UNFCCC negotiations play an influential role in establishing the norms, principles and priorities for international climate action, making them ripe for study to gain insights into how power dynamics between and within countries play out to influence international climate policy. Well-documented evidence demonstrates the deeply entrenched systemic inequalities that already underpin UNFCCC negotiations, such as poor representation of marginalized and Indigenous communities that bear a disproportionate burden of the effects of climate change.

The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated these inequalities, putting certain groups at a further disadvantage when trying to participate in climate negotiations.

Applying a critical climate justice lens, authors show that in order for UNFCCC climate negotiations to withstand to global crises, the process needs to transcend a surface-level attempt at achieving justice through representation and shift power to poor and climate-vulnerable countries and populations.

The authors make the following recommendations for correcting these inequalities:

1) The UNFCCC can take short-term actions, such as offering larger negotiating rooms to improve observer participation and greater investment in virtual negotiation observation, and offering support to help participants overcome travel costs travel and visa barriers.

2) The UNFCCC can offer training and capacity-building to ensure that civil society organizations, Global South delegates and youth in particular have the knowledge and support to navigate and effectively engage in the negotiations.

3) Global North actors can build allyship with the Global South and apply pressure to fellow Global North governments and negotiators to deliver and ensure equity and justice are at the heart of climate action.

4) The UNFCCC as a neutral body could play a stronger role in ensuring that geopolitical power dynamics do not permeate into the negotiations and that all Parties are given an equal voice in these processes.

5) Highlighting the global power dynamics at the root of every global crisis could bring attention to power dynamics with the climate negotiations and enable greater solidarity and joint action. Actions can include large-scale accountability movements, including building up anti-colonial movements through non-governmental organizations in the Global North that can motivate citizens to hold their governments accountable and address the causes of unequal power dynamics.