Framing Shaping Outcomes: Issues Related to Mitigation in the UNFCCC Negotiations

Abstract

Actors purposefully frame up their issues in multilateral negotiations to reach their desired goals. How were the issues related to mitigation framed up during the two decades of climate negotiations that yielded the Paris Agreement, what was the mechanism for the evolution of the frames and why did only certain crucially contested frames find traction? In these quests, this work conducts a simultaneous content and frame analysis by applying the framing theory and maps the historic evolution pathways of the related issues. The qualitative analysis identifies a process of frame generation through the contested rhetoric framing by the actors, in line with their primary logics which were shaped by their mental schemata. It finds that the act of framing was the sine-qua-non for the sustenance and traction of the issues, but the fates of the crucially contested frames were determined by the powerful actors. Applying the concept of framing allows the systematic visualization of the negotiation process related to Greenhouse Gas mitigation at the annual conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and helps explain how and why certain outcomes appeared.