IB Global Politics Environment Questionbank

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "The shale revolution transformed the United States from a large energy importer into the world's biggest producer of both oil and natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling unlocked tight oil and shale gas across states such as Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania, and politicians of both major parties embraced 'energy independence' as a strategic prize. The same government that rejoined the Paris Agreement and passed the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in US history, also presided over record crude output. Supporters argue cheap domestic gas and clean-energy subsidies can advance security and decarbonisation together; critics counter that expanding fossil production locks in emissions and contradicts the country's climate pledges."

(a) Using the stimulus, identify three things it suggests about the tension between US energy security and climate commitments.

(b) Analyse one political issue raised by the tension between energy security and climate commitments in the United States.

(c) Recommend a course of action that the US federal government could take to reconcile energy security with its climate commitments, and consider its limitations.

(d) Evaluate the extent to which energy-security imperatives will always override climate commitments for major states.

Stimulus

For thirty years, climate action has rested mainly on political promises. Under the Paris Agreement, each state sets its own nationally determined contribution, a voluntary pledge to cut emissions that carries no binding penalty for falling short. Critics call this a regime of soft law: real in diplomacy, but unenforceable when a government simply does too little. Frustrated campaigners have increasingly turned to a different lever, asking courts to convert loose pledges into hard legal obligations.

The results have begun to reshape the field. In April 2024 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland had violated the rights of a group of older women by failing to act adequately on climate change. In May 2024 the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea found that greenhouse gas emissions count as marine pollution that states are legally bound to control. Driven by a campaign that began with Pacific law students, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on states' climate obligations, delivered in 2025. Together these rulings suggest a shift from what states have promised to what they can be compelled to do.

Adapted from "From Pledges to Duties: How Courts Entered Climate Politics" by Professor Miriam Adeyemi, International Review of Environmental Law (2025).

(a) Using at least two examples from the stimulus, distinguish soft-law climate pledges from hard-law climate obligations.

(b) With explicit reference to a global political challenge from one of your researched case studies, explain how litigation before an international court has been used to strengthen states' climate obligations.

(c) Based on your answer to part (b), recommend a course of action that vulnerable states and their allies could take to turn favourable court rulings into real reductions in emissions.

Stimulus

The world's great forests raise a hard question about who controls them. Under the principle of national resource sovereignty, a state has the right to exploit, conserve or clear the resources within its own borders as it sees fit. Yet tropical forests such as the Amazon and the rainforests of Southeast Asia are also framed as part of a global commons, carbon sinks and biodiversity reserves whose loss threatens everyone. Brazil created the Amazon Fund in 2008 to receive international donations for forest protection, and its use of that money has risen and fallen with successive governments' forest policies.

The tension is sharpest when outside actors attach conditions to their money. Norway and Germany, the Amazon Fund's main donors, froze contributions when deforestation accelerated under one administration, then resumed them when policy shifted. In Indonesia, the world's largest palm oil producer, the government has defended its right to develop plantations for jobs and export income, while facing international pressure over forest clearance and peatland fires. Governments in both countries argue that lecturing from wealthy, already-deforested nations amounts to an infringement of sovereignty.

Adapted from "Whose Forest Is It? Sovereignty and the Global Commons" by Professor Luis Ferreira, Journal of Environmental Sovereignty Studies (2023).

(a) Using at least two examples from the stimulus, contrast national resource sovereignty with the framing of forests as a global commons

(b) With explicit reference to a global political challenge from one of your researched case studies, explain how a funding partnership between states has been used to influence a sovereign government's forest policy

(c) Based on your answer to part (b), analyse the challenges of using conditional international finance to change a sovereign state's environmental policy

(d) Evaluate the extent to which national sovereignty is an obstacle to protecting forests that function as a global commons. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.

Stimulus

Text extract (adapted): "Environmental activism is among the most dangerous forms of political action. According to the campaign group Global Witness, nearly 2,000 land and environmental defenders were killed between 2012 and 2022, most of them in Latin America and many of them Indigenous people opposing mining, logging and agribusiness. The 2016 murder of the Honduran Indigenous leader Berta Caceres, who had led resistance to the Agua Zarca dam, drew global attention. In response to such violence, Latin American and Caribbean states adopted the Escazu Agreement, which entered into force in 2021 as the first binding treaty to include specific protections for environmental defenders, guaranteeing access to information, public participation and justice in environmental matters."

(a) Using the stimulus, identify three things it suggests about the position of environmental defenders.

(b) Analyse one political issue raised by the violence faced by environmental defenders.

(c) Recommend a course of action that governments and international bodies could take to better protect environmental defenders, and consider its limitations.

(d) Evaluate the extent to which protecting environmental defenders is essential to effective environmental governance.

(d) Evaluate the extent to which framing climate finance as compensation for harm, rather than as investment in mitigation, strengthens the position of vulnerable states in global environmental politics. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.

(d) Evaluate the extent to which turning climate commitments into binding legal obligations is an effective way to compel state action on the environment. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.