INTRODUCTION

The second half of this book focuses on the cosmopolitan assessment of the global response to climate change, both multilateral and transnational. Now that the book has assessed the multilateral climate change response, it turns to assessing transnational responses. Chapter 4 explained that both multilateral actors under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and actors involved in transnational climate change governance processes have a moral responsibility to enable a condition of climate justice, due to their capability of restructuring the social and political context so that the three demands defended in this book can be met. Furthermore, it was explained that although multilateral actors are most responsible for enabling a condition of justice in the case of climate change, transnational actors must act on their responsibilities if multilateral actors fail to enable a condition of climate change justice. The previous chapter assessed the multilateral climate change response and argued that it has unequivocally failed to fully enable any of the three demands of justice set out in this book. This failure implies that transnational climate change governance actors have a responsibility to enable these demands and thereby facilitate a just response to the climate change problem.

The purpose of the current chapter is therefore to assess to what extent transnational actors enable a condition of justice in the case of climate change. Further to this, the chapter aims to provide a broad-brush overview of transnational climate change governance. This will allow readers to develop an understanding of the vast and rapidly changing non-state climate change response. To provide this overview, the chapter makes use of both existing climate change governance research and ten examples of transnational climate change governance initiatives. This allows the chapter to explain how climate change governance has developed and where it stands today. Mirroring the previous chapter, the current chapter will focus on one demand of climate justice at a time, assessing both what has been promised by transnational actors and what has been achieved so far. The final part of the chapter summarises the findings made, compares them to those made in the previous chapter and considers what role multilateral and transnational actors might play in the post-Paris Agreement climate change regime. This will be expanded on in the conclusion of the book.