40% of the world’s population will be voting in the coming months. This is an opportunity for citizens around the world to call for more action to tackle the climate emergency, writes Mattias Söderberg.

In the coming months, 2 billion voters across 50 countries will be heading to polling stations to make their voices heard. Never before have so many people been eligible to vote in a single year. And never before have one year’s elections represented 8 out of the 10 most populous countries in the world and more than 40% of the population.

What effects will these elections have on our joint efforts to handle the climate crisis?

The climate crisis is a reality, and more and more people around the world are experiencing the effects. While millions of voters in the global North are driving their cars to the polling stations, millions of people in the global South are displaced and food insecure due to droughts, floods, extreme heat, and devastating storms.

Sadly, in the run up to elections, politicians tend to move their focus towards national, and local debates to appeal to their voters. This could be bad news for the UN climate talks. The next climate summit, COP29, in November, will be very important. Parties are expected, after a long process, to adopt a new collective quantified goal for climate finance. This international process will need all the attention it can get, and it will require national commitments.

Looking at past negotiations, talks about climate finance are often the core of the conflicts between the global North and the global South. At the same time, climate finance is urgently needed as all other UN agreements will have limited effect if the necessary funding is not available. I do hope that politicians, who are busy with their national election campaigns, also remember to focus on climate finance. This is especially important to ask in the global North, where for example the USA and the EU, in line with the UN negotiations, will have to increase their commitments to deliver climate finance to countries in the global South, while politicians, at the same time, will make promises to their voters, about improved welfare, and lower taxes.

But the upcoming elections may also become the climate’s window of opportunity. Extreme heat, droughts, floods, and storms have made it clear that investments in mitigation, adaptation, and efforts to address climate related loss and damage are needed. In many countries there will be a strong call for increased climate action, especially from youth groups who are mobilising around the world.

With a strong public call for action, politicians may become more willing to make promises about scaled up ambition. If climate change become an important theme in the election debate, the election can become an important springboard for climate policies. If 2 billion voters in e.g. the US, in India, Russia, Indonesia, Algeria, Iran, the UK and the EU vote for climate action, this planet has a chance.

However, even if the election debates may have an important role to play, it will be even more important what kind of leadership countries will have after the campaigns, and after the last vote has been counted. The current leadership in the world has clearly not delivered on their promises to manage the climate crisis, and the question is therefore if the big number of elections in 2024 can bring a more ambitious, and a more committed leadership, who is able and willing to take bold decisions, which are needed to enable the necessary climate action.

One of the key tasks for the newly elected politicians, is to develop, and adopt, new national climate plans (NDCs). These plans, which are one of the core elements of the Paris climate agreement, should guide national climate action in the coming years. If these new plans are not being more ambitious than the current ones, global temperature will pass the 1,5-degree limit, scientists have set as a critical red line if we want to be able to manage the climate crisis.

In the coming months I hope we will see peaceful, fair, and free elections around the world, and I hope a new and ambitious global climate leadership will emerge.