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Presentation short abstract

This paper critically analyzes maps from COP28 and how these cartographic outputs reflect global power relations. By evaluating multiple aspects of mapping, from mediums to accessibility, the paper examines mapping’s role in questions of necropolitics and power in international climate governance.

Presentation long abstract

In international climate governance, maps are crucial to the production of climatic knowledge and the distribution of information about climate change. This paper interrogates the use of cartography in global climate negotiations by evaluating maps as producers and enforcers of Foucauldian power relations. Through critically analyzing the realities created by maps as authoritative entities in the negotiations at the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28), this paper aims to show how the processes and outputs of mapping contribute to the necropolitical nature of international climate governance and influence power relations between various stakeholders.

The paper evaluates the background, content, and use of 198 maps collected from COP28, including aspects such as their organizational affiliation and accessibility. Based on these map elements, the maps are then analyzed as either reinforcing or resisting neoliberal narratives in the necropolitical arena of climate negotiations. Drawing on critical theory from the fields of cartography, geographic information systems, and remote sensing, this paper evaluates maps as social creations that, rather than being objective representations of the world as it is, create their own subjective realities as actors in climate necropolitics.

Whenever a cartographic output is shown in global climate negotiations, power is produced. Understanding the power dynamics between the map, the reality it creates, and the audience observing the map is vital to how necropolitics operates in international climate governance and how cartographic outputs can generate power as a form of opposition to dominant neoliberal climate solutionism.