Globalising the arctic climate: Geoengineering and the emerging global polity

Abstract

International Relations has traditionally been subject-centric, ignoring how the targets or objects of governance emerge or transform with different structuring effects. This chapter uses an object-oriented approach to explore how the Arctic is being constituted as a global governance-object within an emerging ‘global polity’, partly through geoengineering imaginaries. It suggests that governance-objects-the socially constructed targets of political operations and contestations-are not simple ‘issues’ or ‘problems’ exogenously given to actors to deal with. Governance-objects emerge and are constructed and rather than slot neatly into existing structures, but with their own structuring effects on world politics. The emergence of the Arctic climate as a potential target of governance with the help of geoengineering techniques provides a case in point.