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This article reviews the state of the literature on the politics of global health governance and associated political dynamics of actors involved in this issue space. We identify seven eras in the field, beginning with the period of empire and colonialism and ending with the COVID-19 outbreak. The field of global health has long had a focus on infectious disease, often rooted within a state-centered approach to transnational global health problems with recurrent debates about whether and how restrictions on trade and travel should be imposed in the wake of disease outbreaks. This statist focus is in tension with more cosmopolitan visions of global health, which require broader health system strengthening. In the mid-2000s, a golden age emerged with the influx of new financing and political attention to addressing HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as reducing the risk posed by infectious disease outbreaks to economies of the Global North. Despite increased awareness of noncommunicable diseases and the importance of health systems, events of recent years (including but not limited to the COVID-19 outbreak) reinforced the centrality of states to global health efforts and the primacy of infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of climate and security has matured over the past 15 years, moving from the margins of academic research and policy discussion to become a more prominent concern for the international community. The practice of climate and security has a broad set of concerns extending beyond climate change and armed conflict. Different national governments, international organizations, and forums have sought to mainstream climate security concerns emphasizing a variety of challenges, including the risks to military bases, existential risks to low-lying island countries, resource competition, humanitarian emergencies, shocks to food security, migration, transboundary water management, and the risks of unintended consequences from climate policies. Despite greater awareness of these risks, the field still lacks good insights about what to do with these concerns, particularly in 'fragile' states with low capacity and exclusive political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak is the most serious test of the international system since the 2008 global financial crisis. Rather than cooperate to contain and respond to a common threat, the world's leading powers--the United States and China--have increasingly blamed each other through wildly speculative theories about the origins of the virus. The World Health Organization sought to coordinate a global response, but it has been hamstrung and has come under attack. Given past cooperation between major powers to mobilize and eradicate smallpox and previous US leadership to fight HIV/AIDS and the 2014 West African Ebola crisis, the limited cooperation and lack of leadership are puzzling. What explains the anemic global response to date? This article draws from structural international relations theory to suggest a partial but somewhat dissatisfying answer. International organizations are inherently weak and now face opposition by major powers. The international system simultaneously incentivizes states to cooperate and address common threats, but it also encourages countries to take care of themselves, potentially at the expense of others. Which of these motives dominates cannot be explained by structural theory, thus requiring us to look to other factors such as the attributes of states and leaders themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Paris Agreement is in trouble.Herewe assess the potential for climate leaders to bring the global climate regime back on track by developing a strategic understanding of followership. In other words, leaders need to know how to encourage other actors to follow them. We develop a typology of follower types--Enthusiasts, Pliables, Reluctants, and Hard Nuts--distinguished based on motivation and capacity. We identify the scope for a participation cascade based on the distribution of follower types.We argue that achieving a participation cascade may be more likely if leaders appreciate three insights from theories of collective action. First, break down the climate mitigation problem into smaller, more manageable challenges, such as sectoral approaches. Second, prioritize major emitters and areas with high mitigation potential and politically feasible action. Finally, emphasize benefits to potential followers. Together, the strategies can help reduce the number of Hard Nut cases by making the cost/benefit calculus more attractive to prospective followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations scholars have found that multilateral approval increases public support for the use of military force and have developed competing explanations for this phenomenon. However, this literature has given little attention to the attitudes of individuals who participate directly in the foreign policy process or shape foreign policy debates. In this research note, we administer a survey experiment to both a cross-section of US foreign policy elites and a nationally representative sample of the US public. We find that US foreign policy elites are more responsive to multilateral approval than the US public, with elites with direct foreign policy decision-making experience valuing it especially highly. These findings point to the importance of considering differences between elites and the public when investigating or theorizing about the impact of multilateral cooperation on domestic politics. Video Abstract Video Abstract Close [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Asian countries have among the highest numbers of people exposed to the impacts of climate-related hazards. • The article models and map sub-national “climate security vulnerability” in 11 countries in Asia. • Bangladesh, southern and western Myanmar, and parts of Pakistan were the most vulnerable locations. • In terms of populations exposed to climate hazards, the largest numbers were in India and Bangladesh. • The model is compared with the EM-DAT International Disaster Database, an expert survey, and alternative specifications. Abstract Asian countries have among the highest numbers of people exposed to the impacts of climate-related hazards and, thus, at greatest risk of mass death. Floods, droughts, and storms have always tested civilian governments and international humanitarian aid agencies. However, climate change threatens to make the problem worse by increasing the intensity and possibly the frequency of climate-related hazards. Humanitarian emergencies potentially upend and reverse progress on development priorities, making improved spatial awareness of likely hot spots a priority for adaptation and preparedness. This article presents the findings of the effort to map sub-national “climate security vulnerability” in 11 countries in South and Southeast Asia. Climate security vulnerability is defined as areas where large numbers of people are at risk of death due to exposure to climate-related hazards and the follow-on consequences of exposure, including but not limited to conflict. The Asian Climate Security Vulnerability Model Version 1 (ACSV V1) found that Bangladesh, parts of southern and western Myanmar (the Ayeyarwady region and Rakhine state), and parts of southern and northwest Pakistan (Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces) were the most vulnerable from a climate security perspective. In terms of absolute numbers, the largest numbers of people who are exposed to climate hazards are in India followed by Bangladesh. Model results are compared with a geo-referenced version of the EM-DAT Disaster Database and by creating alternative model specifications informed by a survey of 18 regional experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of international finance for coal power plants have intensified since the 2015 Paris climate agreement was negotiated. Over the past few years, Japan and South Korea have signaled their intent not to fund new coal projects overseas, leaving China and its Belt and Road Initiative as the 'financier of last resort.' In September 2021, China too announced its intent to stop providing finance for overseas coal projects. What accounts for their decision to cease financing overseas coal projects despite prominent differences in political systems, degree of internationalization of their financial systems, and economic size? Drawing on datasets of coal projects and financing supplemented by case material and interviews, this paper explores the dynamics of coal export finance and how the combination of international reputational pressures and declining demand for coal finance diminished the domestic support for incumbent coal exporters in all three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlling for factors such as criminal violence and poverty, we tested if drier than usual growing season weather was a predictor of emigration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to the US between 2012 and 2018. We focus on growing season weather because agriculture is a primary transmission pathway from the effects of climate change upon migration. We secured the migration apprehensions data for our analysis through a FOIA request to US Customs and Border Protection. Border Patrol intake interviews recorded the original home location of families that arrived at the southern US border. We used this geographic information to measure recent weather patterns and social circumstances in the area that each family departed. We found 70.7% more emigration to the US when local growing seasons in Central America were recently drier than the historical average since 1901. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the lack of efforts by some countries to address climate change and reduce their carbon emissions. Topics discussed include key goal of the Paris Agreement, attitude of U.S. President Donald Trump on climate action, and political challenges of trying to curb emissions. It also mentions the problem facing the 24th Conference of Parties (COP) in Katowice, Poland, and rise in global temperatures by 2034, according to the Global Carbon Project.

When AIDS activists launched their campaign for developing world access to antiretroviral therapy in the late 1990s, this treatment cost on average $10,000 per patient per year. More than a decade later, drug prices for "first line" therapies hovered around $100 per patient per year, and nearly 13 million people in low- and middle-income countries were receiving these life-extending medications. By contrast, climate activists during the same time period labored without much success in establishing mechanisms to put a price on carbon. We identify the global market structures most conducive for social movement-led market transformations. We argue that advocacy collective action is more likely to be successful when the global market structure involves (i) a small number of product markets, (ii) globally integrated product markets, (iii) a relatively concentrated industry with few producers or buyers, and (iv) a source of rents produced through social construction rather than natural or technological barriers to entry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses climatic changes and international cooperation for climatic changes. Topics discussed include global economy, carbon emissions and Paris convention on climatic changes held in Paris, France in December 2015. Other topics such as UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are also discussed.

Climate change is expected to have severe consequences on the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the world, but its effects will not be evenly distributed. Africa is thought to be especially vulnerable, given both high exposure to climate change and relatively low community resilience and governance capabilities. With climate change adaptation looming ever larger as an important policy area, understanding where climate vulnerabilities are located therefore has immense practical significance. This article details the methodological refinements made to an existing model of climate security vulnerability, the rationale for the approach, and the findings. The model introduces more fine-grained data and new methods of normalizing the data to retain more granularity, as well as other changes. The vulnerability maps show the Horn of Africa (Somalia in particular), South Sudan, the eastern coasts of Madagascar and Mozambique, northern Nigeria and southern Mali, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Guinea, as well as pockets along rivers and coasts in Egypt and Nigeria to be the most vulnerable. For validation, the model is also compared to maps of climate-related disaster counts, fatalities, and affected populations derived from the EM-DAT International Disaster database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global coal use must be phased out if we are to minimize temperature increases associated with climate change. Most new coal plants are being built in the Asia Pacific and rely on overseas finance, with Indonesia and Vietnam the leading recipients. However, the politics of coal plant finance are changing, with many projects cancelled in recent years. This article explores the factors that led to coal plant cancellations in Vietnam and Indonesia. Based on new data of coal plant finance and elite interviews, we find fuel switching, public opposition, and national planning were the dominant reasons for cancellations in Vietnam, while Indonesia's reasons were more diverse. Vietnam also had a larger number of cancellations than Indonesia, which has a more entrenched domestic coal mining sector. These findings suggest that Vietnam is farther along the coal phaseout agenda than Indonesia. We further provide provisional explanations for these patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal-fired energy generation is the backbone of India's power sector and considered a driver of its economic development. However, it is associated with detrimental environmental and health impacts in India and its fleet is currently struggling with overcapacity and inefficiency problems. One solution to address these challenges is the early retirement of some of India's coal-fired power plants. In this paper, we introduce multidimensional indices that identify plants for retirement based on comprehensive criteria that include technical and economic characteristics of plants as well as their environmental impacts. We implement an ensemble approach, where we formulate 8008 indices based on all possible combination of seven relevant parameters and rank plants accordingly. This approach facilitates a comprehensive analysis of the plants' performance on different parameters and provides a new outlook on plant retirements that differs from the common approach of retiring plants based solely on technical characteristics such as age, capacity, and heat rate. Our results show that top plants recommended for early retirement are typically 7 years older, 13% more expensive and have around 40% higher population exposure to emissions compared to an average plant in India. We estimate the potential costs saved from the retirement of the worst-performing 50 GW of generating capacity to be $21 billion resulting from shifting ownership towards a cheaper cost of capital and replacing coal by more competitive sources such as solar power. • Identify plants for early retirement based on technical, economic and environmental indicators. • Worst performing 50 GW capacity are older, more expensive to operate and have higher population exposure. • Costs saved from retiring 50 GW capacity and replacing them with solar are $21 billion. • A multidimensional approach is essential for a politically feasible phaseout of coal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]