Climate change and Australian foreign policy
from Part II - Global issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2024
Between 2016 and 2020, Australia began to feel the effects of international pressure on climate change and struggled to articulate a convincing public case that its failure to take decisive action was consistent with national interests and values. This chapter asks how and why the government found itself in this seemingly unsustainable position, and the role that Australia’s approach to climate change played in its foreign policy more generally. It first discusses Australia’s approach to the international climate regime and the commitments made under the Paris agreement, before examining the impact of the leadership change from Turnbull to Morrison and election outcomes within Australia. The third section examines the domestic pressure for political action on climate change, especially during the 2019–20 bushfires and their aftermath, before shifting to a focus on the international pressure that Australia faced. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the state of climate politics and policy in Australia, and the possibility of moving beyond the ‘toxic politics’ of climate change that have long plagued Australia’s engagement with this issue.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.