Editorial

Abstract

Author’s e-mail: john.doyle@dcu.ie Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 31 (2020), 1–4 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/ISIA.2020.31.15 This issue of Irish Studies in International Affairs draws largely on the theme of the 2020 Annual Conference which discussed ‘The global politics of the climate emergency’. It was an unusual conference in April 2020, organised before the Covid-19 pandemic and then held fully online, relatively early in the related restrictions. The standard of debate and interaction was however of the highest quality and we are delighted to publish papers based on most of those presentations . It was also interesting to reflect back on conferences from 2017 and 2018 on the challenges for multilateralism and right-wing populism, and to see how so many of this year’s papers saw the limitations of international policy action, as a sub-set of a wider threat to multilateral politics.1 The volume begins with the opening address to the 2020 conference by the then tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs and trade, Simon Coveney TD. It provides a thoughtful response from government to the climate emergency and the need for policy responses. In a focus on discursive debates around climate policy, Diarmuid Torney draws on recent literature in environmental politics as well as the Copenhagen School of security studies. He identifies four characteristics of emergency politics: policy prioritisation, mobilisation of resources, the role of experts in policymaking, and oversight and scrutiny of government decision-making. He analyses the Irish state’s response under these headings, concluding that Ireland’s response to date falls considerably short of the kind of response we might expect to be associated with emergency politics. 1 See for example, David Donoghue, ‘Multilateralism and interdependence,’ Irish Studies in International Affairs 29 (2018), 13–16; Michael Cox, ‘The rise of populism and the crisis of globalisation: Brexit, Trump and beyond’, Irish Studies in International Affairs 28 (2017), 9–17; Agnès Maillot, ‘Setting the agenda? The Front National and the 2017 French Presidential Election’, Irish Studies in International Affairs 28 (2017), 45–56. Editorial John Doyle Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction, Dublin City University 2 Irish Studies in International Affairs Su-Ming Khoo and Tanja Kleibl explore how academics can teach, research and write for climate action, from a position of action rather than by-standing. In this they draw on the experience of a collaborative Erasmus+ Disciplinary Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment (Erasmus DELTA) training exchange and consider the challenges and benefits for engaged scholarship, subject specific curriculum enhancement and creative pedagogy. Pat Brereton offers an eco-reading of three successful, environmentally focused, screenplays from 2019 drawing on environmental communications strategies to explore how such texts might potentially inspire audiences to become more active ecological citizens. John Morrissey explores the climate emergency through the lens of human security. His paper argues for a human security agenda which includes climate change and discusses how this requires us to think differently and cooperatively about security, to prioritise a story of shared precarity and collective responsibility. Democracy, rights and climate change form an important theme in this 2020 issue, starting with a paper on reimagining democracy in an era of deep transition , by Clodagh Harris and Ian Hughes, which discusses the impact of crises in established democracies, from climate change to inequality, which have facilitated the rise of toxic leaders. Drawing on the experiences of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly and the UK’s Climate Assembly, they call for the development of new spaces for citizens to revisit the meaning of democracy and to reimagine their role as citizens in collectively shaping democracy. Emanuela Ferrari discusses how mainstream approaches to the climate emergency, framed around technocratic , market-based policies have often left unchallenged the model of development responsible for the crisis in the first place, and have ignored the voices of grounded and localised experiences. Reflecting on the ontological turn in the social sciences and post-humanist perspectives, can allow, she argues, for the possibility of other realities to emerge that can offer a way out of the current political and ecological impasse. Gerard Maguire investigates the relationship between the...