025 did not topple institutions, it unravelled them to reveal their obsolescence and limits. Many global and regional bodies archaically operate under mandates written for an era when crises were less existential and when climate disruption sat on the margins of policy rather than at its center. Those mandates assumed a world where economic shocks were transient, where energy and environmental issues were less intertwined, and where development and security were mostly questions of trade, finance, and territorial stability. That world is long behind us. Yet, its institutional architecture remains.
This year displayed the price of this incongruity. Climate–driven droughts and floods debilitated supply chains, labor markets, and migration. Across the world, prolonged heatwaves strained electricity grids and reduced hydropower output, exposing energy market rules designed for price efficiency rather than resilience. Food systems grappled with snowballing weather extremes. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) notes climate impacts as a growing driver of food instability, underscoring risks to availability and access. These pressures are cumulative and structural, but institutions increasingly respond with the short attention span of the electoral cycles that shape their mandates. Climate remains framed as an environmental concern rather than the context in which economic, political, and security challenges now unfold. The result is drift. Institutions are not failing because they lack expertise. They are failing because they are designed to manage isolated shocks rather than systemic, cross–sectoral risk.
For all the rhetoric of adaptation, 2025 delivered remarkably little institutional progress. COP once again produced more carefully brokered language masking the absence of binding commitments and a final communiqué that gestured towards ambition while avoiding anything that could possibly disrupt the status quo. This reflects the limits of a consensus–based process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose mandate is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations and facilitate cooperation but not to enforce obligations beyond voluntary commitments. The policy conversation, while never centered on climate to begin with, drifted even further towards competitiveness, industrial strategy, and an increasingly transactional, winner–takes–all approach to trade policy.
Beyond climate diplomacy, the same mandate mismatch appeared across economic and development institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) notes that climate change poses significant macroeconomic and financial risks, prompting efforts to mainstream climate risk into surveillance and capacity development, yet its core mandate remains rooted in short-term fiscal and balance–of–payments stability.
The lesson is unambiguous. Governance now warrants an acceptance that climate is no longer a thematic category, it is the overarching operating environment for every economic, security, and social system. It requires planning frameworks that survive elections. It requires mandates that link near-term political authority to long–term responsibility. Without these changes, institutions will appallingly continue to misread the risks they face and misallocate their attention.
Looking ahead, practical reforms matter. Adaptation finance must reposition itself from discretionary promises to predictable commitments. Economic and development institutions necessitate integration of climate into their core mandates rather than delegating it to specialist units, treating climate adaptation and policy as though the environment exists in its own silo. Planning cycles must extend beyond electoral timelines and move toward long–term risk governance. These are not aspirational ideas, they are the minimum adjustments required for institutions to remain relevant.
If institutions cling to mandates configured by a world that no longer exists, they will continue to falter. If they evolve to meet us in the world we have become, they can once again serve as anchors during periods of uncertainty. The space for institutional renewal still exists. The question is whether institutions will choose to inhabit it.
a global affairs media network
The mandates that no longer serve us
hoto by Oleksandr Sushko on Unsplash
January 12, 2026
Our institutions are not collapsing—they are misaligned with reality, being designed for isolated shocks rather than systemic conditions such as climate change. This mismatch, and a growing institutional sensitivity to election styles, make governance drifting and reactive, writes Namrata Bhandari.
2
025 did not topple institutions, it unravelled them to reveal their obsolescence and limits. Many global and regional bodies archaically operate under mandates written for an era when crises were less existential and when climate disruption sat on the margins of policy rather than at its center. Those mandates assumed a world where economic shocks were transient, where energy and environmental issues were less intertwined, and where development and security were mostly questions of trade, finance, and territorial stability. That world is long behind us. Yet, its institutional architecture remains.
This year displayed the price of this incongruity. Climate–driven droughts and floods debilitated supply chains, labor markets, and migration. Across the world, prolonged heatwaves strained electricity grids and reduced hydropower output, exposing energy market rules designed for price efficiency rather than resilience. Food systems grappled with snowballing weather extremes. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) notes climate impacts as a growing driver of food instability, underscoring risks to availability and access. These pressures are cumulative and structural, but institutions increasingly respond with the short attention span of the electoral cycles that shape their mandates. Climate remains framed as an environmental concern rather than the context in which economic, political, and security challenges now unfold. The result is drift. Institutions are not failing because they lack expertise. They are failing because they are designed to manage isolated shocks rather than systemic, cross–sectoral risk.
For all the rhetoric of adaptation, 2025 delivered remarkably little institutional progress. COP once again produced more carefully brokered language masking the absence of binding commitments and a final communiqué that gestured towards ambition while avoiding anything that could possibly disrupt the status quo. This reflects the limits of a consensus–based process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose mandate is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations and facilitate cooperation but not to enforce obligations beyond voluntary commitments. The policy conversation, while never centered on climate to begin with, drifted even further towards competitiveness, industrial strategy, and an increasingly transactional, winner–takes–all approach to trade policy.
Beyond climate diplomacy, the same mandate mismatch appeared across economic and development institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) notes that climate change poses significant macroeconomic and financial risks, prompting efforts to mainstream climate risk into surveillance and capacity development, yet its core mandate remains rooted in short-term fiscal and balance–of–payments stability.
The lesson is unambiguous. Governance now warrants an acceptance that climate is no longer a thematic category, it is the overarching operating environment for every economic, security, and social system. It requires planning frameworks that survive elections. It requires mandates that link near-term political authority to long–term responsibility. Without these changes, institutions will appallingly continue to misread the risks they face and misallocate their attention.
Looking ahead, practical reforms matter. Adaptation finance must reposition itself from discretionary promises to predictable commitments. Economic and development institutions necessitate integration of climate into their core mandates rather than delegating it to specialist units, treating climate adaptation and policy as though the environment exists in its own silo. Planning cycles must extend beyond electoral timelines and move toward long–term risk governance. These are not aspirational ideas, they are the minimum adjustments required for institutions to remain relevant.
If institutions cling to mandates configured by a world that no longer exists, they will continue to falter. If they evolve to meet us in the world we have become, they can once again serve as anchors during periods of uncertainty. The space for institutional renewal still exists. The question is whether institutions will choose to inhabit it.
