IOs and Climate Change: Toward Global Eco-Social Policy

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, climate change poses a major challenge to the work of IOs. This chapter contextualizes the historical shift from more compartmentalized understandings of climate change at the IO level, toward the current understanding of climate change as a pervasive threat to social policy across various issue areas. Fueled by ongoing discourse surrounding the Sustainable Development Agenda at the United Nations, a multiplicity of IOs are framing social policy issues in relation to climate change that may have traditionally been viewed as largely separate. The cross-cutting nature of the issue for IOs is highlighted, and as illustrated via an exploration of climate insurance as a social policy tool, climate change has led to compelling developments regarding the archetypal roles of IOs as actors of soft governance, raising questions for the future of IOs in the context of climate change and social policy engagement.