Handbook on the Geopolitics of Sustainability

This Handbook brings together more than 60 leading researchers from diverse academic disciplines to examine the complex and evolving intersection between geopolitics and sustainability. The result is a timely exploration of how sustainability challenges reshape geopolitics and how geopolitics, in turn, shape the prospects for just and effective sustainability transformations.

Contributing authors analyse topics such as climate change, energy transitions, demographic shifts, digital governance and planetary equity, through the tandem lens of sustainability and geopolitics. They identify critical risks as well as opportunities for positive change. They also present approaches, methodologies, and tools for navigating uncertainty and advancing integrated perspectives, including from systems thinking, risk science, AI-based modelling, critical security studies, and scenario analysis.

This Handbook contributes to the emergence of geopolitics of sustainability as a field in its own right – distinct from the two traditional fields of geopolitical analysis and sustainability science. It further demonstrates that this emerging field has its own dedicated methodologies, conceptual frameworks, empirical focus, institutional spaces, and communities of practice.

This collection is an essential resource for students and scholars in environmental studies, sustainability studies, geopolitics, security studies, international relations, political science, geography, and science and technology studies. The Handbook also offers valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners looking to better understand and navigate the complex dynamics shaping our planetary future.