Politics Panther · Paper 3 Global Politics · Environment

Global Environment · Overview

The environmental regime from Stockholm to Baku, and the cooperation-vs-sovereignty debate.

1. Spec sections this topic covers

Topic on the spec3 · sourced from Edexcel A-Level Politics 9PL0

The creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its role and significance.

competing views about how to tackle environmental issues to include: shallow-green ecology versus deep-green ecology; sustainable development and tragedy of the commons.
Strengths and weaknesses of international agreements, including key highlights from Rio, Kyoto, Copenhagen, Paris.
Obstacles to international co-operation and agreement, including sovereignty, developed versus developing world division and disagreement over responsibility and measurement.

The role and significance of the global civil society and non-state actors, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in addressing and resolving the issues above.

Timeline of agreements: Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, Kyoto 1997, Paris 2015 (NDCs, 1.5C target), Glasgow COP26 2021, Sharm el-Sheikh COP27 2022 (Loss and Damage Fund), Dubai COP28 2023, Baku COP29 2024 (climate finance), Belem COP30 2025.
Key institutions: UNFCCC, IPCC, UNEP, Conferences of the Parties (COPs).
Recent named examples: Russia environmental protests (2024), KlimaSeniorinnen v Switzerland (ECtHR 2024), Loss and Damage Fund operationalised (2023-24), Vanuatu / ICJ advisory opinion request (2023), US Inflation Reduction Act (2022), Trump 2025 Paris Agreement re-withdrawal.
Debates: developed vs developing world responsibility (CBDR principle), market vs regulatory solutions, state vs non-state action, global governance vs national sovereignty.
Tensions: voluntary NDCs are insufficient to keep 1.5C; Loss and Damage Fund is small relative to need (~$700m pledged vs $400bn estimated annual loss); US withdrawal undermines collective action.

Environment questions cluster around effectiveness of global governance and the cooperation-vs-sovereignty tension.
Bring in 2-3 named contemporary examples per essay. Loss and Damage Fund + Trump 2025 withdrawal + KlimaSeniorinnen is a strong evidence trio.
AO3: regime theory (do norms shift behaviour) vs realist sovereignty critique (states act for self-interest).

Drawn from the Panther question bank. The Notes page in this pack covers the content needed to answer these.

Year	QID	Question
2023 Mock	P3G-2023M-Q3C	Evaluate the view that global governance has been more successful in reducing poverty than in protecting the environment.
2022	P3G-2022-Q3B	Evaluate the view that the slow rate of progress over climate change results primarily from economic inequalities within and between countries rather than from the actions of particular countries and political institutions.
2021	P3G-2021-Q3B	Evaluate the view that environmental issues have received greater attention than economic issues in global politics.