Announcements
Prof. Grossman Discusses Climate Politics in Developing Countries on VoxDevTalk
Guy Grossman, Co-Director of PDRI-DevLab and David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations, recently joined VoxDevTalk to discuss the politics of climate change in developing countries.
Drawing on a new review co-authored with Audrey Sacks and Alice Xu, Grossman examines why communities experiencing failing harvests, drying rivers, worsening floods, and other environmental changes often respond through private adaptation rather than political action or demands for government accountability.
A central theme of the conversation is the gap between widespread concern about climate change and the political demand needed to address it. Although many people across Africa, Asia, and Latin America are deeply concerned about changing environmental conditions, these experiences do not automatically become political issues. Media, political leaders, and local institutions can play an important role in connecting individual hardship to broader questions of public policy and government responsibility.
The conversation also challenges the assumption that democratic institutions necessarily produce stronger environmental outcomes. Grossman argues that political incentives, state capacity, and the distribution of power often matter more than institutional labels in determining whether governments protect natural resources or allow them to be exploited for short-term political gain.
Grossman also discusses how climate policies can become more politically sustainable by producing visible and immediate benefits, including employment, lower energy costs, cleaner air, and greater economic security. Policies that create tangible gains can build constituencies that support climate action over the longer term.
The episode further highlights the importance of secure land rights and meaningful local authority, particularly for Indigenous communities, informal urban residents, and other groups that are disproportionately exposed to climate risks but often excluded from decisions about adaptation and environmental protection.
As Grossman notes, “Climate harm isn’t just weather happening to people; it’s a distribution, and that distribution reflects who has power and who doesn’t. Which means that it’s chosen, and the good thing is that it could also be chosen differently.”
The conversation draws on the article “The Politics of Climate Change in the Developing World”, published in the 2026 volume of the Annual Review of Political Science.
🎧 Listen to the full VoxDevTalk using the audio player above.