The impacts of COVID-19 on climate diplomacy
Billed as a ‘super year’ for climate diplomacy, international efforts to address the climate crisis in 2020 were among the myriad processes affected by COVID-19. Amid worldwide travel restrictions and lockdown measures, climate diplomacy moved to virtual mode. This learning paper provides a theoretical framework to assess how the Least Developed Countries (LDC) influenced climate diplomacy before the pandemic, and further explores their experiences of climate diplomacy during COVID-19. It offers recommendations for how policymakers from the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), the international community and the LDC Group might support LDCs to effectively engage in the new format of virtual climate diplomacy and address some of the challenges caused by the pandemic.
