Authoritarianism is supercharging the climate crisis

OpEd by Dr Marta Schaaf & Nazia Erum

The world’s slide into authoritarian practices is accelerating the climate crisis. At its core, the authoritarian goal is typically to enable resource consolidation for a few. Such projects pursue muscular governance that puts the concerns of these few people ahead of the planet, while weaponising disinformation and dissatisfaction.

The increasing adoption of authoritarian tactics by leaders, including in democracies, and their corporate allies are further entrenching fossil fuels. The United States, an economic behemoth and number one cumulative emitter of greenhouse gas, is one such example.

Globally we are seeing authoritarians aggressively expand their control of fossil fuel infrastructure, attack climate change expertise, and disrupt the social cohesion needed to demand change. The result is a global feedback loop of disinformation, regulatory sabotage, coercive diplomacy and entrenched fossil-fuel dependency. This is making the transition to sustainably produced renewable energy and life-saving climate adaptation far more precarious.

The playbook: Suppress truth, lock in fossil power, crush dissent

Authoritarian projects tend to advance through three core tactics.

• First, they not only trash climate science but discredit the very idea of expertise and manipulate the information ecosystem to breed cynicism. A report compiled by a group of “independent experts”, convened by the US Department of Energy, says projections of future global warming are exaggerated and climate action could do more harm than good. Similarly, Javier Milei, president of Argentina, actively pushes the lie that climate change is not due to human activity. Also, Russia’s state-backed TV station has rolled out an “alternative perspective” training programme for journalists in Africa, explicitly pitching themselves as a counterweight to coverage on climate change and LGBTQ+ issues. Coordinated disinformation is but one tactic in the larger strategy of diminishing the credibility of the scientific establishment. This also entails demonising scientists, defunding their institutions, cancelling their projects and co-opting platforms and forums to share pro-fossil-fuel narratives and policies.

• Second, many authoritarians lock in fossil dependence at home and abroad by exploiting economic interdependence and asymmetries of power. The recent efforts of the US are a case in point. Following the extraordinary capture of President Nicolás Maduro by US special forces, President Donald Trump said the US intended to tap Venezuela’s oil reserves. Trump has also said he would like to take Iran’s oil amid the ongoing battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz through which about 25% of the world’s seaborne oil passes. The US has made the purchase of its so-called “natural” gas (methane) a condition in some of its tariff negotiations. It bullied diplomats and threatened tariffs and sanctions to halt a long-negotiated global levy on ships’ carbon which Trump denounced as a “scam”. And it engaged in muscular lobbying to undermine corporate sustainability legislation in the European Union.

• Third, as the American philosopher Jason Stanley has documented in his book How Fascism Works, authoritarian projects intentionally stoke social divisions, sabotage community relationships and divert attention to the wrong ‘bad guys’ to cement power and hobble collective action. People power has played a critical role in fomenting climate commitments and action: from the “Fridays for Future” movement to the group of Pacific Island students that took the fight against climate change to the International Court of Justice. Yet across the world, governments are rewriting laws to make peaceful mobilisation by climate and social justice movements risky and costly. When protest is treated as a crime, the political cost of fossil expansion falls and the social cost of climate impacts rises. Governments are also defunding public services using antagonistic rhetoric about outsiders to justify cutting health, emergency and social welfare services that are essential for climate resilience. 

Transnational authoritarianism hurts the ability to adapt and survive

What we face today is not a random scatter of national decisions. It is a coordinated ecosystem of power. Networks of authoritarian-leaning actors share tactics, give each other diplomatic cover and coerce other states into obeying.

The “Axis of Petrostates” is exerting wide geopolitical influence by offering developing nations affordable energy access in exchange for long-term infrastructural lock-in. Cuts in global aid for climate mitigation and adaptation, and paltry payments into the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage, have been accompanied by denial of any liability for climate harms.

These cuts and refusals to recognise liability are overlaid on an economic system that consistently favours high-income countries who fail to ditch fossil-fuel subsidies; an unfair global tax system that allows multinational corporations to shift some profits to advantageous tax jurisdictions; and an “investor-state dispute settlement” regime that allows foreign fossil-fuel companies to claim compensation if climate policies affect their profits.

The climate implications are obvious: a fossil-fuel economy is foisted on countries that lack the power or courage to resist, and they find themselves depleted of funds to invest in systems like health – required to save lives in the face of growing climate disasters.

The climate implications are obvious: a fossil-fuel economy is foisted on countries that lack the power or courage to resist, and they find themselves depleted of funds to invest in systems like health – required to save lives in the face of growing climate disasters.

Meanwhile, multilateral systems are also being weaponised for authoritarian ends. The consensus rule governing the world’s multilateral climate change forum, the UNFCCC, was designed to ensure all countries are heard. But it is being exploited by fossil-fuel‑aligned states to undermine the Paris Agreement’s call to act on the “best available science”. The US has gone even further by formally withdrawing from climate and other multilateral fora, and Argentina and Russia were more hostile to climate action at the most recent UNFCCC annual Conference of the Parties (COP) than in the past.

Many current authoritarian practices also share a common ideological base: anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism. Political scientist Cara Daggett calls this fusion “petro-masculinity“. Authoritarians often hark back to an idealised past, and are increasingly protagonists in the so-called “culture wars” that drive social atomisation. Recent investigations exposed fossil-fuel money flowing into the anti‑trans movements and pushback on a gender action plan at the recent COP30 meetings. The strategy is deliberate: create cultural distraction, fuel division, keep environmental deregulation and fossil-fuel expansion out of the spotlight.

The case for human-rights-centred climate politics

It is tempting to treat human rights as a moral add-on in climate policy. That is a mistake. Rights provide a mobilising vision and a framework for effective climate action. Concern about climate change is a widely shared value, and studies of authoritarian practices show that values-based organising can be integral to resisting. The Yale University Program on Climate Communications has found that fear of climate change and support for climate action is widespread in countries where authoritarian momentum is strong. This includes Argentina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, El Salvador, India, Mali, Senegal, the United States and Uzbekistan, among others.

When rights defenders and communities organise, expose facts and litigate, they can shift trajectories. Last year, the International Court of Justice published an historic advisory opinion on states’ climate change obligations. It was made possible by a global campaign that originated with 27 law students from the Pacific Islands. People power can force governments to confront responsibilities they would otherwise dodge.

When rights defenders and communities organise, expose facts and litigate, they can shift trajectories.

Yet the international human rights system is under attack from authoritarianism: defunded, delegitimised and weakened by double standards. Just as activists of all stripes march in the streets proclaiming: “Whose streets? Our streets!”, the same is true for the international human rights system. Retreating now would mean surrendering the very space where major climate breakthroughs are won. It is simply not an option.

We must build coalitions beyond the UN. One such grouping is the “coalition of the willing”: world leaders who want to move faster on a just transition from fossil fuels. This past week they convened the inaugural conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. It showed there is political appetite for states to defossilise the global economy and embark on just transitions. But that momentum must now translate into concrete action rooted in human rights. We must wholeheartedly support these efforts, as well as push for the adoption of a fossil fuel treaty.

The draft 2026 UN climate resolution proposed by the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu is another act of leadership from those fighting for survival. They understand what is at stake: without stronger norms and legal tools to counter “veto politics”, the Paris Agreement goals will remain hostage to the few who want a permanent fossil-fuel economy.

These efforts show how determined countries can break the deadlock created by authoritarianism-inclined petrostates.

Humanity must win, and it will by defending the rights that make climate action possible, by fiercely guarding civic space where people can fight for their future, and by refusing to let authoritarian obstruction dictate the fate of all of us in favour of the short-term interests of the few.

First published in Dialogue.Earth

Dr Marta Schaaf is the director of the Climate, Economic and Social Justice and Corporate Accountability programme at Amnesty International. She has spent the last 25 years working at the interface of health and human rights in the NGO sector and academia.

Nazia Erum works with Amnesty International’s Global News and Media team, challenging injustice, influencing public debate and driving attention to human rights crises.

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