Pakistani planners are increasingly prone to recognize the many links between water, food, and energy security. The construction of new large dams is seen by many as a concrete measure to achieve resource security for Pakistani for a future marked by climactic variability and unpredictability. This article explores the geopolitical and political geographic implications of Pakistan’s strategic vision of building dams as a way to prepare for climate change.

The standard narrative on modern geopolitics is being re-scripted. Previous ingredients that made up the literature on high politics such as securing resources, rivalries over the control of territory and war plans are increasingly being replaced instead by concerns about the ‘mundane’ politics of global energy plans, food systems, infrastructure and city design. Meaningful geopolitics in the time of climate change, in other words, would now have to grapple with the inescapable urgency for sustaining key ecological, biological and atmospheric indicators at the planetary level.

The growing international influence of so-called emerging powers has had a major impact on global governance, leading to new challenges for established and emerging powers alike. This contribution outlines the expectations of established powers and the debates on the state of global governance in the field of International Relations, as well as the positions and policies of emerging powers.

The G8, Pakistan and the Pacific island states have pushed for a discussion in the United Nations (UN) Security Council on the security dimensions of climate change. As the issue gains momentum at the global and regional levels, India as an emerging power that continues to use energy and other natural resources, at the cost of stressing other countries, particularly its neighbours, will need to formulate a response.