Climate Conferences Research Articles

Creating space for reflection and dialogue: Examples of new modes of communication for empowering climate action

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” This quote by Albert Einstein highlights our need for new formats of communication to address the knowledge-action gap regarding climate change and other sustainability challenges. This includes reflection, and communication spaces, as well as methods and approaches that can catalyze the emergence of transformative change and action. In this article we present and reflect on experiments we carried out at international climate negotiations and conferences.

Linear Global Temperature Correlation to Carbon Dioxide Level, Sea Level, and Innovative Solutions to a Projected 6°C Warming by 2100

Too many climate committees, conferences, articles and publications continue to suggest a one and a half (1.5°C) to two degrees (2°C) Celsius as an achievable global limit to climate changes without establishment of any causal link to the proposed anti-warming mechanism. A comprehensive review has found instead that observationally informed projections of climate science underlying climate change offer a different outlook of five to six-degree (5°C - 6°C) increase as “most accurate” with regard to present trends, climate history and models, yielding the most likely outcome for 2100. The most causative triad for the present warming trend from 1950 to the present is identified in this paper: 1) the tripling (3×) of world population; 2) the quadrupling (4×) of carbon emissions; and 3) the quintupling (5×) of the world energy consumption. This paper presents a quantitative, linear global temperature correlation to carbon dioxide levels that has great predictive value, a short temporal feedback loop, and the finding that it is also reversible. The Vostok ice core temperature and CO2 values for the past 400,000 years, with past sea level estimates have produced the sufficiently evidential “Hansen’s Graph”. Detailed analysis results in an equation for global average temperature change and an indebted, long-term sea level rise, from even a 20 ppm of CO2 change above 290 ppm, commonly taken as a baseline for levels before 1950. Comparison to the well-known 800,000 year old Dome C ice core is also performed. The best-performing climate change models and observational analysis are seen to project more warming than the average model often relied upon. World atmosphere, temperature, and sea level trends for 2100 and beyond are analyzed. A laboratory experiment proves the dramatic heat-entrapment capability of CO2 compared to pure air, which yields insights into the future global atmospheric system. Policy-relevant climate remediation, including gigaton carbon capture, zero and negative emissions and positive individual action, are reviewed and updated, with recommendations.

Parliamentarizing a Politicized Policy: Understanding the Involvement of the European Parliament in UN Climate Negotiations

Climate change is a central topic of concern for EU international diplomacy and is the site of increased politicization globally. Concomitantly, a parallel process of parliamentarization of the EU has unfolded. Whilst the European Parliament (EP) has enjoyed significant powers in internal policy-making on climate change, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 the EP has gained the right to veto the EU’s ratification of international (climate change) agreements. This development raises questions about our understanding of the EP as an actor in international climate diplomacy that this article addresses through the following research question: What impact have the increased powers of the EP had on its involvement in UN climate diplomacy? We analyze the EP’s evolving role in international climate diplomacy through an evaluation of its policy preferences prior to international climate conferences (COPs) and its activities during those meetings. We find evidence that the EP’s preferences have become more moderate over time, and that it is also more active at COPs and increasingly engaged with a range of more important actors. However, we find little evidence that the EP’s involvement in international negotiations is significantly different when it holds a veto power, which we attribute to a willingness to depoliticize internal EU climate negotiations to secure policy gains at the international level.

Advocacy group effects in global governance: populations, strategies, and political opportunity structures

Global governance is no longer a matter of state cooperation or bureaucratic politics. Since the end of the cold war, advocacy groups have proliferated and enjoyed increasing access to global governance institutions such as the European Union, World Trade Organization, and the United Nations climate conferences. This special issue seeks to push theories of interest groups and international non-governmental organizations forward. We argue that the advocacy group effects on global governance institutions are best understood by examining how groups use and shape domestic and global political opportunity structures. The individual articles examine how, when, and why domestic and global political opportunity structures shape advocacy group effects in global governance, across global institutions, levels of government, advocacy organizations, issue areas, and over time. As special interests are becoming increasingly involved in global governance, we need to better understand how advocacy organizations may impact global public goods provision.

The Struggle for Climate Justice: Three Indian News Media Coverage of Climate Change

ABSTRACTClimate justice involves two crucial matters, namely, ensuring that rich nations take responsibility for their past emissions and supporting developing nations’ efforts to protect vulnerable people from climate disasters. Although there is a growing interest in climate justice from a global standpoint, this concept has yet to receive due critical attention from a local perspective. This study focuses on the local perspective and examines how climate justice was represented in three Indian newspapers during COP21 (Paris, 2015) and COP22 (Marrakech, 2016). It utilizes the selected Indian news media content and reveals that the newspapers have emphasized on the harm avoidance justice during the international climate conferences when an emphasis on the burden sharing dimension was instead expected. The publications strongly criticize rich countries for the emissions but less vigorously criticize the local authorities who are responsible for containing pollution and emissions. This finding along with the emphasis on the harm avoidance signifies the growing importance of local environmental issues in global deliberations.

Improving critical incident reporting in primary care through education and involvement

BackgroundCritical incident reporting systems (CIRS) can be an important tool for the identification of organisational safety needs and thus to improve patient safety. In German primary care, CIRS use is...

Should I stay or should I go? Explaining variation in nonstate actor advocacy over time in global governance.

The past decades have been characterized by a growing number of nonstate actors (NSAs) involved in global governance. However, despite this growth, only a small number of NSAs have been able to maintain a prolonged global presence over a substantial period of time. To explain why some NSAs are more active, we rely on resource dependence theory. We demonstrate that sustained advocacy over time can be explained by a density dependence mechanism, namely the more NSAs mobilize, the lower the chance that individual NSAs will prolong their global advocacy efforts. Analysis of data stemming from a unique data set of 5,627 NSAs active at the global climate conferences demonstrates that much advocacy in this field is indeed of an incidental nature, namely a large number of groups attend once and never return.

МІЖНАРОДНО-ПРАВОВЕ ТА ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНЕ ОФОРМЛЕННЯ АРХІТЕКТУРИ КЛІМАТИЧНИХ ЗМІН

У статті розкрито нормативно-правове забезпечення розв’язання проблем зміни клімату. Проаналізовано зміст основних міжнародно-правових актів, що регулюють питання зміни клімату, та організаційні структури, котрі пов’язані з ними, зокрема кліматичні конференції й Міждержавну групу експертів зі зміни клімату (МГЕЗК). Простежено вплив міжнародних конференцій на прийняття міжнародно-правових документів, які ставили за мету розв’язання глобальної проблеми зміни клімату. Особливу увагу приділено спеціальній резолюції ООН «Збереження глобального клімату для теперішньої та майбутньої діяльності людини», Всесвітній кліматичній програмі, Всесвітній програмі досліджень клімату, Віденській конвенції про охорону озонового шару, Монреальському протоколу про речовини, що руйнують озоновий шар, Базельській конвенції про контроль за трансгра­ничним переміщенням небезпечних відходів та їх видаленням, а також Рамковій Конвенції ООН про зміну клімату, Кіотському протоколу до Рамкової конвенції й Паризькій кліматичній угоді.
 Уважаємо, що потрібно враховувати: кліматична політика здійснюється на різних рівнях – від місцевого до глобального, – а відтак потребує нормативно-правового та організаційного забезпечення розв’язання проблем зміни клімату на всіх цих рівнях, що має перетворюватися на інструментарій прийняття колективних рішень, пошуку компромісів, котрі задовольняють усі сторони переговорів щодо кліматичних змін.

China’s Evolving Image in International Climate Negotiation: From Copenhagen to Paris

As the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China has been a key party in global climate negotiation. External perceptions of China’s role in climate negotiation are significant for China’s domestic policy-making process and international climate efforts. Based on the case studies of two most historic climate talks, the Copenhagen and Paris climate conferences, this article attempts to examine the evolution of external perceptions on China’s role in international climate negotiation by three criteria: acceptability, credibility and constructiveness. The study shows that external perceptions of China’s role in international climate talks have changed considerably since 2009. At the Copenhagen conference, China was regarded as a “dead weight” or even a “wrecker,” though it managed to attain most of its negotiating goals. At the Paris conference, however, China was widely recognized as a global climate leader whose endeavor was indispensable for the conclusion of the Paris Agreement.

Representation(s) of Developed and Developing Countries in Newspapers’ Coverage of Climate Conferences: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study critically analysed how developed and developing countries were represented in The Independent and The New York Times’ coverage of the Conferences of the Parties to the UNFCCC between 2004 and 2013. The method of analysis was a qualitative critical discourse analysis in accordance with Fairclough’s (1989) framework with the support of corpus techniques.The research findings showed that there were distinct responsibilities for climate change ascribed to the developed and the developing countries. While the developed countries were represented as being reluctant and indifferent towards their responsibility, the developing countries tended to depend on the developed countries’ support in solving their climate-related problems. During the study period, therefore, no consensus could be reached on a common framework for climate change. The linguistic features of lexical choice, passivisation, nominalisation, modality and metaphor were found ideologically employed in the newspapers’ representations of the countries. Additionally, the ideologies and their linguistic manifestations were influenced by the media’s discursive practices and the wider social context.

AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF COMPONENTS OF CLIMATE ARCHITECTURES

Based on unique data from a worldwide survey among participants of international climate conferences, I investigate the acceptance of the most discussed components of architectures for an international climate agreement, namely: global quantitative targets, sector targets, research and development, geoengineering, land use, and adaptation. Regional and economic differences as well as personal attitudes play an important role for the perception of the different components. Global quantitative targets and adaptation are the most accepted in contrast to a low acceptance of geoengineering. People that are more affected by climate change and value fairness a lot care more about global and sector targets and research and development. Surprisingly, being vulnerable to climate change does not increase the preference for adaptation by much. Furthermore, I analyze which countries or groups of countries are expected to play a leading role for each component. The EU is seen as a key player and not much is expected from the USA and China. I detect a normative bias that increases expectations on China, the EU, and the USA for some of the components.

The Power of Social Networks: How the UNFCCC Secretariat Creates Momentum for Climate Education

Despite the relevance of education-specific negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the influential role of the secretariat therein, research in this area is still scarce. We contribute to closing this research gap by exploring how the UNFCCC secretariat becomes involved in and has latent influence on the education-specific debates surrounding global climate conferences and the related information exchange on Twitter. Our analysis extends previous findings by combining theories and methods in novel ways. Specifically, we apply social-network theory and derive data from participant observations and Twitter, which enables us to analyze the role and influence of the UNFCCC treaty secretariat within education-specific negotiations. We find that the secretariat increases its influence by strategically establishing links to actors beyond the negotiating parties and show that it occupies a central and influential position within the education-specific communication networks in UNFCCC negotiations.

The stakeholder model paradox: How the globalisation of politics fuels domestic advocacy

AbstractOne of the central assumptions underlying the stakeholder model is that strengthened opportunities for involvement of non-state actors in political procedures hold significant promise for making those procedures more democratically legitimate. However, recent studies show that more open international organisations (IOs) are not perceived as more legitimate by non-state actors. In this article we explore one potential reason to explain this apparent paradox, investigating whether, and under what conditions, strengthened opportunities of stakeholder involvement enable the effective representation of global constituencies. The article shows that globalisation and politicisation of IOs go hand in hand with greater political activity by non-state actors defending domestic, rather than global, interests. Globalisation and politicisation may thus contribute to the exponential growth of the community of non-state actors active at IOs, but they do not make such community more globalised in nature. The article also illustrates that granting greater access to stakeholders in international institutions can somehow mitigate the effects of this underlying structural factors, and that institutional openness disproportionally fosters political activity by civic, rather than business, global stakeholders. We advance these arguments relying on a novel dataset including over eight thousand organisations active at the UN climate conferences and the WTO Ministerial Conferences.

Making climate governance global: how UN climate summitry comes to matter in a complex climate regime

ABSTRACTThis article examines the role the UNFCCC plays in a polycentric climate regime complex. Through an extended questionnaire survey at the UN Climate Conferences in Warsaw (2013), Lima (2014) and Paris (2015), we study what government delegates and non-state observers see as the main purpose of UN climate summitry and their roles therein. Only a minority of these actors attend UN Climate Conferences to actively influence the outcome of the intergovernmental negotiation process. Instead, most come to these meetings to network, build interpersonal relationships, learn from each other and foster a sense of community across scales of difference. The ability of the UNFCCC to bring together different actors across time and space, to perform multiple policy tasks, has become one of its notable strengths and is an important facilitative practice that holds the polycentric regime complex together.

Explaining citizens’ perceptions of international climate-policy relevance

This paper empirically analyses the antecedents of citizens’ perceptions of the relevance of international climate policy. Its use of representative surveys in the USA, China and Germany controls for different environmental attitudes and socio-economic factors between countries. The findings of the micro-econometric analysis suggest that the perceived relevance of international climate policy is positively affected by its perceived effectiveness, approval of the key topics discussed at international climate conferences, and environmental attitudes, but is not affected by perceived procedural justice. A higher level of perceived trust in international climate policy was positively related to perceived relevance in the USA and in China, but not in Germany. Citizens who felt that they were well informed and that their position was represented at climate summits were more likely to perceive international climate policy as relevant in China in particular. Generally, the results show only weak evidence of socio-demographic effects.

Balancing friends and foes: Explaining advocacy styles at global diplomatic conferences

The growing attempts by non-state interests to influence global policy processes has attracted much scholarly interest in recent years. One important question thereby is what characterizes and explains the interactions of non-state advocates with policymakers. In order to clarify this matter, we analyse the advocacy strategies of non-state actors, more precisely whether and why they address opponents instead of more like-minded policymakers. For this purpose, we analyse evidence collected through 228 interviews with advocates who attended the WTO Ministerial Conferences (Geneva 2012) and the United Nations Climate Conferences (Durban 2011; Doha 2012). Our results show that transnational advocates predominantly target like-minded policymakers and that their activities are much less focused on their opponents. Variation in advocacy towards opponents or like-minded policymakers is explained by the alignment of non-state actors with policymakers, the salience of topics on the political agenda, group characteristics, and whether or not advocates hail from democratic countries.

Climate Change as Social Drama: Global Warming in the Public Sphere. By Philip Smith and Nicolas Howe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. vii+242. $29.99 (paper).

Climate Change as Social Drama: Global Warming in the Public Sphere. By Philip Smith and Nicolas Howe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. vii+242. $29.99 (paper).

Balancing inside and outside lobbying: The political strategies of lobbyists at global diplomatic conferences

This article seeks to explain the use of inside and outside lobbying by organised interests at global diplomatic conferences. At first sight, the lobbying at these venues is puzzling as it does not seem to be a very fruitful way to acquire influence. The use of outside strategies especially is perplexing because most aspects of international negotiations fall outside of the purview of national constituencies. It is argued in this article, however, that the presence of outside lobbying is not so puzzling if lobbying is seen both as a way to attain influence and as a way to pursue organisational maintenance goals. Empirically, the article draws on interview data with 232 interest group representatives that participated at either the 2012 session of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Geneva, or the 2011 (Durban) and 2012 (Doha) United Nations Climate Conferences. The analysis demonstrates that organisational needs, and especially the competition actors face in obtaining resources, significantly affects the relative focus of organised interests on inside and outside lobbying.

The Road to Paris: Contending Climate Governance Discourses in the Post-Copenhagen Era

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we advance discourse analysis to interpret how the state and direction of climate governance is imagined or interpreted by the multitude of actors present at UN climate conferences. We approach the annual Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as active political sites that project ideas, assumptions and standards for the conduct of global politics. This paper examines to what extent the discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernization and civic environmentalism identified by Bäckstrand and Lövbrand [(2006). Planting trees to mitigate climate change. Contested discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism. Global Environmental Politics, 6(1), 51–71; Bäckstrand, K., & Lövbrand, E. (2007). Climate governance beyond 2012. Competing discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernization and civic environmentalism. In M. Pettenger (Ed.), The social construction of climate change. Ashgate] a decade ago still inform how climate governance is imagined and enacted in the post-Copenhagen era. After reviewing scholarship on climate governance and International Relations, we introduce our discursive framework and systematically compare three contending discourses of climate governance articulated at COP 17 in Durban (2011), COP 19 in Warsaw (2013) and COP 20 in Lima (2014). We end by discussing whether the discursive struggles played out at UN climate conferences represent a shift in the ways in which climate governance was imagined and enacted on the road to Paris, and to what extent our findings may help to extend scholarship in this field.

The size of national delegations and the need for attendance regulation at climate conferences

With the growing significance of the United Nations climate conferences the number of attendees has grown considerably over the last years. But more participants do not necessarily ensure better decisions. And sometimes attending a United Nations climate conference is only a way to raise the profile of the attendee.