How Climate Change Became a Business Risk: Analyzing Nonstate Agency in Global Climate Politics

10.1068/c1179 ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Pattberg
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Business Risk ◽  
Climate Politics

scholarly journals COP and the Cloth: Quantitatively and Normatively Assessing Religious NGO Participation at the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Sci ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
David Krantz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
United Nations Framework Convention ◽  
Global North ◽  
Quantitative Examination ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Climate Crisis

How much is religion quantitatively involved in global climate politics? After assessing the role of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from a normative perspective, this descriptive, transdisciplinary and unconventional study offers the first comprehensive quantitative examination of religious nongovernmental organizations that formally participate in its annual meetings, the largest attempts to solve the climate crisis through global governance. This study finds that although their numbers are growing, only about 3 percent of registered nongovernmental organizations accredited to participate in the conference are overtly religious in nature—and that more than 80 percent of those faith-based groups are Christian. Additionally, this study finds that religious nongovernmental organizations that participate in the conference are mostly from the Global North. The results call for greater participation of religious institutions in the international climate negotiations in order for society to address the planetary emergency of climate change.

A Regime Paralyzed: An Exploration of Current Climate Politics and the Urgent Need for Reform

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenna Owen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
International System ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Reduce Emissions ◽  
To Come ◽  
Climate Crisis

The science on climate change is in: legitimate scientists have been unable to provide serious scientific evidence that casts doubt on the fact that anthropogenic, that is, human-caused climate change is occurring. Less clear are the speed of climate change and the extent of damages to environmental and human health if emissions from fossil fuels continue unabated. The most recent international conference on the environment, namely the 2013 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or Conference of the Parties (COP) 19, was characterized by bitter intergovernmental negotiations and non-committal by major emitters to watered-down agreements. COP 19 exemplifies the inadequacies inherent in the current international system, which render it incapable of effectively addressing climate change; in other words, the international community remains unable to come to an agreement or agreements that mitigate the effects of climate change now, while establishing adaptation mechanisms for the future as the effects of climate change become increasingly pronounced. The efficacy of the current regime is impeded not only by its singular, non-binding approach to emissions reduction, but also by the ability of a small number of major emitters’ ability to hinder agreements. In order to make rising to the challenge of the global climate crisis politically feasible, the international climate regime must abandon the current emissions cap approach and adopt an incremental approach to negotiations, crafting sector-specific agreements that aim to gradually reduce emissions in a viable and equitable manner.

scholarly journals Advancing Comparative Climate Change Politics: Theory and Method

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Purdon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Climate Change Politics

Central to this special issue is the notion that the methods and conceptual tools of comparative politics can improve our understanding of global climate change politics. Building on recent advancements in the field of comparative environmental politics, the special issues offers a more comprehensive treatment of climate change politics in developed countries, emerging economies and least developed countries. In this introduction, I distil the key features of comparative politics, advocate for the more rigorous application of comparative methods in climate politics scholarship and highlight three groups of political factors—institutions, interests and ideas—that hold considerable promise in explaining climate change politics at the domestic level. The introduction concludes with an appeal to (re)think how international and domestic politics interact. Examples drawn from the articles assembled for this special issue are used to substantiate the claims made.

scholarly journals Youth Mobilization to Stop Global Climate Change: Narratives and Impact

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heejin Han ◽  
Sang Wuk Ahn
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Combat Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Governance

Galvanized by Greta Thunberg’s idea for Friday school strikes, “climate strikes” emerged in 2018 and 2019 as a form of youth social movement demanding far-reaching action on climate change. Youths have taken various actions to combat climate change, but academics have not paid sufficient attention to youth climate mobilization. This study thus examines the questions of what has motivated youth to mobilize and how they have shaped global climate politics and governance. This study focuses particularly on the narrative of youth activists to address their understanding of climate change and their ideas regarding how to respond to it. Youth collective action has succeeded in problematizing global climate inaction and inertia and in framing climate change from a justice perspective, but activists have faced limitations in converting their moral legitimacy into the power required for sweeping changes. Overall, this study demonstrates the emergence of young people as agents of change in the global climate change arena and the urgency of engaging them in climate change governance and policymaking.

scholarly journals Prisoners of the Wrong Dilemma: Why Distributive Conflict, Not Collective Action, Characterizes the Politics of Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-27
Author(s):  
Michaël Aklin ◽  
Matto Mildenberger
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Free Riding ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Distributive Conflict

Climate change policy is generally modeled as a global collective action problem structured by free-riding concerns. Drawing on quantitative data, archival work, and elite interviews, we review empirical support for this model and find that the evidence for its claims is weak relative to the theory’s pervasive influence. We find, first, that the strongest collective action claims appear empirically unsubstantiated in many important climate politics cases. Second, collective action claims—whether in their strongest or in more nuanced versions—appear observationally equivalent to alternative theories focused on distributive conflict within countries. We argue that extant patterns of climate policy making can be explained without invoking free-riding. Governments implement climate policies regardless of what other countries do, and they do so whether a climate treaty dealing with free-riding has been in place or not. Without an empirically grounded model for global climate policy making, institutional and political responses to climate change may ineffectively target the wrong policy-making dilemma. We urge scholars to redouble their efforts to analyze the empirical linkages between domestic and international factors shaping climate policy making in an effort to empirically ground theories of global climate politics. Such analysis is, in turn, the topic of this issue’s special section.

scholarly journals COP and the Cloth: Quantitatively and Normatively Assessing Religious NGO Participation at the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Krantz
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
United Nations Framework Convention ◽  
Global North ◽  
Quantitative Examination ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Climate Crisis

How much is religion quantitatively involved in global climate politics? After assessing the role of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from a normative perspective, this descriptive, transdisciplinary and unconventional study offers the first comprehensive quantitative examination of religious nongovernmental organizations that formally participate in its annual meetings, the largest attempts to solve the climate crisis through global governance. This study finds that although their numbers are growing, only about 3 percent of registered nongovernmental organizations accredited to participate in the conference are overtly religious in nature — and that more than 80 percent of those faith-based groups are Christian. Additionally, this study finds that religious nongovernmental organizations that participate in the conference are mostly from the Global North. The results call for greater participation of religious institutions in the international climate negotiations in order for society to address the planetary emergency of climate change.

scholarly journals Policy Characteristics, Electoral Cycles, and the Partisan Politics of Climate Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Kai Schulze
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Electoral Incentives ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Stable Production ◽  
The Relationship

Domestic policies are the cornerstone of the new global climate governance architecture. However, what motivates vote-seeking politicians to pursue climate policies remains remarkably unclear, as the climate politics literature suggests that climate policies are usually not perceived as a vote winner. The present article revisits this issue and argues that a better understanding of the relationship between electoral competition and climate policy making requires taking into account differences both in party ideologies and in policy characteristics. Studying twenty-nine democracies between 1990 and 2016, the analysis finds that climate policy production overall tends to increase as the election approaches due to increases in “soft” policies, such as subsidies, research grants, and information instruments, and relatively stable production rates of “hard” policies like taxes and regulations over the electoral term. Regarding partisan politics, left governments are found to produce more hard, but not more soft, climate policies than center and right governments, especially before elections. This suggests that partisan and electoral incentives are important reference points in the fight against climate change.

scholarly journals Contrasting Views of Citizens’ Assemblies: Stakeholder Perceptions of Public Deliberation on Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sandover ◽  
Alice Moseley ◽  
Patrick Devine-Wright
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Mixed Method ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Mixed Method Research ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Broad Array

It has been argued that a ‘new climate politics’ has emerged in recent years, in the wake of global climate change protest movements. One part of the new climate politics entails experimentation with citizen-centric input into policy development, via mechanisms of deliberative democracy such as citizens’ assemblies. Yet relatively little is known about the motivations and aspirations of those commissioning climate assemblies or about general public perceptions of these institutions. Addressing these issues is important for increasing understanding of what these deliberative mechanisms represent in the context of climate change, how legitimate, credible and useful they are perceived to be by those involved, and whether they represent a radical way of doing politics differently or a more incremental change. This article addresses these gaps by presenting findings from mixed method research on prior expectations of the Devon Climate Assembly, proposed following the declaration of a climate emergency in 2019. The research compares and contrasts the views of those commissioning and administering the citizens’ assembly, with those of the wider public. Findings indicate widespread support, yet also considerable risk and uncertainty associated with holding the assembly. Enabling input into policy of a broad array of public voices was seen as necessary for effective climate response, yet there was scepticism about the practical challenges involved in ensuring citizen representation, and about whether politicians, and society more generally, would embrace the ‘hard choices’ required. The assembly was diversely represented as a means to unlock structural change, and as an instrumental tool to achieve behaviour change at scale. The Devon Climate Assembly appears to indicate ‘cautious experimentation’ where democratic innovation is widely embraced yet carefully constrained, offering only a modest example of a ‘new climate politics,’ with minimal challenges to the authority of existing institutions.

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