocktake (an aspect of the Paris agreement for measuring progress), for instance, gives COP the chance to evaluate the global suite of nation-efficient efforts to achieve climate targets. The 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11 to 22 November 2024 ended with several important outcomes designed to ramp up worldwide action to tackle climate change. New Climate Goal Delegates lauded a new climate finance goal to make available at least $300 billion annually by 2035 and mobilize it to support developing countries as they mitigate and adapt to climate change. As the conference closed, it moved to finally set up the so-called Loss and Damage Fund which is providing support to people and communities after they have experienced climate-related impacts.
While having success in reaching goals in tackling climate change, there are some challenges that multilateralism faces, for instance, countries have struggled to reach agreement on how much money developed countries should supply to address loss and damage in developing nations, which have contributed the least to the climate crisis but are often hit hardest by its impacts. For instance, The Group of Twenty (G20), representing countries that are responsible for 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution, has pledged to stop financing new coal-fired power plants abroad and agreed to triple renewable energy capacity by the end of this decade. However, G20 governments have thus far failed to set a deadline to phase out fossil fuels. The World Bank has projected that due to the escalating challenges posed by climate change, anywhere from 32 million to 132 million individuals could find themselves pushed into poverty by the close of this decade.
In conclusion, although multilateral frameworks do set the agenda, enabling local and regional actors to develop customized climate strategies would improve effectiveness. Engagement in diplomacy and building trust through common objectives can help countries impacted by geopolitical tensions, in this case, by advancing the fight against climate change.
Guliko Kurdgelashvili, Highlight 9/2025 – Multilateralism in Tackling Climate Change: A Path Toward Collective Action, 17 January 2025, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva.