Mapping the Political Economy of Climate Vulnerability in the Global South

The Global South faces acute and existential impacts from climate change, yet we know little about how the different dimensions of climate vulnerability that characterize these countries affect the politicization of climate risks. We argue that, despite little information about climate change and even attribution, ecological vulnerability in the form of exposure to extreme weather events has increasingly translated into political activation in the Global South. However, we also argue that this mobilisation is less likely in the presence of climate forcing asset-owners, especially when carbon intensive industries are strong. Consequently, we maintain that vulnerability to climate disasters can drive changes in political mobilization following climate events in the developing world, but in ways directly dependent on the different local political economies they map on to. To test our conjectures, we introduce the novel Climate Vulnerability Database (2010-2024), which traces climate-relevant risks at the municipality-monthly level in six emerging economies, and present original focus group data from Brazil and Indonesia. Our analyses reveal that, even accounting for levels of prosperity and deprivation, ecological shocks can trigger protests and change turnout, hence igniting behavior preceding climate change politicization. However, these effects are systematically dampened by the presence of fossil fuels. These findings highlight that the distributional effects of climate events on political mobilization are inherently contingent on the carbon economy of the exposed local communities, and why demand for climate politics remains dampened in areas of high inequality and fossil fuel consolidation.

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Host or Publisher SOAS Politics, University of London