Conference Program

For the last decade, scientists have been warning about the devastating consequences of climate change. Every year, international organisations and civil society demand greater action for states to meet their international commitments, such as the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, as well as other agreements reached in the framework of the Conferences of the Parties to the UNFCCC, which have been held since then and which are linked to the environmental goals incorporated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In this way, the meetings of recent years have led to debates on the need to change the energy matrix and move towards cleaner energies.

In this scenario, Latin America is one of the most affected regions by the climate crisis, and currently poses an enormous challenge for regional environmental governance, requiring more cooperation, coordination, and funding. Given the growing interest in environmental issues in the region, this paper analyses the behavior of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico's foreign policy on environmental issues, highlighting the adoption of measures aimed at protecting and conserving biodiversity, as well as the search for resources for the energy transition. However, the actions of these governments depend on the overlapping of different international challenges (irregular and mass migration, war, poverty), which generates different responses depending on the political context, the capacity for action and the governmental coalitions in power in each country, and which therefore form part of a changing and heterogeneous narrative presented in this paper.

The environmental crisis is advancing at an alarming rate worldwide; year after year, global warming records are surpassed and ecosystems are degraded and disappearing. There are many expressions of the environmental crisis, however, in international public opinion, climate change and biodiversity loss receive greater attention due to their transversality, multi-causality and impact on global society at various scales.

To address the causes and consequences of the environmental crisis, the international community has designed international regimes and contributed to the construction of a multilevel governance system. The results have not been as expected, since counteracting the inertia of the global economic system, based on the demand, transformation and consumption of material goods, sustained by a fossil energy model driven by the consumption of oil, gas and coal, is not a politically and economically profitable decision. Most nations and their members develop for the sake of ecological balance without the consideration and acceptance that we are part of a global and integrated socio-ecological system, that our future depends on the conservation and sustainable use of nature.

In this sense, the general objective of this article is to analyze the dynamics, scales and dimensions, from the perspective of the international relations of climate change and biodiversity loss in the context of the 20-30 Agenda for the achievement of sustainable development.

The aim of the paper is to present the determinants, goals and instruments of Germany's foreign climate policy. In order to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, the Federal Government believes that joint action by the international community is essential. This is why Germany is constantly expanding its commitment to climate policy dialogue with industrialised and developing countries at all levels. In addition, Germany contributes to ensuring that the EU fulfills its pioneering role in climate protection, mitigation, adaptation and financing. Germany's climate foreign policy should also help geopolitical and economic policy interests and achieve an exit from all fossil fuels – in other countries. The first part of the paper will present the methodological assumptions [levels of analysis: state (state-centric) and systemic (international)], as well as the reasons for introducing climate protection issues into the process of formulating and implementing foreign policy, followed by priorities and instruments of foreign climate policy and answering questions whether and how the above-mentioned issue influences the role of Germany in international relations.

This study addresses the enigma of why some developing countries decline international humanitarian aid following major natural disasters. It synthesizes audience cost theory with the new concept of 'stateness' to develop a foreign behavior analysis framework. It seeks to explain the dynamics behind how and when audience costs affect developing countries' responses to international humanitarian aid. The research employs data from EM-DAT and Relief Web, analyzing aid response patterns from 2000 to 2023. The research navigates through the interplay of international and domestic politics, dissecting both the international and domestic facets of audience costs, categorized into ex-ante and ex-post stages. The study highlights that these two factors, audience cost and stateness, collaboratively influence a nation's humanitarian aid response. The investigation reveals three distinct types of aid responses: expression (initial reaction to aid), coercion (using force or intimidation for compliance), and adaption (adjusting to meet new conditions). It uncovers that ex-ante audience costs largely dictate the initial aid response, with nations preferring lower-cost options. Moreover, it shows that countries with substantial stateness can overlook ex-post audience costs, maintaining their original aid response strategy. In contrast, nations with lesser stateness may modify their approach, resulting in 'footdragging'. Empirical evidence from case studies in India, Myanmar, and Indonesia underscores these findings.