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 characterise these countries affect the politicisation of climate risks. 

Federica Genovese argues 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, she also argues that this mobilisation is less likely in the presence of climate forcing asset-owners, especially when carbon-intensive industries are strong. Consequently, vulnerability to climate disasters can drive changes in political mobilisation following climate events in the developing world, but in ways directly dependent on the different local political economies they map on to. 

To test their conjectures, Genovese and her colleagues 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. Their 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 politicisation. However, these effects are systematically dampened by the presence of fossil fuels. These findings highlight that the distributional effects of climate events on political mobilisation 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.