Global governance in the context of climate change: the challenges of increasingly complex risk parameters

It is well-acknowledged that there is an imbalance between the existing structures and processes for global governance and the threats that the world is facing to its environment and natural resources. When swift responses to risk and uncertainty are required, formal international institutions and legal frameworks are found wanting. Climate change is accelerating and exacerbating worst case scenarios in the areas of energy, fisheries, forests, food, water and desertification, to name but a few, and intensifying pressures of poverty on natural resource management. The importance of avoiding policy failures of the past and failures of global governance has thus become more urgent. This article reviews the global governance challenges arising from complex resource risks and explores what has been learnt about effective risk governance. Global governance can not continue as though the world faces a ‘business as usual scenario’ and climate-related risks—systemic, complex, uncertain and ambiguous—require us to focus on particular aspects of global governance, many of which are those where performance has hitherto been weakest.