The announcement marks the latest in a series of steps under the two Trump administrations in which the United States has increasingly withdrawn from global engagement on climate. Although a future administration has options for rejoining the UNFCCC, this withdrawal is a further blow to global climate cooperation and more generally a demonstration of U.S. foreign policy volatility.

Background on the UNFCCC

The UNFCCC is the first global climate treaty; it was negotiated in the run-up to, and opened for signature at, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Its stated objective is to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

“Framework conventions” are generally designed to promote broad participation, including by leaving specifics for future elaboration. As such, the UNFCCC is quite general, setting out provisions on, e.g., relevant principles, mitigation and adaptation, finance, reporting on emissions, annual meetings of the “Conference of the Parties,” and future elaboration of the regime. At U.S. insistence, the emissions “aim” that applied to so-called “Annex I” Parties (which included the United States) and involved returning emissions to 1990 levels in the year 2000, was not legally binding.

The United States was an early ratifier of the UNFCCC, the Senate having approved it in 1992 by voice vote with no opposition. In signing the instrument of ratification, President George H.W. Bush deemed the agreement the “first step in crucial long-term international efforts to address climate change.”

The UNFCCC regime has evolved considerably since its entry into force in 1994:

• The Parties adopted the Kyoto Protocolin 1997, an agreement that the United States never sought to ratify due to, among other things, its failure to include commitments for developing countries whose emissions were growing.
• Building on the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, the Parties adopted a non-binding instrument in Cancun in 2010 that, among other things, quantified the UNFCCC’s objective of preventing dangerous interference with the climate, bolstered reporting and review, raised the profile of adaptation to climate impacts, and moved away from the Kyoto paradigm by covering developed and developing countries alike.
• Most consequentially, the Parties concluded the landmark Paris Agreementin 2015. It aims to limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C (pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C) above pre-industrial levels and includes various mechanisms to promote the achievement of such goal. The backbone of the Agreement is the “nationally determined contribution,” i.e., each Party is responsible for designing its own emissions plan, which should become more ambitious with each five-year update.

The United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement under the first Trump administration. President Joe Biden rejoined the Agreement, signing the relevant instrument on day one of his administration in 2021. Shortly after taking office, Trump announced the second U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which will take effect on Jan. 27.

Legal Aspects of U.S. Withdrawal From the UNFCCC

As a matter of international law, Article 25 of the UNFCCC permits States that have been Parties for more than three years to withdraw following one year of notice. U.S. withdrawal will therefore take effect one year after the United States submits its notice of withdrawal.

We assume that the United States will submit this notice shortly. (We note, however, that Trump’s Jan. 7 memorandum did not precisely say that the United States would formally withdraw. Rather, it described “withdrawal” as meaning “ceasing participation in or funding to” U.N.-affiliated entities, including the UNFCCC.) At the time of this writing, no notice of withdrawal has been posted by the Office of the U.N. Secretary-General, which serves as the treaty depository.

As a matter of domestic law, the mainstream legal view, as taken in the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law, is that the president may constitutionally withdraw the United States from a Senate-approved treaty where, as here, the withdrawal is lawful under international law and neither the Senate’s resolution of advice and consent nor a congressional law has put limits on withdrawal. The president’s power to do so has never been definitively resolved by the courts. In the 1979 case of Goldwater v. Carter (which involved President Jimmy Carter’s termination of a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan), a fractured Supreme Court declined to address this issue. In practice, however, presidents have exercised this unilateral withdrawal power, especially in the years since Goldwater. Examples of scholarly writings on the issue can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Implications of U.S. Non-Party Status

The U.S. withdrawal from the foundational climate treaty is hugely symbolic, particularly given that the first Trump administration chose to remain a Party to the Convention and participated constructively in its proceedings. As a practical matter, however, the United States as a non-Party may not be discernibly different from how the United States functioned as a Party under the second Trump administration in 2025. In addition to not appearing at key meetings of Parties, the United States has been functioning as a de facto non-Party in other ways, including its notable failure in 2025 to submit a mandatory report on its greenhouse gas emissions.

As a non-Party, the United States will have the right to participate in Convention proceedings as an observer — without the right to vote or other rights associated with Party status. However, it seems unlikely that the administration will take advantage of such participation, given its lack of participation over the past year when the United States was still a Party.

While the world is familiar with U.S. flip-flopping on climate, given the history with respect to both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, withdrawal from the entire regime takes U.S. abdication of climate leadership to a new level. Many Parties may be relieved that the administration is not participating, given its current policies; however, in the longer term, U.S. absence could have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the regime and the willingness of other countries to take ambitious action.

Potential Rejoining

A future administration could have the United States rejoin the UNFCCC. This would also be necessary if the United States wishes to rejoin the Paris Agreement. (Article 20 of the Paris Agreement makes Party status in the UNFCCC a condition of joining the Paris Agreement.)

As a matter of international law, rejoining is straightforward. The UNFCCC provides in Article 23 that a State can become a Party 90 days after it deposits its instrument of ratification or accession. After doing that, the United States could rejoin the Paris Agreement, which per Article 21 would take 30 days after the deposit of its instrument.

As a matter of domestic law, there are multiple future pathways to rejoining the UNFCCC. In our view, the original Senate resolution of advice and consent remains in effect (unless repealed by the Senate) and provides the legal authority for rejoining by a future President. One of us (Sue) outlined this argument in 2017 in an unpublished paper, and the other of us (Jean) developed this position at length in a 2020 law review article. A future president could also seek a second round of advice and consent, ask Congress to approve rejoining, or potentially join the UNFCCC under his or her independent constitutional powers.

The post Legal and Practical Implications of the U.S. Withdrawal from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change appeared first on Just Security.

That admonition is rooted in history. In 1950, following a Soviet Union boycott of the U.N. Security Council, the United States called a Council meeting to halt the advance of Soviet-backed North Korean troops into South Korea. Because no Soviet delegate was present to exercise a veto, the Security Council simply ignored the Soviet absence and authorized a U.N. mission to repel the attack. In short, the United States got what it wanted because it showed up — and its opponent didn’t.

For all the talk about his dealmaking prowess, one might assume President Donald Trump would heed this lesson. Instead, he announced Jan. 7 that the United States will withdraw from 66 international organizations, effectively half from the U.N. system and half from other multilateral bodies. Coupled with earlier exits from the World Health Organization, UNESCO, the Human Rights Council, and the U.N. climate process, last week’s announcement amounts to the most significant abdication of U.S. leadership and influence in generations.

Having worked on U.N. policy at the White House and at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, we know that the consequences are likely to unfold quickly.

First, other voices, far less aligned with the traditional U.S. view of the world, will fill the space. None are happier to do so than China. Beijing has spent years attempting to reshape the mandates, staffing, and norms of international institutions to reflect its own political model. Previously, it could do so only around the edges, because the United States remained the gravitational center of these bodies. Not any longer. 

Consider the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty architecture through which key long-term rules on emissions and carbon markets are negotiated. Exiting it gives China and others a free opportunity to shape parts of the global energy transition without U.S. input. The same dynamic applies to the International Solar Alliance, a fast-growing coalition with over 100 signatories that steers solar deployment and financing across the Global South, precisely the regions where Chinese firms are already dominating. 

Remove the United States from these discussions, and China is not merely present, it is ascendant. And although the Trump Administration clearly has no interest in addressing climate change, a pullback from these entities disadvantages U.S. businesses that are creating good-paying, clean energy jobs for Americans.

Second, disengagement cripples the very tools Washington relies on to advance its interests. These institutions are marketplaces for influence: venues where States trade support, negotiate compromises, and shape the diplomatic environment. When the United States walks away, it forfeits its ability to define terms, block harmful initiatives, and build coalitions that produce outcomes it prefers. 

The International Law Commission (ILC), an independent body of legal experts, is one example where disengagement will clearly harm U.S. interests. Since the 1940s, its work has laid the legal groundwork for many of the most important treaties governing security, diplomacy, and commerce, including the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The ILC quietly influences the drafting of the international rules that bear upon U.S. security interests, military action, and the activities of U.S. businesses and citizens abroad. Withdrawing would remove any American perspective from the earliest – and sometimes most consequential – stages of international rulemaking, effectively ceding that space to others who will continue to show up and shape these norms.

The administration is also withdrawing its support for U.N. offices that promote longstanding U.S. foreign policy positions historically supported by both political parties: the Freedom Online Coalition, which ensures that human rights are protected on the internet; the Global Counterterrorism Forum, which works to diminish terrorist recruitment; and U.N. offices that protect children affected by armed conflict and combat the use of sexual violence as a tactic of war.

Third, the United States’s competition with China occurs not just on a bilateral basis but in lesser-known international settings every day. A core advantage of American statecraft has always been its network: allies who exchange political and technical information, align votes, co-enforce norms, and lend legitimacy to American initiatives. Beijing understands this power. It’s why Chinese diplomats spend an extraordinary amount of time courting countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. Many of the 66 bodies the United States is exiting are precisely where those often highly technical relationships and exchanges are maintained. 

For all the hand-wringing about the U.N. and other international organizations, the truth is that, for the United States, friends inside these systems far outnumber adversaries. Even when frustrated by U.S. policy, countries around the world generally prefer the American vision to China’s and Russia’s. But they cannot defend American interests inside institutions where the United States is no longer present. When Washington vacates the room, even close allies must adapt to new political realities.

To be clear, there is redundancy and inefficiency within the multilateral system. We write as former officials who have spent years negotiating inside some of these bodies – we know their dysfunctions intimately. Many U.N. organizations are in desperate need of reform. Yet even as the United States seeks this reform, it needs to remain involved. 

The reality of U.S. superpower status is this: superpowers can’t afford to take an entirely a la carte approach to international systems. Prioritization is critical, of course, but disengagement is something else entirely. The United States needs to stay active in many settings because it is difficult to know when action in one body that appears inconsequential will have a meaningful impact on a core national security interest elsewhere. Whatever the modest cost-savings that are generated by this U.S. withdrawal, the loss of long-term influence will be far greater.

The United States has always had the ability to shape these institutions, even when doing so required patience, persistence, or open conflict with other major powers. In moments of frustration, previous U.S. administrations fought within the system, rather than walking away, because they understood that the only thing worse than an imperfect institution is one in which your competitors write the rules unopposed.

The post The United States in Retreat appeared first on Just Security.

Originally published Jan. 21, 2025, and frequently updated.

A. Resources

Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions 

B. “What Just Happened” Series

Mark Nevitt, Trump, the National Guard, and the District of Columbia: What You Need to Know (Aug. 18, 2025)

Kathleen Claussen, What Just Happened: The Tariff Litigation Advances (Jun. 4, 2025)

Chiraag Bains, What Just Happened: The Trump Administration’s Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits (May 27, 2025)

Dani Schulkin, Tess Bridgeman and Andrew Miller, What Just Happened: The Trump Administration’s Reorganization of the State Department – and How We Got Here (Apr. 22, 2025)

Stefanie Feldman, What Just Happened: The Trump Administration Repealed Zero Tolerance Policy for Rogue Gun Dealers (Apr. 15, 2025)

Kathleen Claussen, What Just Happened: The Trump Administration’s Latest Moves on Tariffs (Apr. 3, 2025)

Ahilan Arulanantham and Adam Cox, Explainer on First Amendment and Other Legal Issues in Deportation of Pro-Palestinian Student Activist(s) (Mar. 12, 2025)

Brett Holmgren, What Just Happened: Security and Foreign Policy Implications of Pausing Intelligence Sharing with Ukraine (Mar. 6, 2025)

Nicholas Bednar, What Just Happened: Musk-OPM Send Email to Federal Employees Asking for Five Accomplishments (Feb. 22, 2025)

Roderick M. Hills, What Just Happened: Purges at the DOJ and FBI – How Do and Don’t the Civil Service Laws Apply (Feb. 14, 2025)

Alex Finley, What Just Happened: Security Implications of Trump’s Efforts to Trim the CIA Workforce (Feb. 7, 2025)

Jonathan Hafetz and Rebecca Ingber, What Just Happened: At Guantanamo’s Migrant Operation Center (Feb. 6, 2025)

Kathleen Claussen, What Just Happened: New Tariffs on Products from Mexico, Canada, and China (Feb. 5, 2025)

Tess Bridgeman, What May Be About to Happen: Can the President Dissolve USAID by Executive Order? (Feb. 1, 2025)

Brad Brooks-Rubin, What Just Happened: Trump’s Termination of West Bank Settler Sanctions (Jan. 30, 2025)

William Banks, What Just Happened: The Framing of a Migration “Invasion” and the Use of Military Authorities (Jan. 29, 2025)

Ilya Somin, What Just Happened: The “Invasion” Executive Order and Its Dangerous Implications (Jan. 28, 2025)

Tom Ellison, What Just Happened: Trump’s Executive Actions on Environment and Implications for US Climate Security (Jan. 24, 2025)

Ahilan Arulanantham, What Just Happened: Sanctuary Policies and the DOJ Memo’s Empty Threat of Criminal Liability (Jan. 23, 2025)

Andrew Weissmann, What Just Happened: What Trump’s Hobbling Privacy Oversight Board Portends for Exercise of Surveillance Powers (Jan. 22, 2025)

Justin Hendrix, What Just Happened: Trump’s Announcement of the Stargate AI Infrastructure Project (Jan. 22, 2025)

Tom Joscelyn, What Just Happened: Trump’s January 6 Pardons and Assaults on Law Enforcement Officers By The Numbers (Jan. 22, 2025) 

Mark Nevitt, What Just Happened: Unpacking Exec Order on National Emergency at the Southern Border (Jan. 21, 2025)

Tess Bridgeman and Rebecca Hamilton, What Just Happened: With ICC Sanctions (Jan. 21, 2025)

Sue Biniaz, What Just Happened: Withdrawing from Paris and other International Environmental Agreement Actions (Jan. 21, 2025)

C. Analysis and Perspectives

Elizabeth Goitein, Trump v. Illinois: A Narrow Supreme Court Decision with Broad Implications (Jan. 9, 2026)

Harold Hongju Koh, Bruce Swartz, Madeline Babin, Saavni Desai, Samantha Kiernan, Ananya Agustin Malhotra, Pete Nelson, Jake Reagan, Summia Tora and Julian Watrous, A SCOTUS Bench Memo for the Trump Tariff Case: Separation of Powers, Delegation, Emergencies, and Pretext (Nov. 3, 2025)

Kelsey Merrick, The Use of Tariffs to Raise Revenue is a Choice for Congress, not the President (Nov. 3, 2025)

Thomas E. Brzozowski, How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties (Oct. 27, 2025)

Cathy Buerger, Repression as Rescue: The Authoritarian Logic of Trump’s Early Executive Orders (Sept. 25, 2025)

Himamauli Das, Rethinking IEEPA Accountability and Oversight (Sept. 18, 2025)

Conner Bender, America’s Missile Shield Raises Legal and Cybersecurity Concerns (Aug. 27, 2025)

Devika Hovell, Raising the Cost of U.S. Coercion Against the ICC (Aug. 26, 2025)

Jordan Ascher, The APA Authorizes “Universal” Stays of Agency Action Under 5 U.S.C. § 705 (Aug. 22, 2025)

Andrew Miller and Kelly L. Razzouk, Save the PMF Program or Risk Losing a Generation of Public Servants (Aug. 1, 2025)

Michael Schiffer, Congress Shrinking from the World: the Constitution’s Article I in the Shadow of Trump 2.0 (July 23, 2025)

Ryan Goodman, Understanding DHS’s and ICE’s New Powers in Comparative Perspective (July 21, 2025)

Samuel Estreicher and Andrew Babbitt, Court of International Trade’s Flawed Ruling in Striking Down Trump’s Tariffs (July 14, 2025)

Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, The Trump Administration’s Multi-Front Assault on Federal Research Funding (July 9, 2025)

Bruce Swartz, Will to Resist: What Dartmouth Teaches Harvard About Protecting American Freedom (July 7, 2025)

John Lewis and Jordan Ascher, Pathways to “Universal” Relief after Trump v. CASA (July 3, 2025)

Harold Hongju Koh, Alan Charles Raul and Fred Halbhuber, After CASA: The Administrative Procedure Act Option for Challenging the Birthright Citizenship and Other Illegal Executive Actions (June 30, 2025)

Rebecca Hamilton, The Trump Administration’s Use of State Power: Keeping Track of the Big Picture (updated June 30, 2025)

Ilya Somin, Nondelegation and Major Questions Doctrines Can Constrain Power Grabs by Presidents of Both Parties (June 26, 2025)

Elizabeth Goitein, Federal Troops in Drug Raids Outside of Los Angeles: An Alarming Escalation (June 25, 2025)

Ryan Goodman and Steve Vladeck, The Posse Comitatus Act Meets the President’s “Protective Powers”: What’s Next in Newsom v. Trump  (June 20, 2025)

Adam Grogg and John Lewis, The Legal Defects in the Trump Administration’s Attempts to Deregulate Without Notice and Comment (Jun. 17, 2025)

Rachel Levinson-Waldman and Melanie Geller, How DHS’s New Social Media Vetting Policies Threaten Free Speech (Jun. 17, 2025)

Cathy Buerger, Unequal Before the Law: How Trump’s Death Penalty Order Codifies Dangerous Speech (Jun. 6, 2025)

Suzanne Summerlin, Too Big to Be Lawful: A Federal Court Halts Mass Layoffs Across the Civil Service (Jun. 3, 2025)

Kristin A. Collins, Gerald Neuman and Rachel E. Rosenbloom, Another Reason Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order is Unlawful (May 15, 2025)

Mark Nevitt, The New “National Defense Area” at the Southern Border: What You Need to Know (Apr. 29, 2025)

Harold Hongju Koh, Fred Halbhuber and Inbar Pe’er, No, the President Cannot Enforce the Law-Firm Deals (Apr. 28, 2025)

Paul M. Barrett, Justice Department Fails to Address Central Point in VOA Case (Apr. 24, 2025)

Ahilan Arulanantham, Deportation to CECOT: The Constitutional Prohibition on Punishment Without Charge or Trial (Apr. 23, 2025)

Aadhithi Padmanabhan, The Fox TV Problem with Deporting International Students (Apr. 21, 2025)

John Mikhail, Birthright Citizenship and DOJ’s Misuse of History in Its Appellate Briefs (Apr. 18, 2025)

Paul M. Barrett, Unpacking the Voice of America Litigation (Apr. 10, 2025)

Harold Hongju Koh, Fred Halbhuber and Inbar Pe’er, No, the President Cannot Issue Bills of Attainder (Apr. 9, 2025)

Francisco Bencosme and Michael Schiffer, America’s Absence in Myanmar’s Early Earthquake Response: A Moral and Strategic Failure (Apr. 4, 2025)

Marty Lederman, Remarkable Things in the Government’s Alien Enemies Act Briefs to the Supreme Court (Apr. 3, 2025)

Stephanie Psaki and Beth Cameron, Dropping U.S. Biodefenses: Why Cuts to Federal Health Agencies Make Americans Less Safe (Apr. 3, 2025)

Edgar Chen and Chris M. Kwok, The Trump Administration’s 14th Amendment Retcon: ‘Wong Kim Ark’ Does Not Limit Birthright Citizenship (Mar. 28, 2025)

Mary B. McCord, Dissecting the Trump Administration’s Strategy for Defying Court Orders (Mar. 25, 2025)

Rebecca Hamilton, The Imperative of Solidarity in Response to Assaults on Legal Services, Universities, and Independent Media (Mar. 24, 2025)

Andrew Weissmann, The New “Blacklists” Work When Law Firms Stay Silent (Mar. 24, 2025)

Katherine Yon Ebright, The Courts Can Stop Abuse of the Alien Enemies Act – The Political Question Doctrine is No Bar (Mar. 20, 2025)

Rebecca Ingber and Scott Roehm, The Trump Administration’s Recent Removals to El Salvador Violate the Prohibition on Transfer to Torture (Mar. 20, 2025)

Mark Pomar, Trump Move to Eliminate VOA, RFE/RL Ignores Lessons of Global Power (Mar. 20, 2025)

Jean Garner, Journalists Who Took Risks for US-Funded Broadcasters Threatened Anew by Trump Shutdown (Mar. 18, 2025)

Ambassador Daniel Fried, The US Government’s Self-Harm in Killing Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Mar. 17, 2025)

Faiza Patel, U.S. AI-Driven “Catch and Revoke” Initiative Threatens First Amendment Rights (Mar. 18, 2025)

Steve Vladeck, 5 Big Questions in the Alien Enemies Act Litigation (Mar. 16, 2025)

Noor Hamadeh and David McKean, Suspension of FCPA Enforcement Is Bad for U.S. and Global Business (Mar. 13, 2025)

Brian O’Neill, The President’s Declassification Power is a Double-Edged Sword (Feb. 28, 2025)

Michael Schiffer and Anka Lee, Trump’s China Tariff Now Treats Hong Kong the Same as the Mainland, a First in US Policy (Feb. 27, 2025)

Bill Frelick, The Racial Twist in Trump’s Cutoff of Refugee Admissions (Feb. 27, 2025)

Daniel Jacobson, The Trump Administration Cannot Use Award Terms and Conditions to Impound Funds (Feb. 24, 2025)

Mark Nevitt, How the Pentagon Personnel Firings Threaten Our Apolitical Military (Feb. 24, 2025)

Brian Finucane, U.S. Military Action in Mexico: Almost Certainly Illegal, Definitely Counterproductive (Feb. 20, 2025)

Tobias Barrington Wolff, The Attempt to Purge Trans Members from the Armed Services (Feb. 19, 2025)

Elizabeth Goitein and Katherine Yon Ebright, Trump’s Doubly Flawed “Invasion” Theory (Feb. 19, 2025)

Seth Binder, Sheridan Cole, and Haydn Welch, The Disastrous Costs of the Foreign Foreign Aid Freeze on US Interests in the Middle East and North Africa (Feb. 14, 2025)

Laura Booth, Can the President Dismantle the Department of Education by Executive Order? (Feb. 14, 2025)

Scott Busby, Freezing Support to Democracy and Human Rights Activists Undermines US Interests (Feb. 13, 2025)

Laura Thornton, Supporting Freedom and a Foreign Aid Freeze are Incompatible – But Perhaps the Point? A Case Study (Feb. 13, 2025)

Donell Harvin, The Need for Course Correction: The Risks of Treating Drug Cartels as Terrorist Threats (Feb. 12, 2025)

Winona Xu, As Sexual Violence Surges in Goma, US Aid Remains Crucial (Feb. 12, 2025)

16 US Human Rights Experts, Current and Former Members of UN Bodies, “The Trump Administration’s Attacks on International Law and Institutions”: Public Statement of American Human Rights Experts, Current and Former Members of UN Bodies (Feb. 10, 2025)

Simon Lomax, Greg Clough, Morgan Bazilian, Restarting US LNG Permitting Brings Geopolitical Benefits and the Potential for Climate Progress (Feb. 10, 2025)

Rebecca Hamilton, Connecting the Dots: Trump’s Tightening Grip on Press Freedom (Feb. 6, 2025)

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, The Dangerous Sweep of Trump’s Plan to Designate Cartels as Terrorist Organizations (Feb. 5, 2025)

Marty Lederman, The Most Indefensible Aspects of DOJ’s Briefs in the Birthright Citizenship Cases (Feb. 4, 2025)

Suzanne Summerlin, Federal Employee Rights: What Probationary Employees Need to Know (Jan. 31, 2025)

Faiza Patel, Trump’s Executive Order on Foreign Terrorists: Implications for the Rights of Non-Citizens (Jan. 31, 2025)

Sara Zdeb, The Real Reason Trump’s Purge of Career DOJ Officials Should Alarm You (Jan. 30, 2025)

Suzanne Summerlin, Beware the “Deferred Resignation” Offer: A Legally Dubious Proposal for Federal Employees (Jan. 29, 2025)

Stuart Gerson, Understanding Trump’s Choice for FBI Leadership in Light of the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” Executive Order (Jan. 29, 2025)

Adam Cox and Trevor Morrison, Trump’s Dictatorial Theory of Presidential Power – What the Executive Orders, in the Aggregate, Tell Us (Jan. 28, 2025)

Ambassador Donald Steinberg, `Elections Have Consequences’: Trump and Rubio’s Foreign Aid Halt Will Hit the World’s Most Vulnerable (Jan. 28, 2025)

Dafna H. Rand, Stopped Security Assistance: From Counter-Narcotics to Combating Human Trafficking Programs (Jan. 28, 2025)

Andrew Weissman, Why has the Trump Justice Department Not Moved to Dismiss the Case Against Trump’s Co-Defendants in the FLA Classified Documents Case? (Jan. 28, 2025)

Michael Schiffer, Stop-Work Order on US Foreign Aid Puts China First and America Last (Jan. 27, 2025)

Ambassador (Ret.) Dennis Jett, Deprofessionalizing the State Department Is a Threat to National Security (Jan. 24, 2025)

Jean Galbraith, The Legal Problem with Trump’s WHO Order: The US Cannot Withdraw Until It Pays Its Dues (Jan. 23, 2025)

Alex Abdo, A Free Speech View on the “Free Speech” Executive Order (Jan. 21, 2025)

Xiangnong (George) Wang, President Trump’s Attempt to “Save” TikTok is a Power-Grab that Subverts Free Speech (Jan. 21, 2025)

“What Just Happened” Podcast Series

David Aaron, Brian Netter and Mark Nevitt, Federalization of DC Law Enforcement, Legal Authorities and Updates (Aug. 20, 2025)

David Aaron, Carrie Cordero and Donell Harvin, Federalization of Law Enforcement in Washington DC (Aug. 14, 2025)

David Aaron and Steven Cash, The Budget Bill and the Future of DHS and ICE (July 18, 2025)

Chiraag Bains, Dani Schulkin and Maya Nir, Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits (June 2, 2025)

Ambassador Daniel Fried, Dafna H. Rand, Michael Schiffer, Michael Hanna, Rachel Goldbrenner and Maya Nir What’s Next for U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Assistance (May 19, 2025)

Ryan Goodman, Tom Joscelyn, Mary B. McCord, Paras Shah and Clara Apt, Politicization and Weaponization of the Justice Department in the Second Trump Administration (Mar. 6, 2025)

David Aaron, Kevin Carroll, Paras Shah and Clara Apt, CIA Officers’ Lawsuit at Intersection of DEI and National Security (Mar. 4, 2025)

David Aaron, Tess Bridgeman and Suzanne Summerlin, Understanding Federal Employee Rights (Feb. 18, 2025)

David Aaron, Tess Bridgeman, Ryan Goodman and Mark Nevitt, Potential U.S. Military Domestic Deployment for Immigration Enforcement (Jan. 28, 2025)

Steve Vladeck, David Aaron, Tess Bridgeman and Ryan Goodman, Trump’s Immigration Executive Orders (Jan. 22, 2025)

IMAGE: President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The post Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of Trump Administration Executive Actions appeared first on Just Security.

In some cases, these might be topics that were under-covered. Others received significant coverage but still may have implications that merit more attention.

There are of course far more developments that are noteworthy than a single recap can capture, and we encourage you to keep an eye out for other “looking back, looking ahead” style articles on Just Security in the days and weeks ahead. But in the midst of a news environment dominated by attention-grabbing headlines and algorithms commodifying our attention, we hope that this compilation will provide an opportunity to step back and reflect on some of the important trends shaping our world today.

Climate Milestones and Misses

Global climate progress in 2025 was, in a word, uneven, reflecting an ever-widening gap between ambition and the ability to mobilize that ambition into concrete global action. Two highly-anticipated advisory opinions – from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in May and from the International Court of Justice in July – took strong positions with respect to States’ obligations in relation to climate change, as analyzed on Just Security here and here.

But in practice, climate diplomacy produced relatively weak results; at COP 30 in Belém, for example, there was little progress on crucial questions such as countries’ specific individual commitments to emissions reduction. Earlier this year, analysts described a much-anticipated climate announcement from China as likewise underwhelming, and the year of course was also marked by the United States’ highly visible retreat from global climate engagement – with some signs that U.S. state and local governments may be seeking openings to engage even as the national government pulls back.

Meanwhile, one relatively undercovered story in climate diplomacy was the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), or High Seas Treaty, which received sufficient ratifications this fall to enter into force in January 2026. It creates the first comprehensive legal framework for protecting biodiversity on the high seas, an area covering nearly half the earth’s surface, and is notable as a milestone in climate-biodiversity governance and as a sign that international treaty-making continues to function even in an environment of increasing uncertainty.

(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s Climate Archive.)

In the Age of Generative AI, How Do We Know What We Know?

This year saw what seemed to be a near-constant rollout of generative AI tools, including new versions of consumer-facing large-language models (LLMs), an explosion in AI video content, and the continued development of sector-specialized generative models. Among the many complex questions raised by the ubiquity of generative AI, one relatively under-covered angle involved epistemic risks: how society and institutions create and understand knowledge, and how we validate what information to trust.

This can play out in different ways across different types of use. Some specialized AI models used for professional purposes may develop faster than users – even very expert users – can fully understand the model’s inputs, limitations, and biases, potentially degrading the quality of knowledge production and eroding public trust in information. In general consumer uses, the ubiquity of AI-generated content may threaten the (already tenuous) social agreement about reality. AI video, for instance, presents new challenges for civilian protection and evidence collection: not only that manipulated images will be taken as true but also that very real evidence, including of atrocities, might be dismissed as AI.

Scholars have been grappling with these questions for several years now. But with the explosion of public-facing AI, the risk becomes that products will move into common use, and policymakers will be charged with regulating them, before the relevant public fully understands those risks and limitations. In July of this year, for example, some scholars expressed concern about this very knowledge gap when the EU released its General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, providing guidance on how the 2024 AI Act should be applied to general-purpose AI tools like LLMs.

With AI now shaping our physical world as much as our digital one, understanding and communicating about these epistemic gaps is likely to be a key theme of 2026.

(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s archive of artificial intelligence articles.)

“A Tale of Two Courts” at the ICC

The story of the International Criminal Court (ICC) this year was, in the words of Just Security Editorial Board member and former ICC Prosecutions Coordinator Alex Whiting, “a tale of two courts.”

On the one hand, developments like sanctions in connection to the Palestine situation and allegations against Prosecutor Karim Khan, now on leave pending investigation, drew headlines.

But against that backdrop, the Court also managed to continue its work and achieve meaningful progress in many areas this year: the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, convictions in the Sudan Situation and a case from the Central African Republic, the first arrest and surrender of an accused in the Libya Situation, the confirmation of charges in absentia in the Joseph Kony case, and launching of new policies, including on environmental crimes and cyber-enabled crimes. (Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s ICC coverage, in which authors analyze a number of these developments.)

Observes Whiting: “This is not to minimize the challenges faced by the Court, or some of the structural problems that may exist within the Rome Statute, but under the direction of the Deputy Prosecutors and the judges, the Court is continuing to function and do its work. The Court is not invulnerable, but it is resilient.”

ICRC Updates Civilian Protection Guidance to Reflect Realities of Modern Warfare

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this year published its updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians (GCIV), the core humanitarian treaty governing civilian protection in international armed conflict and occupation. This marks the last in a cycle of modernizing the commentaries to the Geneva Conventions, after which the ICRC will turn to the Additional Protocols.

The Commentaries provide interpretive guidance on how the Geneva Conventions’ rules should be applied in real-world situations. Given the importance of GCIV in the protection of civilians while under increasing threat in conflicts around the globe (see, for example, the next entry on this list), and the many ways in which armed conflict has changed in the 60-plus years since the last round of Commentaries, this update was particularly anticipated. There is no expectation, of course, that it will provide a panacea, but by updating the guidance to reflect the conditions of today’s armed conflicts, the ICRC reaffirms the centrality of the fundamental legal protections owed to civilians.

Watch this space for a series from international humanitarian law experts analyzing the updated Commentary, coming jointly from Just Security, the ICRC, and EJIL:Talk! early in the new year.

Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan

The brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), now well into its third year, has triggered the largest displacement crisis in the world, with approximately 12 million people forcibly displaced as of Dec. 1, and estimates from earlier this year of over 30 million people in need of humanitarian aid. Civilians are subjected to direct and brutal violence from the conflict itself, while also suffering from a health system under strain; malnutrition, and in some areas famine; and repeated outbreaks of cholera, dengue, and other diseases.

As authors writing on Just Security and elsewhere have repeatedly observed, the scale of global attention – in the press, from the public, and from policymakers – fails to match the scale of the atrocities. At the same time the global community faces the urgent task of addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, it also faces the question of how one of the worst global crises has unfolded with so little international attention.

A Power Vacuum in Public Health Leadership

While the Trump administration’s controversial cuts to public health programs, including the dismantling of Centers for Disease Control initiatives, the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), dominated headlines, a less-publicized consequence was the response to the resulting power vacuum in public health leadership.

Within the United States, regional public health alliances emerged, primarily among Democratic-led states in the west and northeast. However, even as state and local governments stepped in to fill the gaps, they faced deep budget cuts from federal health programs.

Globally, a July 2025 study in The Lancet estimated that U.S. cuts to public health aid could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030. A December 2025 response from other scholars argued that the study’s assumptions were being contradicted by real-world developments. “People, institutions, and governments in several countries have responded to the moment,” they noted, by shifting budgets, reforming supply systems, and increasing aid from other nations—challenging the notion that U.S. leadership is indispensable to global health efforts.

But while European countries, China, and global solidarity networks have been suggested as alternatives to fill the gaps, a real funding shortfall remains. The UK and European Union member states, led by Germany (which recently became home to a new WHO center) have visibly assumed a more prominent role in global public health leadership. However, many are also scaling back their overseas development assistance due to their own budget constraints. China’s public health contributions, especially in Africa, are notable but far smaller than the resources previously provided by USAID.

Ultimately, these cuts have sparked efforts to explore alternative solutions, both domestically and internationally, but these initiatives are constrained by undeniable resource limitations.

(Readers may also be interested in the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of Trump Administration Executive Actions.)

The Double-Edged Sword of U.S.-Belarus Rapprochement

From Just Security Washington Senior Editor Viola Gienger, who curates much of the site’s content on rule of law and diplomacy related to eastern Europe:

Belarus generally garners little attention in the Western news media, and that includes this year’s curious rapprochement between the Trump administration and longtime Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenka, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Trump overtures even merited the appointment of a specific U.S. special envoy for Belarus, former Trump lawyer John Coale.

The result has been several major releases of Belarusian political prisoners in exchange for easing of sanctions — the husband of opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in June, a mass release of 52 prisoners in September and another of 123 in December, the latter of which included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition figures Maria Kolesnikova and Viktar Babaryka.

Despite the recent prisoner releases, Lukashenka (whose 2020 electoral “win” was widely recognized by impartial monitors as fraudulent) continues to play a double game, cracking down on dissent and jailing others, under conditions of abuse and torture, even amid the periodic releases.

Lukashenka has played the West off against Putin for decades, and he became an influential, though still minor, factor after Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the longtime Belarusian leader allowed Russian troops onto his territory for their military operations against Ukraine while at the same time declining to send his own forces to aid the Russians on the battlefield. There also have been persistent reports that Lukashenka allowed Russian nuclear weapons onto Belarus territory, and he played a role in the saga of the failed apparent coup against Putin by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 that ended in his demise a few months later in a plane crash. Given this history, Lukashenka’s latest opening to the West merits a close watch as the United States seeks to broker a peace agreement to end Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

U.S.-Canada Tensions: More Than a Meme

While new U.S. alliances emerged in 2025, other longstanding partnerships faltered. Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in diplomatic fractures that appeared between the United States and Canada, long one of the world’s most stable relationships.

Although President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions to make Canada the “51st state” generated headlines, memes, and jokes, the absurdity of the situation itself became the story, obscuring a more consequential and potentially lasting geopolitical shift.

The Canadian public, already sensitive to issues of sovereignty and autonomy, increasingly viewed U.S. rhetoric as disregard for the bilateral relationship. In an Ipsos poll this fall, six in ten Canadians surveyed said they could never trust Americans in the same way again, while seven in ten anticipated similar trade and economic disputes between the countries for at least several years to come.

Despite these tensions, Canada and the United States continue to maintain productive diplomatic relations on issues like mutual defense under the North American Aerospace Defense Command and Arctic cooperation. However, Canada is also exploring new partnerships, including closer links to Europe. And while it has often followed the U.S. lead on foreign policy issues such as China, it may soon face new questions about whether to chart its own independent path in the new geopolitical landscape.

Latin America’s Rightward Swing

In Chile, a presidential candidate who openly praised former dictator Augusto Pinochet won with a tough-on-crime and anti-immigration platform. In Bolivia, after two decades of socialist rule, a centrist candidate triumphed, his closest opponent not from the left but from the right. In Argentina, libertarian President Javier Milei’s party enjoyed a “decisive” congressional elections win despite governing amidst continued economic turmoil, with voters apparently unconvinced they would fare better under left-wing policies.

Elections in Latin America in 2025 didn’t universally swing right; in Honduras, for example, left-wing incumbent President Xiomara Castro appears to have won against a Trump-backed challenger. (Author’s note, Dec. 26: In fact, conservative candidate Nasry Asfura was finally declared the winner of the Nov. 30 election on Dec. 24, with claims of irregularities still maintained from both sides.) But there was certainly an observable trend, as populist rhetoric, “law and order” pledges, and economic frustration seemed to fuel a shift toward more conservative or centrist candidates in a region where the left had done well in recent decades, and where right-wing governance had often been associated with the legacy of dictatorship.

But as a recent Foreign Affairs article observed, “the idea that the right is inherently or uniquely authoritarian has lost traction in today’s Latin America, where all three cases of clear-cut dictatorship are on the ideological left: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.” Traditional left-wing promises of social progress appear to be less convincing to voters than frustration with the political establishment’s perceived failures to address crime and inflation.

High-profile elections in the region will continue in 2026, including in Peru, where one of the leading candidates is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted for human rights abuses from his time in power in the 1990s; and Brazil, where recent polls have the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of potential rivals, including the son of imprisoned ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. But with the elections months away, much can still change.

The post Nine Stories That Deserved More Attention in 2025 – and Might Shape 2026 appeared first on Just Security.

The Surprise Theme

One reason COP 30 was likely to be an “unusual COP” was because, before it kicked off in November, it lacked a defined theme or metric for judging its success. Unlike many past COPs where a major decision was to be adopted (a negotiating mandate, a new agreement, significant rules/guidelines), Belem was in need of a clear motif – for Parties and observers to both understand its purpose and measure its outcomes. COP President Brazil and others put forward several possibilities throughout the year, including the Amazon COP, the Forest COP, the Implementation COP, the COP of Truth, and the Adaptation COP. However, the de facto theme – and ultimate metric for success – became one that was rarely mentioned during the year, i.e., making progress on “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

This phrase had its origins in a decision of the Parties from the 2023 Dubai COP, which engaged in their first assessment of progress (the so-called “global stocktake”) under the Paris Agreement. A carefully worded paragraph called upon the Parties, in line with their respective national circumstances, to contribute to a series of “global efforts” that would help keep a 1.5^o C limit on temperature rise within reach. One such global effort, and a key Dubai achievement, was “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

It was Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva himself who introduced into COP 30 the imperative of developing a “roadmap” to implement this transition, and the idea consumed the Parties, media, and observers. The ensuing debate over whether to include a reference to such a roadmap in the consensus decision pitted supporters (the “coalition of the willing”) against the oil-producing States (the “coalition of the drilling,” so to speak) and became the surprise hottest political issue of the COP. And, despite the fact that it was eminently predictable that the idea would not gain consensus (unless perhaps drafted in a highly nuanced manner, and in the context of the other agreed global efforts, not singled out), it also became the unanticipated metric for success, with much of the COP commentary focused on the failure to agree on such a reference. (Notably, the issue will be taken forward outside the formal process, both by Brazil in its Presidency role and by Colombia/Netherlands at a conference next spring.)

The Surprisingly Weak NDC Response

A second reason for expecting an unusual COP was that the Paris Agreement “issue of the year” was the submission of the Parties’ next set of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – due last February but mostly straggling in since then – yet the issue was not on the formal agenda, and it was unclear whether the COP would actually address it. It was a main topic of conversation in the run-up to the COP, and it seemed almost impossible to imagine that Belem would not in some way respond to the clear gap between the aggregate NDCs and what is needed to keep a 1.5^o C limit within reach. It was the centerpiece of my personal litmus test for a minimally successful COP30.

There were many ways in which the Belem COP could have at least attempted to respond to the NDC gap.

• Ideally, there would have been clear language in a consensus decision acknowledging the gap and converging on a plan, whether substance or procedural (or both) to address it.
• Anticipating a potential lack of consensus at the end of the COP, Brazil could have, for example, prepared a chair’s summary of the NDC-relevant statements at its early Leaders Summit.
• In addition or alternatively, Brazil could have hosted a ministerial-level event focused on the latest NDCs in all their dimensions.

Stunningly, the COP ended with none of the above. While two provisions (¶¶ 41, 42) of the main decision, though tortured, can be read to lightly skim along the surface of the NDC deficit, they are not nearly what should be expected from the primary forum on climate change about the latest NDCs – the backbone of the Paris Agreement. The result clearly placed the interests of the BRICS above those of the progressive and vulnerable Parties. To me, this thin NDC outcome, rather than the absence of an agreed roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels, was the true failure of COP 30, given that consensus agreement on such a roadmap was never realistically in the cards. It may even be that the intense focus on an agreed roadmap took the spotlight off arriving at a serious answer to the NDC gap.

Given the weak response here, it was also somewhat surprising that the main decision’s final package included rather strong outcomes on controversial topics not even mandated to be addressed in Belem, namely in relation to the tripling of adaptation finance and the nexus between climate and trade.

• The “tripling” was heavily nuanced, calling for “efforts,” rather than setting a new goal, and in the context of last year’s agreement in Baku on climate finance, which moved away from the “developed countries only” paradigm. Still, it was a substantial addition to the Paris Agreement’s climate finance architecture.
• The trade outcome was also noteworthy – involving three future dialogues on a topic that has historically been weighted against the developed countries (and even more so since the EU introduced its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism). While the dialogues will involve climate/trade issues generally, rather than the proposed focus on “unilateral” trade measures, it was arguably still a high price to pay for the slim outcome on NDCs.

The Surprise Temperature Goal

Last July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an Advisory Opinion address the obligations of States with respect to climate change. Among other things, the ICJ opined that the Parties to the Paris Agreement, through their post-Paris decisions, legally changed the temperature goal of the Agreement from the composite goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2^o C and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5^oC” to the single goal of 1.5^o C.

I assumed that proponents of the Advisory Opinion would seek to secure some kind of positive reference to it in one or more COP 30 outcomes – either generic or specific. I equally assumed that there would be certain pushback against such a reference, either on general principle or on the merits of a specific point. (For example, Dan Bodansky and I did not find legally persuasive the Opinion’s reasoning regarding 1.5^o C.)

However, I further assumed that the Opinion’s champions would not agree to any references in the outcomes that were inconsistent with the Opinion. I was therefore surprised to see the main decision reaffirming the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal as the original one set forth in Article 2 of the Agreement, which I read as contradicting the ICJ’s conclusion.

The Surprise COP 31 Announcement

The world waited all year to learn who would host COP 31. Bets were initially on Australia, in partnership with the Pacific, and then evolved to includes Australia (still with the Pacific) in some kind of arrangement with Türkiye (such as with the Leaders Summit in Türkiye) or, in the absence of an agreed arrangement, default to the UNFCCC headquarters (Germany) per the rules of procedure.

So, it was a surprise to learn of the innovative partnership ultimately struck between Australia and Türkiye, under which the latter will host the COP and be its President, while the former will have the newly-created position of “President of Negotiations” and the pre-COP will take place in a Pacific island country. Previous COPs have been held in faraway places (the Chile-led COP in Madrid, the Fiji-led COP in Bonn), but there is no precedent for a shared Presidency such as this one. Many details of the COP-sharing arrangement — a bilateral document that appears as nuanced and hard-fought as a consensus COP decision – await further refinement. In any event, advocates of climate action hope that the innovative approach will work to promote, rather than hinder, progress next year.

Some Open Questions…

• Is a weak negotiated outcome on mitigation the new normal or will Türkiye and Australia, aided by the involvement of the Pacific, turn it around next year?
• Recognizing the constraints of the consensus process and without the presence of a pro-climate United States, what will be the relative roles of the formal negotiated outcomes versus informal initiatives, coalitions, and commitments?
• Will the interesting side initiatives emerging from Belem, such as on carbon pricing/markets, gain steam?
• Will opponents of a roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels (and on deforestation) live to regret their opposition, in the sense that they will have less influence over the development of these roadmaps outside the UNFCCC process?
• Will the new dialogues on climate/trade create a space for constructive cross-cutting discussion or devolve into yet more meetings of negotiators with sterile talking points?

The post COP 30 in Belem: The COP of Surprises appeared first on Just Security.

SRM is now a commercial industry. In October, U.S.-Israeli startup Stardust announced that it raised $60 million in financing to test a new way of fighting climate change: deploying specially-designed, proprietary particles high into the atmosphere, where — if all goes to plan —  solar-reflecting clouds will form.

Like many startups, Stardust wants regulatory certainty. In an interview, its CEO pledged not to deploy the technology without approval from governments. But SRM is one of the most complex emerging governance issues. Following the failure of this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belem to meaningfully reduce the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, we break down the current state of SRM governance discussions at different levels and what they mean for solar geoengineering in the startup phase. As the number of commercial actors in the largely unregulated arena of SRM grows, so do the security risks associated with this technology.

SRM as a (Partial) Climate Solution

Global average temperatures are increasing as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, trapping a higher fraction of solar energy that would otherwise escape back into space. In principle, SRM could partially offset these temperature increases by creating more cloud cover, which reflects incoming solar radiation before it reaches the lower atmosphere and contributes to warming near the Earth’s surface. Most SRM proposals envision using aircraft to inject particles into the upper atmosphere, where they act as nuclei for cloud formation — essentially replicating the effect of a large volcanic eruption.

Few climate scientists believe that SRM is a complete or unproblematic solution to climate change. It would not prevent other climate change impacts like ocean acidification, and the effect of SRM will last only as long as humans keep injecting particles into the atmosphere. Additionally, SRM will likely have side effects, including reduced rainfall and damage to the ozone layer. Many climate activists, moreover, object to SRM because they fear it gives politicians an excuse to avoid cutting emissions.

For these reasons, SRM has long been viewed as a fanciful rather than realistic solution to climate change. But it is quickly gaining credibility, for two reasons. First, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that Earth’s systems are near several climate “tipping points” that, once reached, will become impossible to reverse. Second, global climate governance has suffered a number of body blows — such as the United States’ latest withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the European Union’s weakened climate targets — over the past year, making the prospect for international cooperation to stem the climate crisis increasingly fraught.

In this context, SRM has attracted attention from a growing array of serious organizations. In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Global Trends 2040 report warned that demand for SRM is growing, despite inadequate understanding of its impacts. Harvard University has emerged as a hub for SRM research, receiving several grants to study the subject. In the United Kingdom, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is working to understand the ethical considerations of SRM, and 60 scientists have also signed an open letter calling for increased research into the topic. Despite this growing attention, there are few rules for who can conduct SRM, where, at what scale, and with what safeguards.

United States

SRM sits in a regulatory grey zone in the United States, with no singular law regulating its deployment. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has limited authority over atmospheric experiments and the ­Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates emissions, but there is no statute tailored to intentional solar-reflection interventions.

While the Biden administration had issued an initial research governance framework emphasizing the importance of international cooperation on SRM in 2023, the Trump administration has not yet issued any policies explicitly relating to this technology. SRM is not necessarily at odds with this administration’s “Energy Dominance” agenda, which may create an opening to pursue additional policy action on the topic. Furthermore, the administration’s deregulatory approach to energy and climate activities may create ground for private companies to undertake SRM research and development. On the other hand, some U.S. Republicans have called for a ban on weather modification, which may extend to SRM.

SRM has also received attention from local decisionmakers in the United States. Last year, the City Council of Alameda, California, voted to stop tests of a form of SRM that were planned for the area. At the state level, 34 states have proposed bans on solar geoengineering, with Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida having successfully passed bans. The lack of popular support for SRM in the United States has also complicated its development. A 2025 study in Nature found that solar geoengineering research faces more opposition than support among politicians and the public. Despite this backlash, private investment in SRM startups is growing, likely leading to a dynamic in which the private sector continues development and testing for SRM without any federal level regulation.

Europe 

The European Union, generally a leader on climate action, has taken a precautionary approach to SRM research and development. In 2023, the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors released a scoping paper finding that the E.U. does not see SRM as a solution to the climate crisis, with member States united in their skepticism of the technology. Indeed, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made clear his opposition to SRM as a way to fight climate change, while the French Academy of Sciences has called for its outright ban. However, it recommends further research into SRM, including governance issues.

Non-E.U. members, most notably the United Kingdom, have gone against this trend. For example, the country’s Natural Environment Research Council said it would invest more than $13 million over five years into SRM deployment through modelling and lab work. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency has similarly dedicated over $74 million to research if climate cooling is proved feasible, scalable, safe, and governable.

Global South

Though still largely unclear, the views of major economies in the Global South, such as China and India, will likely be decisive in shaping the regulation of SRM. Some Indian researchers have expressed caution in proceeding with SRM, finding that its use could reduce rainfall during the Indian monsoon. Meanwhile, Chinese professor and former U.N. Overshoot Commissioner Xue Lan wrote that the international community “must proceed carefully” by adopting a moratorium on SRM deployment. Other Chinese commentators have expressed similar caution, urging that any moves toward SRM must take place in accord with multilateral agreements.

Other Global South countries have taken a more forceful stance against SRM. When Switzerland proposed establishing an expert advisory panel on SRM at the 2024 U.N. Environmental Assembly, a group of African nations and other supported countries criticized the move, resulting in the resolution’s withdrawal.

No Global Cooperation but Global Risks

At the global level, international legal and regulatory provisions regarding SRM are few and far between. In 2010, the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a non-binding resolution urging countries to consider prohibiting SRM pending further research and greater risk assessment. However, the resolution’s non-binding nature has meant it has had little effect in practice. Looking elsewhere, an amendment to the London Convention — which regulates marine dumping and pollution — would manage several forms of marine geoengineering, but ratification at the national level remains minimal, and it does not directly pertain to SRM.

Perhaps the most applicable international agreement is the International Convention on Environmental Modification (ENMOD), which aims to regulate and restrict artificial human modifications of the natural environment. However, ENMOD applies only to “hostile” environmental modifications that have  “widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to another State.” But ENMOD has never been enforced, with no violations against the treaty ever having been lodged. ENMOD raises the question if SRM would be considered “hostile.”

Stardust’s insistence that it will proceed only if and when permitted by international governance arrangements is encouraging. However, as interest in SRM develops, competitors may not feel so constrained by the lack of international regulation. This scenario could produce a significant security risk if states feel that their interests are threatened by unregulated, private-sector SRM activity. This risk is accentuated by the fact that future private sector SRM interventions could conceivably be mounted from areas beyond national jurisdiction, such as the high seas, where they could fall outside of national government control.

SRM is unlikely to be used as a weapon directly, either by a state or private actor. SRM cannot be targeted in a precise manner and will not take effect immediately, making it unattractive when compared to conventional weapons which can be targeted precisely and have near instant impact.

Still, due to the wide-ranging implications of SRM and the lack of effective safeguards, states could have substantial reason to perceive a unilateral SRM intervention as a hostile act. SRM deployment would likely alter weather patterns and precipitation, leading to adverse climate impacts in some countries that may  not have agreed to SRM deployment, for example. Downstream effects could be catastrophic, and could plausibly cause or exacerbate confrontations on the global plane.

Countries must begin the difficult task of developing an effective governance framework for SRM. The fact that its absence has far-reaching security implications should make even governments skeptical of international climate governance, such as the Trump administration, take the issue seriously. Stardust may be the first SRM startup to enter the commercial mainstream, but it is unlikely to be the last.

Now is the time to effectively regulate this new industry — one that just might have a decisive impact on the world’s ability to combat climate change. Without regulation, the dangers of SRM become magnified and the security risks more unchecked.

The post As Solar Geoengineering Enters its Startup Phase, Governments Must Address Emerging Security Risks appeared first on Just Security.

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The catalog below organizes our coverage into general categories to facilitate access to relevant topics for policymakers, researchers, journalists, scholars, and the public at large. The archive will be updated as new pieces are published.

We welcome readers to use the archive to follow climate change developments and generate new lines of analysis. To search headlines and authors, expand one or all of the topics, as needed, and use CTRL-F on your keyboard to open the search tool. The archive also is available in reverse chronological order at the climate change articles page.

IMAGES (left to right): Natural disaster and its consequences (via Getty Images); In this picture taken on September 28, 2022, an internally displaced flood-affected family sits outside their tent at a makeshift tent camp in Jamshoro district of Sindh province (Photo by Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images; Trees smolder and burn during the Dixie fire near Greenville, California on August 3, 2021. – Numerous fires are raging through the state’s northern forests, as climate change makes wildfire season longer, hotter and more devastating. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

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When listing the seven wars he purportedly ended while speaking at the United Nations in September,  Trump surprised conflict watchers by claiming to have ended this somewhat esoteric fight — a war that has not yet started. Yet, Trump’s attention to this high-stakes dispute, if well-focused, could still produce results. A deal is basically written, but a dramatic “closer” who can create a narrative to sell to both domestic publics is needed to lock it in.

The core of the dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is about water and the power politics of the Nile River. Ethiopia’s Blue Nile contributes 85 percent of the Nile’s water, but historically Egypt has used 90 percent of that flow downstream based on colonial-era treaties. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is projected to double Ethiopia’s electricity capacity, fueling needed development, and is an intense source of national pride for a country dealing with significant internal ethnic and regional divisions. Egypt sees the dam as a direct threat to its water supply, given its reliance on Nile waters, especially with its fast-growing population and potential for extended or intensified droughts or flooding due to climate change. Ethiopia has pledged to work with Egypt and Sudan, which lies in between them, in the event of extreme weather, but neither Egypt nor Sudan trusts Ethiopia’s pledges. Adding to the mistrust, Egypt fears that dam is only the beginning — that Ethiopia may move to construct further dams to extract water for its agricultural and industrial use.

Egypt and Ethiopia are engaged in a dispute that is contributing to wider regional instability. It is impeding efforts to stop the devastating violent civil war in Sudan (already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by many metrics)  and inflaming regional tensions in Somalia to Ethiopia’s east. Last month, Somalia’s president rejected peacekeepers offered by both countries and said he did not want to become a battleground for a proxy war between the two.

Once So Close…and Yet…

The first Trump administration came close to a deal to resolve this conflict in 2019-2020, but the deal was never finished. In a strange series of diplomatic events, after the Trump team secured the outlines of a deal, it then fumbled the ball by cutting U.S. aid to Ethiopia, followed by threats from Trump that Egypt would “blow up” the dam if no agreement was reached.

During the Biden administration, where we both worked on this issue in 2021, consecutive U.S. envoys continued to bring both sides back to the table and finalize an agreement. There was almost a breakthrough at the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit in 2022, but Egypt pulled back – possibly in hopes it could get a binding agreement or a better deal later, especially if Trump returned to office. The conflict moved to the backburner over subsequent years as attention was consumed by the wars in Sudan and Gaza.

In the meantime, the Ethiopians continued undaunted to construct the dam. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was inaugurated last month to great fanfare in Ethiopia. The reservoir-filling process is complete and energy is beginning to flow. Ominously in response, Egypt sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council warning it will not allow Ethiopia to impose unilateral control over shared water resources. In a recent speech to donors, Trump seemed to realize the conflict was not quite solved and commented that the dam remains a “big problem” for Egypt.

On the surface, it may seem like this conflict is far from ripe for a deal. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed believes he has the upper hand right now. He is basking in the glory of the dam’s success and does not want to be seen as caving to Egyptian pressure, especially as he seeks to establish a foothold on the Red Sea, over the likely objections of Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti.  A port would be an uphill and potentially dangerous goal for his landlocked country. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, too, faces domestic pressure to project strength as he seeks to hold on to power — he needs to add energy to his struggling economy.

Potential for Good Optics

Yet, Trump is a master of strong man diplomacy and creating optics around a potential deal. He could create a scene where both Abiy and el-Sisi get a win handed to them in gold-embossed palatial rooms with overstuffed couches. He has the trust of el-Sisi, and he can regain the trust of Abiy. The question is whether Trump’s team can and will do the work needed to set him up for success on this issue.

In many ways, a workable agreement is already drafted. The parties were close to accepting the draft text that former U.S. Special Envoy Mike Hammer developed with the parties in the runup to the 2022 Summit. Ideally, the agreement will include provisions for a technical body made up of experts from all three countries and international participation to review and report on the flow and use of water. The United States could further propose options for third-party monitoring and verification mechanisms, including with regard to construction of any more dams, to help assuage Egypt’s concerns.

Ethiopia is skeptical, in part out of concern over Trump’s sympathy for Egypt, but the United States and its partners have leverage. Ethiopia faces a growing crisis in managing unsustainable sovereign debt and desperately needs planned support from international financial institutions. After having pulled back considerable foreign aid to Ethiopia as part of this administration’s dramatic gutting of foreign assistance, the Trump team could dangle new support from the proposed $2.9 billion “American First Opportunity Fund” – a flexible fund in the administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget request to Congress – to get them back on-side. As for the Egyptians, the United States continues to have leverage with its annual $1.3 billion it provides in Foreign Military Financing. Egypt also is desperate for more foreign investment to create jobs, and would welcome associated support.

The United Arab Emirates, with which the Trump team is already working closely on several issues, will be an important partner in reaching any deal and bringing along Abiy. The UAE has significant political and financial leverage with Ethiopia in particular, given billions of dollars in financing provided and a range of cooperation agreements between them. In support of resolving the conflict, the UAE previously hosted several rounds of experts to identify technical solutions to help the countries prepare for drought scenarios. And the UAE could use some positive international news coverage amid continuing reporting of its partisan role in Sudan’s war and the devastation in Yemen.

With the right components in place, Trump’s team could set him up to engage Abiy and el-Sisi and be the closer of a deal. As much as it might pain human rights advocates, given the longstanding and egregious rights violations by both parties over the years, a visit to Washington D.C. and Rose Garden signing ceremony could incentivize these leaders to sign an agreement. Such an accord would not only give Trump an achievement to truly brag about, it would make a difference for a region that cannot afford more war and instability.

The post The Brewing Egypt-Ethiopia Nile River Conflict is Ripe for “Solving” appeared first on Just Security.

Yet the vertical mechanism offered by the ICC for the prosecution of international crimes has both jurisdictional and practical limitations. For this reason, it is useful to consider whether the impending negotiation of a new United Nations treaty on crimes against humanity, beginning in January, might present an additional timely and realistic approach to addressing environmental harm, by adding it as a 12th enumerated act to the list of 11 crimes already contained in Article 2(1) of the International Law Commission’s (ILC’s) 2019 Draft Articles on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity (the Draft Articles).

Examples of such harm abound: In the 1990s, Saddam Hussein’s regime drained southern Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes in retaliation against the Marsh Arabs, destroying a vital ecosystem, displacing hundreds of thousands, and decimating a centuries-old culture. More recently, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have raised the specter of mass environmental harm causing untold suffering to a civilian population. These environmental tragedies, and others like them, represent attacks against human communities — deliberate, avoidable, and often unpunished. As the ICC Prosecutor’s new draft Environmental Crimes Policy states, “human-induced environmental damage has reached unprecedented levels… [threatening] both human and non-human life.” The current treaty process offers a chance to close that gap.

In considering the possibility of including environmental harm in the new crimes against humanity convention, it may be helpful to trace the development of this idea over time, as well as its current application. Adding environmental harm as a new provision offers many advantages to simply reinterpreting existing provisions of the current definition or relying upon the catch-all provision of “other inhumane acts,” as appears in article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statue’s definition of acts that may constitute crimes against humanity as well as the current Draft Articles, including by making it clear that attacks against the natural environment may give rise to penal responsibility in peacetime as well as during war. In light of such considerations, States should seriously consider the idea of adding environmental harm as a 12th crime against humanity.

Historical Development

For nearly 40 years, three approaches have been advanced relating to the criminalization of environmental harm: (1) creating a standalone crime; (2) prosecuting it as a war crime; and/or (3) adding it to the existing texts on crimes against humanity, either in the 1996 Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind or even in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Until recently, aside from limited case law treating environmental harm as a crime against humanity, the only clearly established basis for prosecution was as a war crime, a proviso that was rarely used. In 1986, the Special Rapporteur on the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, a project that the ILC had been working on for many years and was originally intended to be the substantive criminal law accompanying the ICC Statute that the ILC was working on at the same time, proposed adding a new crime to the list of crimes against humanity, defined as “any serious breach of an international obligation of essential importance for the safeguarding and preservation of the human environment.” While a majority of the ILC’s members supported the proposal, the Drafting Committee ultimately separated the emerging concept of environmental crime from crimes against humanity, codifying it instead as Article 26 of the 1991 Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind.

Yet Article 26 and the broader idea of incorporating environmental crimes into the Draft Code, either as a standalone offense or as part of crimes against humanity, was short-lived. During the ILC’s early work on the Draft Code, Christian Tomuschat, chair of its Environmental Crimes Working Group, observed that “nobody fully realized that such seemingly abundant goods as water, air and soil might be severely and perhaps even irreparably prejudiced by certain human activities.” Under Tomuschat’s leadership, the Working Group concluded that such crimes should be incorporated into the Draft Code. However, when the question returned to the ILC, while it easily adopted damage to the environment as a war crime during international armed conflict, it rejected recognizing environmental harms as a standalone offense in the 1996 Draft Code of Crimes and then voted 9-9, with 2 abstentions, against including it as a crime against humanity.

Those advocating for inclusion of environmental harm among the list of offenses in the Draft Code cited Saddam Hussein’s torching of Kuwait’s oil wells, scorched earth tactics and farmland destruction in other conflicts, the ICJ’s 1996 Advisory Opinion on nuclear weapons, and the ILC’s work interpreting Article 55 of Protocol I and Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute. Those opposed, however, raised four primary objections to including a new offense or adding environmental harm as a crime against humanity:

First, they argued that the proposed crime lacked precision in its drafting;

Second, some believed that environmental offenses were not serious enough to warrant inclusion among core international crimes and were better addressed through national legislation;

Third, there was a sense that environmental protection in international law was not sufficiently developed to support codification or even the progressive development of international criminal law in this direction; and

Finally, looking at the comments of States, some of them argued that there was a lack of political will for establishing such a crime.

Explicit Reference Absent in Draft Crimes Against Humanity Treaty

In 2013, the ILC began drafting the Articles on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity. It adopted the Rome Statute’s definition of crimes against humanity, with minor modifications, as the basis for the 2019 Draft Articles. The ILC’s reliance on the Rome Statute was logical, as it provided the first widely accepted definition of crimes against humanity in a multilateral treaty, and the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative had adopted the same view in its model treaty. However, this also meant that certain offenses, such as environmental harm, were excluded. As Draft Articles have been discussed in the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth (Legal) Committee over the past few years, however, particularly under the structured process established by General Assembly Resolution 77/249, the idea of recognizing environmental harm as a crime against humanity has been revived. This reflects the growing concern over escalating environmental threats posed by both State and non-State actors.

The ICC Prosecutor has already recognized environmental harm as a factor in assessing the gravity of a crime, stating in its case selection and prioritization policy that the manner of commission may be evaluated in light of “crimes committed by means of, or resulting in, the destruction of the environment, including the social, economic and environmental damage inflicted on the affected communities.” It is true that criminalizing intentional environmental harm, when part of a widespread or systematic attack on civilians, could be accomplished by reinterpreting existing provisions, but doing so may raise concerns about legality and due process protections. A bolder approach would be to make this explicit by adopting a concrete proposal, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Environmental Law’s suggested addition of a 12th crime to Article 2(1) of the ILC Draft Articles. This would criminalize “widespread, long-lasting, or severe destruction of the natural environment as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any civilian population.”

A body of human rights law that has developed since the drafting of the Rome Statute underscores why environmental harm now properly falls within the scope of crimes against humanity. This includes decisions by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which have “all started incorporating environmental damage into considerations of human rights violations.” In July 2022, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 76/300, recognizing “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right,” and the right to a healthy environment is recognized by the constitutions or national legislation of more than 125 States. This affirms the vital link between environmental protection and the dignity, prosperity, and survival of humanity, norms that were also reaffirmed in the recent Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change.

A Logical Next Step

As noted above, efforts in the 1990s to classify environmental harm as a standalone crime or as a crime against humanity faced four main objections: the definitions were unclear and imprecise, the harms were not seen as serious enough, international environmental law was underdeveloped, and political will was lacking. Today, it is difficult to argue that the second and third objections still stand, but the challenges of careful drafting and building political momentum remain. The opening of treaty negotiations will allow States to craft a proposal that meets current needs and can certainly be carefully drafted. This leaves the only real obstacle to incorporating environmental harm explicitly into the new treaty to be the question of political will.

It could be argued that framing environmental destruction as a crime against humanity is a mismatch, and that nature should instead be protected in its own right — that “trees should have standing.” But law has not yet entirely caught up with morality in this arena, meaning that there are some significant juridical hurdles to doing so. Moreover, as a conceptual matter, is it not precisely the false divide between humans and the environment that has brought humanity to the precipice of catastrophe. As Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring helped spur public awareness of the harm technology was inflicting on the natural environment, stated shortly before her death:

[Humanity’s] attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But [humanity] is a part of nature, and [its] war against nature is inevitably a war against [itself]. We are challenged as [humanity] has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.

Studies have demonstrated that international humanitarian law protects explicitly designated objects more effectively than those protected by implication. The public and media understand the law more easily when prohibitions are explicit, and it is fairer to the accused to clearly define what is permitted and what is not. While existing law allows for the investigation and punishment of environmental harm, the negotiation of a new treaty on crimes against humanity presents a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to recognize not only the atrocities of the past but also the harms facing current generations and those to come. The massive destruction of the natural world threatens not only human life but the planet itself. Surely, in crafting a new instrument to address harms that, as the Draft Articles notes, “deeply shock the conscience of humanity,” this urgent and devastating reality must be addressed.

The 2019 Draft Articles are the product of a 16-year process involving States and civil society, led first by academics, then by the ILC, and now by States and their civil society partners. The negotiation of a new treaty at this juncture offers a critical opportunity to name and explicitly address the gravest harms confronting humanity in the 21^st century. Environmental harm outside the context of war came close to inclusion in the ILC’s 1996 Draft Code of Crimes — and would thus have shaped the Rome Statute and perhaps even the ILC’s 2019 Draft Articles on Crimes Against Humanity. For this reason, as States begin the process of moving forward with treaty negotiations in 2026 under Resolution 79/122, 30 years after environmental harm was narrowly excluded from the ILC’s list of core crimes of international concern, they should seriously consider closing this gap. Addressing the global environmental crisis requires urgent action, and this new treaty offers States an unprecedented opportunity to confront it directly and decisively.

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