“In the years following the Second World War, Britain emerged as a nation still clinging to its imperial past, yet increasingly tethered to the mechanisms of a new global order. These mechanisms—many crafted under the auspices of the United Nations—promised cooperation, progress, and peace. But beneath the lofty ideals lay something else: a system of agreements and frameworks that would slowly reshape the very notion of sovereignty.
The United Kingdom signed on to hundreds of these treaties—each a carefully crafted piece of paper, thick with clauses, commitments, and compromise. They covered everything from human rights to agricultural practices, the protection of migrants to the preservation of biodiversity. At first, they seemed harmless—necessary, even. After all, Britain was one of the architects of this order. But over time, these agreements began to bind the hands of policymakers in ways they could not have imagined.
These treaties created what the political theorist Hannah Arendt once called a ‘web of obligations’—a system that is too vast, too interconnected, to challenge. For every treaty Britain signed, it became just a little harder to turn back. Sovereignty—once the cornerstone of national power—was transformed into something more abstract, more illusory. And yet, this was celebrated as progress.
The web of treaties and commitments that shaped the UK’s Net Zero policies and farming reforms was part of something much larger—a vast system of global governance, overseen by the United Nations. Britain had signed on to more than 700 treaties and agreements under the UN’s umbrella. These ranged from the Paris Climate Accord to the Convention on Biological Diversity, from migration compacts to sustainable development targets. Each treaty carried its own obligations, its own demands. And Britain was not alone.
Across the world, almost every nation was ensnared in this same intricate network. As of today, over 190 countries are parties to major UN frameworks like the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Global Compact for Migration. Together, these agreements form a kind of invisible constitution for the planet—a set of rules that guide how nations govern themselves and interact with one another. The logic was simple: global problems required global solutions. But the reality was more complicated.
For countries like India, these agreements meant limiting coal consumption, even though millions depended on it for energy and jobs. For Brazil, they meant halting deforestation, despite the pressures of a growing economy. For African nations, they meant adopting costly technologies to meet emissions targets, often at the expense of immediate development needs. And for the UK, they meant reimagining its agriculture, energy, and industry, regardless of the economic and social fallout.
The punishments for non-compliance were the same everywhere: trade restrictions, sanctions, and exclusion from funding opportunities. Even reputational damage carried immense weight. A country labelled as a climate denier or a rogue actor could lose its place in international forums, its voice drowned out in the chorus of global consensus.
This was the hidden irony of the system. The treaties were framed as voluntary, built on cooperation and goodwill. But in practice, they functioned as a form of soft coercion. Nations signed because they had to—because not signing meant being left behind, isolated in a world that had moved on without them.
And yet, as the list of treaties grew longer, the contradictions grew sharper. Each agreement promised to solve a problem, but often created new ones in its wake. Farmers protested in the UK, coal miners marched in India, and indigenous communities in Brazil resisted the loss of their lands. The system that claimed to represent the will of the world began to look less like a force for progress and more like an engine of control.
But what choice did these nations have? The web was too vast, too interconnected to escape. From the richest economies to the poorest, every country found itself bound by the same invisible strings. And so, they complied—sometimes reluctantly, sometimes eagerly—knowing that the cost of resistance was too high to bear.
In the end, the story of Britain’s Net Zero policies was not just the story of one nation, but the story of a world trying—and failing—to govern itself. A world where treaties and agreements offered the promise of order, but often delivered chaos. Where sovereignty was traded for security, and progress was measured in the number of signatures on a piece of paper.
And as Britain looked to the future, it found itself asking the same question as every other country caught in the web: Was this system truly saving the world? Or was it simply trapping it in a cycle of promises and punishments, forever striving for a utopia that might never come?”
