By: Sivan Shlomo Agon
The evolving climate crisis is a cross-sectoral and cross-border crisis, whose causes and effects span all sectors of society and all regions of the globe. International law and institutions are, therefore, expected to play a key role in determining our ability to cope with the mounting crisis and mitigate its multifaceted impacts. However, runaway climate change has emerged into a reality of fragmentation in international law and governance, where aspects of the crisis are covered by a growing number of international norms and international institutions with distinct, but interrelated jurisdictions. The aim of this Article is to expose critical challenges that this reality of fragmentation holds for international law and organizations in their attempt to counter the multisectoral climate crisis—challenges that have so far largely gone unnoticed in the existing legal debate on the fragmentation of international law and governance. This Article does so by taking a comparative look at another cross-border and multisectoral crisis, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed the pressing gaps facing international organizations when called upon to cooperate around a global problem that traverses sectors and issue-areas—gaps that hindered the ability of these institutions to meet the coronavirus challenge and deliver a cohesive and timely global response. Against this backdrop, this Article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic and the deficient cooperation marked by the response of international organizations to the crisis offer important lessons that can be used to better tackle the growing climate crisis under conditions of fragmentation. Above all, these lessons suggest that, as we chart our way out of the waning COVID-19 crisis, we must expand the bounds of the existing fragmentation debate, as well as reconstruct the legal and institutional structures governing cooperation between international organizations to ensure that they are well situated to tackle the climate crisis and the emergencies it is expected to generate. The COVID-19 crisis provided us with a critical “reality check” for climate policy and international governance. This reality check and the lessons it offers should not go unnoticed.