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This article was originally published by Climate Strategies and is cross-posted here with permission.
Engaging in climate negotiations is like learning a new language. The UNFCCC process is replete with acronyms* (e.g., GST, GGA, NCQG, SBs) and even nested acronyms (i.e. acronyms within acronyms, e.g., LEG). It also relies on distinctive terminology (e.g., ’non-paper’) and seemingly innocuous words that acquire very specific meanings (e.g., ‘informal meeting’).
Given this opacity, it’s unsurprising that even negotiators and experts sometimes arrive at different interpretations of the same terms. Words that have specific meanings in academic discourse can take on a life of their own when introduced into the political process. This is not necessarily a bad thing: allowing terms to evolve organically can serve as a real-world stress test for theoretical scholarship, revealing where more precise language or more robust frameworks are needed.
When terms are used in new contexts, they can become less specific. In the UNFCCC, precise and mutually agreed-upon language is essential to achieving consensus. If terms are understood differently by different actors, the door opens to misinterpretation, which can weaken critically important decision texts.
We’ve recently seen this in relation to seemingly similar terms: ‘cross-border impacts,’ ‘transboundary climate risks,’ and ‘transboundary climate impacts.’ Climate experts and policymakers have long used a diverse vocabulary to describe climate change impacts that extend across borders. Likewise, there are many ways to reference the impacts of mitigation and adaptation policies on other countries. Having many words for one idea can be unwieldy, but it is not inherently problematic.
The difficulty arises when a single term starts to encompass multiple and incompatible ideas. For example, some people use ‘transboundary impacts’ to refer to the impacts of climate change across borders, while others use it to describe the impacts of climate policies across borders. These are two very different types of impact; conflating them is guaranteed to cause confusion.
‘Cross-border impacts’ has consistently been used in Response Measures negotiations to describe the impacts of climate action (more specifically: mitigation policies and measures) on other countries. For example, if one country reduces fossil fuel use to limit emissions, then another may experience a decline in fossil fuel revenue.
The term ‘just transition’ gained prominence in the UNFCCC after its inclusion in the Paris Agreement (2015). For several years, the only space in which to discuss just transitions was the Katowice Committee of Experts, which is part of Response Measures. When the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) was initiated in 2022, some of the language and ideas associated with Response Measures (including ‘cross-border impacts’) migrated into the JTWP.
Given its history in Response Measures, ‘cross-border impacts’ is a loaded term. It evokes negative associations after many years of contentious and stalled negotiations. Perhaps for this reason, some Parties started using different words to describe the effects of climate policies across borders and the need for a global Just Transition.
The tendency to introduce new terms to escape the baggage of older ones is called the ‘euphemism treadmill.’ This may explain the changing language for ‘cross-border impacts.’ Perhaps to move the discourse forward after many years of controversy, some actors, particularly within the JTWP, began using terms such as ‘transboundary impacts’ or even ‘transboundary risks’.
The difficulty is that these terms already have established meanings among negotiators and experts working on adaptation. Both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UNFCCC have used ‘transboundary climate risks’ to describe situations in which climate impacts originate in one country and cascade into others. These cascades can propagate through disrupted supply chains, human mobility, financial flows, and shared ecosystems or infrastructure, affecting neighbouring and distant countries alike. In Dubai, both the GGA and GST decisions recognised the ‘transboundary nature of climate risk’.
Where it becomes more complicated is that adaptation itself can also affect other countries. For example, countries may restrict the export of certain food commodities in anticipation of a predicted drought. For commodities with high price elasticity, such as rice, this can trigger immediate knock-on effects on world-market prices, making them more expensive for importing countries and potentially unaffordable for poorer people.
The recognition that adaptation can create winners and losers has given rise to the notion of ‘just resilience’, which argues that we should not just protect ourselves from the impacts of climate change, but that we should do so justly. If we fail to do so, and adaptation efforts generate negative consequences for people in other countries, the underlying dynamic becomes conceptually similar to mitigation policies and measures that have adverse effects across borders. It is therefore positive that the JTWP under the Paris Agreement considers adaptation as well as mitigation.
To avoid confusion and misinterpretation, we propose the following definitions:
These terms will never be perfectly tidy, and some overlap is unavoidable. But if they continue to be used interchangeably, discussions on adaptation, mitigation and just transitions risk losing coherence. Clear and consistent terminology helps to ensure that negotiations focus on substance rather than semantics, and that decisions that follow are as robust and unambiguous as possible.
*Glossary:
Nicole Kempis is a Development and Programme Manager at Climate Strategies. Prior to working at Climate Strategies, she worked in sustainable agriculture in Rwanda. Nicole has an MSc in Sustainable Development from the University of St Andrews, with a focus on reconciling tensions between social and ecological justice in transfrontier conservation projects in Southern Africa.
Richard Klein is a Senior Research Fellow and a Climate Strategies Member. He is a recognized international expert on the science and policy of adaptation to climate change. He has over 30 years of experience in original research, science assessment and policy advice.
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