Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnography of the UNFCCC negotiations this study attempts to understand how climate justice and postcolonial relations are reframed and performed. It is argued that climate justice is being instrumentalized discursively and politically.

Paper long abstract:

This study draws upon Foucauldian discourse analysis in order to understand how the performance of climate justice has led to a (re)negotiation of North-South relations in the context of the UNFCCC Paris Climate Agreement signed in December 2015. The presentation argues that there is a systematic effort of Northern countries to unmake the notion of differentiation (and thus of their primary responsibility in the convention) by pointing to the economic development and current emissions of some Southern nations. At the same time Southern countries reaffirm their underdevelopment and demand for the North the transfer of more financial resources and inherently superior technologies in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change. From this assertion the article instigates post-colonial studies of climate change to look more closely at how the north-south divide is being instrumentalized discursively and politically.