Climate Conferences Research Articles

The materiality of youth representation at climate summits: navigating barriers, routes, and spaces

ABSTRACT Recent decades have seen institutionalized procedures for youth representation in global climate governance, and significant visibility for youth climate activists. Despite these improvements, young representatives continue to bear witness about tokenized forms of participation and a lack of influence. This article seeks to address this ambiguous development by focusing on the materiality of youth representation in United Nations climate conferences. Through interviews and participant observations at COP26 and COP27, as well as COY16 and COY17, we analyse the bureaucratic and socio-economic barriers to representation, the knowledge resources and competitiveness of the routes to representation, and the spatial ordering and subversive tactics on site at the summits. We show that these materialities shape youth’s discursive strategies, thus helping to explain who gets to be a representative and what forms of subjectivities, agendas, claims, and strategies that become possible in the global climate governance regime.

The dramaturgical infrastructure of counter-summitry – ethnographic insights from the Glasgow climate conference

ABSTRACT The annual UN climate conferences synchronize major social worlds, including politics, media, business, science, and law. They therefore attract anyone interested in high-profile performances such as protest action. With the post-Paris turn in global environmental governance, scholarly interest in theatrical aspects of climate governance is increasing. Activism at climate conferences, however, has not yet been studied through a dramaturgical lens. We propose the concept of ‘dramaturgical infrastructure’ to complement Goffman’s focus on self-presentation with the material and immaterial context beyond the micro-level of situated interactional practices. Based on fieldwork at the 2021 climate conference in Glasgow, we describe how activists draw on and mobilize a dramaturgical infrastructure of scripts, spaces, rituals, and requisites for their performances, and how this results in role-taking on the Glasgow stage. We identify the roles of the watchdog, the participant, the disrupter, and the connector, each with distinctive patterns of compliance with or distancing from post-Paris climate governance and the news media. The dramaturgical perspective suggests that climate conferences provide encounters that educate activists to be aware of the component of self-presentation in their activism and to design performances for high public, policy, and media attention.

Sensing a Twenty-First-Century Commons in the Theater: Relationality in a Climate of Distrust and Destruction

Abstract Conceptualizations of a “commons” have recently been gaining traction in theorizations of specific locations, gatherings, and activism in and beyond the arts. A theater-based commons that adopts a planetary and relational approach to selfhood, interaction, and future survival on Planet Earth tends to focus on breaking with social, political, economic, and aesthetic hierarchies. I will first introduce how notions of relationality have been integrated in theorizations of solidarity, humanitarian action, and a commons. Then, I will discuss these theorizations within the contexts of theater as communication and action that involves both theater-makers and audience members as actants. Finally, I intend to show how these conceptualizations can be meaningfully applied to unraveling the artistic strategies of a broad array of plays associated with the biannual theater festival Climate Change Theatre Action, which has been taking place before and after the United Nations Conference of the Parties climate conferences since 2015. The examples from the corpus of 250 five-minute plays are to illustrate the intervention of climate-change theater in potentially insurgent commons-based engagement and thinking which tries to avoid virtue signaling and other self-promoting forms of supposed solidarity.

The social anatomy of climate change denial in the United States

Using data from Twitter (now X), this study deploys artificial intelligence (AI) and network analysis to map and profile climate change denialism across the United States. We estimate that 14.8% of Americans do not believe in climate change. This denialism is highest in the central and southern U.S. However, it also persists in clusters within states (e.g., California) where belief in climate change is high. Political affiliation has the strongest correlation, followed by level of education, COVID-19 vaccination rates, carbon intensity of the regional economy, and income. The analysis reveals how a coordinated social media network uses periodic events, such as cold weather and climate conferences, to sow disbelief about climate change and science, in general. Donald Trump was the strongest influencer in this network, followed by conservative media outlets and right-wing activists. As a form of knowledge vulnerability, climate denialism renders communities unprepared to take steps to increase resilience. As with other forms of misinformation, social media companies (e.g., X, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok) should flag accounts that spread falsehoods about climate change and collaborate on targeted educational campaigns.

Storytelling and worldmaking climate justice futures: Indigenous climate advocacy and transnational solidarity in UN climate conferences

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes statements made by the International Indigenous People’s Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) at the United Nations Climate Change Conferences from 2017–2021 to amplify how Indigenous speakers navigate international climate negotiations and build transnational networks of solidarity through their storytelling. In looking at statements, speeches, and panels from Indigenous advocates connected with the IIPFCC, I argue Indigenous storytelling braids together temporal, place, and felt knowledges into constellations of what Tiara Na’puti calls “resilience rhetorics,” or rhetorical patterns of meaning-making across texts that rhetorically (re)iterate colonial discourses of resilience around Indigenous adaptability, relationality, and reciprocity with more-than-humans. Constellations of resilience rhetorics coalesce relational ways of knowing, connect stories through Indigenous resiliency, resist market-based, colonial solutions to climate change, and empower Indigenous international leadership in the cultivation of climate justice futures. In building on Na’puti’s work through a focus on Indigenous storytelling as worldmaking, constellations as rhetorical patterns of (re)iterated resiliency across texts, and temporal, place, and felt knowledges as relational epistemologies foregrounded in Indigenous storytelling, I argue constellations of resilience rhetorics are forms of international coalition-building that counter colonial apocalyptic temporalities, spatialities, and affectivities and center Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in climate justice solutions.

Divergences between mainstream and social media discourses after COP26, and why they matter

Abstract UN climate conferences (COPs) have become powerful opportunities for driving public attention to climate issues and raising awareness via mainstream and social media coverage. While there is an abundance of studies examining various elements of the media arenas separately, there are currently no comparative analyses of how mainstream media outlets and social media opinion leaders react to and thereby shape discourses around COPs. Using Bourdieu’s field theory to conceptualize agents in the two arenas as ‘adversaries’, we use manual content analysis to compare reactions to the 2021 Glasgow climate conference (COP26) across the five top English-language online newspapers in Australia, India, the UK and the USA with those of prominent users and organizations on Facebook and Instagram. We find entirely different appraisals of the conference between the two arenas: Where the mainstream media outlets highlighted the progress of the summit, social media leaders were eager to criticize its failures and those of world leaders to take sufficient action. We discuss the implications of this divergence, specifically (i) the extent to which it hinders the cultivation of cohesive narratives about critical climate issues, and (ii) how the failure frame advocated by social media opinion leaders may de-legitimize international policy initiatives and undercut public support for and engagement with these efforts.

Concealing, naming, or tackling inequalities? Art, culture and (In)justice at COP27

ABSTRACT Although art and cultural events have been part of the COPs from the very beginning they remain largely absent in the literature. Conversely, the symbolic, dramaturgical, performative, and narrative elements of climate conferences have been established as objects of study in the political and social sciences for some time. Relevant to this paper are Death’s (2011) reflections on ‘summit theatre’, Blühdorn’s (2007) concepts around ‘simulative politics’ and the ‘post-ecologist’ condition, and Aykut, Morena and Foyer’s (2021) more recent theorisation of ‘incantatory governance’. Focusing on COP27, it provides an initial categorisation of art in the context of these negotiations, not only using contemporary theories on climate governance to explain the various roles and functions of art in this context but thereby also hinting at how these theories can be extended (and criticised) by including an analysis of ‘summit art’. More specifically, it looks at how art conceals the conflictual nature of climate governance, in particular the fact that North/South divides and the question of justice play a central rhetorical role in justifying the lack of significant political decisions, and at how art projects aimed at the creation of a ‘depoliticized’ feeling of togetherness that lacked a reflection of the underlying causes of climate change and social injustices (Harvey 1996).

Framing engagement and public participation in local climate conferences

In a yearlong ethnographic study, we actively participated as members of the national planning committee for fourteen local climate conferences, we examined how citizen participation was imagined and enacted. We introduce a framework for studying the relationship between cognitive engagement, learning, and civic engagement in the public sphere. We describe the different levels of cognitive and civic engagement in the design of climate conference activities. The findings suggest that the planners’ approach to democracy, the involvement of environmental NGOs, and individual attitudes toward environmental change, may collectively contribute to diminished levels of cognitive and civic engagement among residents. Furthermore, we observed that more collaborative interpretations of cognitive and civic engagement align closely with deliberative democracy approaches, emphasizing inclusive, dialogical processes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the future design of climate conferences and how they relate to the evolving roles of environmental NGOs.

Quantifying leadership in climate negotiations: A social power game.

We consider complex multistage multiagent negotiation processes such as those occurring at climate conferences and ask ourselves how can an agent maximize its social power, intended as influence over the outcome of the negotiation. This question can be framed as a strategic game played over an opinion dynamics model, in which the action of an agent consists in stubbornly defending its own opinion. We show that for consensus-seeking opinion dynamics models in which the interaction weights are uniform, the optimal action obeys to an early mover advantage principle, i.e. the agents behaving stubbornly in the early phases of the negotiations achieve the highest social power. When looking at data collected from the climate change negotiations going on at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we find evidence of the use of the early mover strategy. Furthermore, we show that the social powers computed through our model correlate very well with the perceived leadership roles assessed through independent survey data, especially when non-uniform weights incorporating economical and demographic factors are considered.

Design fundamentals of demountable steel structures: from materials to members

AbstractThe impact of greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO2 emissions, on the global environment is receiving more and more attention. Most countries around the world had reached a consensus to reduce carbon emissions after holding a series of climate conferences. In 2021, the buildings and construction sector accounted for around 37% of energy and process‐related CO2 emissions globally. To mitigate the CO2 emissions produced by the construction industry, the application of demountable steel structures that can be reused is a viable solution. This study investigated the design fundamentals of demountable steel structures that aims to reduce carbon emissions by reusing the main components of the steel structure. In this paper, the demountable reusability performance parameter γd of steel members is proposed and used for the reusable performance design of demountable steel members. An overview of the mechanical properties of steel materials under static and cyclic loading are presented as a basis for the reuse of steel structures. A brief review of existing forms of demountable steel connection joints is presented and the feasibility of reuse of demountable steel systems is explored.

International Legal Support of Gender Equality in the Context of Climate Change

Introduction. Gender equality and human rights in the context of overcoming climate change is one of the key and debated topics at the annual UN Climate Conferences. The climate crisis creates social in justice between different population groups and has the greatest impact on the lives of vulnerable groups. Women, compared to men, are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change that limit their rights and opportunities. It is also worth noting that there is a widespread trend of feminization of poverty in the world, which means that poverty is increasing among women more than among men. In addition, women are under represented in international decision-making bodies related to climate change. This, above all, only confirms the lack of adequate support for womenʼs initiatives in climate decision-making. The aim of the article. The purpose of the research is to clarify the essence of gender equality and the peculiarities of its international legal support in the context of climate change based on the study of scientific works by reputable scholars and international legal acts. Results. Climate change is one of the major global problems of humanity, which is directly related to gender equality. As a result of climate change, women and men facenew challenges that affect the realization of their rights in the current environment.Women are more vulnerable to climate change and have fewer opportunities to adapt to it. The international community has faced a difficult task to eliminate the imbalance between the ability of women and men to realize equal rights in the context of climate change. Unfortunately, only a few of the international human rights instruments cover the issue of gender equality in the field of environmental protection, especially in the context of climate change. In addition, they donʼt enshrine the right to a safe, clean and sustainable environment, which is one of the main environmental human rights. The realization of this right is extremely important in the context of climate change. Conclusions. Thus, the issues of ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men in the context of climate change are not properly regulated ininternational law or in the national law of Ukraine. Certain aspects of gender equalityin the context of climate change are reflected in General Recommendation №37 to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women of 1979, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, the Beijing Declaration of 1995, the Paris Agreement of 2015, UN General Assembly Resolution 70/1«Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development» and the Escazu Agreement of 2018. The solution to one of the global problems of humanity depends on the adoption of significant climate decisions that must take into account the gender principle. To date, the extent of womenʼs participation in shaping international climate policy is insufficient. That is why they must represent their governments internationally on equal terms with men, participate in the work of international organizations and in decision-making in the field of climate change. In turn, the needs of both women and men should be taken into account when developing strategic programs and measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change. As a future EU member, Ukraine is trying to integrate a gender component into environmental policy, especially in the area of climate change, by fulfilling its European integration commitments. Key words: gender equality, discrimination, climate change, human rights,sustainable development.

From continuity to change: Soviet and Russian government attitudes on climate change (1989–2009)

This article studies successive Soviet and Russian government positions on climate change between the late 1980s and the Putin era. It thereby bridges a gap between expanding research on both the role of the Soviet Union in climate change science and diplomacy and on Russian climate change policy after the turn of the millennium. While far-reaching late Soviet plans for decisive participation in the groundbreaking Rio Earth Summit contrasted with the lack of priority accorded to it by Russia during a period of political and economic turmoil, this article argues that there was, before and after 1991, a remarkable continuity of real concern in government about anthropogenic climate change and its negative consequences, not least for the Soviet Union and Russia. This continuity of concern took form in 1989 and lasted for a decade. In contrast to the misleading picture presented to outside observers, notably by the highly visible Yuri Izrael’ and some of the Russian delegations at international climate conferences in the 1990s, a neglect of anthropogenic climate change and its dangers for Russia took hold in the Russian government only after Vladimir Putin came to power. A renewed official recognition of the dangers of anthropogenic climate change materialized only with the 2009 Climate Doctrine. However, until recently this recognition remained half-hearted in comparison with the clear government positions of the late 1980s and the 1990s.

Climate Leadership Through Storylines: A Comparison of Developed and Emerging Countries in the Post-Paris Era

ABSTRACT The expectation of developed countries’ leadership is institutionalised in the United Nations’ climate agreements. Hence, climate leadership discussion often builds on the experience of the Global North and ignores the non-western contexts. This article analyses how climate leadership is socially constructed through discourse by developed and emerging countries. Here, developed countries were limited to Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, New Zealand, and the US, and emerging countries to the BASIC group, comprising Brazil, China, India, and South Africa. The analysis was conducted by drafting storylines and discourse-coalitions based on national speeches at the UN climate conferences in 2016–2019. The results underline that the two sides differ primarily in perceptions of leadership responsibility and problematisation but share ideas about transition as a problem solution. Furthermore, neither side constructs their own leadership on the basis of responsibility, and the demand for collective responsibility particularly benefits the Global North.

Глобальная климатическая повестка: большая игра

The article considers one of the most relevant and, at the same time, the most controversial topics of international politics – tackling climate change (global warming). The author attempts to answer a question: is the global climate agenda a natural priority, or is it being promoted intentionally? On the one hand, global warming is a scientifically acknowledged process, encouraged by industrial emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.), which may be harmful and dangerous for the environment and for humanity. On the other hand, climate change is one of many serious environmental problems that require urgent solution (such as water and soil pollutions, deforestation and desertification, loss of species, plastic waste and other). The question is: for what reason has the global warming been gaining increased attention for the last decades, primarily from Western states which not only proclaimed it their chief political goal, but have also been consequently promoting this agenda in the international arena? The Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) adopted in 1992 at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, with the additional Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and then the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, aimed mainly at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, undergo a yearly “stock-taking” and promotion at the UN Climate Conferences. The European Union and its leading states (Germany and France) as well as the United States were the first to declare a “green transition” meaning a full decarbonization of their economies by 2050, expecting the rest of the world to follow this path as well. They have already spent billions of dollars for climate aims, including direct assistance to “fragile states”, and are ready to spend much more in the near future. Regular informal meetings at high level (the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Bled Strategic Forum) have also been mostly devoted to the climate agenda in recent years. Analyzing the results of climate-related events of the last decades and especially the last years, the author comes to a conclusion that the global climate agenda in its current form is being promoted intentionally and is a new form of struggle for world economic and political leadership.

On the way to decarbonization of the world economy. Global warming. UN climate conferences

The paper considers the causes and consequences of climate change on planet Earth. Including global warming and the need to switch to alternative energy sources, as well as the decarbonization of various industries. It is shown that the main causes of global warming are human activities and the use of fossil fuels as energy carriers. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is closely related to the problems of changing the structure of the energy sector in almost all countries of the world. Listed are international organizations that deal with climate problems and monitor changes in temperature and the content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere of the planet. The work of these organizations based on UN climate conferences in the period 1992 to 2022 to develop solutions aimed at the decarbonization of the main industries and, above all, energy is analyzed. It is shown that the Paris Agreement is a key element of the multilateral climate process. It is the first ever legally binding document that unites countries in the pursuit of a common goal of combating and adapting to climate change. At COP-26 in 2021, a climate package was signed, which confirmed the main goal of limiting global warming to only 1.5°C. Many promises have been made regarding the use of new technologies and renewable energy sources, improving the energy efficiency of old equipment. According to scientists' forecasts, climate changes will increase in all regions of the planet in the coming decade. Emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of human activity were and remain the main causes of global warming. However, after the start of the war in Ukraine, much of what most countries previously agreed to became unfeasible. The war changed the political and economic outlook, and global inflation escalated. The energy crisis has arrived. According to IPCC experts, 2022 has become a year of stagnation and a departure from previously chosen positions. It is shown that war can make some countries think about energy self-sufficiency and saving energy resources. These issues were discussed at the climate conference COP-27 in Egypt. Among the issues discussed at COP-27, the main one was the decarbonization of the energy system

Carbon market volatility analysis based on structural breaks: Evidence from EU-ETS and China

In recent years, carbon market transactions have become more active. The number of countries participating in carbon market regulation is increasing, and the carbon market’s overall turnover continues to grow. It is important to study the features of carbon allowance price volatility for the stable development of the carbon market. This paper constructs a modified ICSS-GARCH model to analyze the volatility of carbon price returns and the dynamic characteristics of price fluctuations in the emissions trading system of the European Union (EU-ETS) and the Chinese carbon pilot markets in Hubei. The results show that fluctuations in carbon price returns have a leverage effect and that the impact of negative news on the market is stronger than that of positive news. The international climate and energy conferences, abnormal changes in traditional energy prices, and global public health emergencies all affect volatility and cause shocks to the carbon trading market. The modified ICSS-GARCH model with structural breaks can reduce the pseudovolatility of the return series to a certain extent and can improve the accuracy of the model. This research can give policymakers some implications about how to develop the carbon market and help market participants control the risks of fluctuations in carbon allowances. Regulators should enhance carbon price monitoring and focus on short-term shocks in the carbon market to reduce trading risks. The Chinese carbon market should strengthen the system design and develop carbon financial derivatives.

Анализ итогов климатической конференции в Глазго в контексте энергетической политики России

The climate agenda is becoming more politicized every year. One of the components of climate conferences is their relationship with the world economy, especially with the fuel and energy sector of many countries, including Russia. The article analyzes the foreign policy results of the climate conference in Glasgow, further to which a number of agreements that can change Russia's possible cooperation with a number of countries were signed. The authors conclude that a sharp change in the position of the Russian leadership on the climate agenda is a positive factor, but this is not enough to dictate its terms on the world stage. Cooperation with China and a number of countries of the European Union for achievement the set goals requires more active and proactive position. The climate agenda can become an area where the EU and Russia can overcome a number of differences and act on the base of mutual respect and mutual benefit.

A wave of green start-ups in India—The study of green finance as a support system for sustainable entrepreneurship

<abstract> <p>Development of the economy cannot be done at the cost of deterioration of ecology. Green finance is the most practical way of economic development and ecological development. To tackle the urgent challenges of climate change, several summits and conferences have adopted a sustainable development framework for their action plans. The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a unique collection of seventeen time-bound goals that strive to balance the three sustainability objectives of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. This research has been carried out to assess the present status of green finance in India and see its impact on startups. A green startup's success probability and importance are explained with specific case studies. By extracting the data from various published reports, it has been found that government initiatives are turning green by providing green finance, and Indian startups are exploiting this opportunity by the implementation of sustainable entrepreneurship. India has been on a path toward green project finance for some years now, and significant adjustments have been made to the country's financial sector to embrace ecologically friendly methods. Businesses are the economy's engine, and adopting sustainable business practices is critical for reaching carbon neutrality.</p> </abstract>

Die Höhen und Tiefen der Europäischen Union als Akteur in der internationalen Klimapolitik

At international climate conferences, the European Union (EU) and its member states both are negotiating partners. The EU signs the treaties to protect the climate, the member states ratify and translate them into national policy. Based on the literature on actorness, we identify different dimensions in which the EU’s actor quality is articulated. Actorness has internal dimensions, such as the transfer of responsibilities, and external dimensions, such as the recognition as a contracting party by other states. Actorness, however, cannot be grasped by analysing institutions alone, but also arises discursively and situationally. We trace EU actorness for four critical points in time in international climate policy and can thus show that actorness in the policy field has increased overall over time, but that the full potential has not yet been exploited. In some dimensions, a temporary decline in actorness could be observed, especially at the Copenhagen summit. The analysis of actorness can also contribute to the explanation of a possible lack of effectiveness.

BRICS Countries in International Climate Policy

The article presents an analysis of the BRICS countries climate policies at the global and national levels. The authors consider the positions of these states within the framework of both international climate conferences (Conference of the Parties) held under the auspices of the UN since 1992, and the summits of BRICS member states in the years 2011-2020. The paper covers strategies and results of national climate policies implemented in these countries. Using structural, comparative, and content analysis methods, the authors emphasize that BRICS countries play a key role in stabilizing the climate of our planet today. It is impossible to achieve the main aim of the Paris Agreement without a comprehensive transformation of environmental practices in these societies. BRICS adheres to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in its position towards international climate policy; the BRICS countries stand for sustainable economic growth through the introduction of new environmental technologies, and against restrictive measures that impede their economic development. At the same time, the Russian economys dependence on the extraction and export of fuel resources complicates environmental transformation. Russia is dominated by a negative narrative of climate change, where the urgent ecological modernization of the economy is seen as a threat to key sectors (oil and gas) of the economy. The implementation of international agreements to reduce the carbon intensity of the Russian economy, the creation of conditions for the transition to climate-neutral technologies, would contribute not only to the fight against global climate change, but would become a powerful incentive for the modernization of the economy, accelerating innovation and increasing its competitiveness.