Abstract:In order to address the research gaps on climate finance dynamics in developing countries, especially those with low governance scores, this study assesses the 2016–2020 bilateral climate finance to these countries. The total disbursed bilateral climate finance was US$1.3 billion (92 percent for mitigation, 7 percent for adaptation, and 1 percent for mitigation and adaptation simultaneously). Development-focused loans were the prevailing financial instrument cumulatively, and grants were the prevailing instrument on a per-country level. Japan was the biggest provider of bilateral climate finance (US$1 billion) to fund Uzbekistan's natural gas-fired electric power plants. All major bilateral climate finance providers ranked high on governance scores compared to the ten examined countries. Countries examined in this study will need to receive higher amounts of bilateral climate change finance in order to improve their readiness to address this issue and reduce their vulnerability to climate change impacts.
The government of the Republic of Kazakhstan aims to become carbon neutral by 2060. However, this goal, among other climate protection initiatives Astana is carrying out, does not occur in a vacuum. Kazakhstan has a history of environmental degradation dating back to the Soviet era; a case in point is the loss of the Aral Sea, which Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan share. This analysis aims to contribute to the literature on climate change and environmental protection in Central Asia. Kazakhstan will be the focus of this analysis due to the various environmental concerns it faces and the environmental protection projects the country is engaged in. The Central Asian state cannot escape or avoid the effects of climate change and global warming. For example, the country faced a dramatic drought in the summer of 2021, which severely affected its cattle and agricultural industries. These types of extreme weather events will continue for the foreseeable future. The Central Asian country is known for its steppe, and keeping Kazakhstan's steppe green and the country's water bodies blue is a long-term, complex project. To address these challenges, a comprehensive domestic green strategy and a "green multivector foreign policy" must be developed.
Climate change exacerbates electric grid resilience gaps and associated societal risks worldwide. The 2021 Texas polar vortex disaster offers many global lessons on improving resilience. Paradoxically, global warming precipitates not just heat waves, but also bitter cold fronts, paralyzing electric power generation. When an ice storm in Texas caused freeze-ups, the interdependence between intermittent fuels—such as wind and solar power—and gas and nuclear power triggered a cascading energy supply problem. Flawed political choices led to the catastrophic outcome of the crisis. After conceptualizing the gaps and risks related to the disaster, we use cross-time electricity generation mix data and comparative weather data to draw policy conclusions.
Climate change threatens the sovereignty of Pacific Island countries. Sea level rise, wave inundation, and extreme weather events will erode coastlines and undermine the habitability of small island developing states. Together these effects raise new legal questions about the sources of island-state boundaries, identity, and political legitimacy. The Pacific Island region has made efforts over the past few years to secure their maritime boundaries in response to sea level rise, but these actions are limited in scope. Despite regional initiatives like the Pacific Boundaries Project and Vanuatu's case for the International Court of Justice, there are several outstanding considerations for policymakers. Overall, international maritime law was not written with climate change in mind, leaving small island states among the most vulnerable to both physical and legal damage.
The Basel Accords have been adopted by most major economies and have served as the primary international framework for maintaining financial stability through active institutional supervision and regulation. However, existing principles and practices fail to address the physical and transition risks fostered by climate change and instead, focus on internal threats emanating from financial institutions, as well as markets at large. These concerns are existential, thereby requiring different assumptions and instruments to safeguard the global financial system. This paper will examine and explain shortcomings within the Basel Accords and its inability to properly address physical and transition risks related to climate change. This paper also suggests structural reforms that would enable the Basel Accords to improve their long-term oversight of climate-related issues, while encouraging institutions within the global financial system to assume leadership over the transition towards a sustainable economy. These findings contribute to a burgeoning body of scientific and economic literature revealing the necessity of an enhanced international macroprudential policy framework to protect against the catastrophic consequences of inaction on climate change.
Plan(et) A:Addressing the Climate Crisis The SAIS Review Editorial Board Human-driven climate change poses a continual and existential threat to our planet. This crisis disproportionately impacts developing nations and indigenous populations and inhibits human and economic development around the world. Annually, climate change-induced extreme weather events take thousands of lives, displace millions, and destabilize governments. These challenges have reached new heights in recent years as historic flooding in Nigeria and Pakistan uprooted tens of millions; devastating wildfires engulfed Greece, Italy, and Spain; and melting glaciers precipitously elevated global sea levels, threatening to erase coastal populations and small island nations. Less than two years ago marked the end of the world's warmest decade on record. From widespread economic insecurity to exacerbated military conflicts, the climate crisis poses intersectional, unabating threats to world peace and stability. Despite these momentous challenges set before our generation, the editors of the SAIS Review of International Affairs remain optimistic. Our optimism is abundant as Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) enters its 80th year and a new building at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC during the Summer of 2023. Writing for the SAIS Review in Autumn 1963, SAIS Professor Paul Linebarger characterized the creation of our school twenty years prior as persisting on "the basis of nothing but a little money, a lot of hope, and enormous talent." In the six decades since his writing, SAIS has cultivated countless students prepared to meet the United States' and the world's most pressing challenges, outlined each year in the pages of the SAIS Review. This edition of the SAIS Review of International Affairs has the bittersweet distinction of being the last edition published from our office in 1619 Massachusetts Avenue, and the first dedicated entirely to assessing the impacts of climate change and practical policy solutions to address its root causes. Plan(et) A: Addressing the Climate Crisis explores the intersectionality of climate change with major global trends and challenges including energy, financial systems, governance, injustice, and state sovereignty. The issue begins with Anne Andreassen and Connemara Doran, who analyze the negative impact of climate change on electrical grid resilience using the 2021 Texas polar vortex as a case study, weather data, and data on [End Page 1] mixed sources of electricity generation. The authors determine that resilience is a global challenge because it is local: each climate-induced crisis provides lessons for averting disaster elsewhere. They explain that officials must address local resilience gaps to avoid using natural gas as a "bridge fuel" in the transition to renewable forms of electricity generation. While the transition to nonfossil fuels is ongoing and necessary to address the impacts of climate change, interdependence on different energy sources may exacerbate resilience gaps in electrical grids. The Texas polar vortex and other intense weather events linked to global warming highlight the need to address local resilience gaps to manage the impact of climate-induced energy crises. The next two works address country- and region-specific concerns and opportunities related to combating climate change. Wilder Alejandro Sánchez writes about the need for Kazakhstan to implement a comprehensive domestic green strategy and a green multivector foreign policy. The Central Asian state has faced environmental challenges with greater frequency in recent years. A severe drought in the summer of 2021 gravely impaired agricultural industries throughout the country. Kazakhstan, known for its steppe, will struggle to keep its terrain green in the long term. Sánchez argues that Kazakhstan can and will be able to protect its land and waters through sound "green" policies, which will require leadership, foresight, and collaboration with allies. Nitya Labh highlights the existential and legal threats of climate change for Pacific Island states and peoples. She outlines how climate change disproportionately affects small island developing states (SIDS), including Vanuatu and its Pacific Island neighbors. The author explains that Pacific SIDS confront sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and extreme weather events, which threaten their existence; sovereignty; and legal, economic, and cultural survival. Labh assesses that international maritime law insufficiently safeguards small island states from the harsh impacts of climate change, despite strides taken through the...
Web3, the new iteration of the internet, is vying to put power back in the hands of users around the world. Web3 technologies like blockchain hold tremendous promise in enabling this vision with a broad range of applications, from modernizing existing financial systems to changing the way individuals interact with one another in the digital world. While the ethos of Web3 is decentralization, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is shaping its own vision of Web3 according to its principles of authoritarian rule—outlawing uncontrollable technologies like cryptocurrencies while simultaneously developing Web3-inspired projects like the Blockchain-based Service Network to influence global technology standards. Despite the promise of Web3 to decentralize the internet, the PRC is using Web3 as a tool for further control.
As the world recovers from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines the engagement of four low- and middle-income states (Brazil, India, Nigeria, and South Africa) with the obligations to guarantee the right to health domestically they have assumed in the treaty framework on health. Utilizing institutional liberalism (or sometimes liberal institutionalism) as its theoretical lens, the paper suggests the presence of a strong correlation between these states' domestic commitment to the right to health and their responses to treaty obligations in respect of that right. The paper further propounds that of the states examined, those that have shown serious commitment to the right to health in their domestic system have shown a greater likelihood of engaging and complying with their international treaty obligations in fulfilling that right. The paper concludes that by engaging and being committed to the right to health in their domestic systems, these states have increased the likelihood that they will engage and comply with the treaty framework on the right to health. Alternatively, the paper argues that even where domestic commitment to the right to health is weak, the assumption of international treaty obligations in respect of that right can "help domestic social actors in these states set priorities, define meaning, make rights demands and bargain from a position of greater strength than would have been the case in the absence of their government's treaty commitment."1
While much has been made of the Rome Statute's exhaustive definitions and stated desire for strict construction, the Statute and the International Criminal Court regularly employ terminology that is, by its very nature, vague and potentially unclear. Consider terms like "atrocities" (how many people must be harmed to qualify), "moral" (what and how many data points must be considered to find a judge does or does not have it), and "appropriate" (some would argue the only appropriate sentence for a convicted genocidaire under the Statute is life imprisonment). This is not a novel concern. Rather, states have consistently and often intentionally used relatively open-ended language when more precise terminology is insufficient or impractical. Many of the drafters of the Rome Statute and the judges presiding at the Court are from states where such terminology is ingrained in their legal vocabulary. Identifying such language usage is essential, not for purposes of eradication, but rather so that judges, practitioners, and those seeking to amend the Statute can recognize such terminology and how it affects the potential application of the law in actual cases involving defendants accused of the worst crimes and victims who have suffered immeasurable harm.
Recoding Reality:The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism The SAIS Review Editorial Board The 2020s thus far have been defined by a pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, looming climate disaster, and violent conflicts around the world. The culmination of these dire circumstances has led to movements in all forms calling for fundamental change in existing political, economic, and social structures. Technology has been a bulwark and democratizing force in enabling masses of people to express themselves in a transparent and far-reaching manner. Amid these inspiring scenes lingers a more sobering reality. The global shocks already experienced in this decade have exacerbated the fading and inconsistent presence of major democracies on the international stage. State actors responded with repression, state-sponsored violence, and heavy jail sentences levied against prominent dissidents. Alarmingly, technology's potential as a democratizing force is equal if not less than its potential as a tool of repression. As China, Russia, and other one-party states begin to export this form of governance, an analysis of this emerging form of government is crucial. Digital authoritarianism's present threat to democracy is the product of 16 consecutive years of decline in global freedom. As this decade unfolds, allowing this form of governance to take root without critical analysis may be the death nail on democracy itself. This edition of The SAIS Review of International Affairs will address the ways in which state and nonstate actors stifle dissent with digital authoritarianism, defined as the use of information technology by regimes to manipulate, repress, and surveil domestic and international populations. Recoding Reality: The Emergence of Digital Authoritarianism seeks to not only explore this emerging phenomenon, but to juxtapose the emergence of digital authoritarianism with the declining relative influence of major democracies in the face of immense global challenges. The issue begins with an article by Ahmed Abozaid that highlights the growing concern surrounding Egypt's antiterrorism laws, which do not necessarily tackle the state's war against terror, but instead serves the interests of groups such as the armed forces, neoliberal elites, and the old regime. Dr. Abozaid argues that these laws complement other legislation that restrict journalists and reporters from freely expressing themselves online and offline. Egyptian authorities employ cyber and digital counterterrorism measures as [End Page 1] part of their "cyber Baltaga" (digital thuggery) strategy to demonstrate their way of preserving and advancing their domination of the public and cyber spheres. Years of repression have led to Egypt being ranked as one of the world's worst jailers of journalists. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has dominated conversations for the past year, causing many to reassess long held beliefs about power and conflicts, particularly in the digital space. This issue includes two articles focusing on the conflict, each approaching the impacts of Russian digital authoritarianism in different ways. Fabian Burkhardt and Mariëlle Wijermars discuss the ways in which externally imposed sanctions have disrupted Russia's digital mechanisms of control. States' reliance on foreign platforms and technology is a byproduct of the integrated nature of the digital sphere. Dr. Burkhardt and Dr. Wijermars argue that this reliance shapes the regime's ability to control and suppress domestically, focusing on the changes to Russia's repressive capabilities as these foreign technologies are restricted by sanctions. In examining the period from February to September of 2022, they find that while Russia has demonstrated enhanced capacity for digital authoritarianism in response to these sanctions, the conflict also threatens the future of the digital infrastructures necessary for repression. Where the prior article looked at the impact of external forces on Russia's capacity for digital repression, Jackie Kerr examines Russian internal digital dynamics. In tracing the relationship between the state and Runet (the Russian Internet), Kerr examines how the conflicts, contradictions, and communities formed as Runet developed affect the regime's actions, both domestically and internationally. She contrasts the Kremlin's repressive efforts with the digital communities that have evolved in response, offering insight into the future of Russian, and perhaps global, internet freedom. Hugh Harsono writes about the potential that Web3 provides for decentralizing the internet and the People's Republic of China's (PRC) attempts to manipulate its...
Abstract:Today, the meaning and possibilities of the Russian internet stand at a critical juncture. So do those of the global internet. Understanding the Kremlin's evolving relationship with "Runet" (the Russian internet) and the networked communities it has fostered is essential to making sense of the regime's current turn to international belligerence and domestic repression. This article examines Russia's unique history as a digital authoritarian state to shed new light on recent developments and their significance for global internet freedom. It traces Russia's approach to internet control from the early days of relatively laissez-faire development to the current onslaught of wartime repression.
Kosi Ogbuli, podcast editor on The SAIS Review editorial board, spoke with Maya Wang, the associate director in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, about her original research on the use of technology for mass surveillance, including biometrics, artificial intelligence, and big data.
In the early days of the development of cyberspace in the 1990s, many believed that the internet and associated technologies were immune to government regulations. However, significant shifts have taken place over the past two decades both in terms of internet accessibility and how political regimes across the world have responded to it. Non-democratic governments have attempted to assert political control of the internet by increasingly sophisticated measures. This trend of states increasing their efforts to control the internet is often described as "digital authoritarianism." Although this trend is the subject of much new research, the contemporary mechanisms of digital authoritarianism remain understudied. In this paper, I investigate recent developments in the mechanisms of digital authoritarianism and argue that digital authoritarianism is being implemented through three categories of measures: legal, extralegal, and technical. This paper draws on qualitative evidence from Bangladesh, where the government has undertaken all three measures of digital authoritarianism.
Kosi Ogbuli, podcast editor on the SAIS Review editorial board, spoke with Dr. Chris Meserole, director of research for the Brookings Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, about artificial intelligence and the future of governance.
Analysis of current counterterrorism laws shows that Egypt's discourse on the subject has nothing to do with its war against terror. Instead, this discourse seeks to serve the interests of many institutions like the armed forces, the ministry of the interior, the neoliberal elites, and proponents of the old regime. As a result, the various antiterrorism laws (e.g., Law 94 of 2015, Law 107 of 2013, Law 180 of 2019, Law 149 of 2018, and Law 62 of 1958 with its recent amendments of 2020) exist side-by-side with legislation that restricts freedoms, blocks public and digital spheres, and labels any kind of protest or attempt to change the regime as a terrorist act. In fact, this arsenal of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency legislation has become an integral and indispensable component of a larger and holistic (legal, discursive, and material) system of control. This paper reveals how the regime employs what is labelled as "cyber Baltaga" (digital thuggery) to preserve and consolidate its domination of both the public and the cyber spheres.
Advances in digital technology are fundamentally reshaping the nature and dynamics of control mechanisms in authoritarian states. While there has been a surge in research on the strategies autocracies use to enhance control over the internet, scholarship on "digital authoritarianism" insufficiently acknowledges the concentration of power in increasingly integrated digital infrastructures and the transnational dependencies this has given rise to. In this article we argue that authoritarian states' dependence on foreign digital technologies and services can shape and constrain their capacity to control, surveil, and repress domestically. To illustrate our argument, we examine how Russia's war against Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia in response have influenced its domestic repressive capacities. Assessing the period February-September 2022, we find that the war has had an ambiguous effect, both providing enhanced capacity for digital authoritarianism and undermining the future integrity of the digital infrastructures on which this repressive apparatus relies on.
Abstract:Why and how do autocrats use international law to their advantage? These questions have grown in urgency as more governments trend toward autocracy and more countries pivot to a period of great power competition. But to date, analysts have largely focused on the "how," cataloguing the quirks of international institutions when placed in the hands of particular regimes. As a result, these analyses have yet to account for the range of autocratic actors and tools shaping global governance today. This paper presents a novel case—the rise and reach of Qatar's sports empire—to untangle two forces underpinning the lawfare of autocratic states. The first force, internationalization, offers a gauge of how embedded Qatari stakeholders are in the football industry. The second, legalization, sets the expectations around what they can do with industry institutions. These forces together help illustrate Qatar's far-reaching influence in the sport, where Qatar's legal options (e.g., forum-shopping, institution-shifting) are contingent on its embeddedness. This paper's findings reveal the emerging geopolitics of the pitch, where international law affords autocrats sophisticated tools to disrupt open and closed societies alike.
Letter from the Editors Treaties, Traditions, and Tribunals: The Role of International Law and Institutions in the 21st Century The SAIS Review Editorial Board The title of this spring issue draws upon the sources of international law—treaties signed among states, traditions or norms by which states abide when engaging one another, and tribunals where states can go to resolve disputes. In an increasingly interconnected world, we confront transnational issues that reach beyond the jurisdiction of domestic law and require states to create international rules, norms, and other institutions to collectively address them. At the time of writing, countries around the world are still enduring the public health and economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of climate change are intensifying across the globe—from wildfires across Europe to devastating floods in Pakistan that submerged a third of the country in water. This issue of the SAIS Review explores how states interpret and utilize international law and forums differently. It also addresses the difficulties faced by international bodies and the international legal framework in adequately addressing transnational issues. Contributors to this issue employ a wealth of case studies and legal text analysis to cover wide-ranging topics in international law and institutions. The issue opens with original research on "diplomatic access" championed by coauthors Angelica Mangahas, Carla Freeman, Mark White, and Na-Yeon Park. As developers of the Diplomatic Capacity Index, Mangahas et al. illuminate the motives and methods of states that join international bodies and agree to international laws and norms. By collecting extensive participation data, the authors effectively demonstrate how states participate in political, security, and economic-oriented international organizations to advance their own interests. They analyze Brazil, India, and Egypt as case studies, and find that countries with high diplomatic access possess distinct foreign policy approaches, determined by the types of international organizations in which they engage. The following three works address transnational legal issues in public health, environmental protection, and space exploration. Focusing on the public health landscape among low-to-middle-income countries, Uchechukwu Ngwaba examines the correlation between a country's domestic commitment to its citizens' right to health and its international treaty engagement. Using Nigeria, [End Page 1] Brazil, India, and South Africa as case studies, Dr. Ngwaba compares the countries across criteria in domestic public health infrastructure and participation in international health frameworks. He finds a strong correlation between domestic health commitment and international engagement before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he also concludes that the pandemic has disrupted this correlation, as states and international health bodies alike have struggled to put forward a coherent and effective response to the unprecedented virus. On the environment, Cora Maria Lagioia Freire, a practicing lawyer based in Brazil, writes on the international environmental responsibility of states and how the International Court of Justice (ICJ) enforces this legal concept. Freire highlights a delicate balance in international law between the principle of national sovereignty over natural resources and the transnational nature of pollution effects. After examining previous case rulings by the ICJ, she concludes that the Court still lacks enforcement capacity—the ability to impose legal consequences on states that violate international environmental law. Nevertheless, Freire projects that the ICJ will become more influential in settling international environmental disputes as climate change accelerates around the world. Looking beyond the Earth, Peter Martinez lays out the international law, norms, and institutions for space governance and analyzes how the existing legal framework struggles to adapt to the surge in outer space activities over the past decade. Dr. Martinez identifies the challenges facing effective space governance—from dangers posed by the proliferation of space debris to the militarization of space and counterspace capabilities. He also points out the incongruity between slowly evolving multilateral institutions and rapidly innovating private sector actors in space activities. In his recommendations, Dr. Martinez calls for universalization of the UN space treaties in the short-term, while striving for long-term multistakeholder dialogues in which state and non-state actors establish a set of principles for the future governance of space activities. The next two articles focus on how authoritarian states and actors exploit international institutions to enhance their own power. Sarath K...
Abstract:The environment has risen to become the foremost concern of debates within the international legal system over the past few decades, as it has within the international system as a whole. One particular issue has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years: what are the formal responsibilities of states when environmental protections fall short? The lack of specific existing international norms to regulate responsibility towards environmental obligations has led to the search for an international mechanism to solve controversies. This has put the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a place of great influence and allowed the Court to shape how states are held accountable for lapses in their international agreements on environmental protections and regulations. However, by studying the structure and authorities of the ICJ and analyzing some of its landmark environmental cases, we find that, despite evolving in a promising direction, the ICJ's jurisprudence cannot yet be used as a guiding parameter for the international environmental responsibility of states.
The scale and scope of the transnational serious and organized crime threat are growing at a concerning rate. These increasingly resilient and entrepreneurial organized crime groups directly threaten human security and the rule of law. In this strategic context, international law enforcement cooperation is more important than ever. The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), the preeminent multilateral cooperation mechanism in the rules-based order, is essential to the global response to this organized crime threat. Unfortunately, autocratic states increasingly seek to interact with international institutions in a manner that violates such institutions' rules and norms, as well as those of the broader global rules-based order. Because of its institutional vulnerabilities, Interpol also faces this threat. This paper explores, using case studies, how autocratic states like Turkey, Russia, and China continue to manipulate Interpol's systems to achieve outcomes that these mechanisms were not meant to achieve. Moreover, these same states are undermining the rules-based order. The paper argues that much will need to be done to future-proof Interpol and assure its continued relevance and strategic success. At the heart of this work is a requirement to dramatically increase Interpol's transparency while protecting operational security and privacy. This paper illustrates that a lack of transparency and accountability represents a distinct vulnerability. Exploiting this vulnerability is not simply about the organization and its functions but the broader functionality of multilateralism and the rules-based order. Reforming institutions like Interpol to create transparency and accountability is thus an essential step in preserving the rules-based order that generations have worked so hard to create and that benefits many.
