GOVERNING CLIMATE CHANGE

Governing Climate Change, Second Edition provides a short and accessible

introduction to how climate change is governed by an increasingly diverse
range of actors, from civil society and market actors to multilateral devel-
opment banks, donors, and cities.

This updated edition also includes:

• up-to-date coverage of the negotiations post-Copenhagen (Cancún,
Durban, and towards Paris) and some of the shifts in the inter-govern-
mental politics;
• a deeper discussion of the roles of actors that have come to prominence
in the climate negotiations;
• an overview of key funding mechanisms such as the Green Climate
Fund, Adaptation Fund, the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate
Change Finance, and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation
and forest Degradation);
• a direct assessment of what the proliferation of TCCG (Transnational
Climate Change Governance) adds up to in terms of legitimacy, effec-
tiveness etc., drawing on all the recent research in this area;
• an analysis of renewable energy in the UK (in the light of recent con-
troversies around the siting of wind turbines and fracking projects).

Providing an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on geography, politics,

international relations, and development studies, this book is essential read-
ing for students and scholars concerned not only with climate governance
but also with the future of the environment in general.
Harriet Bulkeley is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham
University. Her research interests are in the nature and politics of environ-
mental governance with a focus on climate change and urban sustainability.
Peter Newell is Professor in the Department of International Relations at
the University of Sussex. He works on the political economy of energy and
climate change.
ROUTLEDGE GLOBAL
INSTITUTIONS SERIES
Edited by Thomas G. Weiss
The CUNY Graduate Center, New York, USA
and Rorden Wilkinson
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

ABOUT THE SERIES

The “Global Institutions Series” provides cutting-edge books about many
aspects of what we know as “global governance.” It emerges from our
shared frustrations with the state of available knowledge—electronic and
print-wise, for research and teaching—in the area. The series is designed as
a resource for those interested in exploring issues of international organiza-
tion and global governance. And since the first volumes appeared in 2005,
we have taken significant strides toward filling conceptual gaps.
The series consists of three related “streams” distinguished by their
blue, red, and green covers. The blue volumes, comprising the majority of
the books in the series, provide user-friendly and short (usually no more
than 50,000 words) but authoritative guides to major global and regional
organizations, as well as key issues in the global governance of security, the
environment, human rights, poverty, and humanitarian action among oth-
ers. The books with red covers are designed to present original research and
serve as extended and more specialized treatments of issues pertinent for
advancing understanding about global governance. And the volumes with
green covers—the most recent departure in the series—are comprehensive
and accessible accounts of the major theoretical approaches to global gov-
ernance and international organization.
The books in each of the streams are written by experts in the field,
ranging from the most senior and respected authors to first-rate scholars at
the beginning of their careers. In combination, the three components of the
 Routledge Global Institutions Series iii

series—blue, red, and green—serve as key resources for faculty, students,

and practitioners alike. The works in the blue and green streams have value
as core and complementary readings in courses on, among other things,
international organization, global governance, international law, interna-
tional relations, and international political economy; the red volumes allow
further reflection and investigation in these and related areas.
The books in the series also provide a segue to the foundation volume
that offers the most comprehensive textbook treatment available dealing
with all the major issues, approaches, institutions, and actors in contempo-
rary global governance—our edited work International Organization and
Global Governance (2014) a volume to which many of the authors in the
series have contributed essays.
Understanding global governance—past, present, and future—is far
from a finished journey. The books in this series nonetheless represent sig-
nificant steps toward a better way of conceiving contemporary problems
and issues as well as, hopefully, doing something to improve world order.
We value the feedback from our readers and their role in helping shape the
on-going development of the series.
A complete list of titles appears at the end of this book. The most recent
titles in the series are:

Representing Islam in International Relations (2015)

by Turan Kayaoglu

Contemporary Human Rights Ideas (2nd edition, 2015)

by Bertrand G. Ramcharan

The Politics of International Organizations (2015)

edited by Patrick Weller and Xu Yi-chong

Global Poverty (2nd edition, 2015)

by David Hulme

Global Corporations and Global Governance (2015)

by Christopher May

The United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (2015)

by Khalil Hamdani and Lorraine Ruffing

The Challenges of Constructing Legitimacy in Peacebuilding (2015)

by Daisaku Higashi
Bulkeley and Newell have updated their Governing Climate Change with
coverage of the many new developments in climate governance, without
losing any of the sharpness, concision, and breadth of coverage of their
excellent first edition of the book. It will be core reading for anyone trying
to understand the bewildering complexity of how societies are trying to
grapple with climate change.
Matthew Paterson, Professor of Political Science,
University of Ottawa, Canada

Praise for the previous edition:

In Governing Climate Change, two of Britain’s leading experts offer a com-
prehensive yet accessible study on current climate policy, with a highly
refreshing and innovative look at the vast universe of politics beyond the
state. Newell and Bulkeley’s powerful analysis shows convincingly that
climate governance reaches much farther than the traditional intergovern-
mental regime.
Frank Biermann, Professor of Political Science
and of Environmental Policy Sciences,
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
GOVERNING CLIMATE
CHANGE
Second Edition

Harriet Bulkeley and

Peter Newell
First published 2015
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Harriet Bulkeley and Peter Newell
The right of Harriet Bulkeley and Peter Newell to be identified as the authors of this work
has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bulkeley, Harriet, 1972–
Governing climate change / Harriet Bulkeley and Peter Newell. – 2nd edition.
pages cm. – (Routledge global institutions series ; 104)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Climatic changes–Government policy–International cooperation. I. Newell, Peter
(Peter John) II. Title.
QC903.B85 2015
363.738'74–dc23
2014046799

ISBN: 978-1-138-79570-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-79571-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75823-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Paignton, UK
CONTENTS

List of figures and boxes viii

About the authors ix
List of abbreviations x
Acknowledgements xiv

Introduction: governing climate change 1

1 Governing climate change: a brief history 23

2 Governance for whom?: equity, justice, and the

politics of sustainable development 48

3 Between global and local: governing climate change

transnationally 68

4 Community and the governing of climate change 90

5 The private governance of climate change 113

6 Conclusions 133

Select bibliography 144

Index 147
Routledge Global Institutions Series 154
LIST OF FIGURES AND BOXES

Figures
I.1 Whose carbon is it? 3
1.1 How the UN bodies dealing with climate change are related 25
1.2 The greenhouse effect and climate change 34

Boxes
I.1 Defining a regime 7
1.1 The global governance of climate change: a short chronology 27
1.2 The Kyoto Protocol in brief 30
2.1 Climate change and poverty 58
3.1 Examples of transnational governance 71
4.1 The governance trap in climate policy 92
4.2 Community forestry and development 97
4.3 Transition Network membership 103
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Harriet Bulkeley is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham

University. Her research interests are in the nature and politics of environ-
mental governance with a focus on climate change and urban sustainability.
She is co-author of An Urban Politics of Climate Change (with Vanesa
Castán Broto and Gareth Edwards) (2014) and Transnational Climate
Change Governance (with the Leverhulme Transnational Climate Change
Governance Network) (2014), and co-editor (with Johannes Stripple) of
Governing the Climate (2014).

Peter Newell is Professor of International Relations and former Director

of the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex.
His research is currently focussed on the political economy of low carbon
energy transitions. He is author of Climate for Change (2000); co-author
(with Matthew Paterson) of Climate Capitalism (2010), Transnational
Climate Change Governance (with the Leverhulme Transnational Climate
Change Governance Network) (2014); and co-editor of The New Carbon
Economy (with Emily Boyd and Max Boykoff) (2012).
ABBREVIATIONS

3C Combat Climate Change

ABARE Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource
Economics
ADP Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for
Enhanced Action
AGBM Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate
AIJ activities implemented jointly
AOSIS Alliance of Small Island States
APP Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and
Climate
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
C40 C40 Climate Leadership Group
CAN Climate Action Network
CBDP community-based disaster preparedness
CCB climate, community and biodiversity
CCBA Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance
CCI Clinton Climate Initiative
CCP Cities for Climate Protection
cCR carbonn Cities Climate Registry
CCX Chicago Climate Exchange
CDCF Community Development Carbon Fund
CDM Clean Development Mechanism
CDP Carbon Disclosure Project
CERES Coalition for Environmentally Responsible
Economies
CERs certified emissions reductions
CIFs Climate Investment Funds
CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research
 Abbreviations xi

CO2 carbon dioxide

CO2e carbon dioxide equivalent
COP Conference of the Parties
CSR corporate social responsibility
DEFRA Department for Environment and Rural Affairs
DNV Det Norske Veritas
EC European Commission
ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean
ECO Environmental Conservation Organization
ERT European Round Table of Industrialists
ETS Emissions Trading Scheme
EU European Union
FIT feed-in-tariff
FIELD Foundation for International Environmental Law
and Development
G77 group of developing countries (originally 77 that
signed a declaration in 1964)
G8 Group of Eight
GCC Global Climate Coalition
GDP gross domestic product
GEF Global Environment Facility
GHG greenhouse gases
GRILA Group of Latin American countries
HSBC Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
ICC Inuit Circumpolar Conference
ICCR Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsibility
ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability
ICSU International Council for Science (formerly
International Council of Scientific Unions)
IETA International Emissions Trading Association
IFC International Finance Corporation
IIED International Institute for Environment and
Development
IMF International Monetary Fund
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
ISO International Organization for Standardization
JI joint implementation
JUSCANZ Japan, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
LDCs least developed countries
xii Abbreviations

LDF local development framework

LULUCF land use, land-use change, and forestry
mCHP micro combined heat and power
NEG-ECP New England Governors and Eastern Canadian
Premiers
NGOs non-governmental organizations
nrg4SD Network of Regional Governments for Sustainable
Development
ODA Official Development Assistance
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
PCF Prototype Carbon Fund
PPP public–private partnerships
PRA participatory rapid appraisal
PSA-CABSA Payments for Carbon, Biodiversity and Agro-
forestry services
PV photovoltaics
QELROs quantifiable emissions limitations and reduction
obligations
REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation
REEEP Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency
Partnership
SBI Subsidiary Body for Implementation
SBSTA Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological
Advice
SGS Société Générale de Surveillance
TCCG Transnational Climate Change Governance
TCG The Climate Group
TT Transition Towns
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change
 Abbreviations xiii

UNICE Union of Industrial Employers’ Confederations in

Europe (now Business Europe)
UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development
Organization
US United States of America
VCA Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment
VCS Verified Carbon Standard
WBCSD World Business Council on Sustainable
Development
WOCoRe West Oxford Community Renewables
WMO World Meteorological Organization
WRI World Resources Institute
WRM World Rainforest Movement
WSSD World Summit on Sustainable Development
WTO World Trade Organization
WWF World Wide Fund for Nature
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Both authors would like to thank the series editor Rorden Wilkinson for
proposing the idea of a second edition of the book, and the publishing team
at Routledge, and especially Peter Harris, for their assistance with produc-
ing the book. They would also like to express their gratitude to Andrea
Brock for research assistance in the preparation of the final manuscript.
Harriet Bulkeley would like to thank Peter Newell for inviting her to
be involved with this project, and for being a committed and thought-
provoking co-author. She is also thankful for the love and support of Peter
Matthews, which continue to sustain her work and life.
Peter Newell would like to express his gratitude to Harriet Bulkeley for
being a willing, efficient and engaging co-author. He would like to show his
appreciation for the love and support of Lucila throughout this and many
other ventures.
The book is dedicated to our respective children Elodie, Thea, Ana and
Camilo for whom the question of the effectiveness of climate governance is
of much more than academic interest.

Harriet Bulkeley and Peter Newell

October 2014
INTRODUCTION
Governing climate change

Climate change is one of the most pressing scientific and political chal-
lenges of our time. With almost daily news reports of climate-related
disasters, international meetings, scientific findings, and various forms
of protest, it is unsurprising that the issue is both at the top of the inter-
national political agenda and one of significant public interest. Over the
past 25 years, we have witnessed the perhaps paradoxical twin processes of
growing scientific certainty about the causes and consequences of climate
change, and rising concern that the issue presents an intractable problem
for global governance. While the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) have built an increasingly alarming picture of
the changes that increased levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmos-
phere may precipitate, the international community has been slow to take
proportionate action. In this book, we examine the governance of climate
change in order to understand why and how the issue is being addressed
and by whom, and to explore the challenges which arise from attempting to
confront such a serious threat to our collective well-being.
In this introductory chapter, we consider why conventional accounts of
international cooperation and efforts to address the issue may fail to provide
a sufficient account of the contemporary landscape of climate governance.
We develop an alternative approach, which goes beyond existing thinking
about global governance, to help us to understand why, how, and by whom
climate change is being governed, and with what consequences.

The governance challenge

Before we consider what different theoretical perspectives might have to
say about the nature of climate change governance, it is appropriate to
look at the problem itself in more detail. In particular, we suggest that the
2 Introduction

complexity of governing climate change stems from three related factors:

the multiple scales of political decision making involved; the fragmented
and blurred roles of state and non-state actors; and the deeply embedded
nature of many of the processes that lead to emissions of GHG in everyday
processes of production and consumption.1
Turning first to the issue of the scale of the climate change problem, it is
commonly assumed that climate change is a “global problem.” If we take a
closer look at this assumption, however, we can see that the very nature of
how “global” is interpreted can lead to radically different understandings of
where, and with whom, the challenge of addressing climate change lies. For
some, the global nature of climate change comes from the physical nature
of the problem—because GHG emissions know no boundaries; emissions
in one place and time contribute to increasing atmospheric concentrations,
which in turn will have impacts across the globe. Because no one country
can tackle climate change alone, addressing climate change needs a global
solution—usually interpreted as cooperation between nation-states—in
order to reduce emissions worldwide and prevent the problem of free-
riding, of some benefiting from the actions of others. This understanding
of the climate change problem has become orthodox, and the challenge
of governing climate change globally is frequently assumed to be that of
agreeing cooperation, normally in the form of an international treaty, among
the relevant nation-states. In effect, this leads to an understanding of climate
change as an inter-national problem since states are the primary participants
in international institutions and have the authority to sign up to international
accords. There are, however, alternative means through which the global
nature of climate change could be understood. For example, one approach
would be to consider the global processes through which emissions of GHG
are generated—flows of production, trade, and consumption, for example—
which would signal a very different geography of responsibility, suggesting
that multinational corporations and consumers had a more significant role
to play in reducing emissions of GHG than the countries in which particular
goods were produced.2 One example of this kind of global geography of
climate change can be found in the study by Greenpeace International that
compared the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil
fuels by major oil companies with those of certain countries, and found that
Shell emits more than Saudi Arabia, Amoco more than Canada, Mobil more
than Australia, and BP, Exxon, and Texaco more than France, Spain, and the
Netherlands.3 Another study by the Climate Accountability Institute found
that “63% of cumulative worldwide emissions of industrial CO2 and methane
between 1751 and 2010” could be traced to 90 major economic actors in the
fossil fuel and cement industries, with half of these emissions having been
 Introduction 3

produced since 1986 (see Figure I.1).4 Hence, if we think of global as a causal
rather than a spatial category (particularly one bounded by the borders of a
nation-state), we are directed to a very different starting point for thinking
about who governs climate change and where that governing takes place.
At the same time, the very framing of climate change as a global problem
tends to neglect other scales of decision making which shape the trajecto-
ries of GHG emissions and the potential to adapt to climate change. Rather
than conceiving of climate change as a global problem, many scholars now
suggest it needs to be considered as a multilevel problem, in which different
levels of decision making—local, regional, national, and international—as
well as new spheres and arenas of governance that cut across such bounda-
ries are involved in both creating and addressing climate change.5 Indeed
we show throughout the book how actors operating at all these levels are
involved in the governance of climate change.

FIGURE I.1 Whose carbon is it?

Source: Carbon Majors available online at [Link]
graphics-for-carbon-majors-study/ [accessed January 15, 2015].
4 Introduction

Opening up the framing of climate change as an international problem

also leads to questions about the role of nation-states in its governance. The
focus of many analyses of climate change has been on what nation-states,
collectively and individually, are or are not doing to combat the issue. This
is clearly important—nation-states have significant power and influence
over many of the processes which contribute to climate change and reduce
vulnerability. However, it is increasingly recognized that nation-states are
also limited in the degree to which they can directly affect emissions of
GHG and the ability of societies and economies to adapt to climate change.
While the language of international agreements and national policy docu-
ments often suggests that nation-states can act as containers for emissions
of GHG—cutting up the global emissions pie into nation-sized pieces,
setting targets, and conducting emissions inventories—the GHG emitted
within the boundaries of a nation-state are shaped by processes and actors
operating across national boundaries, and moreover, only partially within
the purview of the state itself. As Geoffrey Heal argues:

carbon dioxide is produced as a result of billions of de-centralized and

independent decisions by private households for heating and trans-
portation and by corporations for these and other needs, all outside
the government sphere. The government can influence these deci-
sions, but only indirectly through regulations or incentives.6

In part, this reflects the changing nature of the state in the current era of
globalization and neo-liberal economic reform. So that whereas some
nation-states may once have been able to exercise sovereign authority over
those sectors where emissions of GHG are concentrated, such as energy,
transport, and agriculture, others have never enjoyed a monopoly of power
in these sectors. In many cases, however, the nature of the economic and
political interests at work is shifting in response to the globalization of
investment, development, and ownership of infrastructure and utility assets.
For example, many energy markets have been liberalized and privatized,
leaving the nation-state with little influence over the generation and supply
of energy,7 and even countries such as South Africa that managed to resist
some of the power sector reforms that have been applied elsewhere in Africa
are gradually opening up their energy markets to foreign and private inde-
pendent power producers.8 At the same time, a globalized economy makes
many governments wary of introducing policies such as taxation,9 when
businesses threatened with such measures can relocate to areas of the world
where there is less or virtually no regulation of their emissions. This means
that nation-states have to engage in forms of negotiation and cooperation
 Introduction 5

with non-state actors as they are increasingly dependent on them for

realizing their objectives through public–private partnerships (PPP) and
other arrangements.10 Any analytical framework that seeks to understand
how climate change is governed therefore needs to recognize the range of
actors that are now involved in the processes of governing climate change.
The critical involvement of non-state actors in climate governance partly
reflects a third key feature of the issue—the economically and socially
embedded nature of the production of GHG emissions. Unlike other global
environmental issues, such as ozone depletion, the causes of which were rela-
tively confined to one industrial sector based largely in Europe and North
America, or rainforest destruction, which is confined to specific geographic
locations, climate change stems from a complex range of processes, cutting
across place and scale, which are deeply embedded in our current ways of
living. As Timothy Mitchell argues, “the concentration of energy supplies in
large amounts at specific sites led to the creation of an apparatus of energy
supply with which the democratic politics of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries would be built.”11 Given that the use of energy is at the
heart of modern life and central to achieving economic growth, carving out
a specific terrain for climate change governance is problematic both in terms
of containing the scope of international and national policy, and also because
decisions reached in other domains—concerning trade, energy security, and
infrastructure planning to name just a few—will have critical implications for
the success or otherwise of efforts for governing climate change.
The multiscale, multiactor, and embedded nature of the issue poses
significant challenges for how we understand and analyze climate change
governance. In this book, we develop a new approach to address these chal-
lenges. First, we seek to move away from the idea that climate change is
exclusively a global issue—an emphasis which implies a narrow focus upon
public international policy—and instead to understand the shifting terrain of
climate governance across different scales and networks. Second, we shift
away from the position that the nation-state is the only or necessarily most
important unit of climate politics to consider the other actors involved, and
the ways in which public and private authority operate in climate govern-
ance.12 This involves rethinking where responsibility for addressing climate
change might lie, and raises interesting questions about who the relevant
actors are in governing climate change, how and why they govern climate
change the way they do, and with what implications. Third, we suggest that
conventional understandings of rights, risks, and responsibilities assume
a narrow view of who wields power and exercises agency in global cli-
mate politics which serve to reproduce a restrictive emphasis on reducing
6 Introduction

emissions through state pledges rather than promoting the de-carbonization

of the processes and services which generate GHG,13 which are often dif-
fuse, transnational, and frequently beyond direct state control as we saw
above. Before we set out this approach, let us first look in more detail at
existing and conventional approaches to explaining the governance of cli-
mate change and the critiques that have emerged.

Climate change: an international problem?

As we outlined above, approaches to understanding climate change as an
international problem commonly start with the fact that the atmosphere, in
contrast to the world of states, knows no boundaries. Emissions of GHG in
one place at one time can have impacts which stretch over time and space
in complex ways. Those who have made little or no contribution to the
problem will also suffer its consequences, and often it is the most vulner-
able who have the least culpability. Managing climate change, from this
perspective, entails managing a problem of a resource held in common,
over which no one institution or actor has control. In a classic framing of
the problem, Andrew Hurrell puts it:

Can a fragmented and often highly conflictual political system made

up of over 170 sovereign states and numerous other actors achieve
the high (and historically unprecedented) levels of cooperation and
policy coordination needed to manage environmental problems on a
global scale?14

As with other areas in which international cooperation is required, schol-

ars have sought to understand the politics of climate change through the
deployment of regime approaches which seek to explain the creation, stabil-
ity, and effectiveness of international institutions and the agreements they
oversee (see Box I.1).15 These perspectives proved particularly attractive for
understanding the dynamics of international climate change politics since
they respond “to a number of overlapping concerns” that “traditionally char-
acterize the global environmental problematic.”16 These include the desire
to regulate states’ behavior in order to avoid the so-called tragedy of com-
mons, the need to control tendencies towards free-riding, and the need to
respond to the distributive questions arising from the collective response to
global environmental challenges. Across a broad body of work concerned
with understanding the conditions under which nation-states co-operate to
address international problems, there are significant differences in terms of
 Introduction 7

understanding the processes through which regimes are created and operate.
Here, we consider three different perspectives and examine the insights that
they bring to understanding the process of governing climate change, before
considering their shortcomings in the light of the challenges of the climate
governance problem raised above.

Box I.1 DefInIng a regIme

International regimes are “social institutions that consist of agreed
upon principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures, and pro-
grams that govern the interactions of actors in specific issue areas.”
Source: Oran Young, “Rights, Rules and Resources in World Affairs,” in Global
Governance: Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience, ed. Oran Young
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 5–6.

Understanding regimes
In power-based accounts of regimes, regimes are formed and dominated by
a hegemon, the nation-state with the most (economic and military) power
which it can use either to promote cooperation or forestall international
agreement.17 Powerful states can either use their resources and power to
create and finance regimes out of an enlightened self-interest in a well-
governed international system, such as the United States did with the
creation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) at
the end of the Second World War, or, by contrast, exercise a veto role
by withdrawing their support for a regime or just ignoring it.18 Here, the
design of international institutions is less important than the motivations
of the hegemon, and the distribution of power in the international system,
in terms of the outcome of the regime. In the case of climate change, as
in many other issue areas, scholars have pointed to the United States as a
potential hegemon.19 As we discuss in further detail in Chapter 2, initially,
the United States took part in the development of the international agree-
ments for addressing climate change—the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol—
but withdrew from Kyoto in 2001. On the one hand, the ability of the
United States to withdraw from such an agreement on a high profile issue
points to the fragility of regimes and their dependence on the will of the
most powerful state.20 On the other hand, the survival of Kyoto, despite
8 Introduction

the withdrawal of the United States, and the rapprochement between the
Obama administration and the climate change regime suggest that interna-
tional institutions are more than the sum of their (powerful) parts. Perhaps
more fundamentally, scholars have questioned the basis upon which
power is conceived within such approaches. The assumption that interests
are predetermined and materially based (on economic wealth or military
might) has been challenged in the context of environmental issues that are
inherently uncertain and in which interests are difficult to discern at the
outset of negotiations.21 We return to this point below.
A second set of approaches for understanding regimes is also con-
cerned with the role of interests in shaping international cooperation.
Unlike power-based approaches, functionalist or interest-based accounts
of regimes are concerned with how different institutional designs shape
and affect the behavior of nation-states.22 Interest-based accounts suggest
that, over the long term:

regimes are formed when state actors perceive that individual actions
with respect to a given issue-area will not promote their interests in
the long run. Regimes, here, are seen as the medium used by state
actors to reduce vulnerability, opportunism, and uncertainty while
stabilizing the expectations needed to promote collective action.23

The focus is on the ability of institutions to reduce transaction costs, share

information, and enable communication, and so build trust and provide a
shadow of the future; a sense that short-term engagement will pay long-
term dividends. Hence, from this perspective, many of the disincentives
to cooperate that power-based approaches emphasize are addressed by the
ability of institutions to build cooperation through trust, bargaining, and the
careful design of institutions which can deter free-riders.
In a third approach to understanding regimes, the emphasis is shifted
away from rationalist and interest-based accounts to consider the roles
of norms, values, and knowledge in shaping the positions adopted by
nation-states and the evolution of international institutions. These con-
structivist accounts focus on “international regimes as a means through
which cognitive and normative aspects of the problem in question come to
be constructed and learnt, and in turn shape the ways in which states per-
ceive their interests.”24 By opening up the question of how nation-states
come to have interests, and how these evolve, constructivist accounts
widen the temporal and spatial horizons of regime theory by includ-
ing prenegotiation phases of interest development, domestic processes
 Introduction 9

through which interests come to be conceived, and a range of non-state

actors involved in developing norms and knowledge about the nature of
the climate change problem and how it should be governed.25 One key
aspect of this work has been to point to the role of scientific knowledge
in shaping the international politics of climate change through the role
of epistemic communities, who “are both politically empowered through
their claims to exercise authoritative knowledge and motivated by shared
causal and principled beliefs.”26 The IPCC could be regarded as fulfilling
the criteria for an epistemic community, with a shared understanding of
the causal processes involved in climatic change, normative beliefs (e.g.
in a precautionary approach), common tests for the validity of knowledge
(e.g. the extensive processes of peer review involved in IPCC reports),
and a common policy project based on the need to reduce emissions of
GHG.27 However, whether and how this consensual knowledge has influ-
enced the development of the climate change regime is less clear. While
the IPCC was regarded as playing a critical role in the early stages of the
development of the regime, once negotiations began their influence can
be seen to have diminished. For example, the IPCC has regularly stated
that reductions in GHG emissions in the order of 60 percent of 1990 lev-
els by 2050 are needed in industrialized countries. At Kyoto, a collective
target of 5 percent reductions by 2010 was agreed, which is rather far
removed from the scientific consensus. As Paterson argues:

it was clearly not the case that an epistemic consensus neatly pro-
duced international cooperation on the climate issue. Instead, it
produced resources for policymakers from different countries (or
from within different parts of the state within those countries) to
advance the positions they preferred—it became another strategic
argument at their disposal. Thus, oil producing countries were able
to emphasize the uncertainties (even those within the limits of the
scientific consensus).28

As we discuss in more depth in Chapter 2, rather than a process in which

consensual science is unproblematically translated into policy action, the rela-
tion between science and climate policy is complex and deeply politicized.29
This issue points to a wider problem with constructivist approaches. The focus
on knowledge and norms can belie the fragile and contested process through
which interests are forged, and overlook other important material and political
factors that shape the positions taken by different actors which reduces their
explanatory power in relation to the governance of climate change.
10 Introduction

Critiques
Regime approaches have provided powerful tools for understanding and
analyzing the politics of climate change at the global level. We have shown
how different accounts of regimes have demonstrated the roles of power-
ful states, international institutions, non-state actors, and structural factors
in shaping the international climate negotiations and policy outcomes.
However, we find that regime approaches are also limited in their scope,
particularly with respect to the key challenges of climate change as an envi-
ronmental problem—the multiple scales and actors involved, and the close
integration between the causes and consequences of climate change, eco-
nomic development, and everyday life. Here, we highlight four critiques
of regime approaches which we suggest restrict its analytical power for
understanding the governance of climate change.
The first issue concerns where the governance of climate change is seen
to take place. In keeping with orthodox accounts of the global nature of
climate change, which we discussed at the start of this chapter, regime
approaches tend to assume that the location of climate change as a gov-
ernance problem is in a discrete political domain which we can label “the
global.” As a consequence, different levels of governance—notably domes-
tic and international arenas—remain treated for the most part as distinct.
While some scholars have sought to understand the interplay, or interaction,
between different levels of governance—and the interaction between, for
example, domestic and international politics30 —this model of hierarchical,
discrete scales underplays both the fluidity of interaction at such frontiers as
well as how many of the processes that cause climate change operate across
these boundaries.31
The second issue relates to who is regarded as conducting the govern-
ance of climate change. Regime approaches continue to take “as given
the preeminent status of the nation-states as the key point of reference in
seeking account for the ways issued unfold in the global agenda.”32 While
some accounts acknowledge the role of non-state actors, their function is
primarily determined with respect to how they have sought to influence
nation-states and inter-national institutions. This state-centric approach is,
we think, problematic for it serves to limit our analysis of how non-state
actors are involved in climate governance. Furthermore, as an entity the
state remains essentially black-boxed—the nature of the state and how it
operates is taken for granted, so that questions concerning how state institu-
tions vary with historical and geographic context, and of how state power
is used in practice are rarely raised. One side effect is the extension of a
Western conception of the state, its capacity, and role in society as a model
 Introduction 11

for states everywhere, ignoring important differences in the nature of the

state across the globe.33 Another is that the state is regarded as a neutral actor
with regard to the actors and interests it is meant to regulate; an assumption
which overlooks the state’s dependence on economic actors, particularly in
key sectors such as energy which are so central to all other industries, and
the structural power that this confers on business actors to shape the context
in which states make decisions about which courses of action are desirable
and possible.34
The third issue concerns how climate governance takes place. Insofar
as it is considered explicitly at all, climate governance is conceived as a
top-down process, implemented through international agreements, national
policies, and various forms of market instrument. It is assumed that this
happens in a cascade fashion in which decisions and authority flow down-
wards from one level to the next in a linear way.35 While different traditions
of regime theory offer alternative explanations for such processes—whether
they be rationally based or driven by new norms or knowledge—little atten-
tion is paid to the actual practices through which policies and measures
are achieved and which other actors are implicated in this process, and the
implications of this for what is and is not included in the remit of climate
governance.
Finally, we suggest that regime approaches have to date failed to pro-
vide sufficient insights as to why climate governance is taking place, and
indeed to the particular form that it takes. While explanations are offered
in terms of the power of individual actors, institutions, or norms, such
approaches work with a particular concept of power which regards it as a
force exercised by some actors over others, neglecting both the structural
and generative aspects of power. On the one hand, by focusing on the power
of actors and of ideas to produce particular outcomes, regime approaches
tend to neglect the ways in which power operates to structure the rules
of the game within which such contests occur. This in turn means that
questions concerning who is served by particular arrangements or forms
of governance, of who wins and who loses and why, are often ignored.
On the other hand, regarding power as a discrete property of some actors
implies the conceptualization of power in zero-sum terms such that, for
example, “an increase in the power of non-state actors is ipsofacto defined
as a simultaneous reduction on state power and authority.”36 Conceiving of
power differently, as a facility to “enable things to happen,”37 allows us to
consider the way in which power is generated through the process of gov-
erning itself, and move beyond dualistic accounts of the roles of state and
non-state actors in addressing climate change.
12 Introduction

Global governance perspectives

In part as a response to concerns about the analytical power of the regime
approach, scholars within the discipline of international relations have
increasingly turned to the concept of governance as a means of under-
standing the nature of world affairs. Across the social sciences, the term
governance has gained in currency as a means of understanding the chang-
ing nature of the state and the proliferation of actors and mechanisms
involved in the governing of societies. In its broadest sense, governance
“relates to any form of creating or maintaining political order and providing
common goods for a given political community on whatever level.”38 The
specific variant of this literature concerned with global governance owes
much to the work of James Rosenau and his distinction between “govern-
ment,” confined to the world of states, and “governance,” regarded as a
broader phenomenon:

Governance occurs on a global scale through both the co-ordination

of states and the activities of a vast array of rule systems that exer-
cise authority in the pursuit of goals and that function outside normal
national jurisdictions. Some of the systems are formalized, many
consist of essentially informal structures, and some are still largely
inchoate, but taken together they cumulate to governance on a global
scale.39

Global governance therefore encompasses the numerous activities which

are significant both in establishing international rules and in shaping policy
through “on-the-ground” implementation even when some such activities
originate from actors that, technically speaking, “are not endowed with for-
mal authority.”40 As Rosenau suggests, and in common with other definitions
of governance, it is the involvement of non-state actors in the governing of
collective affairs in particular, that sets global governance aside from other
forms of international relations.
Within this broad church, several authors have identified different strands
of thinking.41 Here, we suggest that two main approaches for understanding
the nature and dynamics of global governance can be discerned.42 The first
approach “resides within the realms of regime theory” where the concept
of governance “has provided a way of rethinking regimes as enmeshed in
broader systems of governance instead of issue areas.”43 Closest in approach
and analysis to the constructivist version of regime theory, work in this vein
moves beyond examining how non-state actors have influenced the posi-
tions of nation-states or international negotiations to examine the significant
 Introduction 13

role of non-state actors in governing climate change within and alongside

the regime. Much of this work has focused on the role of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs).44 Such organizations can adopt “insider” strategies,
seeking to shape the governing of issues such as climate change through
the provision of advice, knowledge, and the development of policy solu-
tions.45 Within the international arena, NGOs are seen to act as diplomats
and “perform many of the same functions as state delegates: they represent
the interests of their constituencies, they engage in information exchange,
they negotiate, and they provide policy advice.”46 For example, in her anal-
ysis of the role of NGOs in the development of the Kyoto Protocol, Michele
Betsill argues that it was the specialized knowledge and expertise of NGOs
in the Climate Action Network (CAN) that provided them with leverage
in the negotiations. However, she suggests that the influence of NGOs
was not confined to the technical arena. While there was little evidence of
direct influence, in the form of the uptake of particular targets or proposals
made by CAN for the Kyoto Protocol, its presence made a significant dif-
ference to the overall outcome by holding the European Union (EU) to its
negotiating position of a 15 percent cut in emissions of GHG by 2010 and
pressuring Al Gore, then US Vice President, to take a flexible approach to
target setting. These were two important ingredients in the achievement of
the final outcome of Kyoto which may not have been present without the
role of the NGO community.47 In this manner, NGOs played a role inde-
pendent of individual nation-states, acting with a degree of autonomous
agency in shaping the international regime.
The second approach to understanding global governance moves beyond
the international arena “by acknowledging the emergence of autonomous
spheres of authority beyond the national/international dichotomy” and by
focusing “on the complex interlinkages between different societal actors
and governmental institutions.”48 Hence, rather than focus solely on the role
of non-state actors in shaping international climate institutions, such as the
UNFCCC and the related Kyoto Protocol, this body of global governance
work considers, for example, global climate governance as consisting of
“all purposeful mechanisms and measures aimed at steering social systems
towards preventing, mitigating, or adapting to the risks posed by climate
change.”49 One way of seeking to capture this is the idea of a “regime com-
plex,” which refers to the interactions between a multitude of international
and regional institutions whose mandates, to differing degrees, touch on the
issue of climate change. It embodies the idea that “There is no integrated,
comprehensive regime governing efforts to limit the extent of climate
change. Instead, there is a regime complex: a loosely coupled set of specific
14 Introduction

regimes.”50 Another related strand of literature has looked at the fragmen-

tation that results from this patchwork of public and private institutions,
looking at the consequences of fragmentation, how to manage it, and the
conditions of its effectiveness.51
Finally, scholars have examined the various roles of actors from global
civil society,52 municipal and regional networks,53 public–private partner-
ships,54 and the private sector55 in the governance of global environmental
issues,56 with an increasing interest in moving beyond single initiatives or
types of actors involved in climate governance to examining the different
forms of governance architecture that are being established beyond the
international regime.57 In Chapters 4, 5, and 6 we examine examples of
such approaches with respect to climate change in more detail.

Critiques and prospects

If we return to the core critiques with respect to regime approaches—
concerning where, by whom, how, and why climate governance takes
place—we can see that despite claims to offer an alternative, global govern-
ance perspectives share many, if not all, of the same shortcomings.
In terms of where climate governance is seen to take place, perspec-
tives from global governance offer a significant departure from regime
approaches. Rather than being confined to the international arena, much of
the work conducted under the banner of global governance acknowledges
both the multilevel and multiarena nature of climate governance and spe-
cifically seeks to examine how the governing of climate change is taking
place beyond the international regime. In this book, we follow this line of
argument and seek to examine the multiple sites—from the international
arena and national governments through to transnational networks and
private sector projects—in which climate governance takes place.
With regard to the second issue, concerning who governs climate
change, there is perhaps less distinction from regime approaches. While
both perspectives on global governance extend the range of actors involved
in governing climate change, for many, in particular those adopting a
regime-based account of global governance, the nation-state remains the
dominant force. For example, for Paul Wapner “states remain the main
actors in world affairs, and their co-operative efforts to establish regimes
remain the essential building blocks of global governance in environmental
and other issues.”58 Furthermore, the realms of the state and the non-state
are regarded as distinct and separate, leading some scholars to conclude
that the rise of non-state actors in global governance must be leading to a
 Introduction 15

decline of the state. This black-boxing of the state (and non-state) spheres
is unhelpful for it fails to account for the relations between state/non-state
actors, and the relation between public and private authority.59
Work in the tradition of international political economy offers a starting
point for crossing such divides, bringing into focus the nature of the state,
and emphasizing its intimate relation with private actors and civil society.60
Such approaches move away from the notion that the state is either a uni-
tary actor or occupies an autonomous social sphere. Instead, the state is
conceived as a “dynamic system of strategic selectivity”61 through which
the hegemony of one social group, or historic bloc, is attained and main-
tained.62 From this perspective—sometimes referred to as a neo-Gramscian
approach, because of insights derived from the writings of Antonio Gramsci
about the practice of hegemony—the focus is the coalitions and alliances
that different actors construct to secure, challenge, or maintain their power.63
A strong emphasis is placed on the links between production, power, and
governance, so that processes of governing which ultimately seek to regu-
late and change forms of production, as climate governance does, have to
negotiate with those who have control over that production and their result-
ing power and influence.64 This approach opens up the constitution of state/
non-state relations, and requires that we “think through the many ways in
which power is consolidated in institutions normally considered outside of
the state.”65 Such perspectives allow us to ask important questions concern-
ing who is governing on whose behalf, and who is excluded from such
processes. In the remainder of this book, we seek to deploy perspectives
from political economy to help us understand who governs climate change,
and with what implications.
Like regime approaches, perspectives on global governance have also
been criticized for failing to pay due attention to how governing occurs.
While studies of global governance are concerned with the processes
through which it takes place, Sending and Neumann suggest that

their ontology and concomitant analytical tools are not equipped to

grasp the content of the processes of governance itself. Rather, stud-
ies of global governance typically focus on the changing roles and
power of state and nonstate actors, and on resulting changes in the
institutionalization of political authority.66

As a result of this focus on the shifts in power and the institutionalization

of authority, questions concerning how governance is achieved in practical
terms have been relatively neglected.67 This is an important omission for,
16 Introduction

as scholars of governmentality observe, it is through such processes that

certain discourses or frames of governing are made material and “certain
identities and action-orientations are defined as appropriate and normal.”68
Drawing on these insights, in this book we seek to develop an understand-
ing of how climate governance takes place, and with what implications for
how the “problem” of climate change and “its solutions” are normalized
within the governance arena.
A combined lack of engagement with how and by whom climate
governance is being undertaken contributes to the neglect of questions
concerning why it is conducted within the literatures on global govern-
ance. In the main, key concepts concerning power and authority are
similar to those used within regime approaches, such that both struc-
tural and facilitative notions of power have not been used as a means of
understanding why, and with what implications, the governing of climate
change is taking particular forms. In the remainder of this book, we draw
on these alternative notions of power in order to understand the drivers
and consequences of climate governance.

Outline
Our brief discussion of regime approaches and perspectives on global gov-
ernance has demonstrated that both approaches have shortcomings when it
comes to explaining where, by whom, how, and why climate governance is
being conducted. We have also identified prospects for taking the consider-
able insights generated in these bodies of work forward, acknowledging
the multiscale, multiactor, and embedded nature of the climate governance
challenge, by opening up our analysis of the sites of climate governance,
considering the relation between state and non-state actors in terms of who
is governing climate change, examining the processes through which cli-
mate governance is being achieved, and using alternative concepts of power
in order to understand why, and with what consequences, climate govern-
ance is taking place. We draw on these themes throughout the remainder
of the book, and return to consider their implications in our conclusions in
Chapter 6.
In Chapter 1, we provide a brief outline of the history of the emer-
gence of climate change as a global governance problem, examining the
key roles played by science, North–South politics, and the growing use
of market instruments in structuring the international climate regime and
the possibilities for addressing the issue. Chapter 2 focuses in more detail
on the conflicts that have arisen between countries in the North and South
 Introduction 17

in addressing climate change, and considers in particular what the impli-

cations of climate governance have been for issues of equity. Together,
these chapters provide a picture of the emergence and development of
climate change as an international and national political issue, and of the
resulting consequences across different policy sectors and different places.
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine the emergence of climate governance in a
range of political sites beyond the regime and nation-state. Chapter 3 con-
siders the growing phenomenon of transnational networks and partnerships
for addressing climate change, examining how such processes of governing
take place, and assessing their implications in terms of the effectiveness
and equity of climate governance. Chapter 4 focuses on the emergence
of “community-based” climate governance, examining its connections to
international and national policy arenas and the possibilities for self-gov-
erning approaches for addressing the issue. Chapter 5 explores the role of
private actors in climate governance, considering their significance in both
shaping the positions of nation-states and the international regime, and in
performing governance functions in their own right. These chapters dem-
onstrate that there is a wealth of climate governance taking place outside of
the formal sites of international and national climate politics, which both
carry the promise of innovative solutions and also raise considerable chal-
lenges in terms of accountability, equity, and effectiveness. In Chapter 6,
we conclude by summarizing our main findings and consider the key
themes that have emerged through the book and what challenges they raise
conceptually and politically.

Notes
1 Karena Shaw, “Climate Deadlocks: The Environmental Politics of Energy
Systems,” Environmental Politics 20, no. 5 (2011): 743–63.
2 Yda Schreuder, The Corporate Greenhouse: Climate Change Policy in a
Globalizing World (London: Zed Books, 2009).
3 Greenpeace International, The Oil Industry and Climate Change: A Greenpeace
Briefing (Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Greenpeace International, 1998).
4 Richard Heede, “Tracing Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Methane
Emissions to Fossil Fuel and Cement Producers, 1854–2010,” Climatic
Change 122, no. 1–2 (2014): 229–41.
5 Michele Betsill and Harriet Bulkeley, “Transnational Networks and Global
Environmental Governance: The Cities for Climate Protection Program,”
International Studies Quarterly 48 (2004): 471–93; John Vogler, “Taking
Institutions Seriously: How Regimes Can be Relevant to Multilevel
Environmental Governance,” Global Environmental Politics 3, no. 2 (2003):
25–39; Neil Adger and Andrew Jordan, eds, Governing Sustainability
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
18 Introduction

6 Geoffrey Heal, “New Strategies for the Provision of Global Public Goods:
Learning from International Environmental Challenges,” in Global Public
Goods: International Cooperation in the Twenty-first Century, eds Inge Kaul,
Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
240–64.
7 Adrian Smith, “Energy Governance: the Challenges of Sustainability,” in
Energy for the Future: A New Agenda, eds Ivan Scrase and Godron MacKeron
(Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2009), 54–76.
8 Lucy Baker, Peter Newell, and Jon Phillips, “The Political Economy of
Energy Transitions: The Case of South Africa,” New Political Economy
19, no. 6 (2014): 791–818.
9 Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, “A Climate for Business: Global
Warming, the State and Capital,” Review of International Political Economy
5, no. 4 (1998): 679–704.
10 Phillip Pattberg, “Public Private Partnerships in Global Climate Governance,”
WIREs Climate Change 1 (2010): 279–87.
11 Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
(New York: Verso, 2011), 19.
12 Philipp Pattberg and Johannes Stripple, “Beyond the Public and Private
Divide: Remapping Transnational Climate Governance in the 21st Century,”
International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 8, no.
4 (2008): 367–88.
13 Getting Beyond the Climate Crunch: Re-thinking Rights, Risks and
Responsibilities (ESRC Briefing, 2014).
14 Andrew Hurrell, International Politics of the Environment (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992), 1.
15 Oran Young, “Rights, Rules and Resources in World Affairs,” in Global
Governance: Drawing Insights from the Environmental Experience, ed. Oran
Young (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 5–6; see also Oran Young,
Global Governance: Learning Lessons from the Environmental Experience
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998); eds Peter Haas, Robert Keohane, and
Marc Levy, Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective Environmental
Protection (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993).
16 Peter Newell, Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and the Global Politics
of the Greenhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 23–4.
17 Matthew Paterson, Global Warming, Global Politics (London: Routledge,
1996); Chukwumerije Okereke and Harriet Bulkeley, “Conceptualizing
Climate Change Governance Beyond the International Regime: A Review of
Four Theoretical Approaches,” Tyndall Working Paper 112 (2007), 6.
18 Susan Strange, “Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,”
International Organization 36 (1983): 488–90.
19 Paterson, Global Warming, Global Politics.
20 Marvin Soroos, “Global Climate Change and the Futility of the Kyoto
Process,” Global Environmental Politics 1, no. 2 (2001): 1–9.
21 Karen Litfin, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental
Cooperation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
22 Detlef Sprinz and Tapani Vaahtoranta, “The Interest-based Explanation of
International Environmental Policy,” International Organization 48 (1994):
77–105.
 Introduction 19

23 Okereke and Bulkeley, “Conceptualizing Climate Change Governance Beyond

the International Regime: A Review of Four Theoretical Approaches,” 6.
24 Harriet Bulkeley and Michele Betsill, Cities and Climate Change: Urban
Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance (London: Routledge,
2003).
25 Newell, Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and the Global Politics of the
Greenhouse.
26 Peter Haas, Saving the Mediterranean: The Politics of International
Environmental Cooperation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990),
349.
27 Paterson, Global Warming, Global Politics.
28 Paterson, Global Warming, Global Politics, 151.
29 Sheila Jasanoff and Brian Wynne, “Science and Decision Making,” in Human
Choice and Climate Change I: The Societal Framework, eds Steve Rayner
and Elizabeth Malone (Columbus, Ohio: Battelle Press, 1998), 1–87.
30 Kathryn Harrison and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, eds, Global Commons,
Domestic Decisions: The Comparative Politics of Climate Change (Cambridge
Mass.: MIT, 2010).
31 Matthew Auer, “Who Participates in Global Environmental Governance?
Partial Answers from International Relations Theory,” Policy Sciences 33, no.
2 (2000): 155–80; Bulkeley and Betsill, Cities and Climate Change: Urban
Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance; Harriet Bulkeley,
“Reconfiguring Environmental Governance: Towards a Politics of Scales and
Networks,” Political Geography 24, no. 8 (2005): 875–902.
32 Newell, Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and the Global Politics of the
Greenhouse.
33 Peter Newell, “The Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance,”
Review of International Studies 34 (July 2008): 507–29.
34 Newell and Paterson, “A Climate For Business,” 679–704; Newell, “The
Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance,” 507–29.
35 Bulkeley, “Reconfiguring Environmental Governance: Towards a Politics of
Scales and Networks,” 875–902.
36 Ole Jacob Sending and Iver B. Neumann, “Governance to Governmentality:
Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no.
3 (2006): 651–72.
37 John Allen, “Powerful City Networks: More than Connections, Less than
Domination and Control,” Urban Studies, 47, no. 13 (2010): 2895–911.
38 Thomas Risse, “Global Governance and Communicative Action,” Government
and Opposition 39, no. 2 (2004): 289.
39 James Rosenau, “Change, Complexity and Governance in a Globalizing
Space,” in Debating Governance, ed. Jon Pierre (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 172.
40 James Rosenau, “Governance, Order, and Change in World Politics,” in
Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics, eds
James Rosenau and Ernst Czempiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 6.
41 Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Pattberg, “Global Governance as a Perspective
on World Politics,” Global Governance 12, no. 2 (2006): 185–203; Sverker
Jagers and Johannes Stripple, “Climate Governance Beyond the State,” Global
Governance 9, no. 3 (2003): 385–99; Okereke and Bulkeley, “Conceptualizing
20 Introduction

Climate Change Governance Beyond the International Regime: a Review of

Four Theoretical Approaches”; Matthew Paterson, David Humphreys, and
Lloyd Pettiford, “Conceptualizing Global Environmental Governance: From
Interstate Regimes to Counter Hegemonic Struggles,” Global Environmental
Politics 3, no. 2 (2003): 1–8.
42 These are ideal types and there will of course be work which does not fit
neatly into each category, while other authors may write from both perspec-
tives. Note that we do not include here normative approaches to “global
governance” associated with the drive by international organizations, nation-
states and non-governmental bodies to promote “good” governance, though
we acknowledge that such discourses share some liberal assumptions in com-
mon with academic approaches.
43 Sverker Jagers and Johannes Stripple, “Climate Governance Beyond the
State,” Global Governance 9, no. 3 (2003): 385.
44 Michele Betsill and Elisabeth Corell, eds, NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of
Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008); Newell, Climate for Change: Non-
State Actors and the Global Politics of the Greenhouse; Bas Arts, The Political
Influence of Global NGOs: Case Studies on the Climate and Biodiversity
Conventions (Utrecht, the Netherlands: International Books, 1998).
45 Lars H. Gulbrandsen and Steinar Andresen, “NGO Influence in the
Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol: Compliance, Flexibility Mechanisms,
and Sinks,” Global Environmental Politics 4, no. 4 (2004): 56.
46 Betsill and Corell, NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental
Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations, 3.
47 Michele Betsill, “Transnational Actors in International Environmental
Politics,” in Palgrave Advances in International Environmental Politics, eds
Michele M. Betsill, Kathryn Hochstetler, and Dimitris Stevis (Basingstoke,
UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 191.
48 Dingwerth and Pattberg, “Global Governance as a Perspective on World
Politics,” 197.
49 Jagers and Stripple, “Climate Governance Beyond the State,” 385.
50 Robert O. Keohane and David G. Victor, “The Regime Complex for Climate
Change,” Discussion paper 10–33 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on
International Climate Agreements, 2010), 1.
51 Fariborz Zelli, “The Fragmentation of the Global Climate Governance
Architecture,” WIREs Climate Change 2 (2011): 255–70.
52 Paul Wapner, Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics (Albany, N.Y.:
State University of New York Press, 1996); Ronnie Lipschutz, “From Place
to Planet: Local Knowledge and Global Environmental Governance,” Global
Governance 3, no. 1 (1997): 83–102.
53 Bulkeley and Betsill, Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and
Global Environmental Governance; Henrik Selin and Stacy D. VanDeveer,
“Canadian–US Environmental Cooperation: Climate Change Networks and
Regional Action,” American Review of Canadian Studies 35, no. 2 (2005):
353–78.
54 Karin Bäckstrand, “Accountability of Networked Climate Governance: The
Rise of Transnational Climate Partnerships,” Global Environmental Politics
8, no. 3 (2008): 74–102; Pattberg and Stripple, “Beyond the Public and
Private Divide: Remapping Transnational Climate Governance in the 21st
 Introduction 21

Century”; Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang H. Reinicke, and Jan Martin Witte,

“Multisectoral Networks in Global Governance: Towards a Pluralistic System
of Accountability,” Government and Opposition 39, no. 2 (2004): 191–210.
55 Benjamin Cashore, “Legitimacy and the Privatization of Environmental
Governance: How Non-State Market-Driven Governance Systems Gain Rule-
Making Authority,” Governance 15, no. 4 (2004): 503–29; Jennifer Clapp, “The
Privatization of Global Environmental Governance: ISO 14001 and the Developing
World,” Global Governance 4, no. 3 (1998); Klaus Dingwerth, “North–South
Parity in Global Governance: The Affirmative Procedures of the Forest Stewardship
Council,” Global Governance 14, no. 1 (2008); Simone Pulver, “Importing
Environmentalism: Explaining Petroleos Mexicanos’ Proactive Climate Policy,”
Studies in Comparative International Development 42, no. 3/4 (2007): 233–55.
56 Peter Newell, Phillip Pattberg, and Heike Schroeder, “Multi-actor Governance
and the Environment,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37
(2012): 365–87.
57 Matthew Hoffman, Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting
with a Global Response after Kyoto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011);
Harriet Bulkeley, Liliana Andonova, Michele M. Betsill, Daniel Compagnon,
Thomas Hale, Peter Newell, Matthew Paterson, Charlie Rogers, and Stacy
Vandever Transnational Climate Change Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014).
58 Paul Wapner, “Governance in Global Civil Society,” in Global Governance:
Drawing Insight from Environmental Experience, ed. Oran Young (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), 67.
59 Harriet Bulkeley and Heike Schroeder, “Beyond State/Non-State Divides:
Global Cities and the Governing of Climate Change,” European Journal
of International Relations 18, no. 4 (2012): 743–66; Eva Lövbrand and
Johannes Stripple, “Disrupting the Public–Private Distinction: Excavating
the Government of Carbon Markets post-Copenhagen,” Environment and
Planning C 30 (2012): 658–74; Sending and Neumann, “Governance to
Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs, States, and Power.”
60 David Levy and Peter Newell, eds, The Business of Global Environmental
Governance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Matthew Paterson,
Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation
and Resistance (Houndmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000); Paterson, Humphreys,
and Pettiford, “Conceptualizing Global Environmental Governance: From
Interstate Regimes to Counter Hegemonic Struggles,” 1–10; Julian Saurin,
“Global Environmental Crisis as ‘Disaster Triumphant’: The Private Capture
of Public Goods,” Environmental Politics 10, no. 4 (2001): 80; Ulrich Brand
and Markus Wissen, “Global Environmental Politics and the Imperial Mode
of Living. Articulations of State–Capital Relations in the Multiple Crisis,”
Globalizations 9, no. 4 (2012): 547–60.
61 Bob Jessop, “Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State-
Theoretical Perspective,” Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): 463.
62 Chukwumerije Okereke, Harriet Bulkeley, and Heike Schroeder,
“Conceptualizing Climate Governance Beyond the International Regime,”
Global Environmental Politics 9, no. 1 (2009): 58–78.
63 David Levy and Peter Newell, “Business Strategy and International
Environmental Governance: Towards a Neo-Gramscian Synthesis,” Global
Environmental Politics 2, no. 4 (2002): 84–101; Levy and Newell, The
Business of Global Environmental Governance.
22 Introduction

64 Peter Newell, “The Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance,”

Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 507–29.
65 Michael Ekers and Alex Loftus, “The Power of Water: Developing Dialogues
Between Foucault and Gramsci,” Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 26, no. 4 (2008): 703.
66 Sending and Newmann, “Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs,
States, and Power,” 653.
67 See for example: Robyn Dowling, “Geographies of Identity: Climate Change,
Governmentality and Activism,” Progress in Human Geography, 34, no.
4 (2010): 488–95; Eva Lövbrand and Johannes Stripple, “Making Climate
Change Governable: Accounting for Sinks, Credits and Personal Budgets,”
Critical Policy Studies 5, no. 2 (2011): 187–200; Heather Lovell, “Climate
Change, Markets and Standards: The Case of Financial Accounting,” Economy
and Society 43, no. 2 (2014): 260–84; Angela Oels, “Rendering Climate
Change Governable by Risk: From Probability to Contingency,” Geoforum
45 (2013): 17–29; Johannes Stripple and Harriet Bulkeley, eds, Governing
the Climate: New Approaches to Rationality, Power and Politics (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014).
68 Sending and Newmann, “Governance to Governmentality: Analyzing NGOs,
States, and Power,” 657.
1
GOVERNING CLIMATE CHANGE
A brief history

Although we often assume that the high profile that climate change now
enjoys means that it is a new political issue, in fact it has a much longer
legacy. In this chapter, we provide a brief history of the politics of climate
change. We analyze the key issues and conflicts in the international negotia-
tions from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) in 1992 through to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and up to the
present state of negotiations towards an anticipated agreement in Paris in
2015. The discussion is organized around three features of climate gov-
ernance which have characterized this period: the role of science and the
scientific community in the governance of climate change, the evolving
role of North–South politics, and finally the increasing marketization of
climate governance. Before examining these key issues in turn, we provide
a brief overview of how climate policy is made at the international level.

Making policy on climate change

Actors and institutions

The international negotiations on climate change are organized around a
number of key actors, institutions, and decision making processes that it is
necessary to understand to follow the discussion presented here. In terms
of international organizations, three institutions are critical to the process
of negotiating climate change policy. First, there is the secretariat of the
UNFCCC, based in Bonn since 1996, which organizes and oversees the
negotiations, prepares the necessary documentation, and is responsible for
overseeing the reporting of emissions profiles and projects funded through the
Kyoto Protocol. Guided by the parties to the Convention, it provides organi-
zational support and technical expertise to the negotiations and institutions
and facilitates the flow of authoritative information on the implementation
24 Governing climate change: a brief history

of the Convention. It has a key and often underestimated role to play in

shaping the outcomes of the negotiations.1 It has an executive secretary who
has the responsibility of trying to guide the negotiations towards a success-
ful conclusion. Second, there is the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the
UNFCCC which serves as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol
which meets annually to review progress on commitments contained in
those treaties and to update them in the light of the latest scientific advice.
This is the ultimate decision making body in the climate negotiations. Third,
there are the Subsidiary Bodies for Implementation (SBI) and Scientific and
Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the ad hoc working groups that take
forward negotiations on specific issues which the COP ultimately has to
approve. For example, there is at the moment an Ad Hoc Working Group on
the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. The links between these and other
institutions which form the climate regime are illustrated in Figure 1.1.
In order to shape this process, governments often organize themselves
into blocs and negotiating coalitions to enhance their influence and to
advance common agendas. These key coalitions and negotiating blocs
emerged early on in the negotiations, but have evolved significantly since
then as the issues have changed and their levels of economic development
dramatically altered.2 At one end of the spectrum, the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quickly emerged as the coalition
of states most hostile to action on climate change. With revenues almost
entirely dependent on the export of oil, that opposition was unsurprising.
This bloc affected the pace and course of the negotiations, with calls for
greater scientific certainty before action could take place, the formation of
alliances with businesses opposed to action,3 and the use of wrecking tactics
such as the call for compensation for loss of oil revenue in response to the
call from many low-lying developing countries for economic compensation
for impacts suffered as a result of climate change.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Alliance of Small Island States
(AOSIS), a coalition of island states most vulnerable to the effects of sea-
level rise, has been the most strident of the negotiating coalitions in its
demands for far-reaching and stringent emission reduction targets. In 1995,
it proposed its own protocol to the agreement, mandating a 20 percent cut
in 1990 emissions by 2005. The AOSIS group has worked closely with
the London-based legal group Foundation for International Environmental
Law and Development (FIELD) that provides legal advice on the negotiat-
ing text. Indeed, FIELD were attributed a key role in drafting the AOSIS
protocol, suggesting the fragility of rigid distinctions about who exercises
power and authority in the governance of climate change.4
 Governing climate change: a brief history 25

Conference of the Parties (COP) / Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the
Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP)

Bureau

Permanent subsidiary bodies

Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Subsidiary Body for

Technological Advice (SBSTA) Implementation (SBI)

Convention bodies Kyoto Protocol bodies

The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Compliance Committee

Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP)

Executive Board of the Clean

Adaptation Committee (AC)
Development Mechanism
(CDM-EB)
Standing Committee on
Finance (SCF) Joint Implementation
Supervisory Committee (JISC)
Executive Committee of the
Warsaw International Mechanism
for Loss and Damage Adaptation Fund Board (AFB)

Technology Executive Global Environment

Committee (TEC) Facility (GEF)
Technology Financial
Mechanism Advisory Board of the Climate mechanism
Green Climate
Technology Centre & Network Fund (GCF)
(CTCN)
Special Climate Change
Consultative Group of Experts Fund (SCCF)
on National Communications
from Parties not included in Other financial Least Developed Countries
Expert Groups Annex I to the Convention (CGE) arrangements Fund (LDCF)

Least Developed Adaptation Fund (AF)

Countries Expert Group (LEG)

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat

FIGURE 1.1 How the UN bodies dealing with climate change are related
Source: UNFCCC web site available online at [Link]
[accessed January 15, 2015].

In between these two polarities lay the coalition of the Group of 77

(G77) developing nations and China. This coalition emphasized the North’s
primary contribution to the problem of climate change and sought to deflect
calls for the South to make commitments and to ensure that funds committed
to achieving the Convention’s goals were genuinely additional to existing
money for aid. The G77, which, as we will see below, is now less cohesive,
continues to provide a platform for shared concerns about climate change
policy. The European Union, meanwhile, has been keen to see a stronger
agreement, while the United States, particularly during the administrations of
26 Governing climate change: a brief history

presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, was resolutely opposed
to legally binding cuts in GHG. Japan has adopted a stance between these
two positions, but has often been a reluctant leader because of high levels
of industry pressure to not over-commit, and is now opposed to the idea of
a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. Both the United
States and Japan were part of the JUSCANZ grouping (Japan, United
States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) which argued for maximum
flexibility in how countries were expected to meet their commitments in the
negotiations towards the Kyoto Protocol. Now, along with Russia, many
of these countries constitute the core group opposed to securing a second
commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol. One notable development
has been the growing power of so-called BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and South Africa) which became markedly apparent in the
climate negotiations at the time of the Copenhagen summit in 2009 when
President Obama and these leading, rapidly developing countries were the
brokers of the Copenhagen Accord, and the European Union, previously
thought of as a leader on climate change, was left out in the cold.
Alongside the formal negotiations organized in plenary sessions and work-
ing groups that meet in parallel to discuss specific issues, a bewildering array
of non-governmental, business, and other organizations are registered to par-
ticipate in the process. Though they do not have formal voting rights, they
are allowed to make interventions and are often admitted onto government
delegations where they have access to all the meetings taking place. In many
ways, these actors are non-governmental “diplomats” that perform many
of the same functions as state delegates: representing the interests of their
constituencies, engaging in information exchange, negotiating, and provid-
ing policy advice.5 Their participation, though growing, is nonetheless highly
uneven. For example, although by the time of the Copenhagen summit in
2009, more than 1,000 organizations from 80 countries had obtained observer
status, a closer look reveals the majority are based in Europe and North
America. More than 210 organizations from the United States, for example,
are registered as observers, alongside 100 groups from Britain and 92 from
Canada. Meanwhile, no developing country, except for Brazil, China, and
India, managed to bring more than ten observer organizations to the table.6
We can see, therefore, that the process of making climate policy involves
international organizations and institutional structures established for this
purpose, coalitions and blocs of state actors, and a range of non-state actors
who have sought to influence the process of negotiation in a variety of
ways. Before turning to discuss particular aspects of this process in detail,
we first consider the main policy milestones that have shaped the current
state of international climate policy.
 Governing climate change: a brief history 27

Climate change policy milestones

The governance of climate change as a global political issue has progressed
from being a cause for concern among a growing number of scientists to
gaining recognition as an issue deserving of a collective global effort orches-
trated by the United Nations (UN) (Box 1.1). Over time, there has been a
deepening of cooperation and firming up of obligations to act; this is a proc-
ess common to many international negotiations on the environment where a
general agreement identifies the need for action and a subsequent protocol
contains concrete legally binding emission reduction commitments. What
is also notable, a theme to which we return below, is the increasing use of
market or flexible mechanisms to achieve emission reductions.

Box 1.1 The gloBal governance of clImaTe

change: a shorT chronology
1988 World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: politicians and
scientists conclude that “humanity is conducting an unintended,
uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate con-
sequences could be second only to nuclear war.” The conference
recommends reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2005.
1990 The IPCC publishes its First Assessment Report.
1991 The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee is set up to oversee
negotiations towards an international agreement
1992 In Rio de Janeiro 154 countries sign the UNFCCC at the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The aim is to
stabilize emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000 as part of an over-
all goal to stabilize GHG “concentrations in the atmosphere at a level
that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system.”a
1994 The UNFCCC enters into force on March 21.
1995 The first COP agrees in Berlin that binding commitments by
industrialized countries are required to reduce emissions.
1995 The IPCC publishes its Second Assessment Report, which suggests
that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human
influence on global climate.”b
1996 The second COP in Geneva sees the United States agree to legally
binding targets to reduce emissions as long as emissions trading is
included in an agreement.
1997 More than 150 countries sign the Kyoto Protocol which binds 38
industrialized (Annex 1) countries to reduce GHG emissions by an
average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the period 2008–12.
2000 The negotiations at the sixth COP in The Hague collapse amid
disagreements, principally between the United States and Europe,
about the use of the Kyoto Protocol’s flexibility mechanisms.
2001 President George W. Bush announces that the US is to withdraw
from the Kyoto Protocol.
28 Governing climate change: a brief history

2001 In Marrakesh the final elements of the Kyoto Protocol are worked
out, particularly the rules and procedures by which the flexible
mechanisms will operate.
2004 The Buenos Aires Programme of Work on Adaptation and
Response Measures is agreed at COP 10.
2005 On February 16, the Kyoto Protocol becomes law after Russian
ratification pushes the emissions of ratified Annex 1 countries over
the 55 percent mark.*
2005 The first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol takes place
in Montreal at COP 11.
2006 At the Second Meeting of the Parties (COP 12), the Nairobi
Work Programme on Adaptation and the Nairobi Framework on
Capacity-Building for the CDM are agreed.
2007 The IPCC publishes its Fourth Assessment Report.
2007 At COP 13 the Bali Action Plan is agreed, which calls for a
long-term goal for emission reductions; measurable, reportable,
verifiable mitigation commitments including nationally appropriate
mitigation actions by LDCs; enhanced adaptation, action on
technology development and transfer, and financial resources and
investment to support the above.
2009 The COP 15 takes place in Copenhagen amid pressure to “seal
the deal” on a new legally binding agreement. Instead, a small
group of countries negotiated the Copenhagen Accord, which other
parties would only “note” the existence of. Industrialized nations
committed to provide developing nations with US$30 billion of
“new and additional” fast-track funding between 2010 and 2012, as
well as US$100 billion per year by 2020 to be channelled through a
Green Climate Fund.
2010 COP 16 agrees the “Cancún agreements” which seek to keep the
negotiations on track in the areas of adaptation, forests, climate
finance, technology transfer, and capacity building in the wake of
the fiasco at Copenhagen.
2011 In Durban at COP17, governments commit to adopt a universal
legal agreement on climate change as soon as possible, but not
later than 2015, to come into effect in 2020. A new group called
the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced
Action takes this forward.
2014 The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report is published.c It concludes
that “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent
anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in
history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on
human and natural systems . . . Their effects, together with those
of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the
climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant
cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
2014 COP20 meets in Lima under pressure to quicken the pace of prog-
ress towards a new global deal to be completed and signed in Paris
at the end of 2015.
 Governing climate change: a brief history 29

Sources:
1
Article 2 of the UNFCCC (1992) available at [Link]
ground/convention/items/[Link] [accessed January 15, 2015].
2
IPCC, Second Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995).
3
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report available at [Link] [accessed January
15, 2015].
* Note: Article 25 of the Kyoto Protocol specifies that it enters into force “on the
ninetieth day after the date on which not less than 55 Parties to the Convention, incor-
porating Parties included in Annex I which accounted in total for at least 55% of the
total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 of the Annex I countries, have deposited their
instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession.” The “55 parties clause”
was reached on May 23, 2002 when Iceland ratified the Protocol. The ratification by
Russia on November 18, 2004 satisfied the “55%” clause and brought the treaty into
force, effective February 16, 2005.

The UNFCCC was agreed at the United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development (UNCED) summit in Rio in 1992. As the
first major milestone in the history of climate diplomacy, the UNFCCC
provided a framework for global action on the issue. It sought to emu-
late the apparent success of the ozone regime, which first produced the
Vienna Convention, establishing the nature of the problem and the basis
for action on it, and subsequently the Montreal Protocol, which agreed
a phase-out of the most damaging ozone-depleting chemicals. Given the
sharp differences of opinion described above, and the relative lack of
momentum behind the issue at the time, the fact the UNFCCC was agreed
at all can be considered a considerable achievement. The agreement set
the goal of “avoiding dangerous interference in the climate system,”
defined as aiming to stabilize concentrations of GHG in the atmosphere,
and listed some of policies and measures that countries might adopt to
achieve that end. Acknowledging the vast differences in contributions
to the problem, the Convention established the principle of “common
but differentiated responsibility”7 and recognized that developing coun-
tries were not yet in a position to assume their own obligations. Efforts
they could make towards tackling the issue were made dependent on the
receipt of aid and technology transfer from Northern countries that were
meant to be “additional” to existing aid budgets.
Attention then turned to how to realize the general nature of the commit-
ments contained in the UNFCCC. With scientific assessments of the severity
of climate change becoming increasingly common, and growing awareness
30 Governing climate change: a brief history

of the inadequacy of existing policy responses, momentum built for a

follow-up to the Convention.8 The 1995 Berlin Mandate at the first COP
sought to promote Quantifiable Emissions Limitations and Reduction
Obligations (QELROs) and negotiations thus began towards a Protocol
which would set legally binding targets to reduce GHG emissions. The Kyoto
Protocol, concluded in 1997, was the outcome of this. Signed by more than
150 countries, it binds 38 industrialized (Annex 1) countries to reduce GHG
emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the period
2008–12 (see Box 1.2). It fixes differentiated targets for industrialized coun-
tries while setting in train a process to further elaborate joint implementation
schemes, to set up an emissions trading scheme (ETS), and to create a Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM). We discuss these further below.

Box 1.2 The KyoTo ProTocol In BrIef

Commitments
• Industrialized countries were required to reduce their collective
emissions of GHG by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 lev-
els in the commitment period 2008–12.
• The US was to reduce its emissions by an average of 7 percent,
Japan by an average of 6 percent, and the EU by an average of 8 per-
cent. Other industrialized countries were permitted small increases,
while others were obliged only to freeze their emissions.
• Developed countries were obliged to provide:
○ “new and additional financial resources to meet the agreed full
costs incurred by developing country Parties in advancing the
implementation of existing commitments”
○ “such financial resources, including transfer of technology,
needed by the developing country parties to meet the agreed
and full incremental costs of advancing the implementation of
existing commitments” and
○ “financial resources for the implementation of Article 10,
through bilateral, regional and other multilateral channels” of
which developing country parties can avail themselves.

Instruments
• Clean Development Mechanism—The aim of this body is to assist
developing countries in achieving sustainable development and
 Governing climate change: a brief history 31

at the same time to help developed countries “in achieving com-

pliance with their quantified emission limitation and reduction
commitments” (Article 12). In effect its purpose is to authorize
projects funded by developed states wanting to accrue credits
for emission reductions achieved overseas. Certified Emissions
Reduction credits are distributed by the CDM Executive Board
to projects generating “additional” emissions reductions. In addi-
tion, a tax applied to transactions in the CDM generates revenue
for the Adaptation Fund.
• Joint Implementation/Actions Implemented Jointly—Defined in
Article 6 of the Kyoto Protocol, this allows a country with an
emission reduction or limitation commitment under the Kyoto
Protocol to earn emission reduction units (ERUs) from an emis-
sion-reduction or emission-removal project in another Annex B
(more industrialized country) Party.
• Emissions Trading (Article 17).
• Implementation will be via national reports overseen by teams of
experts nominated by the Parties.
Note: Parties were expected to have demonstrated progress in reaching the Kyoto tar-
get by the year 2005. Cuts in the three important gases (CO2, NH4, and NO2) will
be calculated against a base year of 1990, and cuts in the long-lived industrial gases
(hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride) can be measured
against a base year of either 1990 or 1995.

The process for finalizing the rules and operational details of the Protocol
was agreed at COP 4 in 1998 as part of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. In
November 2000, parties met in The Hague at COP 6 to try to complete these
negotiations, but failed to do so amid a growing rift between, in particu-
lar, the European Union and the United States.9 Having been party to the
negotiations and after lobbying hard for the inclusion of market-based
mechanisms which would allow industrialized countries maximum flex-
ibility, in 2001 the United States walked away from the Kyoto Protocol.
We will see below that part of the United States’ refusal to ratify Kyoto
was because its economic competitors in the developing world were not
required to reduce their emissions. Without the involvement of the United
States, many assumed the inevitable demise of the Kyoto Protocol. If the
largest contributor to the problem and most powerful economy in the world
was not on board, what incentive was there for others to sign up? In fact, the
32 Governing climate change: a brief history

absence of the United States served to galvanize the European Union and
the G77 + China into further action, and with the Russian ratification of the
Kyoto Protocol in 2005 it entered into force.
Subsequent negotiations have focused on detailed issues concerning the
implementation and enforcement of Kyoto and, increasingly, what might
come in its place. At the COP 7, the Marrakesh Accords were agreed,
which established the rules and procedures for the operation of the flex-
ible mechanisms including the CDM, as well as details on reporting and
methodologies. Importantly, they also established three new funds: the
Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund, and
the Adaptation Fund. This work was continued through to the Buenos Aires
Programme of Work on Adaptation and Response Measures agreed at COP
10 in 2004. This was followed at COP 11 in Montreal with the creation of
the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex 1 parties
under the Kyoto Protocol. At COP 12 in Nairobi, dubbed the “Africa COP,”
there was significant discussion about financing issues and how to increase
the number of CDM projects being hosted by the poorest regions of the
world, most notably sub-Saharan Africa. The meeting produced the Nairobi
Work Programme on Adaptation and the Nairobi Framework on Capacity-
Building for the CDM.10 The Bali Action Plan, agreed a year later at COP 13,
set the path for negotiations towards Copenhagen, calling for a long-term
goal for emission reductions; measurable, reportable, verifiable mitigation
commitments, including nationally appropriate mitigation actions by Least
Developed Countries (LDCs); as well as enhanced adaptation, action on
technology development and transfer, and financial resources and invest-
ment to support the above.11 Unfortunately, the 2009 COP 15 meeting
in Copenhagen failed to agree a new legally binding agreement despite
intense pressure to “seal the deal.” A “Copenhagen Accord” was produced
by a small number of powerful countries including China, India, Brazil,
and South Africa—reflecting the growing economic and political power of
those countries, as well as their own rising contribution to the problem of
climate change. This established the aim of limiting warming to 2°C com-
pared with preindustrial levels, but provided no measures to achieve this.
Annex 1 (richer country) Parties committed to implement individually or
jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 while non-
Annex 1 Parties to the Convention agreed to implement mitigation actions
subject to international measurement, reporting, and verification in accord-
ance with guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties. The failure
of the meeting to advance progress and the breakdown in trust that occurred
left the negotiations in a state of disarray.
 Governing climate change: a brief history 33

This was, at least in part, rectified by the Cancún meeting in 2010, which
agreed a series of decisions on key areas of the Bali Action Plan, on issues
such as finance—most notably the creation of the Green Climate Fund—as
well as technology cooperation and adaptation. In Durban in 2011, govern-
ments decided to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change as
soon as possible, but not later than 2015, to come into effect in 2020 under
the auspices of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for
Enhanced Action (ADP). States are divided between those 38 industrial-
ized countries that agreed on a second commitment period of the Kyoto
Protocol from January 1, 2013, and the powerful countries that continue to
be opposed to a second commitment period (including the United States,
Japan, and Canada) who prefer a universal platform including all coun-
tries. By 2013, 42 developed countries had submitted economy-wide GHG
emission reduction pledges, 16 developing countries had submitted multi-
sector expected emission reductions, and in addition, 39 other developing
countries had submitted pledges related to sectoral goals.12 Yet, the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) calculates that existing pledges
provide only 60 percent of the GHG reductions needed to cap warming at
2°C.13 The world is thus on track towards a 4°C temperature rise,14 should
the currently inadequate level of ambition remain. This leaves significant
work to be done at the critical Paris summit in 2015 when a new global
agreement is expected to be concluded.
However, after almost three years of these ADP negotiations, the out-
come of the latest round of these negotiations is still far from agreeing
the key elements of a global agreement to be finalized in 2015. If the new
agreement is to include legally binding elements in the form of a protocol
or similar instrument, under the rules of procedure of the UNFCCC, these
legally binding elements would have to be submitted for consideration six
months prior to COP 21 in Paris, which would be by the end of May 2015.
Time to have an ambitious new global deal in place within this time frame
is clearly running out.

Climate becomes political: science and climate

governance
As we have seen above, the process of making climate policy has been
shaped by a complex mix of institutions and actors. One of the key issues
has been the interface between science and policy which provided the first
impetus for international agreement and continues to be central to global
climate politics.
34 Governing climate change: a brief history

The greenhouse effect—in which particular atmospheric gases, so-

called greenhouse gases, act to increase the amount of energy retained in
the Earth’s atmosphere—was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824. Other
scientists such as the physicist John Tyndall helped to further identify the
relative radiative forcing values of the different GHG before the greenhouse
effect was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.
The basic science behind the greenhouse effect is graphically portrayed
in Figure 1.2. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon. However, by
increasing the proportion of GHG in the atmosphere, human activities can
exacerbate this effect leading to higher globally average temperatures and
changes in the climate. Despite the early discoveries noted above, it was
not until the late 1970s, according to climate scientist Bert Bolin, that this
“possibility of human-induced change of climate first caught the attention
of politicians.”15 During the early 1980s, the first international assessment

Some solar radiation is Someof the infrared

reflected by the atmosphere radiation passes through
and Earth’s surface the atmosphere and is
lost in space

Some of the infrared radiation is

absorbed and re-emitted by the
Solar radiation passes greenhouse gas molecules. The
through the clear atmosphere. direct effect is the warming of the
Earth’s surface and the troposphere.
Surface gains more heat and
infrared radiation is emitted again

Solar energy is absorbed by the

Earth’s surface and warms it… …and is converted into heat causing
the emission of longwave (infrared)
radiation back to the atmosphere

FIGURE 1.2 The greenhouse effect and climate change

Source: Okanagan University College in Canada, Department of Geography, University
of Oxford, School of Geography; United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
Washington; Climate Change 1995, The science of climate change, constitution of working
group 1 to the second assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change,
UNEP and WMO, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
 Governing climate change: a brief history 35

of climate change was convened, supported by the International Council

of Scientific Unions (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), which concluded with the Villach conference in 1985 and an
appeal to the international community to address the issue seriously.
The IPCC was then established in 1988 to provide expert input into the
climate negotiations but to be directed in its mandate by governmental repre-
sentatives. It was formed by WMO and UNEP. The IPCC is an expert body
made up of the world’s leading climate scientists in areas such as oceanog-
raphy, climatology, meteorology, and economics to produce reports, subject
to widespread peer review, on the latest scientific understanding of climate
change. Successive reports by the body issued in 1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, and
2014 have provided a substantive and consolidated knowledge base about
three dimensions of the climate change problem: (i) the science and the basic
causal mechanisms, (ii) impacts, and (iii) response strategies: economic, tech-
nical, and policy implications. Working groups have been created to provide
policymakers with the latest research in each of these areas.
Though charged with the responsibility of providing independent and
objective advice on the latest scientific understanding of all aspects of the
problem of climate change, its work has been heavily politicized from
the very outset. Science has been a key battleground in the debate about
climate change: the severity of the threat, the nature of the causal mecha-
nisms and probable impacts, and the economic costs associated with taking
action. Scientific knowledge is used by all actors in climate governance to
advance and defend their position, and to confer legitimacy upon it. It is the
perception of science as objective and above politics that makes it attractive
to actors who believe it provides them with a trump card over the claims
of others. However, decisions about whose knowledge counts, who wields
authority, and how knowledge is presented and framed are deeply political
processes that imply the exercise of power. As Foucault argues:

we should admit . . . that power and knowledge directly imply one

another; that there is no power relation without the correlative consti-
tution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not at the
same time presuppose and constitute power relations.16

It is unsurprising that the process of accumulating and presenting scientific

evidence and advice about the climate change issue has been so political.
There is a lot at stake. We see this with the production of policymakers’
summaries of the latest IPCC reports, the most widely read part of the
report. Business, NGOs, and government representatives are allowed to
36 Governing climate change: a brief history

participate in the drafting of these summaries and actively seek to shape

their content to reflect their views of the severity of climate change, high-
lighting uncertainties in the case of those opposed to action or drawing
attention to warnings about the potential for dramatic feed-back effects by
those wanting more stringent near-term action. As former IPCC chairman
Bert Bolin reflects:

the Summary for Policy-makers is approved in a plenary session of the

respective working groups . . . [these] become the occasions when the
scientists engaged by the IPCC are confronted with political views
and even attempts to clothe special interests in scientific terms.17

Recognizing the interwoven nature of power and knowledge challenges

the assumption that science interacts with policy in a fairly linear way where
governments and international institutions are dependent on experts—
sometimes labeled epistemic communities—to advise them on political
actions in conditions of uncertainty.18 In practice, the worlds of science
and politics overlap. One of the key roles of scientists is to act as “knowl-
edge brokers,”19 translators of abstract scientific findings into policy
messages, intermediaries between lab and law. The fact that scientists
are also often dependent on government money for their research has led
some to claim that the alleged urgency of the threat posed by climate change
has been deliberately exaggerated by a scientific community keen to attract
research funding for further work in the area.20 Once established in a well-
resourced and high-profile policy network, so this argument goes, scientists
develop their own self-interests in maintaining that position and securing
funding for their work. Another source of potent criticism has been that
important uncertainties in the science and modeling have been downplayed
or ignored altogether. This has been the line of attack of a relatively small
but vocal group of so-called climate skeptics who either doubt that global
warming results from anthropogenic influences or suggest that the scale
of that influence has been over-estimated.21 The so-called “climate-gate”
scandal involving the illegal accessing and release of hundreds of email
communications from the accounts of researchers at the University of East
Anglia’s prestigious Climate Research Unit appeared to provide fodder
for these claims, though subsequent hearings which acquitted the climate
scientists of any wrong-doing received far less public exposure than the
damaging claims made at the time of the release of the emails.22 Given
the contentious ground which the IPCC occupies it is also unsurprising that
senior appointments within the IPCC have also been a source of controversy.
 Governing climate change: a brief history 37

For example, the US government successfully vetoed the reappointment of

Bob Watson as head of the IPCC amid claims he was pursuing a personal
agenda which was interpreted at the time as being too outspoken an advo-
cate of climate action.23
One of the key issues here is not only that politics get played out through
science, but the way science is used politically. While the UNFCCC refers
to the prevention of “dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate
system”24 as the overall goal of the agreement, defining what counts as
“dangerous” is a political act, a judgment about risk: how much risk we,
as a society, are willing to take and who bears the consequences. A key bat-
tleground in the negotiations towards the UNFCCC was whether sufficient
scientific consensus existed to warrant global collective action. Those against
more strident forms of action demanded more science as if that was the key
obstacle to action. As the NGO newsletter ECO declared at the Geneva cli-
mate meeting back in 1990, “all the computer models in the world will not
make a Swiss Franc of difference to governments who simply want to sell all
the oil the world can be persuaded to buy.”25 Part of the reason the interface
between science and policy is so contested is because of the political sig-
nificance of recommendations that are made for identifying and allocating
responsibility. This has been a highly contested issue between developed and
developing countries and it is to this issue that we now turn.

The poverty of climate governance: North–South

politics
The second dimension of climate governance which cuts across this history
of climate diplomacy is the importance of North–South politics. Climate
change in many ways highlights more starkly the North–South divisions
which characterize other global environmental threats such as ozone deple-
tion and biodiversity.26 Early battles about the need to differentiate between
the “survival” emissions of the South and the “luxury” emissions of the
North27 have been compounded by claims of carbon colonialism and cli-
mate injustice as we will see in Chapter 2. Underpinning this conflict is
the fact that, while climate change has been largely caused by the wealthy
industrialized parts of the world, it is the least developed parts of the world
that will suffer its worst consequences. This makes climate change first and
foremost an issue of social justice and equity.
Early discussions of the climate change issue demonstrated a clear
polarity of positions between developed countries and developing coun-
tries with the latter arguing that the former, as leading contributors to the
38 Governing climate change: a brief history

problem, were duty bound to accept responsibility and take action. The
language in the UNFCCC embodies this notion of “common but differenti-
ated responsibility,”28 the idea that everybody has a responsibility to act
but some have more responsibility than others. Insofar as developing (or
non-Annex 1) countries have responsibilities under the convention, these
are conditional on the receipt of aid and technology transfer from more
developed countries. Aid and technology transfer provide what economists
would refer to as side-payments: inducements to cooperate in tackling a
problem to which, historically speaking, they have contributed very little.
Debate has focused on the governance of aid and technology transfer;
which institution will oversee these and on whose terms. While developed
countries were keen to see the Global Environment Facility (GEF) play
a key role, the institution’s close association with the World Bank was a
source of concern for many developing countries that were distrustful of
the organization.29 Many developing countries also expressed reservations
about the levels and types of aid that would be forthcoming. They sought
forms of financial assistance that were “additional” to existing aid budgets
and not drawn from budget lines targeted for other development priorities.
Concerns by developing countries in particular continue to be expressed
about the World Bank’s role as interim trustee of the Green Climate Fund,
the key body called for under the Copenhagen Accord to distribute the
US$100 billion that countries have committed to providing for climate
mitigation and adaptation annually by 2020.
The presentation of a united front by the G77 on these key issues
always disguised a spectrum of diverse national and regional differences.
Over time, however, divisions among developing countries have become
more apparent and more clearly defined. Increasing emphasis in the global
debate about the use of flexible market mechanisms endorsed by the Kyoto
Protocol forced developing countries to assess how they might engage
with and benefit from such mechanisms. Interest in the role of forests as
carbon sinks for which credits might be earned and finance provided to
developing countries, has drawn bio-diverse countries, particularly many
Latin American countries, further into the realm of joint actions.30 At the
same time, the newly industrializing power houses of China, India, Brazil,
Malaysia, Mexico, and South Korea now make their own significant contri-
bution to the problem, raising further questions about how the principle of
“common but differentiated responsibilities” should be put into practice.
In this context, there is an ongoing debate about whether, and if so, in
what form, developing countries should take on their own emission reduction
commitments, an issue which came to a head at the time of the Copenhagen
 Governing climate change: a brief history 39

summit. There is a perception among some developed countries that rapidly

industrializing competitors will be able to free-ride on the sacrifices made
by Annex 1 parties. The related concern is that industries will uproot and
relocate to areas of the world not covered by the provisions of the Kyoto
Protocol, resulting in “carbon leakage.”31 Increasing recognition of this new
geography of responsibility prompted demands from leading polluters—
such as the United States and Australia—to draw their competitors into a
global regime of regulation and controls on GHG. Most dramatically, at
the time of the Kyoto negotiations in 1997, Senator Chuck Hagel drafted the
Byrd–Hagel resolution (Senate Resolution 98) which made US acceptance
of the terms of the Kyoto Protocol conditional on agreement from leading
developing countries to reduce their own emissions. Given the sensitivity
about the issue of legally binding emission reduction obligations for devel-
oping countries, this strategy was aimed at causing maximum divisions,
stalling progress, and most importantly tying the hands of US negotiators
by showing that the senate would not ratify any deal which did not con-
tain developing country commitments. Indeed, it was this issue in part that
led the United States, under George W. Bush, to withdraw from the Kyoto
Protocol in 2001.
Since that time, many developing countries have indeed adopted vol-
untary obligations to reduce their emissions or reduce the carbon intensity
of their growth trajectories, though in many cases continuing to resist calls
for binding reduction commitments. This is the case for China, India, and
South Africa, with, for example, the South African government committing
itself at the Copenhagen summit in 2009 to reduce its GHG emissions by
34 percent by 2020 and 44 percent by 2025. Acknowledgement of the shift-
ing geography of responsibility for emissions underpins moves to abandon
the Kyoto Protocol “fire-wall” between Annex 1 (more industrialized) and
non-Annex 1 (less industrialized) countries and include these countries in a
new round of commitments under the auspices of the UNFCCC.
Besides the issue of responsibility, there is also a clear North–South
dimension in terms of vulnerability to the effects of climate change (par-
ticularly sea-level rise and changes to agricultural systems). In terms of
impacts of climate change, developing countries are in a weaker position to
protect themselves from the adverse effects of climate change. Sea defenses
and other means available to wealthier nations to ensure that land is not
flooded and that population displacement is not necessary are not affordable
to many developing countries. Their reliance on agricultural production on
many low-lying areas that are especially prone to flooding from sea-level
rise, makes them particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
This is an issue we return to in Chapter 2.
40 Governing climate change: a brief history

These uneven patterns of responsibility for emissions of GHG and

vulnerability to the effects of climate change have profoundly affected efforts
to secure global agreements on climate change. The broader historical and
contemporary features of the unequal relationship between the developed and
developing world run through virtually all aspects of climate change gov-
ernance.32 Scientists from developing countries are poorly represented in the
expert bodies that provide the knowledge base for policy. Poorer groups within
these countries are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate
change, even if they contribute little to the problem. In many cases, govern-
ments of developing countries lack the capacity to attend, let alone shape
and influence, negotiating processes that are heavily dominated by developed
countries with the resources to attend all meetings and the legal and scientific
capacity to shape developments according to their preferences. The politics
of North–South relations have therefore both explicitly and implicitly shaped
the history of international climate change policy, with profound implications
for how the issue is addressed. We return to this debate in Chapter 2.

The marketization of climate governance

The third notable feature of climate governance which cuts across this his-
tory is the increasing emphasis on market-based solutions.33 Often referred
to as “flexibility mechanisms,” the right of countries to meet their obli-
gations through funding emission reductions elsewhere through the joint
implementation of projects or through the buying and selling of permits
has been asserted forcefully by the world’s most powerful country, the
United States. As we can see in Box 1.2, the Kyoto Protocol that was
agreed in December 1997 embodied a commitment to constructing such
flexible mechanisms. The CDM market took off rapidly. The global value
of primary offset transactions grew to US$7.2 billion in 2008, more than a
ten-fold growth from 2004, largely due to the CDM. Under the CDM, certi-
fied emissions reductions (CERs) amounting to more than 1.8 billion tons
of carbon dioxide equivalent(CO2e) were produced in the first commitment
period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008–12) and over the period 2001 to 2012,
the CDM is claimed to have spurred US$215 billion in investment.34
The support for market-based approaches as the preferred means of
climate governance reflects a number of factors. The endorsement of
emissions trading in particular built on the alleged effectiveness of other
flexible and voluntary approaches, most notably the United States’ sulfur
dioxide trading scheme. Such approaches reflect the primacy of efficiency
as the guiding policy principle of climate change governance. In this vein,
 Governing climate change: a brief history 41

advocates have argued that it makes no difference where in the world a

ton of GHG is reduced and therefore it makes sense to create mechanisms
which allow countries to pay for reductions where it is most cost-effective
to do so. In terms of domestic politics, such mechanisms make emission
reductions easier to sell to electorates wary of burdening domestic industry
with additional obligations and therefore creates scope to raise the level of
ambition. Such tools were also seen as a valuable way of bridging some
of the North–South conflicts discussed above. They could imply resource
transfers to developing countries, potentially on a significant scale. Indeed,
according to the World Bank, revenues from the CDM constitute the largest
source of mitigation finance to developing countries to date.35 And because
emissions are being reduced in these countries, they draw them further into
the climate regime, pacifying concerns about them free-riding on the sacri-
fices made by more industrialized countries.
That the world of climate governance has become a laboratory for experi-
ments in market-based approaches to regulation is unsurprising, given that
climate politics have risen to prominence during an era of heightened neo-
liberalism.36 This broader political context is important in explaining why
some solutions are seen as valid, legitimate, and plausible, and others are not.
It helps us to understand why, for example, command and control state-led
regulatory approaches are out of favor, or why, in a context of globalization
and the mobility of capital, it becomes more important than ever to address
potential carbon leakage. The emphasis in contemporary neo-liberalism on
the creation of (carbon) markets, the allocation of property rights (in this case
through allocating permits), the political preference for voluntary partnership-
based approaches and self-regulation by industry is clearly apparent in all
aspects of contemporary climate governance, as we will see in Chapter 5. The
irony, of course, was that having insisted on the inclusion of market-based
mechanisms, the United States then refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. The
European Union, meanwhile, which had initially been hostile to the idea of
emissions trading, went on to develop the most advanced emission trading
scheme of its kind, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.37
Despite the prevalence of the idea that markets deliver outcomes more
efficiently and effectively than governments, each of the market-based
mechanisms mentioned here relies on institutional backing. Governments
have to decide who can participate in carbon markets (which sectors and
actors) and set limits on the number of permits that are to be traded to
create the necessary scarcity to incentivize emission reductions. Markets,
in other words, have to be made and then governed. The 2001 Marrakesh
Accords explicitly aimed to agree to rules, procedures, and modalities for
42 Governing climate change: a brief history

the operation of the CDM for example (Chapter 2). Furthermore, in order
to guarantee the worth of the CER units that are allocated, a range of gov-
ernance actors have to be enrolled to verify baselines and methodologies to
demonstrate beyond doubt that emissions are “additional” (that they would
not otherwise have been achieved by other means). Project developers help
set up projects and a CDM Executive Board approves methodologies and
projects. Harnessing the market to the goal of climate protection is one
thing, but it does not do away with the need for inputs from traditional
actors in climate governance such as states, and international institutions.
Indeed, these actors have been called upon repeatedly to bail-out carbon
markets encountering recurrent crises in the same way they have had to
bail out financial markets in the wake of the global economic crisis which
began in 2008. We are currently at a key juncture in the debate about the
role of carbon markets in responses to climate change. On the one hand,
the low price of carbon and the declining interest on the part of financial
capital, thought to be one of the main beneficiaries of carbon trading, and
repeated scandals which have engulfed the CDM and the EU Emissions
Trading Scheme (ETS), have led to claims of their imminent demise.38 On
the other hand, carbon markets, judged by their on-going proliferation,
are flourishing. At the UN level, the negotiations are focused on the con-
struction of new market mechanisms. Governments in Annex 1 countries
continue to construct mechanisms and streams of finance to support the
growth and interlinkage of carbon markets (such as the UK government’s
Carbon Market Finance Initiative). And at a regional and national level, a
swathe of new carbon markets and emission trading schemes are coming
online in countries like China, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia,
and Mexico. Despite their apparent failings, therefore, a strong level of ide-
ological, material, and institutional commitment to carbon markets on the
part of states and corporations as the preferred solution to climate change,
means that the marketization of climate governance looks set to continue.

Governance issues and challenges

This chapter draws our attention to a number of general features of climate
governance. First, though climate change is often talked about as a global
governance challenge, those countries whose actions directly determine the
shape and effectiveness of the regime are relatively few in number. Deal-
brokering, unsurprisingly, tends to focus on those actors. Traditionally,
these have been the United States, the European Union, and Japan. The
rising economic power of countries like China, India, Brazil, and South
 Governing climate change: a brief history 43

Africa means that they also are increasingly privy to head-to-head closed
meetings in which negotiators attempt to establish the basic contours of
agreement within which cooperation might be possible, as the Copenhagen
summit made strikingly clear. The key deal-brokers in climate govern-
ance have changed in a way which reflects shifts in economic power in the
global economy. The scope and nature of the negotiations mirrors broader
geo-political and economic shifts in another way too: the support for mar-
ket mechanisms as the preferred way of governing climate change in spite
of their poor track record to date.39 Climate governance cannot be under-
stood as separate from the ideology, institutions, and material interests that
predominate within the wider global economy which affect the nature of
climate politics and, if it is to be effective, climate governance needs to
engage with and change them.
Second, although traditional approaches to understanding global
environmental politics focus on bargaining between nation-states at the
international level, they often neglect the importance of domestic poli-
tics. Various researchers have revealed the dynamic relationship whereby
what happens in the domestic arenas of global powers carries global reper-
cussions, just as what is agreed in global forums reconfigures domestic
politics.40 We have seen in this chapter, particularly in relation to the role
of the United States, how global arenas are also a site of domestic politics
and domestic politics get played out globally. Analytical distinctions which
attempt to neatly separate the two are poorly served by the reality of net-
works, coalitions, and messy politics that cut across these levels of analysis.
Importantly, as we will see in Chapter 2, the effectiveness of traditional cli-
mate governance in the form of national regulation and the forms of public
international law described here, and the spaces and places where it is said to
take place (within states and international institutions), is contingent on the
ability and willingness of these governance actors and processes to engage
with and seek to transform the everyday practices of climate governance
that go by the names of energy policy, development policy, trade, industry,
and agricultural policy. These are blind-spots or areas of active neglect in
the governance of climate change whose future path will determine whether
our collective responses to climate change are up to the challenge.
Third, non-state actors are central to the governance of climate change.
Even in the traditionally speaking, relatively closed world of interstate diplo-
macy, non-state actors are on delegations, in the conference rooms, talking to
the media and protesting outside. The neat distinctions that underpin the offi-
cial roles and status ascribed to non-state actors describe poorly the reality of
actors and individuals that move in and out of these categories, constructing
44 Governing climate change: a brief history

and participating in coalitions and network formations that bypass traditional

“levels of analysis,” and producing hybrid forms of climate governance in
their wake.41 Whether it is the scientific community, business lobbies, or envi-
ronmental groups, each of these actors plays a role and draws on assets that
go beyond what governments and international institutions, the traditional
agents on climate politics, can deliver alone.42 As carbon markets assume
increasing importance in the delivery of emission reductions, business actors
in particular assume a more important role than ever before. NGOs are
increasingly enrolled as project developers, monitors, and watchdogs. Indeed
with so many governance sites beyond the international regime that form part
of the climate change “regime complex,”43 the UN faces a struggle to retain
relevance and some non-state actors have moved their sights elsewhere.
While there are many competing explanations about why the international
climate change regime takes the form it does, some of which we discuss in
the Introduction (knowledge-based, interest-based, and power-based regime
theories), the increasing role of non-state actors and the importance of broader
(non-regime) economic factors and forces in particular have changed the way
we conceive of the whereabouts of the global politics of climate change, how
they are conducted, and for whom.44 We return to discuss these issues in more
depth in Chapters 3, 4, and 5.

Notes
1 Joanna Depledge, The Organization of Global Negotiations: Constructing the
Climate Regime (London: Earthscan, 2005).
2 Matthew Paterson and Michael Grubb, “The International Politics of Climate
Change,” International Affairs 68, no. 2 (1992): 293–310.
3 Peter Newell, Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and the Global Politics
of the Greenhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
4 Bas Arts, The Political Influence of Global NGOs: Case Studies on the Climate
and Biodiversity Conventions (Utrecht, the Netherlands: International Books,
1998); Peter Newell, Climate for Change.
5 Michele Betsill and Elisabeth Corell, eds, NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of
Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 3.
6 Kathrin Dombrowski, “Filling the gap? An Analysis of NGO Responses to
Participation and Representation Deficits in Global Climate Governance,”
Paper prepared for the Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimension of
Global Environmental Change, December 2–4, 2009.
7 United Nations, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
Bonn, Germany: UNFCCC Secretariat, 1992, available online at [Link]
int/resource/docs/convkp/[Link] [accessed January 19, 2015].
8 Michael Grubb with Christiaan Vrolijk and Duncan Brack, The Kyoto
Protocol: A Guide and Assessment (London: Earthscan and the Royal Institute
of International Affairs, 1999).
 Governing climate change: a brief history 45

9 Michael Grubb and Farhana Yamin, “Climatic Collapse at The Hague: What
Happened, Why, and Where Do We Go From Here?” International Affairs 77,
no. 2 (2001): 261–76.
10 Chukwumerije Okereke, Phillip Mann, and Andy Newsham, “Assessment of
Key Negotiating Issues at Nairobi Climate COP/MOP and What it Means
For the Future of the Climate Regime,” Tyndall Centre Working Paper 106
(2007).
11 Benito Muller, “Bali 2007: On the Road Again! Impressions from the
Thirteenth UN Climate Change Conference,” available online at http://
[Link]/publications/documents/comment_0208-2.
pdf [accessed January 19, 2015]; Jennifer Morgan, “Towards a New Global
Climate Deal: An analysis of the Agreements and Politics of the Bali
Negotiations. E3G,” available online at [Link]
Bali_Analysis_Morgan_080120.pdf [accessed January 19, 2015].
12 United Nations Environmental Programme, The Emissions Gap Report 2013
(Nairobi: UNEP, 2013).
13 United Nations Environmental Programme, Bridging the Emissions Gap
(Nairobi: UNEP, 2011).
14 Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Bill Hare, Olivia Serdeczny, Michiel Schaeffer,
Sophie Adams, Florent Baarsch, Susanne Schwan, Dim Coumou, Alexander
Robinson, Marion Vieweg, Franziska Piontek, Reik Donner, Jakob Runge,
Kira Rehfeld, Joeri Rogelj, Mahe Perrette, Arathy Menon, Carl-Friedrich
Schleussner, Alberte Bondeau, Anastasia Svirejeva-Hopkins, Jacob Schewe,
Katja Frieler, Lila Warszawski, and Marcia Rocha, Turn Down the Heat:
Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience (Washington,
DC: World Bank, 2013).
15 Bert Bolin, “Scientific Assessment of Climate Change,” in International
Politics of Climate Change: Key Issues and Actors, ed. Gunnar Fermann
(Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press, 1997), 99.
16 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972–77 (New York: Pantheon books, 1980), 27.
17 Bolin, “Scientific Assessment of Climate Change,” 102.
18 Peter Haas, Saving the Mediterranean: The Politics of International
Environmental Cooperation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
19 Karen Litfin, Ozone Discourses (New York: Columbia University Press,
1994).
20 Sonia Boehmer-Christiansen, “Global Climate Protection Policy: The Limits
of Scientific Advice – Part 1,” Global Environmental Change 4, no. 2 (1992):
140–59.
21 Among the most prominent “climate skeptics” are Fred Singer (George Mason
University) and Richard Linzen (MIT).
22 Fred Pearce, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming
(London: Guardian books, 2010).
23 “US Reportedly Seeking To Sink Watson as IPCC Head,” available online at
[Link]
sink-watson-as-ipcc-head-0#c16018 [accessed January 19, 2015].
24 Article 2 of the UNFCCC (1992): available online at [Link]
docs/convkp/[Link] [accessed January 19, 2015].
25 ECO NGO Newsletter, issue 7, Geneva, 1990.
46 Governing climate change: a brief history

26 Adil Najam, Saleemul Huq, and Youba Sokona, “Climate Negotiations

Beyond Kyoto: Developing Countries, Concerns and Interests,” Climate
Policy 3, no. 3 (2003): 221–31; Michele Williams, “The Third World and
Global Environmental Negotiations: Interests, Institutions and Ideas,” Global
Environmental Politics 5, no. 3 (2005): 48–9.
27 Anil Argwal and Sunita Narain, “Global Warming in an Unequal World: A
Case of Environmental Colonialism,” (New Delhi, India: Centre for Science
and the Environment/WRI, 1991).
28 Article 3 of the UNFCCC (1992): available online at [Link]
docs/convkp/[Link] [accessed January 19, 2015].
29 Zoe Young, A New Green Order? The World Bank and the Politics of the
Global Environment Facility (London: Pluto Press, 2002).
30 Sjur Kasa, Anne Therese Gullberg, and Gørild Heggelund, “The Group of 77
in the International Climate Negotiations: Recent Developments and Future
Directions,” International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and
Economics 8, no. 2 (2008): 113–27.
31 Scott Barrett, “Montreal Versus Kyoto: International Cooperation on the Global
Environment,” in Global Public Goods, eds Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and
Marc Stern (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 192–220.
32 J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley Parks, A Climate of Injustice: Global
Inequality, North–South Politics and Climate Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2007).
33 Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Climate Capitalism: Global Warming
and the Transformation of the Global Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010); Peter Newell, Max Boykoff, and Emily Boyd, eds,
The New Carbon Economy: Constitution, Governance and Contestation
(Oxford: Wiley and Sons, 2012).
34 UNFCCC (2012) UNFCCC releases report on the benefits of the Kyoto
Protocol’s clean development mechanism. Bonn: UNFCCC press office,
November 20, available online at [Link]
issues/I_KYD6PO19YS9DE7YGH894BJ9WRBCQ4Z/[Link]
[accessed January 19, 2015].
35 World Bank, Development and Climate Change, World Development Report
2010 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010).
36 Matthew Hoffman, Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting
with a Global Response after Kyoto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011);
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (London:
Simon and Schuster, 2014).
37 Jan-Peter Voss, “Innovation Processes in Governance: the Development
of ‘Emissions Trading’ as a New Policy instrument,” Science and Public
Policy 34, no. 5 (2007): 329–43; Jon Birger Skjærseth and Jørgen Wettestad,
EU Emissions Trading: Initiation, Decision Making and Implementation
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008).
38 Pilita Clark, “UN-led carbon market ‘close to collapse,’” Financial Times,
October 2, 2012, [Link]/cms/s/0/ee81799c-0c84-11e2-a776-00144-
[Link].
39 Tanya Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes, Carbon Trading: How it Works and Why
it Fails (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 2009).
 Governing climate change: a brief history 47

40 Miranda Schreurs and Elizabeth Economy, eds, The Internationalization of

Environmental Protection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
Peter Newell, “The Political Economy of Global Environmental Governance,”
Review of International Studies 34 (July 2008): 507–29.
41 Philipp Pattberg and Johannes Stripple, “Beyond the Public and Private
Divide: Remapping Transnational Climate Governance in the 21st century,”
International Environmental Agreements 8, no. 4 (2008): 367–88.
42 Newell, Climate for Change.
43 Robert Keohane and David Victor, “The Regime Complex for Climate
Change,” Discussion paper 2010-33 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Project on
International Climate Agreements, 2010).
44 David Levy and Peter Newell, eds, The Business of Global Environmental
Governance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Chukwumerije Okereke,
Harriet Bulkeley, and Heike Schroeder, “Conceptualizing Climate Governance
Beyond the International Regime,” Global Environmental Politics 9, no. 1
(2009): 58–78.
2
GOVERNANCE FOR WHOM?
Equity, justice, and the politics of sustainable
development

In this chapter, we examine issues of equity and justice in the govern-

ance of climate change. As we saw in Chapter 1, from concerns about
responsibility for causing the problem and the allocation of the burden
of responding to it through to questions of climate adaptation, issues of
equity and justice run through every aspect of the governance of climate
change. Unsurprisingly, therefore, many activists explicitly invoke the
language of “climate justice” when campaigning on these issues.1
Picking up from Chapter 1, we place the issue of climate change within the
broader context of shifting North–South relations as well as exploring its links
to key development concerns around aid, debt, energy, and trade, and the ways
in which efforts to tackle climate change can be made compatible with the
alleviation of poverty. This comes amid growing emphasis on “climate-com-
patible development”: lower carbon models of development that are resilient
to the effects of climate change and help lift poorer people out of poverty.2 As
with other chapters in this book, we suggest that addressing climate change
is in reality a subset of wider governance processes which shape, and at the
same time are affected by, the nature of climate governance. We look in turn
at three key areas where these issues come to the fore: the question of respon-
sibility; the question of who pays for action on mitigation and adaptation; and
the question of who bears the costs of actions and inactions. We conclude by
summarizing some of the key governance challenges that confront efforts to
address issues of justice and equity in relation to climate change.

Whose responsibility? Global warming in an unequal

world
Historical and contemporary relations of inequity and injustice form a pow-
erful frame by which poorer countries and peoples make sense of climate
 Equity and justice in climate governance 49

change as a political issue.3 Histories of suspicion, distrust, and inequity

are played out in the contemporary politics of climate change, account-
ing for conflicting notions of whom climate governance should serve and
how. Whether it is claims about ecological debt or climate justice, there
is a powerful sense in which climate change has the potential to further
aggravate inequalities within and between societies.4 This sense of injustice
derives from the fact that those who have contributed least to the problem
of climate change in the past, including most of the world’s poor, are those
most susceptible to its worst effects now and in the future. Meanwhile,
richer countries are better placed to adapt to the climate impacts that they
will suffer. Statements by leaders from developing countries illustrate the
strength of feeling on the issue. In 2008 President Museveni of Uganda
described climate change as “an act of aggression by the rich against the
poor.”5 Meanwhile, in March 2003, Ambassador Lionel Hurst, speaking on
behalf of the small island states, said:

the most populous and wealthiest of the world face a moral challenge
greater than colonialism or slavery. They are failing in that challenge.
Men [sic] have lost reason in the fossil fuel economy . . . Inhabitants
of small islands have not agreed [to be] sacrificial lambs on the altar
of the wealth of the rich.6

Other critics have picked up on the issue of developing countries being

reconstituted as a sink for GHG emissions from developed countries
through the “flexibility mechanisms,” most critically referred to as “carbon
colonialism.”7 Even senior government officials within the climate change
negotiations such as Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, then chairman of the Ad Hoc
Group on the Berlin Mandate (AGBM), noted at the time of the Kyoto
agreement:

My reservation was that the CDM is considered a form of joint imple-

mentation but I don’t understand how a commitment can be jointly
implemented if only one of the parties involved is committed to limit
emissions and the other party is free from a qualitative point of view.
Such disparity has been at the root of every colonization since the
time of the Greeks.8

The geographies of responsibility have shifted significantly, however,

since the early days of the climate regime, as we saw in Chapter 1. While
the G77 is able to speak with one voice in demanding further action from
50 Equity and justice in climate governance

the developed countries, it contains among its members the world’s

largest current contributor to climate change (China) and many other coun-
tries whose emission trajectories are starting to match those of the United
States, the European Union, and Japan (such as India, Brazil, and Mexico).
The top five emitters of CO2 are now China (29 percent), the United States
(16 percent), the European Union (11 percent), India (6 percent), and the
Russian Federation (5 percent), followed by Japan (4 percent). Indeed,
CO2 emissions from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) countries now account for only one third of global
emissions.9 At issue here is the extent to which “differentiated responsibili-
ties” should reflect past, current, or future trends of GHG emissions. Any
new international agreement that emerges in Paris in 2015 that involves
these industrializing countries will have to acknowledge their historically
low contributions to the problem even if current levels now match those of
developed countries. This is because much of today’s climate change has
been caused by emissions generated principally by the development of the
global North. In this sense, the North continues to owe a huge “ecological
debt” to the South, having consumed a disproportionate share of its global
and historical entitlement. Furthermore, developing countries continue to
be home to a significant percentage of the world’s poor and their per capita
contributions to the problem are dwarfed by those of the United States, for
example, which is home to just 4 percent of the world’s population but is
responsible for 20 percent of global emissions of all GHGs (not just CO2),
while 136 developing countries are together responsible for 24 percent of
those emissions. It becomes clear that the issue of inequity in per capita
emissions goes beyond national borders when we consider that the richest
20 percent of the world’s population is responsible for over 60 percent of
current emissions of GHG.10 Taking into account the inequity between and
within countries concerning per capita contributions to climate change will
be a significant challenge for future international agreements.
Beyond the generic framing of common but differentiated responsibil-
ity in the UNFCCC, a variety of proposals have been advanced that seek
to tackle the thorny issue of per capita emissions and to recognize and
reconcile the right to development with the need to dramatically reduce
emissions. “Contraction and Convergence” is one such proposal, developed
by a small London-based NGO called the Global Commons Institute. The
basic idea, which underpins the proposal, is that developed countries have to
contract their emissions down towards an agreed level which would address
the UNFCCC’s aim of avoiding dangerous interference in the climate sys-
tem, while poorer developing countries would be allowed to increase their
 Equity and justice in climate governance 51

emissions up to the agreed level. Per capita entitlements would then be

bought and sold to harness the market towards this climate stabilization
goal. The idea has many opponents, not least the United States and other
larger polluters who insist that permits would have to be allocated based
on existing need (a grandfathering system) rather than a per capita basis
which would favor developing countries. The idea that everyone has equal
access to the global commons has powerful political and moral purchase,
however.
Another proposal is the Greenhouse Development Rights framework
developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute, Christian Aid, and the
Heinrich Böll foundation. It aims to promote the right to development in a
carbon-constrained world while holding warming below 2 ºC, a task which
may already seem impossible.11 Countries’ abatement targets would be cal-
culated by the number of people above a development threshold (US$20 a
day): the “global consuming class” as they refer to it. Responsibility and
capacity indicators (gross domestic product (GDP), population, cumulative
emissions), including income available after meeting basic needs, are used
in the calculations. Such an approach helps to go beyond aggregated national
figures of wealth and development, challenging divisions made between
countries such as that of “Annex 1” and “non-Annex 1,” or “developed”
and “developing” countries, while also providing a quantitative handle on
how to assess obligations to tackle climate change. Implementation of such
an approach could be through taxation into a global fund for redistribution
for mitigation and adaptation, or via national mitigation targets as set out
in the Kyoto Protocol. Questions remain about whether this proposal is
politically realistic, and as such it does not provide a way of bypassing con-
flicts over how money would be redistributed or by whom, or how capacity
and responsibility indicators would be agreed. Nonetheless, such proposals
show that it is possible to conceive of responsibility for climate change in
different ways, with significant implications for the development of climate
policy and its ability to address issues of equity.
Such debates are slowly taking shape within the international arena.
Although the 2007 Bali Action Plan places emphasis on “nationally appro-
priate mitigation actions” in less developed (non-Annex 1) countries, the
question of how to attribute responsibility for emissions remains hotly
contested. In addition to the challenges of historical and future emissions,
nation-based or per capita emissions allocations, a further concern is where
along global supply networks responsibility for emissions should be allo-
cated—whether the point of production or consumption is the appropriate
focus.12 Many rapidly industrializing countries such as China claim their
52 Equity and justice in climate governance

emissions profile is a by-product of demand for low-cost manufactured

goods in developed countries. In other words, they should not be penal-
ized for the fact that many countries are able to outsource the most carbon
and energy-intensive stages of the production process to parts of the world
where it is cheapest to do so.
If climate politics could ever have been characterized as at core a conflict
between North and South over responsibility, the rise of these issues on the
agenda means that the picture is certainly more complex now. The issues
around which developing countries once mobilized have changed, as the
political and economic might of those who once relied upon the solidarity of
other states as part of the G77 coalition has increased. It is increasingly diffi-
cult for the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)
to argue that they should not have obligations to control their emissions of
GHG as their net contributions to the problem match those of countries which
are obliged to do so, as we saw above. Likewise, growing reliance upon
flexible mechanisms and market-based instruments has served to fragment
the opposition of developing countries to involving themselves in emission
reductions projects. The GRILA (Group of Latin American countries) has
seen opportunities to access funds for forestry projects that might not other-
wise be supported within the G77. Given this diversity, it is unsurprising that
speaking as a united bloc makes increasingly less sense for developing coun-
tries in the climate negotiations. Some of the more powerful governments
have been drawn into alternative governance forums for reaching agreements
on climate change. The preference among India, China, and Brazil is to con-
clude bilateral deals and engage in partnerships that offer more immediate
returns alongside, and some suggest in competition with, Kyoto. Over time,
these have included the Asia–Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and
Climate, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP),
the Australia–China Partnership, the EU–China Partnership on Climate
Change, the US–India bilateral agreement on nuclear energy, and agreements
on EU–India energy cooperation. As India, China, and Brazil find alternative
paths for addressing climate change we are perhaps left in the international
negotiating arena with an “insecure alliance between the unwilling (OPEC)
and the powerless (least developed countries) providing few impulses towards
increasing G77 flexibility in the post-Kyoto negotiations.”13 The new geog-
raphies of responsibility for climate change are therefore not only shaping
the trajectory of current and future international climate agreements, but can
be seen as one of the factors shaping the emergence of a whole range of new
governance arenas for addressing climate change, a topic to which we return
in Chapter 3.
 Equity and justice in climate governance 53

Who pays?
A second key issue that has shaped the North–South politics of climate
change is the concern about who should meet the costs of addressing the
issue. Agreeing a fair and equitable allocation of responsibility for acting
on climate change requires subsequent agreement about who pays for such
actions and how. In governance terms, some of the key conflicts are about
which institutions should oversee such flows of funds from North to South,
and on what terms. As we saw in Chapter 1, the battle over whether the
GEF should be the body to oversee aid and technology transfer reflects
concerns about the role of the World Bank, with whom many developing
countries have had, and continue to have, difficult relations. We also noted
how this contest was replayed over the role of the World Bank in manag-
ing the Green Climate Fund. A further concern, illustrating how broader
North–South politics have shaped climate governance, is where the finance
for climate change will come from. Reflecting a deep-seated fear that exist-
ing aid budgets might be diverted to fund climate change measures, the
obligations for Annex 1 parties explicitly call on them to provide “new and
additional” financial resources, though the extent to which this has been the
case is hotly contested.
Turning first to questions of institutional oversight, it is clear that mul-
tilateral and regional development banks such as the Asian Development
Bank have sought to define for themselves a key role in financing mitiga-
tion and adaptation based on a recognition that climate change can reverse
development gains in so many other areas where they work. A key actor
here is the World Bank. In addition to being an implementing agency of
the GEF, the financing agency for the climate agreements, the World Bank
has been involved in a range of climate change initiatives. Though there
are now more than 20 different bilateral and multilateral funds for climate
change, the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) of the World Bank repre-
sent more public finance than has ever before been dedicated to climate
change. A key role the World Bank seeks to perform is the provision of
incentives for the private sector to carry some of the burden of funding
climate protection. Piloting and demonstrating sustainable energy projects
helps to minimize some of the risks that deter private actors from investing
in the poorest areas of the world. For example, the Scaling up Renewable
Energy Program was launched at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009
with the aim of catalyzing new economic opportunities for private sector
investment in renewable energy production in low income countries, while
the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund identifies its niche in terms of
54 Equity and justice in climate governance

providing finance to developing countries at more concessional rates than

the standard multilateral development banks’ terms, and at the scale neces-
sary to help provide them with incentives to integrate low-carbon strategies
into their development plans and investment decisions.14
Perhaps more significantly still, the World Bank, as trustee, has been
charged with interim management of the Green Climate Fund called for by
the Copenhagen Accord to oversee the distribution of US$100 billion per
year for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The design of the Fund
was approved at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, in 2011 and was meant
to be operational in 2013. According to developed country self-reporting,
as of 2014, over US$30 billion has been delivered as fast-start finance, the
bulk of which is made up of more than US$10 billion from aid and develop-
ment agencies, US$6 billion from investment promotion and export credit
agencies, and US$6 billion from multilateral climate change funds.15
However, while some parts of the World Bank are promoting action
on climate change, many other policies pursued by the same institution—
notably energy market deregulation—do not take their impact on climate
change into account. For example, the World Bank concedes that “unregu-
lated electricity markets are likely to put renewable energy technologies at
a disadvantage in the short-run because they favor the cheapest energy as
determined purely by price, but do not capture environmental and social
externalities.”16 This raises the critical question of whether climate con-
cerns are being mainstreamed into core World Bank activities. One report
found that less than 30 percent of the World Bank’s lending to the energy
sector has integrated climate considerations into project decision making.
As late as 2007, more than 50 percent of the World Bank’s US$1.8 bil-
lion energy-sector portfolio did not include climate change considerations
at all.17 Indeed, from 2006 to 2010, the World Bank increased its lending
towards fossil fuel-based projects by 400 percent.18 On this basis, it is clear
that climate change has yet to be mainstreamed throughout the activities of
the World Bank.
Whatever their limitations may be, development banks do have a key
role to play in supporting clean energy transitions in the developing world.
Energy is clearly pivotal to development, and meeting the development
needs of the majority of the world’s people in a carbon-constrained world
presents a global challenge of staggering proportions. Today, 1.6 billion
people are without electricity. Electricity demand in developing countries
is projected to increase three to five times over the next 30 years,19 and 57
percent of future power sector investment will occur in developing coun-
tries.20 Without a significant change of course, most of this will be fossil
 Equity and justice in climate governance 55

fuel-based electricity production that will exacerbate climate change. A

recent UN report notes that of the “substantial shifts in investment pat-
terns” required to mitigate climate change, “half of these should occur in
developing countries which will require incentives and support for policy
formulation and implementation.”21 Effective governance of these broader
processes will clearly be key to the success of any efforts at climate change
governance.
In this context, the second issue concerning who pays is how to generate
new sources of funding. To address the question of where the money will
come from, a High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Finance was
convened in 2010 and recommended a series of potential funding sources
including a carbon price of around US$20–25 per ton of CO2 equivalent by
2020, carbon taxes, taxes on shipping and aviation, a financial transaction
tax, redeployment of fossil fuel subsidies, the use of carbon markets, and a
key role for multilateral development banks in levering public and private
finance along the lines discussed above.22
There is increasing emphasis upon the need to expand the amount of
private investment in addressing climate change in particular. A UNFCCC
report on investment and financial flows to address climate change argues
that the “carbon market . . . would have to be significantly expanded to
address needs for additional investment and financial flows.”23 Indeed, the
Adaptation Fund is in large part financed by sales of certified emission
reductions under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. The share of
proceeds amounts to 2 percent of the value of Certified Emission Reductions
issued each year for CDM projects, contributing to the more than US$226
million which the fund has allocated to 39 countries around the world.24
In approaches to financing climate change mitigation, growing attention
is being paid to the need to capture co-benefits in developing countries:
projects that deliver climate and development dividends simultaneously.
In line with this argument, the CDM is often highlighted as a great devel-
opment opportunity for developing countries to use climate related funds
to invest in projects and technologies that benefit the poor. The projects it
approves are meant to capture social and environmental benefits as well
as deliver emission reductions additional to those that would have been
funded anyway. However, in reality, investment has tended to flow to larger
developing countries such as China and India that between them are cur-
rently home to over 70 percent of all registered CDM projects and not,
for example, to Africa, where just over 2 percent of projects are currently
registered. There has also been a neglect of broader sustainable devel-
opment benefits flowing from the projects even if they are successful at
56 Equity and justice in climate governance

reducing the growth of GHG emissions, partly because these benefits are not
monetarized in the same way emission reductions are monetarized through
the allocation of Certified Emissions Reductions.25 In governance terms,
there are also issues of limited capacity to manage project demand in some
countries, as well as to oversee and implement the projects in a way which
protects not just the interests of the investor but also the communities which
host these projects.26 We discuss these issues in further depth in Chapters
5 and 6. For the moment, it is sufficient to note that the debate concerning
where additional funds for addressing climate change should come from is
far from being resolved in terms of either policy or practice, with significant
concern expressed that addressing climate change may serve to divert much
needed resources away from other environment and development agendas,
will be tokenistic at best, and may serve to promote particular solutions to
the climate change problem favored by the developed world rather than
those developing countries in receipt of climate finance.
There is also the danger of trying to create islands of formal climate
governance in a sea of unregulated, ungoverned flows of trade and finance,
unguided by the imperative of addressing climate change. For example,
the implemented and scheduled emission trading schemes and carbon
taxes thus far only put a carbon price on approximately 7 percent of global
emissions.27 Moreover, only a small percentage of trade, aid, production,
and finance is governed by public bodies charged with tackling climate
change.28 Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds are currently less
than 1 percent of investment globally.29 What this highlights is the press-
ing need to identify policies, strategies, and interventions which are able to
steer financial flows, public and private, to where they are most needed but
in ways that are consistent with the goal of reducing GHG emissions. For
those countries most integrated within the global trading system (OECD
and BRICS), one avenue that has been advocated is an agreement on trade
in energy services and the use of energy-intensity indicators. For exam-
ple, proposals for an energy round in the World Trade Organization (WTO)
aimed at meeting the energy needs of the poor through access to services
and technologies are justified in the following way:

Facilitating access to products and services in this area can help improve
energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have a positive
impact on air quality, water, soil and natural resources conservation. A
successful outcome of the negotiations on environmental goods and
services could deliver a triple-win for WTO members: a win for the
environment, a win for trade and a win for development.30
 Equity and justice in climate governance 57

According to the World Bank, the removal of tariffs for four basic clean
energy technologies (solar, wind, clean coal, and efficient lighting) in 18
developing countries with high levels of GHG emissions would result in
trade gains of up to 7 percent. The removal of both tariffs and non-tariff
barriers could boost trade by as much as 13 percent.31 For others, such as
countries in sub-Saharan Africa which are less well integrated into the glo-
bal economy and more aid-dependent, important support can be provided
by donors to enable clean energy transitions. The World Bank and regional
development banks, meanwhile, can play a key role in screening public
and private flows going into countries that are already attractive investment
locations, as well as provide inducements that reduce the risk of investors
entering new markets in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America that have
not received such flows to date.
What this more positive analysis overlooks is the climate impacts of
increased trade and the simultaneous and ongoing levels of donor support
for fossil fuels, as noted previously. For example, a narrow focus on specific
sectoral gains ignores the way in which unfettered trade liberalization in gen-
eral serves to place the global economy on a collision course with the goal of
reducing GHG emissions because of the huge increases in emissions associ-
ated with transporting large volumes of goods over greater distances.32

Who bears the costs?

In justice and equity terms it is necessary to relate the question of who
pays for action in financial terms to the question of who bears the costs
of climate change, not just in terms of biophysical impacts, but also the
human and social costs of how the issue is currently governed, or con-
versely, “ungoverned.”
The findings contained in the 2014 IPCC report on the impacts of climate
change demonstrate quite clearly that poorer and marginalized communities
in drought-prone areas, those experiencing water scarcity, or those whose
livelihoods depend on agriculture will be the worst affected and have the
least capacity to adapt to climate change. As IPCC lead author Neil Adger
notes, “the impacts of climate change are likely to be greater on those
countries more dependent on primary sector economic activities [mostly
farming], primarily because of the increase in uncertainty on productivity in
the primary sectors.”33 As shown in Box 2.1, changes in the supply of water,
natural resources, and food bring in their wake enormous social changes
and disruptions. Across the developing countries, it is areas of sub-Saharan
Africa, where poverty is most acute, that will be worst affected. Indeed, a
58 Equity and justice in climate governance

multidonor report Poverty and Climate Change rightly acknowledges that

“Climate change is a serious risk to poverty reduction and threatens to undo
decades of development efforts.”34

Box 2.1 clImaTe change anD PoverTy

• Food production needs to double to meet the needs of an addi-
tional 3 billion people over the next 30 years. Climate change is
projected to decrease agricultural productivity in the tropics and
sub-tropics.
• One-third of the world’s population is susceptible to water scar-
city. Populations facing water scarcity will more than double
over the next 30 years. Climate change is projected to decrease
water availability in many (semi-) arid regions.
• Wood fuel is the main source of fuel for one-third of the world’s
population. Wood fuel demand is expected to double in the next
50 years. Climate change will make forest management more
difficult due to increases in pests and fires.
• Today 1.6 billion people are without electricity. Electricity
demand in developing countries will increase three to five times
over the next 30 years. Fossil fuel-based electricity production
will exacerbate climate change.

Source: Ogunlade Davidson, Kirsten Halsnæs, Saleemul Huq, Marcel Kok, Bert Metz,
Youba Sokona, and Jan Verhagen, “The Development and Climate Nexus: The Case of
Sub-Saharan Africa,” Climate Policy 3, no.1 (2003): 97–113.

Given the slow pace of progress of international cooperation on climate

change, noted in Chapter 1, and the difficulties of advancing some of the
mitigation options discussed above amid conflicts about how and by whom
they should be governed, attention has increasingly turned to the issue of
adaptation to climate change. Vulnerability to climate change cuts across
geographical boundaries and it is often the poor in all parts of the world
that are affected most, raising issues of distributive justice. We saw in the
case of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 how poorer communities of color bear
some of the worst devastation inflicted by “natural” disasters. Poorer people
often have the least means of adapting their livelihoods and means of sur-
vival to sudden change of the sort associated with extreme weather events.
Bradley Parks and Timmons Roberts argue, for example, that Hurricane
 Equity and justice in climate governance 59

Mitch in Honduras “serves as a parable about uneven vulnerability to global

climate change.”35 The Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) estimated that US$5 billion would be necessary to fund
reconstruction efforts, to say nothing of damage to the banana plantations
that were so central to generating export revenues. These revenues fell to
one fifth of their pre-hurricane levels, forcing Dole and Chiquita to lay off
25,000 workers and setting in train a series of other devastating social con-
sequences. Likewise, the torrential rains and tropical cyclones which struck
Mozambique and surrounding countries in 1999 left 700 people dead, one
million people displaced, and extensive losses of land, animals, and other
means of survival leaving a reconstruction bill of US$700 million.36 Heat
waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia, and
deadly flooding in Thailand and Pakistan, as well as Typhoon Haiyan in
2013 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, have further drawn attention to the
devastating effects of climate change. Constructing effective mechanisms
of adaptation raises issues not just of distributive but also of procedural
justice.37
The concern with issues of procedural justice reflects the fact that the
impacts are felt and costs borne by poorer groups in particular, not just as
a result of climate change and differential ability to adapt to it, but because
of the ways in which mitigation and adaptation policies are designed and
implemented. Though the UN climate change negotiations may seem far
removed from local land conflicts, the governance of climate change inter-
sects with the governance of other key resources such as water and land.38
For example, there have been cases of negative impacts on the poor when
land is given up for carbon sink purposes, giving rise to accusations of car-
bon colonialism. One Norwegian company operating in Uganda that leased
its lands for a sequestration project is said to have resulted in the eviction
of 8,000 people in 13 villages.39 The project in Bukaleba Forestry Reserve
was meant to offset GHG emissions of a coal-fired power plant to be built
in Norway.40 Likewise, carbon finance can provide a financial lifeline to the
operation of landfill sites, which poorer communities had been campaign-
ing to close down but whose life is extended because of the profit to be
made from capturing and burning methane.41
People do not meekly accept their fate as victims of forms of climate
governance they consider unjust, however. There is significant resist-
ance to attempts at “accumulation by de-carbonization” by communities
and movements resisting the commodification and inequities produced
by “green grabs” of their land.42 Acting as watchdogs, NGOs have also
played an important role in monitoring public and private activity in the
60 Equity and justice in climate governance

new carbon economy, and drawing attention to the inequities it produces

or fails to address. SinksWatch, for example, an initiative of the World
Rainforest Movement (WRM) set up in 2001, monitors the impact of the
financing and creation of sinks projects to highlight the threat they pose to
forests and other ecosystems, to forest peoples as well as to the climate. A
particular concern is the exclusion of marginalized groups from their own
forest resources once they become the property of a distant carbon trader for
whom they represent a valuable investment opportunity. One case in point
is the Plantar project which involves planting 23,100 hectares of eucalyptus
tree plantations to produce wood for charcoal, which will then be used in
pig iron production instead of coal. The project also claims carbon credits
for sequestration of carbon through the trees planted. Because of the social
and environmental impacts of the project, over 50 Brazilian NGOs, move-
ments, churches, and trade unions have been urging investors to refrain
from buying carbon credits originating from the project.43
In the search for means of protecting poorer groups from the effects of
climate change or the effects of poorly conceived forms of climate govern-
ance, many affected communities and activities have increasingly turned
to the language and tools of human rights. As Kevin Watkins of the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said of climate change: “it is
about social justice and the human rights of the world’s poor and marginal-
ized. Failure to act on climate change would be tantamount to a systematic
violation of the human rights of the poor.”44 As a mechanism for seeking
redress for rights violations, access to the law is limited for many poorer
groups, but there have been a series of legal cases which seek to explore
the boundaries of culpability and establish new and challenging legal prec-
edents.45 One such case involves the Inuit community in North America.
On December 7, 2005, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) submitted
a “Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Seeking
Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming caused by Acts
and Omissions of the United States.” The United States was targeted as
the world’s largest contributor to GHG emissions. Sheila Watt-Cloutier,
Inuk woman and chair of the ICC, submitted the petition on behalf of her-
self, 62 other named individuals, “and all Inuit of the Arctic regions of the
United States and Canada who have been affected by the impacts of climate
change.”46 The petition calls on the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights to investigate the harm caused to the Inuit by global warming, and
to declare the United States in violation of rights affirmed in the 1948
American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and other instru-
ments of international law such as the International Convention on Civil
 Equity and justice in climate governance 61

and Political Rights and the International Convention on Economic, Social,

and Cultural Rights. Specifically, the petition alleges:

The impacts of climate change, caused by acts and omissions by the

United States, violate the Inuit’s fundamental human rights protected
by the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and
other international instruments. These include their rights to the bene-
fits of culture, to property, to the preservation of health, life, physical
integrity, security and a means of subsistence and to residence, move-
ment, and the inviolability of the home.47

The Commission rejected the petition as inadmissible, though reasons for

the refusal were not given. Importantly, however, the human rights issues
raised by the case were not disputed by the Commission. One positive out-
come of the case has been that the Commission invited petitioners to request
a public hearing on the matter which took place on March 1, 2007.
Civil society actors in both North and South also have a key role to
play in debates about equity and justice in climate governance through
enhancing the voice and reach of excluded groups. This can take the form
of legal groups—such as the UK-based FIELD—helping to redress some of
the procedural inequities, which mean levels of participation and effective
engagement from smaller developing countries in the climate negotiations
are low. Outside the formal negotiating arenas of climate governance, it
includes the climate justice movement which draws attention to the dispro-
portionate impact of climate change on the poor. This movement focuses
on the way in which climate change has the potential to exacerbate existing
social inequalities and draws much of its critique from broader contestations
of neo-liberal globalization. For the activists spearheading the movement,
climate justice means:

holding fossil fuel corporations accountable for the central role they
play in contributing to global warming . . . challenging these com-
panies at every level – from the production and marketing of fossil
fuels themselves, to their underhanded political influence, to their PR
prowess, to the unjust “solutions” they propose, to the fossil fuel-
based globalization they are driving.48

The movement works through popular education and protest and seeks to
provide a space for the articulation of claims by those most affected by cli-
mate change, but who contribute least to the problem. It has also spawned
62 Equity and justice in climate governance

new alliances such as the “Stop Climate Chaos” coalition involving

environment and development NGOs working on climate justice issues and
wanting to draw attention to impacts on the poor in particular.49

Governance issues and challenges

From this discussion of the politics of responsibility, costs, and burdens of
climate change we find that there are a number of cross-cutting governance
issues and challenges that arise. First, battles over the definition of the nature
of the problem of climate change affect how and where it is addressed. In
this chapter we have seen how action on climate change has been presented
as a trade opportunity by some (and as barrier to trade by others), and how
it has got caught up in, and at the same time redefines, older debates about
issues of aid and development. As connections to other issues and policy
arenas are made, new actors are enrolled in climate governance from trade
and financial institutions to bodies dealing with human rights and develop-
ment. The new resources being made available to tackle climate change
attract international organizations, civil society groups, and business alike.
Carbon entrepreneurs seek a share of the market while development NGOs
define for themselves a role in addressing climate change, and interna-
tional agencies from UNDP to the United Nations Industrial Development
Organization (UNIDO) line up alongside the World Bank to make sure their
presence is felt and their expertise brought to bear.
Just as each of these actors seeks to define the nature of the problem in
a way which advances their interests, so too they compete to define appro-
priate solutions. In particular, the privileging of market-based solutions
reflects the interests of particular organizations and nation-states with their
neo-liberal emphasis on using the market and allocating property rights to
create incentives to reduce emissions wherever it is cheapest to do so. The
proliferation of actors and sites of climate governance also raises signifi-
cant challenges in terms of policy coordination and coherence. Instead of
coordinated strategies between global bodies working in relevant areas and
across levels of governance from local government up to the global, we find
high levels of incoherence. The activities of one body or set of organiza-
tions can systematically undermine those of others. New trade agreements
increase the transport of goods over longer distances, adding to the emis-
sions that climate negotiators are struggling to reduce,50 while multilateral
development bank-lending supports projects that commit vast amounts
of GHG to the atmosphere. For instance, the World Bank, in a move that
attracted widespread criticism from civil society, made a loan of US$3.75
 Equity and justice in climate governance 63

billion to the South African national utility Eskom, the largest stand-alone
energy investment in the Bank’s history, to finance the construction of the
4,800 MW Medupi supercritical coal-fired power plant.
We have seen in this chapter that whereas once climate change was
an issue mainly addressed by the UN, its nature as a political issue at the
intersection of the relationship between economy, energy, and environment
means that it touches many other policy areas which in turn shape the effec-
tiveness of action on climate change. This close interweaving of climate
change with other key sectors of the economy raises another important
issue, that of the “un-governance” of climate change: issues and areas of
active and deliberate neglect. These are areas of politics and practice which
are often not considered as climate policy, but which contribute signifi-
cantly to the problem around energy, transport, agriculture and trade, for
example. This requires us to look not only at the activities of governments,
but also at the international institutions and market actors that shape so
strongly the direction of national development strategies.
Second, this chapter has shown how new sites for climate governance
become venues for the articulation of demands that it has not been possible
to achieve by other means or in other forums. The forging of links to aid,
debt, and trade issues illustrates this clearly. While some have sought to
maintain clear boundaries around climate governance for fear of overload-
ing the agenda with the politics of these other issues and hence slowing
progress, these new sites for climate governance also open up new potential
avenues for advancing action. While the interlinkages between different
policy issues create a challenge in terms of the governability of the “regime
complex” around climate change, positive benefits might be able to be
achieved from such synergies.51 The emergence of new sites of climate pol-
itics is not, however, just about constructing new avenues of cooperation.
Older development concerns re-emerge in the climate context. Concerns
about subsidies to flailing technology sectors whose applications are inap-
propriate to local Southern contexts for which they were not designed, the
use of non-additional tied aid which requires recipients to purchase the
technology from the donor have all resurfaced as concerns expressed by
developing countries in the climate change debate.52
Third, we find that issues of process have been decisive in shaping cli-
mate governance outcomes. Who gets to define issues of responsibility,
equity, and justice is a function of who participates, who is represented, and
who wields most power. Many smaller developing countries have limited
representation in the international negotiations, while many more powerful
developing countries have moved to bilateral or plurilateral forums where
64 Equity and justice in climate governance

they expect higher returns from their engagement. As climate governance

enrolls more actors in complex and disparate ways, questions of account-
ability come to the fore—whether it is the accountability of CDM project
developers to communities expected to host projects, the accountability of
bodies such as the Green Climate Fund for the funds it disperses, or com-
pensation for vulnerable areas of the world for climate impacts. This creates
enormous challenges for the design of institutions that are transparent and
open to participation yet at the same time robust and effective. Indeed, the
need to enhance the effectiveness of action across scales and improve the
accountability of key actors in climate governance has provided the point
of departure for many of the transnational networks that are the subject of
the next chapter.

Notes
1 Peter Newell, “Climate for Change: Civil Society and the Politics of Global
Warming,” in Global Civil Society Yearbook, eds Marlies Glasius, Mary
Kaldor, and Helmut Anheier (London: Sage, 2005), 90–119; Patrick Bond,
Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below (Scottsville:
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012).
2 Tom Mitchell and Simon Maxwell, “Defining Climate Compatible
Development,” CDKN Policy Brief November (London: Climate and
Development Knowledge Network, 2010).
3 J. Timmons Roberts and Bradley C. Parks, A Climate of Injustice: Global
Inequality, North–South Politics, and Climate Policy (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2007); Chukwumerije Okereke, Global Justice and Neoliberal
Environmental Governance Ethics, Sustainable Development and International
Cooperation (London: Routledge, 2008).
4 Bradley C. Parks and J. Timmons Roberts, “Globalization, Vulnerability to
Climate Change and Perceived Injustice,” Society and Natural Resources
19, no. 4 (2006): 342; Tearfund, Dried Up, Drowned Out: Voices from the
Developing World on a Changing Climate (London: Tearfund, 2005); Peter
Newell, “Race, Class and the Global Politics of Environmental Inequality,”
Global Environmental Politics 5, no. 3 (2005): 70–94.
5 “The Case for Climate Security,” Lecture by the Foreign Secretary, the Rt.
Hon. Margaret Beckett MP, Royal United Services Institute, May 10, 2007,
available online at [Link]
info:public/infoID:E4643430E3E85A/ [accessed January 21, 2015].
6 Quoted in Peter Newell, “Climate Change, Human Rights and Corporate
Accountability,” in Climate Change and Human Rights, ed. Stephen Humphrey
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
7 Heidi Bachram, “Climate Fraud and Carbon Colonialism: The New Trade in
Greenhouse Gases,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 15, no. 4 (2004): 5–20.
8 Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, “First Approaches and Unanswered Questions,” in
Issues and Options: The Clean Development Mechanism (New York: UNDP,
1998): 23–9.
 Equity and justice in climate governance 65

9 Jos G.J. Olivier, Greet Janssens-Maenhout, and Jeroen A.H.W. Peters,

Trends in Global CO2 Emissions; 2012 Report (The Hague/Bilthoven: PBL
Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, 2012).
10 Roberts and Parks, A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North–South
Politics, and Climate Policy.
11 Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, “Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change:
Emission Scenarios for a New World,” Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society A 369, no. 1934 (2011), 20–44.
12 Karen Turner, Max Munday, Stuart McIntyre, and Christa D. Jensen,
“Incorporating Jurisdiction Issues into Regional Carbon Accounts Under
Production and Consumption Accounting Principles,” Environment and
Planning A 43, no. 3 (2011): 722–41.
13 Sjur Kasa, Anne Therese Gullberg, and Gørild Heggelund, “The Group of 77
in the International Climate Negotiations: Recent Developments and Future
Directions,” International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and
Economics 8, no. 2 (2008): 113–27.
14 Peter Newell, “The Governance of Energy Finance: The Public, the Private
and the Hybrid,” Global Policy 2, no. 1 (2011): 94–105.
15 Climate Funds Update, Fast Start Finance, available online at [Link]
[Link]/about-climate-fund/fast-start-finance [accessed January
21, 2015].
16 World Bank, Carbon Funds and Facilities (2014), available online at http://
[Link]/51X7CH8VN0 [accessed January 21, 2015].
17 World Resources Institute, Correcting the World’s Greatest Market Failure:
Climate Change and Multilateral Development Banks (2008), available online
at [Link]
ure [accessed January 21, 2015].
18 Friends of the Earth (US) and Groundwork (South Africa), eds, World
Bank, Climate Change and Energy Financing: Something Old, Something
New? (April 2011), available online at [Link]
org/?publication=world-bank-climate-change-and-energy-financing
[accessed January 21, 2015].
19 Ogunlade Davidson, Kirsten Halsnæs, Saleemul Huq, Marcel Kok, Bert Metz,
Youba Sokona, and Jan Verhagen, “The Development and Climate Nexus: The
Case of Sub-Saharan Africa,” Climate Policy 3, no.1 (2003): 97–113.
20 UNFCCC, Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change
(Bonn, Germany: UNFCCC, 2007).
21 UNFCCC, Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change, 26.
22 Report of the Secretary-General’s High-level Advisory Group on Climate
Change Financing (New York: UN, November 5, 2010).
23 UNFCCC, Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change,
Executive summary.
24 Adaptation Fund, About the Adaptation Fund, available online at [Link]
[Link]/about [accessed January 21, 2015].
25 Emily Boyd, Nathan Hultman, Timmons Roberts, Esteve Corbera, Johannes
Ebeling, Diana M. Liverman, Kate Brown, Robert Tippmann, John Cole, Phil
Mann, Marius Kaiser, Mike Robbins, Adam Bumpus, Allen Shaw, Eduardo
Ferreira, Alex Bozmoski, Chris Villiers, and Jonathan Avis, “The Clean
Development Mechanism: An Assessment of Current Practice and Future
Approaches for Policy,” Tyndall Centre Working Paper 114, available online at
66 Equity and justice in climate governance

[Link]
current-practice-and-future-approaches-policy [accessed January 21, 2015];
Karen H. Olsen, “The Clean Development Mechanism’s Contribution to
Sustainable Development: A Review of the Literature,” Climatic Change 84,
no. 1 (2007): 59–73.
26 Peter Newell, “The Politics and Political Economy of the CDM in Argentina,”
Environmental Politics 23, no. 2 (2014): 321–38; Jon Phillips and Peter
Newell, “The Governance of Clean Energy in India: the Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM) and Domestic Energy Politics,” Energy Policy 59 (2013):
654–62.
27 Mapping Carbon Pricing Initiatives: Developments and Prospects
(Washington: World Bank, 2013).
28 Newell, “The Governance of Energy Finance.”
29 Peter Newell, Nicky Jenner, and Lucy Baker, “Governing Clean Development:
A Framework for Analysis,” The Governance of Clean Development Working
Paper Series, no. 1 (Norwich, UK: UEA, 2009).
30 World Trade Organization, Activities of the WTO and the Challenge of Climate
Change, available online at [Link]
mate_challenge_e.htm [accessed January 21, 2015].
31 World Bank, International Trade and Climate Change: Economic, Legal and
Institutional Perspectives (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007).
32 New Economics Foundation, Collision Course: Free Trade’s Free Ride on the
Global Climate (London: New Economics Foundation, 2003).
33 Neil Adger, “Scales of Governance and Environmental Justice for Adaptation
and Mitigation of Climate Change,” Journal of International Development 13,
no. 7 (2001): 921–31.
34 World Bank Group, Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability
of the Poor Through Adaptation (Washington, DC: World Bank Group,
2003).
35 Parks and Roberts, “Globalization, Vulnerability to Climate Change and
Perceived Injustice,” 342.
36 Parks and Roberts “Globalization, Vulnerability to Climate Change and
Perceived Injustice,” 345.
37 Jouni Paavola and Neil Adger, “Justice and Adaptation to Climate Change,”
Tyndall Centre Working Paper 23 (2002).
38 Peter Newell and Adam Bumpus, “The Global Political Ecology of the CDM,”
Global Environmental Politics 12, no. 4 (2012): 49–68.
39 Bachram, “Climate Fraud and Carbon Colonialism: The New Trade in
Greenhouse Gases,” 10–12.
40 Jutta Kill, “Land Grab in Uganda in Preparation for CDM Sinks Project,”
World Rainforest Movement Bulletin no. 74, September 2003.
41 Patrick Bond, Rehana Dada, and Graham Erion, eds, Climate Change, Carbon
Trading and Civil Society: Negative Returns on South African Investments
(Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2009).
42 Adam Bumpus and Diana Liverman, “Accumulation by De-carbonization and
the Governance of Carbon Offsets,” Economic Geography 84, no. 2 (2008):
127–55; James Fairhead, Melissa Leach, and Ian Scoones, “Green Grabbing:
A New Appropriation of Nature?,” Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 2
(2012): 285–307.
 Equity and justice in climate governance 67

43 “Sinks Watch,” available online at [Link] [accessed

January 21, 2015].
44 Kevin Watkins, Editor of the UNDP Human Development Report, at its
launch in Brazil, November 27. Quoted in Larry Elliot and Ashley Seager,
“Cut Carbon By Up to Third to Save Poor, UN Tells West,” The Guardian,
November 28, 2007, available online at [Link]/environment/
2007/nov/28/climatechange [accessed January 21, 2015].
45 Stephen Humphrey, ed., Climate Change and Human Rights (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009); Peter Newell, “Civil Society, Corporate
Accountability and the Politics of Climate Change,” Global Environmental
Politics 8, no. 3 (2008): 124–55.
46 Earthjustice, “Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Seeking Relief From Violations Resulting From Global Warming Caused By
Acts and Omissions of the United States,” available online at [Link]
[Link]/news/press/2005/inuit-human-rights-petition-filed-over-climate-
change [accessed January 21, 2015].
47 Earthjustice, ibid.
48 “Corporate Watch,” (2007), available online at [Link]
[Link]?id=979 [accessed January 21, 2015]..
49 Clare Saunders, “The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition: Climate Change as a
Development Issue,” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 8 (2008): 1509–26.
50 New Economics Foundation, Collision Course.
51 Robert O. Keohane and David G. Victor, “The Regime Complex for Climate
Change,” Discussion paper 10–33 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on
International Climate Agreements, 2010).
52 Oliver Tickell and Nicola Hildyard, “Green Dollars, Green Menace,” The
Ecologist 22, no. 3 (1992): 82–3.
3
BETWEEN GLOBAL AND LOCAL
Governing climate change transnationally

As we outline in the Introduction, climate change is an issue of concern not

only on international and national agendas (Chapters 1 and 2), but also for an
array of transnational networks.1 A growing number of arrangements which
cross national boundaries are being formed by a range of actors with the
specific purpose of addressing climate change.2 In this chapter we explore
this transnational phenomenon. First, we examine the roots of transna-
tional climate change governance and the governance “functions” that such
networks perform. Second, we consider different types of transnational cli-
mate change governance networks—those based purely on the involvement
of public actors, those that involve a hybrid of public and private actors, and
those that involve only private actors. In the final section, we consider the
issues and challenges for governing climate change that this phenomenon
raises.

Transnational networks and climate change

Transnational relations are not new. In the early 1970s, Keohane and Nye
were among the first to draw attention to the significance of these cross-
border transactions and networks, which seemingly bypassed the central
organization and control of national governments.3 As the debate on glo-
bal governance (see Introduction) gathered pace during the 1990s, a range
of scholars pointed to the importance of transnational coalitions and net-
works in influencing the development of policy in various spheres of global
affairs and in undertaking governance in their own right.4 The presence of
arrangements that sought to govern global environmental issues outside of
the remit of international regimes and without the necessary involvement
of nation-states provided one of the foundations for the argument that a
different way of approaching global politics was required.
 Governing climate change transnationally 69

The emergence of transnational climate change governance

In the climate change arena, the presence of such networks can be traced
back to the beginning of social and political concern for the issue. For
example, transnational networks of municipal governments such as the
Climate Alliance and ICLEI’s5 Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) origi-
nated in the early 1990s as both climate change and sustainability began
to become significant issues for local authorities. However, most trans-
national arrangements are more recent, post-dating the 1997 Kyoto Protocol,
and in the ensuing decade their numbers and profile have increased sig-
nificantly.6 Why might this be the case? Karin Bäckstrand suggests that
the recent growth of transnational arrangements can be seen as a “response
to the regulatory deficit or implementation deficit permeating multilateral
regimes.”7 In other words, the emergence of transnational governance could
be regarded as a response to the perceived failures and limitations of more
traditional international institutions and national governments in addressing
the problem of climate change, some of which we have discussed in Chapters
1 and 2. Taking a slightly different line of argument, Andonova et al. point
to the specific characteristics of the climate change issue as providing fer-
tile ground for the emergence of transnational governance networks.8 First,
the diversity of national commitments in the international climate regime
creates opportunities for alternative forms of cooperation between actors
subject to international targets and those who are not. Second, the inclusion
of flexible mechanisms in the Kyoto Protocol has led to the involvement
of a range of new actors working across borders in the design and imple-
mentation of international climate policy. We saw in Chapters 1 and 2 how,
despite being market mechanisms, they still involve high levels of state
involvement and require a range of governance functions to be performed
by project developers, mediators, and verifiers. Third, the complexity and
breadth of climate change as a policy agenda offers potential for issue-
and sector-specific collaborations alongside international agreements. In
short, the nature of the climate change governance problem and how it is
being addressed has created the political space for new collaborations and
mechanisms of governance, such as the transnational initiatives that are our
focus in this chapter.
However, it is important to realize that the emergence of transnational
climate change governance has not taken place in a political, social, or
economic vacuum. As we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2, broader trends—
frequently referred to by terms such as globalization and neo-liberalism—
have provided both the means and the rationale for the involvement of
70 Governing climate change transnationally

multiple actors in seeking to shape the governance of a range of local to glo-

bal problems. Across many nation-states, principles of neo-liberalism have
been used as the basis for reducing the role of the state and increasing the
role of the private sector in service delivery. Various forms of partnership
have been promoted as the means through which to determine public policy
goals and deliver governance. In the environmental arena, the argument
that responsibilities for governing global issues should be shared between
public and private actors was epitomized by the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD) which established the role of so-called
Type II partnerships (between public and private actors) in delivering sus-
tainability.9 This is a role that many non-state actors have actively sought,
on the basis of arguments about their relative expertise, ability to engage
with a range of different communities, and for reasons of corporate social
responsibility (see Chapters 4 and 5). We suggest that it is this context,
together with the specific characteristics of climate change as a governance
problem, which has led to the emergence of transnational climate change
governance.10

Governing transnationally
Having recognized that transnational networks now form an important part
of the governance landscape for climate change, the critical questions that
emerge are whether, how, and why such networks are able to have any effect.
While international regimes and national governments can deploy binding
agreements and various policy instruments, such as economic incentives or
sanctions, transnational networks do not on face value seem to have much at
their disposal in terms of the standard means of shaping behavior or ensur-
ing compliance with particular targets, goals, and norms. However, the range
of mechanisms and instruments that networks deploy include measures
which are traditionally seen as “soft,” such as information-sharing or capac-
ity building and implementation, as well as those which imply a degree of
enforcement and rule-setting, such as those that accompany funding, certifi-
cation, or mandatory requirements for membership of any one transnational
organization.11 These three broad categories of governance functions are not
mutually exclusive—some transnational networks may use a combination of
information-sharing, capacity building, and rule-setting approaches, while
others may focus on one particular function (see Box 3.1). Analysis suggests
that “few initiatives undertake only information-sharing or capacity build-
ing (13 percent); most have some form of target, monitoring or rule-setting
function (75 percent).”12
 Governing climate change transnationally 71

Box 3.1 examPles of TransnaTIonal

governance
Information-sharing
The Climate Group aims to “convene leaders, share hard evidence of
successful low carbon growth, and pilot practical solutions which can
be replicated worldwide.”

Source: The Climate Group, About Us, [Link]

about-us/ [accessed November 2014].

Implementation and capacity building

The Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP)
“invests in clean energy markets to help developing countries expand
modern energy services and improve lives; increase prosperity and
economic dynamism; and keep CO2 emissions in check: a paradigm
commonly known as green growth. REEEP’s tools are modern clean
energy technologies – renewable energy and energy efficiency –
market forces, and knowledge management.”

Source: [Link] [accessed November 2014].

Regulation
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) states that “the
RGGI states implemented a new 2014 RGGI cap of 91 million short
tons. The RGGI CO2 cap then declines 2.5 percent each year from
2015 to 2020. The RGGI CO2 cap represents a regional budget for
CO2 emissions from the power sector.”

Source: RGGI, Welcome, [Link] [accessed November 2014].

Within transnational networks, information-sharing can perform cru-

cial governance functions by framing issues, setting agendas, defining
what counts as responsible or effective action, offering inspiration, and
providing a means of benchmarking achievements. In the context of trans-
national governance, information-sharing is usually orientated towards net-
work constituents and acts both to reinforce engagement and to police its
boundaries. A second set of governance functions relating to implementa-
tion and capacity building is regarded as particularly important in those
72 Governing climate change transnationally

transnational networks which have emerged as a result of the 2002 WSSD

and other multilateral environmental agreements.13 Through the provision
of resources, transnational networks seek to develop the capacity of their
constituents to act on climate change by providing access to expertise, fund-
ing, or technologies that would otherwise be unavailable. In some cases,
transnational networks are seeking to develop the capacity to implement or
respond to international or national policy frameworks, such as contribut-
ing to meeting targets set in the Kyoto Protocol or being able to participate
in the CDM. In other cases, transnational arrangements are seeking to build
capacity in response to network aims and goals. A third set of governance
functions that transnational networks undertake involves regulation. This
can take place through setting particular standards, such as goals for emis-
sion reductions or certification schemes, establishing a particular basis for
membership, for example, signing up to a specific program of actions or a
code of conduct, or various means of measuring performance. Networks
vary considerably in the extent to which they use and implement regula-
tions. However, despite the supposedly voluntary nature of transnational
climate change governance, the presence of regulation and (sometimes)
sanctions suggest that networks are able to exert a degree of power over
their members.
In the absence of the traditional governance toolkits of nation-states
and international institutions, transnational governance arrangements have
devised a range of means through which they seek to guide and direct their
constituents towards particular goals. At one end of the spectrum, prac-
tices of sharing information could be regarded as entirely voluntary, yet in
the process of establishing what does and does not count as best practice,
for example, transnational arrangements can exert considerable pressure
on members to conform to particular ways of working or to certain norms.
Once one or two key market players participate in a scheme like the Carbon
Disclosure Project (CDP) (see Chapter 4), there is peer pressure on others
to show investors that they are willing to report on their emissions pro-
file. Sharing information in this manner can serve to define the agenda,
and determine how the climate change problem should be tackled. Means
of building capacity could equally be regarded as voluntary—members
are free to join in with project proposals, to take or leave advice, or to
disregard funding opportunities. Again, however, by being able to deter-
mine the criteria upon which funding is distributed, to set the rules of the
game, and by providing certain forms of advice or access to particular
sorts of technologies or information, networks can also find themselves in
powerful positions with respect to their constituents. Transnational networks
 Governing climate change transnationally 73

also undertake explicit forms of regulation, establishing standards and

disclosing performance, developing membership rules, and, on occasion,
sanctioning those who fail to comply. Despite their apparently voluntary
nature and weak position, through these means transnational networks are
able to govern by shaping the ideas and behavior of their constituents in
accordance with certain norms and goals for addressing climate change,
suggesting that they warrant further exploration as part of the contemporary
landscape of climate governance.

Comparing types of transnational climate change

governance
Transnational climate change governance arrangements involve a whole
host of actors—from municipal governments to private foundations,
non-governmental organizations to multinational corporations. These
networks take on different characteristics depending on whether they are
constituted by public actors (e.g. subnational governments), private actors
(e.g. corporations), or a hybrid of public and private actors. Here, we out-
line the different types of transnational network involved in governing
climate change and compare their roles with respect to the functions of
information-sharing, implementation and capacity building, and regula-
tion discussed above.

Governing beyond but through the state: public transnational

governance
Transnational environmental governance may involve networks of public
actors including, for example, sub-units of central government, regional
or state authorities, and city or local governments. In the climate domain,
examples include transnational municipal networks, discussed in more
detail below, networks of regional governments, such as the New England
Governors and the Eastern Canadian Premiers (NEG-ECP) 2001 initiative
to adopt a joint Climate Change Action Plan14 and the Network of Regional
Governments for Sustainable Development (nrg4SD), as well as bilateral
agreements between subnational governments to act on climate change,
such as the initiative between California (United States) and Victoria
(Australia).
Municipal networks provide one of the first and most extensive examples
of transnational governance. In the early 1990s, three transnational munici-
pal networks—Climate Alliance, ICLEI CCP, and Energy Cities—were
74 Governing climate change transnationally

established with member cities in Europe and the United States.15 Founded
in 1990 as an alliance between European cities and indigenous peoples,
Climate Alliance has over 1,600 members in 20 European countries with
a concentration in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.16 Its aim is to
reduce emissions to 50 percent below 1990 by 2030 and protect the rainfor-
est through partnerships and projects with indigenous rainforest peoples.17
Cities for Climate Protection was formed in 1992 as an initiative of ICLEI.18
Municipal membership of the CCP network initially reflected its origins in
North America and Europe, but by 2009 had expanded with specific cam-
paigns in Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Mexico, New Zealand,
South Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the United States, and over
1,000 members worldwide.19 Members of CCP pledged to reduce their
emissions of GHG by between 10 and 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2010.
Energy Cities stemmed from a project funded by the Commission of the
European Union and is a somewhat different network, with an explicit focus
on local energy policy in which addressing climate change is but one factor.
Founded in 1990 and based in France, it now has over 200 individual mem-
bers in 21 European countries and represents over 1,000 municipalities.20
While its members are primarily municipalities, the network also includes
local energy management agencies, municipal companies, and groups of
municipalities. In this way, its reach may be greater than its membership
numbers suggest.21
In the mid-2000s, just as membership and interest in these initial networks
appeared to be stagnating, a new wave of transnational municipal networks
emerged and the work of existing networks was reinvigorated. Following the
success of the 2005 US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement,22 in which
cities pledged to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own commu-
nities, ICLEI has supported the development of the World Mayors’ Council
on Climate Change with the explicit purpose “to politically promote climate
protection policies at the local level.”23 In 2008, the EU Covenant of Mayors
was formed with the aim of contributing to the goal of meeting and exceed-
ing the EU policy goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent
by 2020. With over 5,800 members, it is now the largest municipal move-
ment seeking to address climate change.24 Smaller in scale but critical in
economic and political terms, the emergence of the C40 Climate Leadership
Group (C40) also signals the more avowedly political nature of this second
wave of transnational municipal networks. This network was instigated by
the Mayor of London and The Climate Group (TCG) and formed by 18 cities
in 2005 as a parallel initiative to the Group of Eight (G8) Gleneagles summit
on climate change. In 2007, this network entered into a partnership with the
 Governing climate change transnationally 75

Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and expanded its membership to include 40

of the largest cities in the world, and the organizations were formally aligned
into a closer collaboration in 2011.25 Activities within the network have
included collaboration with Microsoft to produce software for GHG emis-
sions accounting at the city scale, and the Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit
Program, which brings together “public and private organizations, includ-
ing governments, the financial community and other non-profits to highlight,
design, and test innovative solutions to financing, contracting, and procure-
ment, with the goal of developing and scaling these models nationally.”26
While ostensibly a network of municipal governments, the central involve-
ment of both the Clinton Foundation and TCG in its founding stages indicate
that, in practice, the boundaries between public and private actors in transna-
tional climate governance are increasingly blurred. Reflecting this evolving
landscape, in 2012 at the Rio+20 Summit ICLEI launched Green Climate
Cities to replace their long running Cities for Climate Protection program and
integrate a number of the tools and initiatives they have developed over the
past decade, including a global protocol for GHG emissions reporting and the
database on climate action, carbonn Cities Climate Registry (cCR).27
These new developments have both served to create an ever more inter-
linked landscape of urban responses to climate change and helped to raise
the profile of municipal leadership internationally. At COP 13 in Bali in
2008, municipalities formed the second largest delegation and signed the
Bali World Mayors and Local Governments Climate Protection Agreement
to tackle both mitigation and adaptation. The growing momentum behind
urban responses led the World Bank in 201028 and UN-Habitat in 201129 to
publish special reports on the critical need to understand and develop urban
responses to climate change. In 2014, the UN Secretary-General called a
summit of business and city leaders in New York to highlight the impor-
tance of an urban response to climate change, further cementing the central
role now seen for municipal authorities in the international politics of cli-
mate change.
Across these various transnational municipal networks, it is possible to
find evidence of information-sharing, implementation and capacity build-
ing, as well as rule-setting. Information-sharing functions

are the bread and butter of [transnational municipal networks].

Networks are frequently established for the explicit purpose of creat-
ing and sharing “best” or “good” practice, and municipalities indicate
that the opportunity to learn about “what works” from other places is
a key motivation for their participation.30
76 Governing climate change transnationally

For example, transnational municipal networks frequently collate examples

of best practice in databases, disseminate case studies through newsletters,
or may even, as is the case with Energy Cities, organize study tours where
groups of local officials and politicians seek to learn at firsthand how local
energy policies were created.31 Municipal networks also undertake various
forms of audit and inventories of municipal GHG emissions and action
plans which are made available to other members. Such strategies have
the advantage of being open and inclusive, as well as avoiding the need
for explicit forms of intervention or the use of more hierarchical forms
of authority within the network. However, their success as governance
strategies is open to debate. There is little evidence, for example, that the
recognition and dissemination of best practice leads to action in a direct
sense32 or that improved knowledge of local emissions necessarily leads
to policy implementation.33 Rather, these sorts of information-sharing
activities are often most effective in terms of framing a policy problem,
in order to persuade others about the need for, and possibilities of, action.
By framing the nature of the climate policy problem and its appropriate
solutions, strategies of information-sharing both serve to delimit the field
of action and offer a means of monitoring performance amongst network
members,34 in turn making the problem of climate change governable at
the municipal level.
Transnational municipal networks are also involved in governance
through implementation and capacity building. Given that municipalities are
not directly charged with implementing international environmental agree-
ments, such as the Kyoto Protocol, such activities are primarily orientated
towards achieving national or local policy objectives, as well as meeting the
goals established by the network. In the European context, one mechanism
through which this strategy has been pursued is through securing funding
for particular projects. For example, the Climate Alliance is funded for the
coordination and evaluation of the European Mobility Week.35 Securing
additional, external funding is also important for other municipal networks.
One of the key features of the C40 network has been its partnership with
the CCI and the leverage of funding for a program of energy efficiency
improvements in office buildings. Transnational municipal networks are
also able to access national funding, either to set funds aside specifically
for the program, as was the case with CCP Australia,36 or by working with
members to access existing funding programs.
The regulative functions of transnational municipal networks are par-
ticularly interesting, given the public actors involved in these networks and
the traditional association between regulation and forms of public authority.
 Governing climate change transnationally 77

Several different forms of standard and rule setting are apparent. The first
relates to forms of recognition, in which meeting particular standards of per-
formance are explicitly rewarded by the network. One such example is the
“Climate Star,” awarded annually by the Climate Alliance to municipalities
for their achievements.37 A second regulative strategy employed by transna-
tional networks has been that of benchmarking. The CCP network was based
around a series of five milestones of progress, involving conducting an emis-
sions inventory, setting an emissions reduction target, formulating an action
plan, implementing policies, and monitoring progress, and the most recent
developments in this field by the CCP parent organization, ICLEI, involve
working on the development of a global protocol for emissions reporting and
the carbonn registry of urban climate initiatives that focuses on measure-
ment and verification.38 Rather than being based on hard rules, the regulative
function of climate governance within municipal networks is more akin to
processes of voluntary standard setting, where compliance is achieved both
as a result of the recognition on the part of the municipality of the authority
of the network and through processes of peer pressure and competition.

Towards partnership? Hybrid transnational governance

A second type of transnational climate change governance, termed hybrid,
involves actors from the public and private spheres in various forms of
collaboration. Central to the emergence of hybrid transnational governance
has been the growing emphasis in multilateral forums, international organi-
zations, and national governments, as well as amongst some sections of the
business and NGO communities, on public–private partnerships (PPP) as a
means of effecting global governance.39 The WSSD held in Johannesburg
in 2002 promoted the use of these so-called Type II agreements as a means
of pursuing sustainable development alongside formal international (Type
I) agreements. Bäckstrand defines PPP as “institutionalized cooperative
relationships between public actors (governments and intergovernmental
organizations) and private actors (corporate and civil society actors).”40
These formalized PPP are an important feature of the transnational climate
change governance landscape. However, in the context of growing neo-
liberal orthodoxies about the role of the state and other actors, more infor-
mal hybrid arrangements have also emerged through the collaboration of
public and private actors as a means of governing climate change.
Turning first to formalized PPP, of the 334 Johannesburg Type II agree-
ments, approximately 90 are concerned with issues of energy and climate
change, though perhaps only 34 are explicitly directed to the issue of climate
78 Governing climate change transnationally

change.41 One of the largest and most complex is REEEP. Formed on the
initiative of the UK government in the immediate aftermath of the WSSD,
REEEP is organized through an international office and four regional sec-
retariats. Its membership comprises national and subnational governments,
international organizations, businesses, and NGOs, and “in the ten years
since its inception, the organization has grown to comprise 385 Partner
organizations including 45 governments as well as a range of private com-
panies and international organizations.”42 Its mission is “to accelerate the
global market for sustainable energy with a primary focus on developing
countries and emerging markets.”43 In terms of its governance functions,
REEEP engages both with information-sharing and implementation and
capacity building. The regionalized structure of REEEP is intended to cap-
ture existing knowledge about the barriers and opportunities for enhancing
renewable energy and energy efficiency, and secretariats undertake various
dissemination activities and events. At the same time, drawing on fund-
ing from various national governments, REEEP is involved in the selection
and support of projects to develop new technologies and markets for
renewables and energy efficiency. While such projects may assist in help-
ing countries to meet their commitments under international frameworks
for climate change (i.e. the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol), the focus here
is more on developing capacity in the energy sector more broadly, espe-
cially with regard to changing the regulatory and market conditions for the
implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in
developing economies.
Another arena within which formal PPP have been created is in the
implementation of one of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, the CDM (see
Chapter 1). While the formation and regulation of the CDM process takes
place within the international arena, Bäckstrand44 suggests that CDM
projects, of which more than 7,500 are now registered,45 can be regarded as
public–private partnerships because of the range of actors, including host
governments, private investors, carbon brokers, and NGOs involved in their
design, implementation, and verification. Streck, for instance, describes the
CDM as “an innovative model of cooperation between the private and public
sectors.”46 The collaborative network structure in which state and non-state
actors collaborate in a partnership arrangement confers on non-state actors,
such as the approved auditing bodies known as Designated Operational
Entities, “a variety of voluntary, self-formal and formal roles in formulating
policy responses and implementing international agreements.”47 However,
as we discuss in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5, the ways in which such
forms of governance operate in practice is highly disputed, demonstrating
 Governing climate change transnationally 79

that the function of implementation cannot be understood just as a means

through which internationally agreed goals are transmitted to particular
places, but rather is a means through which what constitutes just and appro-
priate responses to climate change are constructed and contested. In this
light, each of the actors involved in the CDM project cycle have a signifi-
cant role in determining what counts as a reduction in GHG and the extent to
which sustainable development benefits are realized. Because it operates as
a market mechanism, credits in the form of Certified Emission Reductions
(CERs) are issued for reductions in GHG that (in theory) would not have
otherwise been possible, but no monetary value is attached to sustainable
development benefits. This explains why investors have prioritized projects
which earn them most CERs without necessarily delivering the greatest
benefits to communities that host the projects.48 The CDM highlights the
intertwined nature of the international regime and transnational governance.
While ostensibly created by and for nation-states, the UNFCCC and the
Kyoto Protocol are increasingly reliant on the emergence of transnational
hybrid networks for their implementation.49
As well as being driven through multilateral processes, hybrid transna-
tional governance has also emerged from the bottom up. One such example
is TCG, a UK-based network. Launched in 2004 by then Prime Minister
Tony Blair, TCG was initiated by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation
as a means of fostering dialogue between those corporations and subna-
tional governments in the United States who were taking a progressive
approach to addressing climate change and their European counterparts.
Membership is on a fee-paying basis and now includes over 100 members
from businesses, state, regional, and city governments, organized through
a European headquarters based in the United Kingdom and regional offices
in the United States, India, and China. TCG has undertaken a range of
information-sharing activities, including the production and promotion of
examples of best practice, publicity events about the significance of climate
change and forms of peer-to-peer learning. In addition, the network has
been involved with various projects aimed at implementation and capac-
ity building including the States and Regions Initiative whose members
are “phasing out coal, committing to 100 percent renewables, investing in
clean tech infrastructure and start-ups, linking emissions trading systems,
developing new financing mechanisms and making ambitious emissions
reductions commitments”50 as well as regulative functions through the
development and promotion of the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) (see
Chapter 4).51 The complexity and range of the different forms of governance
taking place within TCG, as well as formal partnerships such as REEEP and
80 Governing climate change transnationally

the implementation of international policy instruments such as the CDM,

suggest that such initiatives go beyond the sorts of organizational struc-
tures of non-governmental and business coalitions that characterized the
landscape of climate governance in the 1990s. Instead, such initiatives are
forging what John Ruggie terms a “new global public domain,” “an increas-
ingly institutionalized transnational arena of discourse, contestation, and
action concerning the production of global public goods, involving private
as well as public actors.”52 The emergence of this transnational domain of
climate change governance raises significant issues in terms of legitimacy
and effectiveness, to which we return below.

Self-regulation and private transnational governance

Alongside hybrid and public forms of transnational governance, private
initiatives and networks are also contributing to the emergence of the “new
global public domain.”53 Scholars have documented private transnational
governance in a number of fields including forestry, water, chemicals,
and food.54 Private transnational governance involves a variety of non-
state actors, including corporate and civil society sectors, in arrangements
through which “issues are defined, rules are made, and compliance with
these rules is monitored”55 beyond the direct purview of nation-states or
other actors from the public sphere.
One means by which private transnational governance has emerged with
respect to climate change is through the work of business leadership groups,
orchestrated by bodies such as the World Business Council on Sustainable
Development (WBCSD) or “think tanks” such as the World Resources
Institute (WRI). One initiative that was established by the WBCSD and
led by the Swedish energy company Vattenfall between 2008 and 2012 was
Combat Climate Change (3C). It aimed to establish a global opinion group
on the need for international action on climate change, and in so doing
asked its members to commit to a series of principles about the nature of
the climate change problem and how it should be governed, in effect lead-
ing to the development of norms concerning climate change governance in
the private transnational arena. Another example is the “Mind the Science,
Mind the Gap” project launched by WRI, CDP, and WWF in 2014, which
aims to “develop a new, sector-specific methodology that helps companies
set science-based emission-reduction targets based on the IPCC decarbon-
ization pathway that would keep global temperature rise below 2 °C.”56
A second means through which private transnational governance net-
works are being forged is through partnership working between corporate
 Governing climate change transnationally 81

and civil society actors. The Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance
(CCBA) was founded in 2003 by Conservation International, and includes
corporations such as BP and Intel as well as other NGOs, such as Rainforest
Alliance and The Nature Conservancy Council.57 The CCBA has established
the CCB standard for land management projects that simultaneously address
climate change, social goals, and biodiversity conservation. Since the stand-
ards were released in 2005, over 80 projects have been given validation.58
As well as performing a regulative function through the promotion of volun-
tary standards for land management, the CCB also serves an implementation
and capacity building function through enabling action on elements of inter-
national climate policy, including the CDM and Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD). The promotion of standards
for carbon offset markets has been another key area in which private govern-
ance initiatives have flourished (see Chapter 4). The predominance of private
forms of transnational governance that focus on certification and monitoring
has led to the finding that, in relation to public and hybrid forms, “private
actors more often use rule setting, monitoring and certification compared to
other initiatives” yet the continued dominance of “soft” measures, based on
information-sharing and capacity, mean that “a majority [of private initia-
tives] are not able or willing to commit themselves to ambitious or difficult
actions” in order to pursue the transnational governance of climate change.59
Alongside the growth in hybrid forms of transnational governance, it
is perhaps the growing involvement of private actors in governing what
many perceive as a fundamentally public issue—the global climate—that
has raised the most concerns. On the one hand, critics have argued that the
increasing involvement of non-state actors and, in particular, private sector
organizations, in climate governance is detrimental in terms of the legitimacy
of, and accountability for, decision making. This is either seen as a form of
“greenwash,” where corporate actors in particular seek to avoid or deflect
attention away from more serious forms of action, or as part of a broader
trend towards the privatization of governance in which private actors come
to dominate public governance institutions and assume more “government-
like” functions themselves.60 On the other hand, commentators have also
pointed to the highly fragmented and limited nature of transnational gov-
ernance arrangements—despite the growing numbers of municipalities,
regions, businesses, and NGOs involved, the vast majority remain outside
of this “new global public domain.”61 While transnational climate change
governance may be interesting in principle, to date its capacity to make a
difference in terms of reducing emissions of GHG may seem limited.
82 Governing climate change transnationally

Governance issues and challenges

Transnational initiatives for addressing climate change are now firmly
established on the governance landscape. Their presence signifies the broad
and growing constituency for whom climate change is an issue of impor-
tance, and may be read as opening up the climate change domain to a wider
variety of actors and to different perspectives on addressing the problem.
However, the emergence of transnational climate change governance also
raises a number of challenges.
First, we can see from this chapter that in terms of the impact and effective-
ness of transnational climate governance, tracing the links between particular
initiatives and progress either in terms of absolute reductions of emissions or
in developing momentum behind climate policy is a challenge. As research-
ers have also found in relation to the international regime, the causal chains
between policies, interventions, actions, and outcomes are complex and mul-
tiple, such that definitive conclusions are hard to reach. Furthermore, given
the short timescales over which they have been operating, the lack of com-
mon baselines, and the multiple measures used to record reductions of GHG
emissions, assessing the difference that such initiatives are collectively mak-
ing in terms of addressing climate change is almost impossible. However,
there are some ways in which their effectiveness can be gauged and there is
some evidence from particular initiatives that impacts are being achieved. For
example, ICLEI Australia suggest that the CCP program resulted in a saving
of 4.7 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007/8, and a total of 18
million tons since the program started in Australia in 1998/9.62
Second, many networks and partnerships include targets and timetables
for reducing emissions of GHG that go far beyond those agreed internation-
ally. This may create momentum for action towards these ambitious goals
and ease the path of any future international agreements.63 Further, some
analysts suggest that the continued work and effectiveness of the inter-
national regime is bound up with the transnational governing of climate
change.64 As the IPCC note:

the landscape of international institutions related to climate policy has

become significantly more complex. Climate change is addressed in a
growing number of fora and institutions and across a wider range of
scales [such that] careful design of linkages and cooperative arrange-
ments will be needed to manage the increasingly fragmented regime
complex to prevent conflicts among institutions . . . avoid gaps or
loopholes . . . and maximize potential institutional synergies.65
 Governing climate change transnationally 83

Third, many such initiatives target emissions of GHG that are not covered
by international and national climate policy, which has tended to focus on
emission reductions from the energy and industrial sectors. For example,
initiatives such as C40 focus on energy consumption in the commercial
building sector, while others concerned with regulating carbon offsets
address the climate impacts of individual consumption. This suggests that
the effectiveness and impact of transnational climate governance will not
only be realized in the traditional arenas of climate policy, but may also be
more effective if, where, and when it is able to foster action at the local,
regional, and national levels through the development of initiatives that
have co-benefits beyond the climate change domain. Nonetheless, a key
challenge here is the additionality of these initiatives—are they mobiliz-
ing action that would otherwise not have taken place, or acting as window
dressing for actions already underway? Either way, there is certainly no evi-
dence that such initiatives are any worse than international agreements in
terms of their impacts and effectiveness, and they may—by achieving mod-
est emission reductions, creating “coalitions of the willing,” and raising
expectations about what it is possible to achieve—be acting in a way that
is complementary to the international regime. If, however, such initiatives
were to act as a distraction from international agreements, or a substitute
for them, the outcomes in terms of the effect on addressing climate change
might be much less benign.
We have also seen that transnational climate governance initiatives raise
significant challenges in terms of accountability. Once the governing of cli-
mate change moves from discernible public arenas of government, questions
concerning who is participating, on whose behalf, and how they are held
to account, are inevitably raised. Conceiving of accountability as involving
both answerability—the need to justify and explain positions and actions
adopted—and enforceability—the ability to impose sanction for non-com-
pliance—can help to examine the complex questions raised by transnational
climate governance.66 On the one hand, such initiatives may have done much
to promote the answerability of a range of actors in terms of their actions
on climate change. One feature of many of the partnerships and networks
discussed in this chapter is their focus on making their actions accountable
through mechanisms such as audit, disclosure, peer review, standard setting,
and other forms of soft regulation. In this way, they may serve to increase
the accountability of various actors to new constituencies concerned with
climate change. On the other hand, it is clear that the ability of such ini-
tiatives to enforce standards and to implement particular actions is limited.
In the absence of forms of sanction, network members or constituencies
84 Governing climate change transnationally

may have little recourse should action not be forthcoming. In this manner,
transnational climate governance has much in common with the international
regime, which has not only raised the issue of the answerability of nation-
states for addressing climate change, but also demonstrated its weakness in
enforcing the targets and timetables agreed.
One of the consequences of the partial accountability of transnational
climate governance is that, unlike the international negotiating forums and
national policy contexts discussed in Chapter 2, issues of equity are rarely
visited. Issues of procedural equity—who is able to participate in such initi-
atives—and distributive equity—what the impacts of such initiatives might
be in terms of social and environmental justice—are critical. Turning to the
equity of participation, it is clear that initiatives vary significantly in terms
of their inclusivity and the sharing of the benefits of network participa-
tion. Some, such as CCP and Climate Alliance for example, are ostensibly
open, seeking to recruit as many members as possible. Others are based on
an exclusivity of membership, for either geographic or strategic reasons.
However, even in the case of open initiatives, there are significant barri-
ers to involvement, including the capacity required to set up membership
and to access funding, as well as the way in which the problem of cli-
mate change governance has been framed which has to date mainly been
in accordance with Northern concerns for mitigation and energy efficiency,
rather than, say, issues of adaptation and the provision of basic services,
though this picture is now changing. In terms of the equity of impact, there
has to date been little analysis of the implications of transnational initia-
tives in terms of issues of social and environmental justice. As we discuss
in more depth in Chapters 1, 2, and 4, CDM projects have been found to
have mixed benefits for the communities in which they are based, and it is
likely that projects carried out under the auspices of other forms of transna-
tional governance may have similar impacts. At the same time, given the
partial nature of involvement in such initiatives, attempts to govern climate
change in one location or firm may serve to push “dirty” industries out-
side these jurisdictions, with negative consequences for other communities
without the power to resist them. Such impacts are, of course, not unique to
transnational forms of climate governance, but do suggest that their wider
implications for sustainable development and socio-environmental justice
need to be considered in their development and implementation.
Overall, we find that transnational climate change governance raises sig-
nificant issues in terms of effectiveness, accountability, and equity. In part,
these challenges arise because such initiatives transcend and cut across the
frameworks through which we have traditionally analyzed the politics of
 Governing climate change transnationally 85

global affairs. Consequently, there are three ways in which the phenomenon
of transnational governance requires us to reconsider the notion of global
governance. First, in relation to the spatial organization of global politics.
Rather than taking place within discrete and hierarchically arranged levels of
governance, the transnational governance phenomenon is complex, where
so-called local initiatives may have a reach across national jurisdictions, and
international agreements give rise to new forms of regional or local partner-
ships. This finding reinforces our conclusions in Chapter 1 that tracing the
location of climate governance is no longer straightforward. Second, with
respect to the relationship between state and non-state actors, transnational
governance initiatives raise questions as to whether these demarcations are
analytically useful, given their hybridity, the mixing of roles, and the exten-
sion of forms of public authority into ostensibly private domains and vice
versa. As we saw in Chapter 2, the increasing crossover between policy
issues and between institutions, and the proliferation of actors involved in
climate governance, calls into question where the boundaries between the
public and the private might lie. Finally, transnational governance initiatives
demonstrate not only the importance of the power of one set of actors over
another, as currently captured in many analyses of international relations,
but also in a more dynamic sense, where power is exercised in the framing
of the climate problem, and in the day-to-day activities of networks and
partnerships where power-sharing and agreed norms of conduct are key to
their success. Conceiving of climate governance as taking place outside of
the international regime in transnational initiatives, therefore, raises some
fundamental questions about how, where, and why the governing of global
affairs takes place, issues to which we return in the Conclusion.

Notes
1 Throughout the chapter, the terms “network” and “arrangement” are used
interchangeably to describe transnational collaboration between various types
of actor. Not all of these phenomena could be classified as “networks” in orga-
nizational terms, and nor should the term imply that power relations amongst
those participating are necessarily absent or that each is equally active or vital
to the network.
2 Harriet Bulkeley, Liliana Andonva, Michele M. Betsill, Daniel Compagnon,
Thomas Hale, Peter Newell, Matthew Paterson, Charlie Rogers, and Stacy
Vanderveer, Transnational Climate Change Governance (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014).
3 Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Transnational Relations and World Politics
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
4 Liliana Andonova and Marc Levy, “Franchising Global Governance:
Making Sense of the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships,” in Yearbook of
86 Governing climate change transnationally

International Cooperation on Environment and Development 2003/2004

(London: Earthscan Publications, 2003); Ben Cashore, Graeme Auld, and
Deanna Newsom, Governing through Markets: Forest Certification and
the Emergence of Non-State Authority (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 2004); Jennifer Clapp, “The Privatisation of Global Environmental
Governance: ISO 14001 and the Developing World,” Global Governance 4,
no. 3 (1998): 295–316; Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann, and Arthur P. J.
Mol, Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable Development: Reflections on
Theory and Practice (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007); Peter M. Haas,
“Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Committees and Mediterranean Pollution
Control,” International Organization 43, no. 3 (1989): 377–403; Margaret
E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. Advocacy Networks
in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Ann-
Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2004).
5 Once known as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives,
ICLEI now goes by its acronym and the title Local Governments for
Sustainability.
6 Bulkeley et al., Transnational Climate Change Governance.
7 Karin Bäckstrand, “Accountability of Networked Climate Governance: The
Rise of Transnational Climate Partnerships,” Global Environmental Politics
8, no. 3 (2008): 75.
8 Liliana Andonova, Michele M. Betsill, and Harriet Bulkeley, “Transnational
Climate Governance,” Global Environmental Politics 9, no. 2 (2009): 52–73.
9 Liliana B. Andonova, Michele M. Betsill, and Harriet Bulkeley, “Transnational
Climate Governance”; Philipp Pattberg and Johannes Stripple, “Beyond the
Public and Private Divide: Remapping Transnational Climate Governance in
the 21st Century,” International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law
and Economics 8, no. 4 (2008): 367–88.
10 Matthew J. Hoffmann, Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting
with a Global Response after Kyoto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
11 Andonova et al., “Transnational Climate Governance”; Bulkeley et al.,
Transnational Climate Change Governance.
12 Bulkeley et al., Transnational Climate Change Governance, 604.
13 Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang Reinicke, and Jan Witte, “Multisectoral Networks
in Global Governance: Towards a Pluralistic System of Accountability,”
Government and Opposition 39, no. 2 (2004): 191–210.
14 Henrik Selin and Stacy VanDeveer, “Canadian–U.S. Environmental
Cooperation: Climate Change Networks and Regional Action,” American
Review of Canadian Studies (Summer 2005): 253–78.
15 Harriet Bulkeley and Michele M. Betsill, Cities and Climate Change: Urban
Sustainability and Global Environmental Governance (London: Routledge,
2003); Kristine Kern and Harriet Bulkeley, “Cities, Europeanization and
Multi-level Governance: Governing Climate Change through Transnational
Municipal Networks,” Journal of Common Market Studies 47, no.2 (2009):
309–32.
16 Climate Alliance, Our Members, available online at [Link]
[Link]/our_members0.[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
17 Kern and Bulkeley, “Cities, Europeanization and Multi-level Governance.”
 Governing climate change transnationally 87

18 Bulkeley and Betsill, Cities and Climate Change.

19 ICLEI, Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Campaign, available online at
[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
20 Energy Cities, Energy Cities in Europe, available online at [Link]
[Link]/-Members- [accessed January 21, 2015].
21 Kern and Bulkeley, “Cities, Europeanization and Multi-level Governance.”
22 The US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Centre, Mayors Leading
the Way on Climate Protection, available online at [Link]
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23 ICLEI Archive, Kyoto City presents the World Mayors Council on Climate
Change at the United Nations (May 8, 2006), available online at http://
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1362742820&tx_ttnews%5Bpointer%5D=149&tx_ttnews%5Btt_
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24 Covenant of Mayors, Covenant of Mayors: committed to sustainable energy,
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January 21, 2015].
25 C40 Cities, Our Partners and Funders, available online at [Link]
org/partners [accessed January 21, 2015].
26 Clinton Foundation, Energy Efficiency Program, available online at http://
[Link]/our-work/clinton-climate-initiative/programs/
built-environment [accessed January 21, 2015].
27 ICLEI, Green Climate Cities Program: A Pathway to Urban Low-carbon
Development, available online at [Link]
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28 World Bank, Cities and Climate Change: An Urgent Agenda (Washington,
DC: World Bank, 2010).
29 UN-Habitat, Global Report on Human Settlements: Cities and Climate
Change (Nairobi, Kenya: UN-Habitat, 2011).
30 Kern and Bulkeley, “Cities, Europeanization and Multi-level Governance,”
319–20.
31 Energy Cities, Study Tours, available online at [Link]
Study-Tours,14- [accessed January 21, 2015].
32 Harriet Bulkeley, “Urban Sustainability: Learning from Best Practice?,”
Environment and Planning A 38, no. 5 (2006): 235–54.
33 Bulkeley and Betsill, Cities and Climate Change.
34 Michele Betsill and Harriet Bulkeley, “Transnational Networks and Global
Environmental Governance: The Cities for Climate Protection Program,”
International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2004): 471–93; Bulkeley, “Urban
Sustainability: Learning from Best Practice?”
35 Climate Alliance, Activity Report (Frankfurt/Main: Climate Alliance, 2007).
36 Harriet Bulkeley, “Down to Earth: Local Government and Greenhouse Policy
in Australia,” Australian Geographer 31, no. 3 (2000): 289–308.
37 Kern and Bulkeley, “Cities, Europeanization and Multi-level Governance.”
38 Bulkeley and Betsill, Cities and Climate Change.
39 Andonova and Levy, “Franchising Global Governance: Making Sense of
the Johannesburg Type II Partnerships”; Bäckstrand, “Accountability of
Networked Climate Governance”; Thorsten Benner, Wolfgang H. Reinicke,
and Jan Martin Witte, “Multisectoral Networks in Global Governance”;
88 Governing climate change transnationally

Frank Biermann, Arthur P. J. Mol and Pieter Glasbergen, “Conclusion:

Partnerships for Sustainability – Reflections on a Future Research Agenda,”
in Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable Development, Reflections
on Theory and Practice, eds Frank Biermann, Arthur P. J. Mol, and Pieter
Glasbergen (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007), 288–300; Pattberg and
Stripple, “Beyond the Public and Private Divide.”
40 Bäckstrand, “Accountability of Networked Climate Governance,” 77; Pattberg
and Stripple, “Beyond the Public and Private Divide.”
41 Bäckstrand, “Accountability of Networked Climate Governance,” 89.
42 REEEP, REEEP: A Brief Overview, available online at [Link]
reeep-brief-overview [accessed January 21, 2015].
43 REEEP, Mission, available online at [Link] [accessed
January 21, 2015].
44 Bäckstrand, “Accountability of Networked Climate Governance,” 90–1.
45 UNEP DTU Partnership, Welcome to the UNEP DTU CDM/JI Pipeline
Analysis and Database, available online at [Link] [accessed
January 21, 2015].
46 Charlotte Streck, “New Partnerships in Global Environmental Policy: The
Clean Development Mechanism,” Journal of Environment and Development
13, no. 3 (2004): 295.
47 Streck, “New Partnerships in Global Environmental Policy,” 297.
48 Ben Pearson, “Market Failure: Why the Clean Development Mechanism
Won’t Promote Clean Development,” Journal of Cleaner Production 15, no.
2 (2007): 247–52.
49 Kenneth W. Abbott, “The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate
Change,” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 30, no. 4
(2012): 571–90.
50 The Climate Group, States and Regions, available online at http://
[Link]/what-we-do/programs/States-and-Regions/
[accessed January 21, 2015].
51 The Climate Group, Ten Years of The Climate Group, available online at http://
[Link]/our-achievements/ [accessed January 21, 2015].
52 John G. Ruggie, “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain: Issues, Actors and
Practices,” European Journal of International Relations 10, no. 4 (2004): 504.
53 Ruggie, “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain,” 504.
54 Cashore et al., Governing through Markets; Clapp, “The Privatisation of
Global Environmental Governance: ISO 14001 and the Developing World”;
Klaus Dingwerth, “North–South Parity in Global Governance: The Affirmative
Procedures of the Forest Stewardship Council,” Global Governance: A Review
of Multilateralism and International Organizations 14, no. 1 (2008): 53–73;
Pattberg and Stripple, “Beyond the Public and Private Divide.”
55 Dingwerth, “North–South Parity in Global Governance,” 608.
56 World Resources Institute, Mind the Science, Mind the Gap: Aligning Corporate
GHG Emissions Reduction Targets with Climate Science, available online at
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57 Ingrid J. Visseren-Hamakers and Bas Arts, “Interaction Management by
Partnerships: The Case of Biodiversity and Climate Change Governance
System Interaction,” Paper prepared for the Private Environmental Regimes
Conference, 2008.
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58 CCBA, Projects, available online at [Link]

category/projects/ [accessed January 21, 2015].
59 Bulkeley et al., Transnational Climate Change Governance, 70.
60 Clapp, “The Privatization of Global Environmental Governance”; Peter Newell,
“The Marketisation of Global Environmental Governance: Manifestations and
Implications,” in The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance: Towards
a New Political Economy of Sustainability, eds Jacob Parks, Ken Conca, and
Matthias Finger (London: Routledge, 2008), 77–96.
61 Ruggie, “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain,” 504.
62 ICLEI Oceania, Local Government Action on Climate Change: CCP Australia
Measures Evaluation Report 2008 (Melbourne, Australia: ICLEI Oceana and
Australian Government, 2008), available online at [Link]
[Link]?id=ccp-measures08 [accessed January 21, 2015].
63 Hoffmann, Climate Governance at the Crossroads.
64 Abbott, “The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change”; Bulkeley
et al., Transnational Climate Change Governance.
65 “IPCC Chapter 13, International Cooperation: Agreements and Instruments”, in
Working Group III contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report “Climate
Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change”, accepted but not approved in
detail by the 12th Session of Working Group III and the 39th Session of the
IPCC on April 12, 2014 in Berlin, Germany (2014), 1012, available online at
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final-draft_postplenary_chapter13.pdf [accessed January 21, 2015].
66 Peter Newell, “Civil Society, Corporate Accountability and the Politics of
Climate Change,” Global Environmental Politics 8, no. 3 (2008): 124–55.
4
COMMUNITY AND THE
GOVERNING OF CLIMATE CHANGE

One long-standing feature of environmental governance in general is the

involvement of community-based and “civil society” organizations in
all aspects of politics as advocates, educators, implementers, and active
citizens; as makers as well as shapers of policy.1 It is unsurprising, then,
that a wide array of social or community actors, including various volun-
tary groups, NGOs, and civil society institutions, have also been critical
of the politics of climate change.2 Because addressing climate change
implies actions at all levels, and as we show in the Introduction, change in
everyday patterns of production and consumption, engaging communities
in mitigation and adaptation efforts, is also a key policy goal. At the most
basic level, without the participation of the public—for example, in terms
of their acquiescence to new forms of carbon regulation, their participa-
tion in carbon markets, or changing behavioral practices at home and at
work—climate policy will fail to achieve the targeted reductions in GHG
emissions. Urging communities to “do their bit,” national and local gov-
ernments, as well as a range of non-state actors, have sought to engage
communities in responding to climate change. Social responses to climate
change—much like those of the market (Chapter 5)—therefore involve a
complex mixture of public and private authority, top-down direction, and
bottom-up experimentation.
In this chapter, we focus on this spectrum of community-based responses
and their role in the governance of climate change. First, we consider the
ways in which governments have sought to engage the public in climate
change. Here, we document a shift from a concern to educate individuals
in order to change behavior towards various attempts to draw community
expertise into the design and development of climate change responses.
Second, we examine the ways in which place-based communities are being
mobilized in response to climate change by (government) authorities. All
 Community and climate change governance 91

too often, it seems, such schemes fail to engage with communities and
tensions emerge between the realization of global objectives—for exam-
ple, the reduction of GHG emissions—and locally based concerns and
needs. Third, we turn to the example of Transition Towns (TT) to assess the
emergence of grassroots responses to climate change. While concerns for
social and environmental justice lie closer to the heart of such initiatives,
we find that tensions still remain in seeking to govern the global and the
local simultaneously.

Engaging communities: from ignorance to expertise

Since it first emerged on the policy agenda in the early 1990s, governments
(and some non-governmental actors) have sought to mobilize community
participation in the climate change issue. Despite some apparent consen-
sus on the importance of engaging the public,3 there are different views
about what this should entail. Traditionally, it was thought that behavioral
change would occur if communities were provided with information about
the nature of environmental risks and what they could do to address them.
More recently, approaches informed by assumptions about “information
deficits” and “ignorant publics” have been critiqued and the importance
of basing policy on community knowledge and concerns has been recog-
nized.4 In parallel, research suggests that seeking to engage individuals in
action on climate change requires an engagement with the ways in which
GHG emissions are produced through the practices that comprise everyday
life.5 In this section, we trace these shifts and their implications for govern-
ing climate change.
As public concern for environmental issues grew during the 1970s and
1980s, an apparent paradox emerged. On the one hand, opinion polls and
surveys seemed to indicate that environmental matters—and increasingly
those of a global nature, such as climate change—were attracting high lev-
els of concern amongst the public. On the other hand, the public appeared
to be relatively ignorant about the scientific basis and implications of these
issues, and at the same time unwilling to engage in behavioral change to
address them.6 In this context, the conviction emerged in policy circles
that there was a “deficit” of public knowledge about the issue, spurring
the development of environmental education campaigns in Europe, North
America, and Australia. One example is the “Helping the Earth Begins at
Home” campaign, run in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. In this
campaign, newspaper and television adverts provided information about
the causes of global warming (as it was then commonly referred to), and
92 Community and climate change governance

about the potential for behavioral changes at home to save energy, save
money, and reduce emissions of GHG.7

Box 4.1 The governance TraP In clImaTe

PolIcy
In seeking to avoid the political risks of taking long-term action, gov-
ernments have frequently responded to the need to act on climate
change by placing responsibility back onto individuals, communities,
and firms in the context of proposals for carbon foot-printing, carbon
disclosure for firms, and personal carbon allowances.a For individuals,
research suggests that the majority of people in the United Kingdom
believe that climate change is too big a problem for individuals to
tackle and that responsibility lies with national governments. The
result is a “governance trap” in which both the governing and the
governed seek action from the other, but none is forthcoming.b

Sources:
a
See, for example, proposals for Tradable Energy Quotas, e.g. David Fleming and
Shaun Chamberlain, Tradable Energy Quotas (London: All Party Parliamentary
Group on Peak Oil and The Lean Economy Connection, 2011).
b
Alexa Spence, Dan Venables, Nick Pidgeon, Wouter Poortinga, and Christina Demski,
Public Perceptions of Climate Change and Energy Futures in Britain: Summary
Findings of a Survey Conducted in January–March 2010, Technical Report (Cardiff
University: Understanding Risk Working Paper 10–01).

Yet, despite the high levels of exposure in the media, Steve Hinchliffe found
that the campaign was largely ineffective.8 In focusing on the provision of
information, the campaign, like many other initiatives, had neglected the
numerous other factors which shape behavioral change, including issues
of responsibility, trust, and efficacy. For example, in their exploration of
public understanding of global environmental issues in the Surselva region
of Switzerland, Carlo Jaeger et al. conclude that knowledge about climate
change is a less important factor in determining behavior than social net-
works and rules that sanction and enable mitigating actions.9 Analysis by
Willet Kempton et al. found that public understandings of climate change
in the United States were based on fundamental moral and religious views
on the relation between nature and humanity, the rights of other species,
humanity’s right to change or manage nature, and our society’s responsi-
bility for future generations.10 More recent studies have sustained this view
 Community and climate change governance 93

that public engagement in environmental issues, and climate change in

particular, is shaped by a range of individual and social factors and that the
provision of information alone is unlikely to have much effect on behavior
(see Box 4.1).
Recognition of the flaws of the “information deficit” approach has led
to calls for new approaches to engage the public with the issue of climate
change. First, advocates argued for an approach to involving communities
that recognized and valued their experiences and knowledge, and which
facilitated debate about policy choices.11 One reason underpinning this shift
was the recognition that the public may have forms of knowledge which
would prove valuable in understanding and responding to environmental
risks. For example, Judith Petts and Catherine Brooks suggest that lay peo-
ple may be “local technical experts,”12 using the case of how cyclists have
questioned the validity of local air quality modeling and used their experi-
ence of city streets at the micro-scale to provide an alternative map of urban
pollution.13 Another reason was the recognition that the public’s view of the
practical, ethical, and political aspects of environmental problems might be
as significant as understanding the scientific issues at hand. Importantly, it
was thought that this approach “might help not only to identify or imple-
ment solutions but to define, or reframe, what the problems actually are.”14
One area of climate change governance where this more participatory
approach is beginning to be adopted is in relation to climate change adapta-
tion.15 In the Philippines, community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP)
approaches have been used by the Red Cross as a means of reducing vul-
nerability and enhancing resilience to the impacts of climate change.16 The
CBDP approaches seek to “build on existing local knowledge and experience,
as well as the resources, coping and adaptive strategies of local people.”17
In the case of the Philippines, CBDP involved projects such as construct-
ing flood defenses and training in disaster management skills in order to
provide skills and experience for longer term “flexible and incremental”
approaches to climate adaptation.18 A similar approach, Vulnerability and
Capacity Assessment (VCA), has been used by the Red Cross in Vietnam
and Indonesia.19 It is carried out at the level of villages and urban neigh-
borhoods, and uses participatory rapid appraisal (PRA) tools to diagnose
vulnerabilities, assess a community’s risk priorities, and work together with
the people to devise ways of increasing their capacities to resist hazard
impacts.20 Articulating one of the central arguments voiced in support of
such participatory and deliberative techniques, Maarten K. van Aalst, Terry
Cannon, and Ian Burton argue that a key purpose of the approach is to:
94 Community and climate change governance

catalyze a process that empowers the people in the community and

supports their capacity to alter their own situation. Through engage-
ment with the grass roots, the activities that emerge will have the
people’s ‘ownership’ and participation, be based on trust and there-
fore have more chance of success.21

Their investigation of the use of such approaches found, however, a ten-

sion between the aims of local community empowerment and the need to
engage with the science of climate change impacts, which required expert-
led processes of knowledge dissemination.22 Further tensions emerged in
the process of community engagement in the Philippines, where the idea
of communities as homogeneous within the CBDP discourse tended to
subsume competing interests and priorities within and between commu-
nity groups while also neglecting structural processes over which local
communities have little if any control. At the same time, the rhetoric of
building adaptive capacity implicitly assumes that such processes will cre-
ate more “productive, participatory relations with government agencies.”23
In this manner, far from being autonomous from the central state, commu-
nity-based initiatives provide a key means through which the state seeks to
govern climate change, a point to which we return below.
A second shift in thinking about the nature of public engagement with
climate change, that has been prompted by dissatisfaction with the informa-
tion deficit approach, has focused on the importance of understanding the
ways in which the forms of individual behavior, that appear to lead to GHG
emissions, are intimately tied up with everyday practices. Rather than con-
ceiving of individuals as forming attitudes that lead to particular forms of
behavior through which people make (more or less) rational choices about
their actions in relation to climate change, Elizabeth Shove argues that we
need to move beyond this “ABC” model and consider how the production
of GHG emissions is constituted through practices such as cooking, wash-
ing clothes, entertaining and driving.24 From this perspective, changing
actions at the individual or household level that produce GHG emissions
entails understanding how and why such practices persist and come to be
routine.
While the way in which it has been undertaken has shifted over time,
this overview suggests that engaging communities on the issue of cli-
mate change has been seen as central to the implementation of policy at
national and local levels, either because of a need to educate the public in
order to achieve behavioral change (for example, reducing car travel and
energy use), because of the ways in which public knowledge might be able
 Community and climate change governance 95

to inform policy design, or more recently from an interest in shifting the

systems of provision and consumption through which GHG emissions are
produced. We can see that involving the public is, therefore, a key means
through which such actors seek to govern climate change.

Governing place, governing community

Public education and engagement do not exhaust the means by which
policy makers have sought to govern climate change. The importance of
“community” as a site of governance has been highlighted by governmen-
tality scholars, who point to the ways in which the idea is used to mobilize
particular practices and aspirations that authorities of various sorts con-
sider desirable.25 In particular, the rhetoric of community invokes a sense of
“self-help” and “self-reliance”26 in which communities are encouraged to
take responsibility for addressing policy issues such as climate change. In
this section, we examine two examples of such community-based responses
to governing climate change—small-scale forestry projects27 and renewable
energy schemes28 —and consider the implications for how we might under-
stand by whom and with what implications climate change is governed.

Community forestry and carbon governance

Under the terms of UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, projects which
involve reforestation or afforestation—the conversion of land to forests
or the rehabilitation of forests—and the consequent removal of carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere—carbon sequestration—were included as a
means of reaching national targets for emission reductions under Activities
Implemented Jointly (AIJ) and the subsequent CDM (see Chapters 1 and
2). The imperative to effectively manage and renew forest resources has
long been a mainstay of conservation and development discourses.29 Since
the 1970s, the argument has evolved that communities need to be involved
in the management of forests both because of their expertise and because
without such involvement efforts will be ineffective at best or deliberately
undermined at worst. Attempts at “fortress conservation”—where commu-
nities are kept on the outside of conserved areas—have been shown to fail,
as communities dependent upon forest resources continue to seek their live-
lihoods through these means.30 The language and approach of the climate
change regime also recognizes the importance of including communities in
the processes of carbon sequestration and of delivering “side-benefits” in
terms of development.31
96 Community and climate change governance

Despite these mechanisms, only a few small-scale forestry projects were

developed under the mechanisms of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.
Some 30 forest sinks projects were tested under the UNFCCC AIJ pilot
phase of which several explicitly targeted small-holders and low income
producers aiming to provide dual benefits of global climate protection
and local development benefits.32 Under the CDM, a total of 68 forestry
projects have so far been registered, although they are more prevalent in the
voluntary carbon offset market.33 The development of the Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+)34 mecha-
nism of the UNFCCC has also served to place forestry interventions as
central to the governing of climate change, with the emergence of a plethora
of multilateral and bilateral funding arrangements, partnerships, and projects
being directed towards developing countries and in turn the potential for
community-based projects. These are meant to deliver both decarboniza-
tion and additional social and environmental benefits. However, analysis
suggests that the top-down nature of these initiatives, being driven prima-
rily by international agencies and national governments, has meant that
“pilot forest carbon projects have tended to fall short of their development
objectives by failing to include local stakeholders in decision making and
to ensure their buy-in early on in the project design.”35
The case of community forestry management in Mexico illustrates some
of the complexities involved in seeking to govern climate change through
the enrolment of local communities and places. In the mid-1980s, and in the
context of a high rate of deforestation, the Mexican government began to
promote community forestry and, more recently, have developed schemes
in which local communities receive financial reward for the “ecosystem
services” that the conservation and renewal of forest areas delivers.36 In
2003, one such scheme, Payments for Hydrological Services, was estab-
lished by a government ministry and the National Institute of Ecology.
Subsequently, and following the lobbying of central government by various
peasant- and forest-based organizations, in 2004, a program of Payments
for Carbon, Biodiversity and Agro-forestry services (PSA-CABSA) was
established, reflecting at least some degree of support from local commu-
nities for recognizing their forest management activities in these terms.
Evidence suggests that such projects have delivered considerable economic
benefits to local communities and some notable social benefits, as well as
carbon sequestration (see Box 4.2 for one example).37 The involvement and
support of communities also seems to have been relatively high, a finding
explained in part by the institutional design of the scheme which involved
community-based organizations in establishing the rules of the game,
 Community and climate change governance 97

independent evaluations of compliance, implementation rules that have

been enforced and have minimized illegal logging, and rights of appeal for
the providers of ecosystem services. While there are questions about the
ways in which ecosystem services have been accounted for and about the
long-term financial viability of the PSA-CABSA, the preliminary assess-
ment of the scheme was positive.

Box 4.2 communITy foresTry anD

DeveloPmenT
San Bartolomé Loxicha, an indigenous Zapotec community located
in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico encompasses over 14,000 hectares
and has over 2,250 inhabitants. The main economic activities are cof-
fee cultivation and commercial logging. In 2004, a carbon project
involving the plantation of 66,000 pines in 272 hectares of the forest
commons was approved for implementation. The project was con-
sidered an opportunity for complementing ongoing reforestation and
conservation activities. The total investment from the program for
Payments for Carbon, Biodiversity and Agro-forestry services has
amounted to over MX$2.7 million (or US$0.2 million), of which
over 70 percent has reached the community. The community assem-
bly was involved in determining how the project funding should be
distributed, and 20 percent was given to the Milenio Coffee Producers
Organization, most of whose 100 farmers were involved in carbon
project activities, with the remaining 80 percent distributed among
the farmers who participated in tree planting.

Source: Esteve Corbera, Carmen González Soberanis, and Katrina Brown, “Institutional
Dimensions of Payments for Ecosystem Services: an Analysis of Mexico’s Carbon
Forestry Programme,” Ecological Economics 68, no. 3 (2009): 743–61.

However, changes to the scheme in the light of international and national

demands to better account for carbon services and to secure external flows
of financing may serve to undermine the benefits of community involve-
ment which have been secured. In 2006, the guidance for carbon service
projects changed quite substantially, following the criteria established by
the CDM concerning the size of projects involved, and the timing and extent
of deforestation while funding was limited to project design with external
investors required to purchase the carbon saved in these projects.38 These
98 Community and climate change governance

changes reflected both the international guidance on forest projects from

the CDM and “the interest of the Mexican government to support projects
which may potentially become sources of voluntary and CDM carbon off-
sets.”39 Analysis suggests that this move has gone “against the interests of
Mexican civil organizations,” since under the new rules there “has been a
reduction in the number of project applications, and an increase in the rate
of applications’ rejections,” with the result of undermining “communities’
ability to access carbon payments.”40 This example shows how decisions
concerning climate governance taken at an international level can have sig-
nificant implications for local communities and places, raising questions
about whose resources are being governed, and whose interests are being
served, by such governance mechanisms.
As we saw in Chapter 2, others have raised similar deep-seated concerns
about the emerging carbon market and the ways in which communities, par-
ticularly in the global South, may be affected.41 Adam Bumpus and Diana
Liverman argue that the process of the commodification of carbon—its
extraction from local contexts and circulation in global markets—is follow-
ing a neo-liberal logic concerned with creating profit at the expense of both
its effectiveness in terms of reducing GHG emissions and its implications for
local communities.42 Because of the economic logic of the CDM, and indeed
of wider systems of ecosystem service payments, the implementation of
CDM projects has followed the “avenues of the most profitable geographical
locations,” while the sustainable development benefits which are supposed
to also accrue are neglected.43 Once the value of a resource is changed and
it becomes of commercial value to international investors, communities
home to those resources find themselves under pressure. The introduction of
REDD+ has brought a much stronger focus on realizing the benefits of for-
estry projects for communities. The Mpingo Conservation and Development
Initiative in Tanzania, for instance, has sought to leverage REDD+ as a means
of expanding their successful Forest Stewardship Scheme project which is
based on the sustainable and equitable harvest of timber.44 Their experience
suggests that REDD+ is both enabling NGOs to work with communities
to identify the causes of deforestation—in this case the assumed cause of
charcoal production was found to be less important than the deliberate use of
fire as a farming technique—and enabling access to additional resources for
realizing the economic value of forests for communities. Yet, the project was
demanding in terms of assessing the carbon savings potential, selecting the
appropriate validation scheme from the multiple choices available, and in
gaining community trust. An initial assessment of the benefits being derived
by communities from REDD+ finds that:
 Community and climate change governance 99

many early REDD+ projects are delivering measurable socio-

economic benefits by enhancing populations’ tenure security and
facilitating their empowerment through meaningful participation in
REDD+ project design and implementation . . . [but] to date, projects
have produced only modest opportunity benefits (jobs, income) for
local populations.45

This suggests that while such projects can bring benefits, their design and
implementation are critical in terms of determining how and for whom such
benefits are realized.
Seeking to involve communities in the governing of climate change
through small-scale forestry projects has been a strategy deployed by gov-
ernments and the international community, and, in part, one welcomed by
some of the communities involved. However, it is a process that raises com-
plex questions about the basis upon which communities should be involved,
and about the tensions between local community needs and the imperatives
of international policy and carbon markets. While on the surface, a synergy
between community-based forestry projects, sustainable development, and
carbon sequestration appears to be a matter of common sense, the processes
and practices involved reveal conflicting agendas, priorities and outcomes,
and raise important questions over the nature and distribution of the ben-
efits of such schemes.

Community power: renewable energy in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, since the privatization of the energy generation
and supply system in the 1980s, the development and deployment of
renewable energy technologies has traditionally been assumed to be the
preserve of the private sector, albeit subject to government mandate con-
cerning the proportion of renewable energy in the supply mix. However,
since the development of the 2003 Energy White Paper, the importance of
community involvement in the provision of renewable energy has increas-
ingly been stressed. Moving beyond exhortations to consult or engage
communities in decisions over the siting of renewable energy generation
technologies (though this remains an important rhetoric), this new theme
incorporates “notions of community led, controlled and owned renewable
energy installation development”46 and has been manifest in a series of
government-funded programs, including the Community Action for Energy
program, Community Renewables Initiative, Clear Skies, and Community
Energy scheme.47 Gordon Walker and colleagues found that in 2004 there
100 Community and climate change governance

were over 500 ongoing or completed projects supported by these programs

or initiatives and others with the word “community” in their title and/or
rationale in the United Kingdom.48 These included projects in which there
was a degree of community ownership, through cooperatives, charities,
trusts, or other arrangements, or where co-ownership between a private
company and community takes place. One of the best known examples of
the former in the United Kingdom is the Baywind cooperative,49 in which
people within and beyond the local community become members of the
cooperative and buy shares to finance the project.50 In addition to commu-
nity ownership, community involvement in renewable energy projects was
manifest in two other ways: first, in terms of the involvement of communi-
ties in the development and running of projects, and second, in terms of the
distribution of the benefits of such schemes, for example “providing jobs,
contributing to local regeneration or providing an educational resource.”51
Despite significant variation in how the term was used, the salience
of the theme of “community” in the provision of renewable energy in
the United Kingdom appears to have been high, with a number of sig-
nificant funding streams dedicated to their realization and several hundred
projects established or underway. In seeking to account for this phenom-
enon, Gordon Walker et al. identify four explanations.52 First, developing
a community-basis to renewable energy generation was regarded as a
means of overcoming public opposition to renewable energy, particularly
in the wake of the conflicts over the siting of onshore wind farms that has
occurred in the United Kingdom.53 Second, a community-based approach
allowed the government to stimulate the market for renewable energy,
regarded as critical in the context of carbon reduction targets and the need
to improve skills and capacities with regard to newer, micro-generation,
technologies. A third rationale lay with the predominantly rural nature of
the projects implemented, based on a perceived need to stimulate eco-
nomic growth and security in declining rural areas. Finally, there was a
sense that communities should be involved, in a normative sense, because
it was a legitimate and democratic means through which decisions about
energy futures should be made.54 These explanations point once again to
the significance of community as a site which is crucial for the achieve-
ment of government policy objectives for climate change, including the
United Kingdom’s targets for meeting 20 percent of electricity generation
from renewable sources by 2020.
In 2010, further measures were introduced to meet this aim, includ-
ing the introduction of a feed-in-tariff (FIT) that provides a payment for
the generation and export of electricity from small-scale renewable energy
 Community and climate change governance 101

installations. The introduction of the FIT stimulated a significant rise in the

number of renewable energy installations at the household and community
scale, in particular solar photovoltaics (PV). In 2011, the subsidy which had
been at a rate of 43.3p was lowered to 21p per kilowatt hour, doubling the
period over which an installation would “payback” its costs.55 The FIT appli-
cable to new installations has been progressively reduced in line with the
number and capacity of installations that have been made, so that between
April and July 2014, the rate for PV stood at 14.38p/kWh, or 6.38p/kWh
if the building where it was installed did not meet a minimum energy per-
formance rating.56 The subsidy rates for other small-scale renewables have
also been reduced, but rates for micro-hydro, wind, and micro combined
heat and power (mCHP) were all above solar PV, reflecting their more lim-
ited deployment in the United Kingdom. While the FIT was not focused on
community renewables per se, its introduction provided another means of
support for community organizations interested in engaging with climate
change and/or with addressing local concerns for securing affordable energy
supply. In Oxford, the Low Carbon West Oxford group established the West
Oxford Community Renewables (WOCoRe), “an Industrial and Provident
society for the benefit of the community, [which] raises money from a mix
of government grants, prize money and its own share offer.”57 Low Carbon
West Oxford secured over £900,000 in 2009 through the Department for
Energy and Climate Change’s Low Carbon Communities program and the
Big Green Challenge competition run by the UK-based charity NESTA.
Photovoltaic systems have been installed on schools and community build-
ings, and a project to develop a micro-hydro power station on the River
Thames at Osney is underway. At the same time, the work of Low Carbon
West Oxford focuses on establishing different norms around low carbon
living, such as eating seasonally, reducing waste, improving housing condi-
tions, and building stronger community ties. These examples illustrate how
community projects become essential to, and enrolled in, these wider policy
agendas, but also retain the possibility of governing climate change differ-
ently, because of the democratic mandate they engender.
Through these case studies of carbon forestry and renewable energy,
we can see that the reasons for “community-based” climate governance
stem not only from efforts to displace responsibilities onto the community,
but also as part of a much more explicit strategy to implement policy and
meet climate governance objectives devised at other scales. However, other
forms of community-based climate governance—primarily emerging from
outside of the state—have provided the space for alternative approaches to
addressing climate change, and it is to these that we now turn.
102 Community and climate change governance

Communities governing climate change

In addition to initiatives to engage communities that have emerged from within
the state, communities have also acted as a site for independent responses
to climate change. These community-based climate governance initiatives
range in size and scale from individual groups of households or neighbor-
hoods to transnational networks seeking to connect communities across
national boundaries (see Chapter 3). Some are organized and orchestrated by
third sector and non-governmental organizations, while others originate in
the concerns and spontaneous actions of individuals. Despite their relatively
low profile and limited reach, these community-based initiatives provide a
means through which individuals are becoming directly involved in address-
ing climate change—a level of engagement that has so far eluded mainstream
national and international responses to the issue. At the same time, such initi-
atives provide a source of alternative means of framing and acting on climate
change, which offer a basis for contesting orthodox policy approaches and
which may provide a source of social and technical innovation at other scales
of governance. Here we consider one such example—Transition Towns—in
order to examine the implications for climate governance.

Transition Towns

A Transition Initiative is a community . . . working together to look

Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this
BIG question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs
in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase
resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce
carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?58

The idea of a “transition” from oil-based to low-carbon societies as a local-

ized movement originated in Kinsale, Ireland, in 2005, and was adopted by
the town of Totnes, in Devon, England, in 2006 through the work of Rob
Hopkins, a permaculture teacher. The central idea, as illustrated in the quote
above taken from the TT website, is that communities need to face the reali-
ties of “peak oil”—preparing for a future world without oil resources—as
well as significantly reducing GHG emissions. The TT movement links
these two issues together, arguing for the positive benefits that can accrue
from localizing economies through, for example, the production of local
sources of food and energy. Following Totnes, several other communities in
Southwest England took up the initiative and in 2007 a Transition Network
 Community and climate change governance 103

was established in order to support the spread of the ideas. By 2008, some
100 communities had joined the network, primarily based in the United
Kingdom, but also including the United States, Australia, Japan, and Chile,
and by 2014 this number had reached over 470, with groups also starting in
Asia, India, and South Africa.59 In this process, the Transition Network has
become a more formal entity,60 and a process of signing up to 16 criteria
has now been adopted for those communities wishing to become part of the
movement (see Box 4.3). These criteria set out “demands for mainly local
commitments” that “resonate with the duties inherent in communitarian
theories of citizenship,”61 in which obligations are due first and foremost to
the community within which individuals reside.
A wide range of actions and activities are undertaken under the banner
of TT, including a focus on local food production, health, transport, and
energy. For example, in Totnes, a Garden Share project has been established
that “matches keen, enthusiastic and committed gardeners and local garden
owners who want to see their gardens being used more productively. The
gardener and garden owner enter into an agreement about times, arrange-
ments, security and the sharing of garden produce.”62 In Brixton, London, a
Food and Growing group has been set up, also with a focus on food issues,
where members are involved in “finding out about local food suppliers and
more about how to start growing their own food; reskilling (cooking, grow-
ing, permaculture, food preservation); [and] starting their own community
growing and composting projects.”63 Also in Brixton, the initial formation
of a Buildings and Energy group led to the development of Brixton Energy,
a not-for-profit energy company which created a community investment
vehicle through which to secure funding to generate energy within the com-
munity through the installation of PV, while in Berera, Kentucky, United
States, the group has established a Resilient Household project, aimed to
assist residents to adapt to current and future environmental risks.64

Box 4.3 TransITIon neTworK memBershIP

The criteria and process for membership of the Transition Network,
as available on their website, is as follows:
1 An understanding of peak oil and climate change as twin drivers
(to be written into constitution or governing documents).
2 A group of 4–5 people willing to step into leadership roles (not
just the boundless enthusiasm of a single person).
104 Community and climate change governance

3 We recommend—time and resources permitting—that at least two

members of the core team aim to attend the two day Training for
Transition course. These are now available internationally, listed
either here or on the National Transition Hub for your country.
4 A potentially strong connection to the local council.
5 An initial understanding of the 12 ingredients to becoming a TT.
6 A commitment to ask for help when needed.
7 A commitment to regularly update your Transition Initiative
web presence—either the “community microsite” (collaborative
workspace on the web that we’ll make available to you), or your
own website.
8 A commitment to make periodic contributions to a blog (the
world will be watching) either on the Transition Network site
itself or on one that we can aggregate onto the site.
9 A commitment, once you’re into the Transition, for your group
to give at least two presentations to other communities in your
vicinity that are considering embarking on this journey—a sort
of “here’s what we did” or “here’s how it was for us” talk
10 A commitment to network with other TTs.
11 A commitment to work cooperatively with neighbouring TTs.
12 Minimal conflicts of interests in the core team.
13 A commitment to work with the Transition Network or your
National Transition Hub regarding grant applications for fund-
ing from national grant giving bodies. Your own local trusts are,
of course, yours to deal with as you see fit.
14 A commitment to strive for inclusivity across your entire ini-
tiative. We’re aware that we need to strengthen this point in
response to concerns about extreme political groups becom-
ing involved in transition initiatives. One way of doing this is
for your core group to explicitly state their support for the UN
Declaration of Human Rights (General Assembly resolution 217
A (III) of December 10, 1948). You could add this to your consti-
tution (when finalized) so that extreme political groups that have
discrimination as a key value cannot participate in the decision
making bodies within your transition initiative.
15 A recognition that although your entire county or district may
need to go through transition, the first place for you to start is
in your local community. It may be that eventually the number
of transitioning communities in your area warrant some central
 Community and climate change governance 105

group to help provide local support, but this will emerge over
time, rather than be imposed. (This point was inserted in response
to the several instances of people rushing off to transition their
entire county/region rather than their local community.) Further
criteria apply to initiating/coordinating hubs—these can be dis-
cussed in person.
16 And finally, we recommend that at least one person on the core
team should have attended a permaculture design course . . . it
really does seem to make a difference.

Source: Criteria and process for becoming an “official” Transition Initiative, avail-
able online at [Link] [accessed
February 10, 2015].

While the success of individual TT initiatives in terms of its impact on reduc-

ing emissions of GHG is both hard to measure and currently premature to
evaluate, it is clear that the movement has generated significant interest. The
growth of the network, from one or two cases in 2006 to nearly 500 in 2014,
is one measure of its impact, but so too are the relatively large numbers of
people attending information events in the transition towns (in many cases,
several hundred people are involved in the launch or publicity events in any
one town). However, whether this interest can be sustained as individual
TT move from the dissemination of information to projects on the ground
remains to be seen. At the same time, the movement has provided an alterna-
tive means of framing climate change as a “governance” problem—one that
focuses on consumption rather than the production of GHG emissions, and
on the local rather than global scale—that has provided the basis for con-
testing orthodox accounts of what the climate governance problem entails.
Governance experiments such as this that bubble up “from below” show that
governance, even around a problem as complex as climate change, is not
only constructed above by policy elites where communities passively react
to global political initiatives.65 They also proactively create alternatives and
produce immediate forms of action, often fuelled by a frustration with the
slowness and inadequacy of existing responses.

Governance issues and challenges

In this chapter, we have suggested that alongside a growing interest in
“market”-based solutions to the climate problem (Chapters 1 and 5),
106 Community and climate change governance

community is becoming an important site in the governing of climate change.

A variety of ways in which state and non-state actors seek to engage com-
munities, from education campaigns, to participatory processes, projects,
and social movements, can now be found. We find that such initiatives have
been driven by attempts to implement policy, by a rationale that seeks to
mobilize “responsible” communities into governing climate change outside
of the direct control of the state, and also by actors seeking to create an
alternative politics of climate change. Community-based initiatives, unlike
other forms of climate governance, have succeeded in generating a degree
of public engagement with the issue of climate change. However, they
are not without challenges in terms of effectiveness, legitimacy, and equity,
and it is to these issues that we now turn.
The first issue in terms of the impact and effectiveness of community-
based climate governance relates to the different levels of success in engaging
the public which can be found across different approaches. Attempts to shift
behavior through education campaigns have been found to be largely inef-
fective, while, on the other hand, community-based projects—such as those
discussed here in terms of forestry and renewable energy—have had a much
higher degree of success in terms of the number of participants and projects
created, albeit remaining small in scale and few in number. This suggests
that those schemes which seek to target individual members of the commu-
nity may have less impact than those that focus on the community scale and
seek to achieve change at this level of social organization. It may also be the
case, as with the example of community forestry, that the potential material
benefits that accrue to communities willing to participate in a project encour-
age them to do so. Likewise, communities expected to host “clean energy”
projects such as wind farms are more likely to oppose them if they do not
directly benefit and the electricity generated is transmitted elsewhere.
In terms of the impacts of the initiatives themselves, each has been success-
ful in relation to some goals, for example in the spread of information about
climate change and peak oil (TT), in terms of the promotion and develop-
ment of demonstration projects (renewable energy in the United Kingdom),
or in terms of generating income (small-scale forestry projects in Mexico).
However, the impacts of these initiatives and others like them, in terms of
reducing GHG emissions and achieving other sustainable development ben-
efits, are less clear. First, such schemes remain—perhaps necessarily—small
in scale and their effects highly uneven. Second, accounting for emissions
savings and their additionality is challenging, given the range of factors that
may be shaping individual behavior, shifts in everyday practice, investment
decisions, and the emergence of new forms of energy technology. Third,
there is evidence that some of the progressive goals of such initiatives
 Community and climate change governance 107

(of community involvement, in the case of renewable energy in the United

Kingdom, or of wider sustainable development objectives in the case of
small-scale forestry) are being neglected in state-led community governance
initiatives, suggesting that such schemes remain predominantly a means
through which the state seeks to further its own interests in terms of climate
governance, rather than providing arenas in which community goals can also
be pursued. Community-led initiatives, such as the TT example used here,
may be more able to retain the broader goals of social and environmental
justice that frequently provide the basis for their development in the first
place. However, this raises questions as to whether their impact will remain
confined to the margins of formal politics, with little impact on mainstream
approaches to climate governance or the vast bulk of GHG emissions. By
their very nature they are voluntary and so communities—if they choose—
can opt to do nothing in the absence of pressure to do otherwise.
In terms of accountability, community-based initiatives appear, at least on
the surface, to offer a genuine means through which the public can be engaged
on the issue of climate change. However, challenges arise in terms of how
responsibility for addressing climate change is allocated in such schemes and
the extent to which there is potential for genuine engagement in the framing
and implementation of climate policy. Seeking to place responsibility on indi-
viduals and their behavior rather than wider systemic and structural processes
may in fact be detrimental to engaging the public in climate governance, lead-
ing to a sense of disempowerment and exacerbating the “governance trap”
described above (Box 4.1).66 Rather than being a means through which publics
are able to hold those in authority to account for climate change governance,
community-based initiatives could be seen as a means through which state
(and non-state) actors seek to shift responsibility, and with it accountabil-
ity, to individuals, households, and particular places. This may serve to shift
accountability from actors which preside over significant sources of GHG
emissions and with the capacity to reduce vulnerability—such as nation-
states and large corporations—to those who have little in the way of power
to address either the causes or consequences of climate change—for example
forest-based peoples in Mexico or rural communities in the United Kingdom.
Moreover, even where community-based schemes enable external authorities
to be held to account for their actions on climate change, the limited nature
of participation in such schemes coupled with restrictions on what is “open”
for negotiation can reduce the accountability of climate change governance.
For example, in Mexico, changes in rules on carbon sequestration account-
ing, or on the funding available for renewable energy projects in the United
Kingdom were beyond the remit of the communities involved, meaning that
the answerability of central authorities to the communities involved in these
108 Community and climate change governance

schemes was limited. In this manner, the use of “community-based” projects

by external authorities could function as a smokescreen for other agendas
(for example, the promotion of wind energy in the United Kingdom despite
“community” protests). Initiatives which have emerged at the grassroots level
potentially have accountability built in, through processes of direct participa-
tion which allow people to engage or not, but here the key accountability
challenge is one of enforceability—reliant on voluntary participation, they
may fall short of achieving their ambitions.
These issues of accountability are intimately connected to those of equity
in community-based initiatives. At issue here is how, on what grounds, and
by whom, the terms of community engagement are established, and with
what consequent implications for the distribution of costs and benefits. In
particular, the case studies reviewed in this chapter suggest that there are
profound equity implications that arise from the interplay of international
and national policy agendas with local projects for addressing climate
change. For example, in the case of Mexican CDM projects, shifts in the
requirements for carbon accounting externally had significant implications
for the social and environmental benefits of forest-carbon sequestration. At
the same time, seeking to address climate change in certain places may have
inequitable geographical impacts, as, for example, benefits from carbon
forestry accrue to some communities and not others, some places experi-
ence the advantages (or disadvantages) of renewable energy generation,
while the localization of food production, promoted by TT, has the potential
to create negative implications for farmers in the global South. Community-
based initiatives to address climate change are, therefore, not free from the
politics of interest, and their development creates both winners and losers,
as with all the aspects of climate governance that we consider in this book.
In this chapter, we have suggested that community is becoming a key site
in the governing of climate change—a process that warrants attention in its
own right, but that also has potentially significant implications for how we
conceive of (global) climate governance. In regarding community as a site
of climate governance, we have suggested that there is a need to reconsider
the way in which the state operates. Rather than being confined to particular
institutional boundaries, we have suggested that the state seeks to extend
its reach through the transfer of responsibility for climate governance to
sites of community. However, this extension of the state, and the multiple
means through which climate change is being framed as a governance prob-
lem within community-based initiatives, raises questions about the limits
of climate governance. While, as we outlined in the Introduction, a concep-
tion of global climate governance which confines itself to the global scale
and to state-based institutions is no longer adequate, the question could
 Community and climate change governance 109

also be raised as to whether everything—from a community garden project

to an isolated wind turbine—should be considered as evidence of climate
governance. In this context, determining why, and with what implications,
particular initiatives are framed as a response to climate change, becomes
ever more important. What is clear, however, is that alongside a growing
“low carbon economy” (Chapter 5) we are witnessing the emergence of
a “low carbon society” in which projects and initiatives of all shapes and
sizes are increasingly justified in the name of climate change.

Notes
1 Ken Conca, “Greening the UN: Environmental Organizations and the UN
System,” Third World Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1995): 103–19; Thomas Princen
and Matthias Finger, Environmental NGOs in World Politics (London:
Routledge, 1994); Paul Wapner, Environmental Activism and World Civic
Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
2 Matthew R. Auer, “Who Participates in Global Environmental Governance?
Partial Answers From International Relations Theory,” Policy Sciences 33,
no. 2 (2000): 163.
3 Susan Owens, “Engaging the Public: Information and Deliberation in
Environmental Policy,” Environment and Planning A 32, no. 7 (2000):
1141–8.
4 Brian Wynne, “May the Sheep Graze Safely? A Reflexive View of the
Expert–Lay Divide” in Risk, Environment and Modernity: Towards a New
Ecology, eds Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Brian Wynne (London:
Sage, 1996), 44–83; Simon Joss, ed., “Public Participation in Science and
Technology,” special issue, Science and Public Policy 26, no. 5 (1999); Brian
Wynne, “Creating Public Alienation: Expert Cultures of Risk and Ethics on
GMOs,” Science as Culture 10, no. 4 (2001): 445–81.
5 Elizabeth Shove, “Beyond the ABC: Climate Change Policy and Theories of
Social Change,” Environment and Planning A 42, no. 6 (2010): 1273–85.
6 Irene Lorenzoni, Sophie Nicholson-Cole, and Lorraine Whitmarsh, “Barriers
Perceived to Engaging with Climate Change Among the UK Public and their
Policy Implications,” Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy
Dimensions 17, no. 3/4 (2007): 445–59.
7 Steve Hinchliffe, “Helping the Earth Begins at Home: The Social Construction
of Socio-Environmental Responsibilities,” Global Environmental Change—
Human and Policy Dimensions 6, no. 1 (1996): 53–62.
8 Hinchliffe, “Helping the Earth Begins at Home.”
9 Carlo Jaeger, Gregor Durrenberger, Hans Kastenholz, and Bernhard Truffer,
“Determinants of Environmental Action With Regard to Climatic-Change,”
Climatic Change 23, no. 3 (1993): 193–211.
10 Willet Kempton, James Boster, and Jennifer Hartley, Environmental Values in
American Culture (Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).
11 Owens, “Engaging the Public”; Walter Baber and Robert V. Bartlett,
Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Minu Hemmati, Multi-Stakeholder
Processes for Governance and Accountability (London: Earthscan, 2002).
110 Community and climate change governance

12 Judith Petts and Catherine Brooks, “Expert Conceptualizations of the Role

of Lay Knowledge in Environmental Decision Making: Challenges for
Deliberative Democracy,” Environment and Planning A 38, no. 6 (2006):
1047–59.
13 Stephen Yearly, Steve Cinderby, John Forrester, Peter Bailey, and Paul Rosen,
“Participatory Modelling and the Local Governance of the Politics of UK Air
Pollution: a Three-City Case Study,” Environmental Values 12, no. 2 (2003):
247–62.
14 Owens, “Engaging the Public,” 1144.
15 Roger Few, Kate Brown, and Emma Tomkins, “Public Participation and
Climate Change Adaptation: Avoiding the Illusion of Inclusion,” Climate
Policy 7, no. 1 (2007): 46–59.
16 John Allen, “The Whereabouts of Power: Politics, Government and Space,”
Geografiska Annaler 86B, no.1 (2004): 17–30.
17 Allen, “The Whereabouts of Power,” 83.
18 Allen, “The Whereabouts of Power,” 86.
19 Maarten van Aalst, Terry Cannon, and Ian Burton, “Community Level
Adaptation to Climate Change: The Potential Role of Participatory Community
Risk Assessment,” Global Environmental Change 18, no. 1 (2008): 165–79.
20 Van Aalst et al., “Community Level Adaptation to Climate Change,” 166.
21 Van Aalst et al., “Community Level Adaptation to Climate Change,” 168.
22 Van Aalst et al., “Community Level Adaptation to Climate Change,” 179.
23 Allen, “The Whereabouts of Power,” 94.
24 Shove, “Beyond the ABC.”
25 Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, “Governing Economic Life,” Economy and
Society 19, no. 1 (1990): 8; Jennifer A. Summerville, Barbara A. Adkins,
and Gavin Kendall, “Community Participation, Rights, and Responsibilities:
The Governmentality of Sustainable Development Policy in Australia,”
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 26, no. 4 (2008): 697.
26 Summerville et al., “Community Participation, Rights, and Responsibilities,”
697.
27 Emily Boyd, Maria Gutierrez, and Manyu Chang, “Small-scale Forest
Carbon Projects: Adapting CDM to Low Income Communities,” Global
Environmental Change 17, no. 2 (2007): 250–9.
28 Gordon Walker, Sue Hunter, Patrick Devine-Wright, Bob Evans, and
Helen Fay, “Harnessing Community Energies: Explaining and Evaluating
Community-based Localism in Renewable Energy Policy in the UK,” Global
Environmental Politics 7, no. 2 (2007): 64–82.
29 William M. Adams, Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in
the South (London: Routledge, 2001).
30 William Adams and Jon Hutton, “People, Parks and Poverty: Political Ecology
and Biodiversity Conservation,” Conservation and Society 5, no. 2 (2007):
147–83; Peter Sand, “Fortress Conservation Trumps Human Rights? The
“Marine Protected Area” in the Chagos Archipelago,” Journal of Environment
and Development 21, no. 1 (2012): 36–40.
31 Boyd et al., “Small-scale Forest Carbon Projects,” 251.
32 Boyd et al., “Small-scale Forest Carbon Projects,” 251.
33 Adam Bumpus and Diana Liverman, “Accumulation by Decarbonisation and the
Governance of Carbon Offsets,” Economic Geography 84, no. 2 (2008): 127–56;
Centre on Energy Climate and Sustainable Development, “CDM Projects by
 Community and climate change governance 111

Type” (2014), available online at [Link]

[accessed January 21, 2015]; In 2007, 18 percent of projects in the voluntary
market were made up of forestry projects, while in 2012, the voluntary sector
drove 95 percent of forestry carbon markets. See Katherine Hamilton, Milo
Sjardin, Thomas Marcello, and Gordon Xu Forging, “A Frontier: State of the
Voluntary Carbon Markets,” in Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon
Finance (2008), available online at [Link]
uments/cms_documents/2008_StateofVoluntaryCarbonMarket2.pdf [accessed
January 21, 2015]; Molly Peters-Stanley, Gloria Gonzalez, and Daphne Yin,
Covering New Ground: State of the Carbon Forest Markets 2013 (2013),
available online at [Link]
[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
34 “REDD+” refers to measures that go beyond measures seeking to reduce
deforestation and forest degradation to include “the role of conservation, sus-
tainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.”
35 Boyd et al., “Small-scale Forest Carbon Projects,” 254.
36 Esteve Corbera, Carmen González Soberanis, and Katrina Brown, “Institutional
Dimensions of Payments for Ecosystem Services: An Analysis of Mexico’s
Carbon Forestry Programme,” Ecological Economics 68, no. 3 (2009):
743–61.
37 Corbera et al., “Institutional Dimensions of Payments for Ecosystem
Services.”
38 Corbera et al., “Institutional Dimensions of Payments for Ecosystem Services,”
751.
39 Corbera et al., “Institutional Dimensions of Payments for Ecosystem Services,”
751.
40 Corbera et al., “Institutional Dimensions of Payments for Ecosystem
Services,” 755.
41 Steffen Böhm and Saddhartha Dabhi, eds, Upsetting the Offset: The Political
Economy of Carbon Markets (Colchester: MayFly Books, 2009); Peter
Newell and Adam Bumpus, “The Global Political Ecology of the CDM,”
Global Environmental Politics 12, no. 4: 49–68.
42 Bumpus and Liverman, “Accumulation by Decarbonisation and the
Governance of Carbon Offsets.”
43 Bumpus and Liverman, “Accumulation by Decarbonisation and the
Governance of Carbon Offsets.”
44 Steve Ball and Jaspar Makala, “Making REDD+ Work for Forests and
Communities: Three Shared Lessons for Project Designers,” Gatekeeper
No. 155 (London: IIED, 2013), available online at [Link]
pdfs/[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
45 Kathleen Lawlor, Erin Myers Madeira, Jill Blockhus, and David J. Ganz,
“Community Participation and Benefits in REDD+: A Review of Initial
Outcomes and Lessons,” Forests 4, no. 2 (2013): 296–318.
46 Walker et al., “Harnessing Community Energies,” 65.
47 Walker et al., “Harnessing Community Energies,” 70.
48 Gordon Walker, “What are the Barriers and Incentives for Community-owned
Means of Energy Production and Use,” Energy Policy 36, no. 12 (2008):
4401–5.
49 Baywind Energy, Homepage available online at [Link] [accessed
January 21, 2015].
112 Community and climate change governance

50 Walker, “What are the Barriers and Incentives for Community-owned Means
of Energy Production and Use,” 4401.
51 Gordon Walker and Patrick Devine-Wright, “Community Renewable Energy:
What Should it Mean?” Energy Policy 36, no. 2 (2008): 498–9.
52 Walker et al., “Harnessing Community Energies,” 71–3.
53 John Barry, Geraint Ellis, and Clive Robinson, “Cool Rationalities and Hot
Air: A Rhetorical Approach to Understanding Debates on Renewable Energy,”
Global Environmental Politics 8, no. 2 (2008): 67–98.
54 Walker et al., “Harnessing Community Energies,” 73.
55 The Guardian, “Solar Subsidies to be Cut by Half,” Monday October 31,
2011, available online at [Link]/environment/2011/oct/28/
solar-subsidies-cut-half [accessed January 21, 2015].
56 Energy Saving Trust, “Feed-In Tariffs scheme (FITs)”, available online at
[Link]/Generating-energy/Getting-money-back/
Feed-In-Tariffs-scheme-FITs [accessed January 21, 2015].
57 Low Carbon West Oxford, Homepage, available online at [Link]-
[Link]/the-west-oxford-model [accessed January 21, 2015].
58 Sarah Irving, “Transitional Demands,” Red Pepper, December 2009, available
online at [Link]/Transitional-demands/ [accessed January 21,
2015].
59 Rob Hopkins and Peter Lipman, “The Transition Network Ltd: Who We Are
and What We Do . . . ,” available online at [Link]
content/uploads/who_we_are_high.pdf [accessed January 21, 2015];
Transition Network, Transition Initiatives Map, available online at [Link]-
[Link]/initiatives/map [accessed January 21, 2015].
60 Kelvin Mason and Mark Whitehead, “Transition Urbanism and the Contested
Politics of Spatial Practice,” Annual International Conference of the Royal
Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers, 2008; see also
Transition Network, Becoming Official, available online at [Link]-
[Link]/support/becoming-official [accessed January 21, 2015].
61 Mason and Whitehead, “Transition Urbanism and the Contested Politics of
Spatial Practice,” 8.
62 Transition Town Totnes, Food Group Homepage, available online at http://
[Link]/food/home [accessed January 21, 2015].
63 Transition Town Brixton, Food and Growing Group, available online at www.
[Link]/groups-and-projects/foodgrowing-group/ [accessed
January 21, 2015].
64 Sustainable Berea, Resilient Household, available online at [Link]
[Link]/projects/the-resilient-household/ [accessed January 21, 2015].
65 Gill Seyfang, Sabine Hielscher, Tom Hargreaves, Mari Martiskainen, and
Adrian Smith, “A Grassroots Sustainable Energy Niche? Reflections on
Community Energy in the UK,” Environmental Innovation and Societal
Transitions, doi: 10.1016/[Link].2014.04.004; Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely,
“Green Transformations from Below? The Politics of Grassroots Innovation,”
in The Politics of Green Transformation, eds Ian Scoones, Melissa Leach, and
Peter Newell (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).
66 “Getting Beyond the Climate Crunch: Re-thinking Rights, Risks and
Responsibilities,” ESRC Briefing (2014), available online at [Link]
[Link]/sites/default/files/attachments_site_section/Concept%20note_0.pdf
[accessed January 21, 2015].
5
THE PRIVATE GOVERNANCE OF
CLIMATE CHANGE

In this chapter, we focus on the increasingly important role of the private

sector in the governance of climate change. As market and political actors
in their own right, private sector organizations, and key industries in the
energy and transport sectors in particular, have played a significant role
in the evolution of the climate regime: providing expertise, lobbying gov-
ernments and international institutions, and traditionally cautioning against
strident action on the issue. More recently, however, many firms have come
to see action on climate change as a potential opportunity rather than a
threat. From emissions trading to the carbon offset market, from invest-
ments in technology to the use of a range of corporate social responsibility
tools and investment strategies, financial and business actors now play a
central role in the day-to-day governance of climate change. We explore
how, as well as influencing traditional forms of state-led international gov-
ernance, private actors have increasingly been constructing their own forms
of governance, and the challenges this creates.

Business and climate change

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the private sector in propos-
als to address climate change. A significant proportion of the world’s
GHG emissions can be attributed directly or indirectly to corporations
(see Introduction).1 As the Business Council for Sustainable Development
acknowledged at the time the UNFCCC was negotiated in 1992, “Industry
accounts for more than one third of energy consumed world wide and uses
more energy than any other end-user in industrialized and newly industrial-
izing economies.”2 To reinforce the point, Greenpeace International showed
some years later, in a comparison of CO2 emissions from the burning of
fossil fuels by major oil companies with country emissions from fossil
114 The private governance of climate change

fuel combustion, that Shell emits more than Saudi Arabia, Amoco more
than Canada, Mobil more than Australia, and BP, Exxon, and Texaco more
than France, Spain, and the Netherlands.3 At the same time, the UN esti-
mated that 86 percent of global investment and financial flows required to
tackle climate change will need to come from the private sector.4 It is not
just their contribution to the problem and role in funding solutions, how-
ever, which makes business such as key actor. As the International Chamber
of Commerce put it:

Industry’s involvement is a critical factor in the policy deliberations

relating to climate change. It is industry that will meet the growing
demands of consumers for goods and services. It is industry that devel-
ops and disseminates most of the world’s technology. It is industry
and the private financial community that marshal most of the finan-
cial resources that fund the world’s economic growth. It is industry
that develops, finances, and manages most of the investments that
enhance and protect the environment. It is industry, therefore, that
will be called upon to implement and finance a substantial part of
governments’ climate change policies.5

Business has hence been cast simultaneously as the problem and the source
of solutions to climate change. Simply put, it is perhaps truer now than ever
that constructive business engagement with the climate issue is a precondi-
tion to effective action since much of the control of production, technology,
and finance that is driving climate change and that needs to be de-carbon-
ized lies in private hands.6 Responses to climate change that fail to account
for the activities of transnational business in particular will likely preclude
effective and equitable solutions to the issue.7

Shaping the climate regime

For a long time, businesses mobilized themselves to stall action on climate
change. Climate change first registered on the radar screen of fossil fuel firms
in the late 1980s and early 1990s amid growing demands for an international
treaty to address the issue. The IPCC had been set up in 1988 and negotiations
were set in train through the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for
a UNFCCC (as we saw in Chapter 1). It was at this moment that businesses,
whose interests were threatened by the prospect of action to reduce the use of
fossil fuels, began to organize themselves politically. They moved into gear
to hire lobbyists and form coalitions to present and advance their interests.
 The private governance of climate change 115

Two in particular stood out at this time; the Global Climate Coalition (GCC)
and the Climate Council. Members included all the main oil companies, car
manufacturers, steel firms, US electricity generators, as well as associations
like the US National Association of Manufacturers and the National Mining
Association.8 Though now disbanded, it is difficult to overestimate the
importance of the GCC during the early to mid-1990s as the dominant voice
of concerned industry in the international climate negotiations. As Robert
Reinstein, former head of the US climate delegation, and industry lobbyist
at the time, told us back in 1996, “when GCC, which represents compa-
nies constituting a very significant proportion of the country’s GDP start
making noises, they obviously get attention.”9 At the national level, groups
such as the Confederation of British Industry (United Kingdom), the World
Coal Institute (World Coal Association since 2010) (UK), the American
Petroleum Institute or Western Fuels Association (United States), as well
as regional groupings such as employers’ organizations (Union of Industrial
Employers’ Confederations in Europe, UNICE) (now Business Europe) and
business round tables such as the European Round Table of Industrialists
(ERT), sought to fight off policy measures that threatened their interests.
One such measure was the EU carbon tax proposed in 1992 which, accord-
ing to The Economist, “spurred the massed ranks of Europe’s industrialists
to mount what is probably their most powerful offensive against an EC
(European Council) proposal.”10 Shocked at the intensity of business mobili-
zation against the tax, Carlo Ripa di Meana, EU Environment Commissioner
at the time, described the lobbying offensive as a “violent assault.”11
A multipronged political strategy was developed to promote the voice
of industry in climate debates cautioning against hasty action. First, groups
sought to challenge the science behind climate change. Scientists such as
Fred Singer, Robert Balling, and Patrick Michaels, skeptics of the prevail-
ing consensus on climate change, were provided with funds from fossil fuel
companies to support their research which raised questions about human
contributions to climate change. Such a strategy was successful in part
because the fossil fuel lobby was (and in many ways still is) so well linked
to those governments that contribute most to global warming. In the United
States, Chief of Staff John Sununu, a well-known climate change skeptic,
played a key part in ensuring that President Bush Snr. was exposed only
to doubts about the science and studies that emphasized the costs of tak-
ing action. Sununu’s director of communications in the White House was
John Schlaes who went on to head the Global Climate Coalition leading the
business challenge to a treaty on climate change. Insiders such as Sununu
certainly made the job of industry lobbyists a whole lot easier. Today,
116 The private governance of climate change

climate skeptic organizations such as the Global Warming Foundation, led

by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom, Nigel
Lawson, still manage to achieve disproportionately high levels of media
exposure by continuing to raise questions about the extent and severity of
climate change and therefore whether mitigation actions are justifiable, as
well as maintain close links with key politicians such as the (former) UK
Environment Minister Owen Paterson.12
Second, as the links between climate skeptics and their industry backers
became more public, another strategy started to appeal to those businesses
opposing action. Recognizing that skeptical publics were more likely to
trust NGOs over government and business in environmental debates, the
idea was to create business-funded environmental NGOs or what many
critics call “astroturf” organizations.13 Their role was to persuade an increas-
ingly anxious public that fears about climate change were misplaced and to
emphasize the crucial role of fossil fuels in economic development. In one
case, the Western Fuels Association, the Edison Electric Institute, and the
National Coal Association of the United States created the benign sounding
Information Council for the Environment, which launched a US$500,000
advertising campaign “to reposition global warming as theory, not fact.”14
This sum was more than the combined amount spent by the Environmental
Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Fund, World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Union of Concerned Scientists on
their climate campaigns. Other examples included the Coalition for Vehicle
Choice, a corporate front organization who ran an infamous campaign with
a woman complaining that “the government wants to take away my SUV.”15
In the run-up to Kyoto, these groups spent US$13 million in an advertising
campaign designed to discredit both the Kyoto Protocol in particular, and
fears about climate change more generally.
The third element of the strategy was to emphasize the economic costs
of tackling climate change. The fossil fuel lobby set to work producing eco-
nomic studies suggesting that economies would be driven into recession if
they adopted measures proposed by leading scientists. The Australian Bureau
of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE), for example, conducted
a series of modeling exercises that predicted the loss of jobs and income if
emission reduction targets were accepted. The membership of the group’s
steering committee included Mobil, Exxon (now ExxonMobil), Texaco, and
Statoil. Publicity material published by ABARE made clear why participa-
tion at a cost of AU$50,000 was a good deal: “by becoming a member . . .
you will have influence on the direction of the model development.”16 While
the modeling activities of ABARE were submitted for investigation by the
 The private governance of climate change 117

Australian Conservation Foundation to the Commonwealth Ombudsman

and found to be open to accusations of exclusivity and bias, the key mes-
sage that acting on climate change would have significant economic costs
had a direct bearing on the position adopted by the Australian Government
during the international negotiations.17
Related to concerns about the economics of addressing climate change
was the argument that if emissions were only reduced in the North, busi-
nesses would merely relocate the most polluting parts of their business
overseas, producing a loss of competitiveness and no net gains in emission
reductions. In a globalized economy of capital mobility and international-
ized structures of production, it was argued, there is no point in one country
taking action if others do not do the same. This has become known as the
problem of “carbon leakage.” This led to the adoption of a fourth strategy:
double-edged diplomacy aimed at creating stalemate in the negotiations
towards a deal on Kyoto. For example, while former chief executive of
Exxon Lee Raymond was busy arguing in the United States that no action
should be taken there unless China, India, and other developing countries
also undertook actions, in front of audiences in China, party leaders and
their industries were encouraged to resist calls from the United States to
take action on climate change since this was a problem that China had con-
tributed very little to. Using domestic politics to stall international progress
on a deal was the fifth tactic in the armory of those firms intent on stalling
the development of the climate regime. Press conferences at the climate
negotiations were used to parade petitions from US senators promising
to veto any Kyoto deal that did not include emission reduction targets for
developing countries. This demand came from the Byrd–Hagel resolu-
tion passed in 1997 (see Chapter 1) which made US support for Kyoto
conditional on developing countries accepting binding emission reduction
obligations, which was a distant prospect at the time. This effectively tied
the hands of President Clinton’s negotiators since the Senate has to ratify by
two-thirds any treaty that the government signs up to.
Each of these strategies fed into the sixth pillar of firms’ political strategy
at the time, directly influencing the climate change negotiations. Groups
such as the Global Climate Coalition and the Climate Council, and in par-
ticular their respective heads John Schlaes and Don Pearlman, worked
closely with oil exporting states whose interests were also threatened by
the prospect of emission cuts. From drafting paragraphs of text that delega-
tions would then introduce as their own into draft UN treaty text (often
even left in Pearlman’s handwriting) to hosting press conferences warning
of the calamitous consequences of taking action on climate change, the
118 The private governance of climate change

fossil fuel industries managed to gain an important hold over the emerg-
ing climate regime. For example, a proposal submitted by Saudi Arabia in
1994 that protocols to the convention should be adopted by three-quarters
of the parties instead of the existing two-thirds, was widely attributed to
John Schlaes and Don Pearlman, while the World Coal Institute, alongside
OPEC and Australia, was instrumental in ensuring that implementation of
the UNFCCC would be done in such a way that account is taken of the
impacts on developing countries whose economies are “highly dependent
on income generated from the production, processing and export and/or
consumption of fossil fuels and associated energy-intensive products.”18
When their interventions and presence on the floor of the UN negotiat-
ing halls went beyond a level that was considered acceptable for groups
that were officially classified as “observers” of the process, a ban on non-
governmental representatives from being present on the floor of the main
plenary was introduced, given that these were after all meant to be primarily
intergovernmental negotiations.
Business lobbying continues in both open and more subtle ways as
nuclear, gas, fracking, carbon capture and storage, and renewable industries
seek to present their sectors as vital to collective efforts to address climate
change and deserving of their support, even if the presence of powerful
fossil fuel companies opposing action has waned somewhat.

Private governance
From a long history of opposition to action on climate change, described
above, climate change has been repositioned by some elements within the
business sector as a business opportunity which has led to more positive
engagement with climate governance initiatives, especially in the wake of
the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Driven either by the growing sense of inevita-
bility of action on climate change and the reputational risks of being seen
to opposite it, or in many cases by perceptions of first-mover advantages
and market openings that moves to de-carbonize the economy might bring,
leading companies started to drop their blanket opposition to action and
over time even issued collective calls for more ambitious emission reduc-
tion targets.19
In this new era, and beyond attempts to influence the international climate
regime, we have witnessed the emergence of what is sometimes referred to as
private governance in the climate change domain.20 Private governance can take
several forms, and operate either transnationally—as we saw in Chapter 3—or
within national or local territories. One type of private governance involves
 The private governance of climate change 119

internal processes of self-regulation—the voluntary actions of firms in reduc-

ing their own emissions. A second involves new forms of private regulation
through codes of conduct, standards, reporting, and forms of certification, usu-
ally in conjunction with other non-state actors, to regulate emissions of GHG
from business activities and to address concerns about the credibility of volun-
tary carbon markets. This includes efforts to improve performance evaluation
and forms of civil regulation whose aim is to hold business to account. Here
we look at examples of each in turn.

Self-regulation
The emergence of a positive approach to addressing climate change amongst
some in the business sector in part reflects growing public concern with the
issue and the rise of climate change as a corporate social responsibility
(CSR) issue as well as a growing recognition of the economic possibilities
heralded by low carbon technologies and new carbon markets. A number
of NGOs, such as the Climate Group in the United Kingdom and the Pew
Centre in the United States, have played an important role in this respect in
making the business case for action on climate change and publicizing the
benefits achieved by existing leaders in the field.
The extent to which businesses have adopted a positive approach to
climate change depends on the region and firm in question.21 There is,
nevertheless, already a great deal of evidence of companies taking volun-
tary action on climate change to reduce their own emissions, capitalizing
on the economic savings to be made and the public relations credit to be
earned from being seen to take a lead on the issue. Examples of this type of
voluntary governance or self-regulation include chemicals giant Du Pont,
which reduced its emissions by 65 percent below their 1990 level, while
IBM has saved US$115 million since 1998 through cutting its emissions.
Meanwhile, in 2005, General Electric announced Ecomagination, an initia-
tive that would see the company double investment in research for cleaner
technologies to US$1.5 billion a year by 2010, double sales of environ-
mentally friendly products to at least US$20 billion by 2010, and reduce
GHG emissions by 1 percent by 2012 (from 2004 levels). The company
is being rewarded financially, with revenues from the company’s portfolio
of energy efficient and environmentally advantageous products and serv-
ices exceeding US$12 billion in 2006, up 20 percent from 2005, while the
order backlog rose to US$50 billion.22 Some firms, such as BP and Shell,
have gone so far as to establish their own intra-firm trading systems which
encourage competitive reductions between different parts of the firm. This
120 The private governance of climate change

carries benefits such as saving money through reduced use of energy and
first-mover advantages that come from developing new technologies and
production processes to meet the targets. They also represent interesting
governance initiatives in their own right, emerging as they did ahead of
even the European Union’s own emissions trading scheme.
In this context of a growing interest in self-regulation, many firms have
even come out in favor of a binding regulatory framework to lay out clear
and strict emissions commitments for the immediate and long term future—
in part to protect the competitive advantages that so-called first-movers on
GHG emission reductions might achieve. At the time of the Bali summit
in 2008, an impressive group of 150 of some of the world’s best known
companies (including Volkswagen, Shell, Nokia, Kodak, Philips, HSBC,
General Electric, Nestlé, Adidas, Nike, Rolls Royce, Dupont, Johnson &
Johnson), published a “Communiqué on Climate Change” in the Financial
Times calling for “a comprehensive, legally binding United Nations agree-
ment to tackle Climate Change,” which included the following statement:

The shift to a low carbon economy will create significant business oppor-
tunities. New markets for low carbon technologies and products worth
billions of dollars will be created if the world acts on the scale required.
In summary, we believe that tackling climate change is the pro-growth
strategy. Ignoring it will ultimately undermine economic growth.23

In another example of anticipatory action and leadership preempting gov-

ernment regulation about corporate reporting of GHG emissions, many
companies voluntarily release such information. In the UK context, for
example, one report found that of a sample of 100 UK-listed companies,
57 percent reported carbon emissions “to some degree,” while 37 percent
reported numerical data on their carbon footprint. However, only 20 percent
formally reported a specific target in relation to carbon reduction, only 9
percent disclosed that information on carbon had been reported in line with
government guidance, and only 8 percent stated that their reported infor-
mation had been assured by a third party.24 Self-regulation and voluntary
measures are not only unevenly adopted across regions and sectors, there-
fore, but also within the same national context.

Private regulation
Beyond the sphere of voluntary action on climate change, many corpora-
tions have also sought to construct their own standards and forms of private
 The private governance of climate change 121

regulation. This serves to generate consumer and investor confidence that

common and agreed standards of conduct are being adhered to. It can also
reduce transaction costs (so that each firm or sector does not have to develop
its own standards) and creates a more visible and institutionalized marker
of commitment which has the added advantage of dissipating demands for
stronger forms of public regulation from the state for some businesses.
For example, in response to concerns about the credibility of projects
and credits traded in voluntary carbon markets and the extent to which they
genuinely deliver social and environmental benefits (which many firms pur-
chase in order to claim the carbon neutrality of their operations), businesses
have sought to set up their own forms of standards and voluntary regulation.
They allow firms to show that they are compliant with certain performance
criteria. Examples include the CDM Gold Standard, the Voluntary Carbon
Standard, and the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity (CCB) standard.
They are significant in governance terms because of the steering roles they
perform, and the informal forms of regulation and standard-setting they
generate. A number of these standards claim to have at least as stringent cri-
teria for measuring additionality as compliance markets such as the CDM.
The Gold Standard, initiated by WWF International, Helio International,
and South South North in 2003, includes among its objectives helping
to boost investment in sustainable energy projects and increasing public
support for renewable energy and energy efficiency.25 The Gold Standard
essentially applies an extra set of screens to CDM or voluntary projects
using strict additionality criteria and certifying with Gold Standard credits
only projects in the areas of renewable and energy efficiency and methane
capture and use. To ensure sustainable development, it also places emphasis
on local stakeholder consultation prior to implementation. The “boutique
credits”26 that result from these extra transaction costs are generally sold at
about 25 percent above the market value for normal CERs. In many ways
then it is a “beyond compliance” initiative, as it is designed to help the
CDM realize its objectives and is fully integrated with CDM procedures so,
for example, verifiers (Designated Operational Entities) will validate both
standard CDM and Gold Standard requirements at the same time.
The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), developed by the Climate Group, the
IETA, and the WBCSD in 2006, seeks to provide a “robust global standard,
program framework and institutional structure for validation and verifica-
tion of voluntary GHG emission reductions.”27 It aims to “experiment and
stimulate innovation in GHG mitigation technologies, verification and reg-
istration processes that can be built into other programs and regulations.”28
Part of this involves performing key governance functions such as guarding
122 The private governance of climate change

against double-counting of the same emission reductions and providing trans-

parency for the public. The VCS Board comprises nine members from across
the public and private sectors including the World Economic Forum, IETA,
and International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) while its
steering committee is made up of many of the key actors in this area, including
Det Norske Veritas (DNV), Ecosecurities, and Cantor CO2e. By providing
rules for certification that are claimed to be as robust as those of the Kyoto
Protocol’s CDM, the VCS aims to give confidence to buyers and sellers. As
the Climate Group put it, it does this by providing a “set of criteria that will
provide integrity to the voluntary carbon market.”29 Two recent reports have
found that the VCS is already the most popular standard for voluntary offset
projects,30 is leading the way by being the first carbon standard to cover all
major land-use activities (whether forestry or agriculture), and that it addresses
many of the “permanence and additionality” concerns that have held back the
take up of projects in global carbon markets.31
Besides issues of environmental integrity, some standards address the
social dimensions of voluntary projects. The CCB standards,32 for example,
released in 2005, aim to “identify land-based carbon projects that deliver
robust GHG reductions while also delivering net positive benefits to local
communities and biodiversity.”33 These provide gold, silver and standard
certification for projects depending on how many of their criteria are satis-
fied. They range from required criteria, which include additionality, baseline
issues, and leakage assessment, through to extras such as employing stake-
holders in project management, worker safety, and adaptive management.
Given the fatigue about the proliferation in voluntary standards, one thing
CCB does is build on the use of existing certifiers, authorized under Kyoto
or by the Forestry Stewardship Council for example, as third party evalu-
ators of whether a project deserves to be certified. Most recently, in 2014,
Fairtrade International and The Gold Standard Foundation joined forces
to sign a collaborative agreement to develop a joint Gold Standard and
Fairtrade carbon scheme to foster wider sustainable development and
provide greater access to the carbon market for smallholders and rural com-
munities in developing countries. The Fairtrade Carbon Credit standard:

aims to enable greater access and participation in the carbon market

for the most disadvantaged communities and to drive a greater pro-
portion of carbon income to them. It will provide producers with a
new climate change mitigation opportunity and help them generate
additional revenue through the selling of Fairtrade Carbon Credits in
the voluntary carbon market.34
 The private governance of climate change 123

Other initiatives that fall under the heading of private governance and
which use forms of certification and benchmarking are about promoting the
transparency and accountability of investors. By recording, evaluating, and
comparing performance they may also, however, create pressures for firms
to reduce their emissions through their investments. The Carbon Disclosure
Project (CDP), for example, by systematizing information about investors’
emissions, creates the means to pressure firms to invest in renewable rather
than fossil fuel energy solutions. The CDP covers 767 institutional inves-
tors holding US$92 trillion in assets and thousands of companies to help
reveal the risk in their investment portfolios. The scope of private regula-
tion is, therefore, impressive and reaches key actors not subject to other
forms of governance.
In a similar vein, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) is a
corporate reporting and accounting standard, jointly created by the World
Resources Institute (WRI) and the WBCSD in 1998, and now claims to be
“the most widely used international accounting tool for government and
business leaders to understand, quantify, and manage greenhouse gas emis-
sions.”35 Emphasizing the links between formal and informal regulation,
in 2006, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopted
the Corporate Standard as the basis for its ISO 14064-I: Specification with
Guidance at the Organization Level for Quantification and Reporting of
Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals. On December 3, 2007, ISO,
WBCSD, and WRI signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly
promote both global standards.36 Organizations such as the Carbon Fund
meanwhile aim at “increasing awareness of products and companies that
are compensating for their carbon footprint while helping to hasten a mar-
ket transformation.”37 Indeed, tools such as the Carbon Fund’s “Carbon
Footprint Protocol” draw on guidelines and standards that govern the com-
pliance market such as rules for CDM and Land Use, Land-Use Change
and Forestry (LULUCF), since essentially they are wrestling with the same
issues of proving additionality and using valid baselines.
As with all forms of climate governance, private climate governance has
been contested by other actors—disputing the claims companies have made
about their performance, raising concerns about the adequacy of voluntary
regulation of voluntary markets, and seeking to develop tools and strategies
of accountability. Such strategies are sometimes referred to as civil regula-
tion: civil society-based regulation of the private sector.38 Civil regulation
includes the use of shareholder activism, consumer boycotts, and exposé
campaigns.39 Alternative systems of sanctions to penalize irresponsible con-
duct and reward positive behavior include loss of market value or consumer
124 The private governance of climate change

confidence, tarnished public reputation, and disaffection among sharehold-

ers that serve to “harden the environmental accountability demands leveled
at corporations.”40 Not only do they provide “an instrument of account-
ability for ecological performance,” but also a critical dimension of their
effectiveness derives from the construction of these mechanisms of civil
redress.41 Corporations are, through these means, subject to a variety of
accountability sanctions that go beyond the strict public regulation of their
activities.
To take one example, many leading firms have been subject to share-
holder activism. The year 2005 saw a record number of shareholder
resolutions on global warming. State and city pension funds, labor foun-
dations, and religious and other institutional shareholders filed 30 global
warming resolutions requesting financial risk and disclosure plans to
reduce GHG emissions. This is three times the number for 2000/01. Firms
affected include leading players from the automobile sector such as Ford
and General Motors; Chevron Texaco, Unocal, and ExxonMobil from the
oil sector; Dow Chemicals; and market leaders in financial services such as
J. P. Morgan Chase. Groups such as CERES (Coalition for Environmentally
Responsible Economies) and ICCR (Interfaith Centre for Corporate
Responsibility), a coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors, have
been using their financial muscle to hold firms to account for their per-
formance on climate change. They demand both information disclosure and
management practices that reflect the values of their shareholders. Overall,
the resolutions led to distinctive agreements, but with some common links:
acknowledging climate change impacts in securities filings and on corpo-
rate websites; assigning board-level responsibility for overseeing climate
change mitigation strategy; and benchmarking and GHG emission reduc-
tion goals.42 That many firms are now engaging with the CDP as a means of
making their climate-related activities transparent may reflect the increas-
ing pressure that such forms of civil regulation is bringing to bear.
Disclosure is the first and necessary step to applying and enforcing pres-
sure on corporations to disinvest in fossil fuels and activists have increasingly
targeted the power and vulnerability of banks, trying to persuade them that
investments in fossil fuels should increasingly be seen as liabilities rather
than assets, or as “stranded assets.” If governments are serious about meet-
ing climate mitigation goals, they argue, many existing investments are in
“unburnable carbon” that will have to be left in the ground.43 There is grow-
ing evidence of successful disinvestment or divestment campaigns targeted
at governments, corporations and universities. To date, 22 cities, 2 counties,
20 religious organizations, 9 colleges and universities and 6 other institutions
 The private governance of climate change 125

have signed up to rid themselves of investments in fossil fuel companies and

Norway’s US$815 billion sovereign wealth fund—the world’s largest—has
already halved its exposure to coal producers. In addition to these divestment
announcements, many major banks and financial institutions have limited or
halted their lending to coal projects.44
What the examples above reveal is an interesting dynamic whereby
“resistance makes markets”45 in which civil society organizations create
a legitimacy crisis for corporations around their contribution to climate
change. Corporations then respond by developing systems of private regula-
tion, oftentimes working in collaboration with their NGO critics. Weaknesses
in these initiatives then lead to further pressure to strengthen systems of pri-
vate governance to cover more issues, more regions or reach further down
the supply chain, changing business performance and the expectations sur-
rounding it.

Governance issues and challenges

What we can see from the above examples is that the role of business in
climate governance covers a wide-ranging tapestry of governance practices
taking uneven forms across scales and regions. This is perhaps inevita-
ble given the range of actors whose behavior climate governance seeks to
address, but it does draw our attention to a number of critical features of the
climate governance landscape.
One key feature that emerges from this chapter is the continued impor-
tance of the relation between forms of “public” and “private” governance.
As we saw in the history of business involvement in the climate change
negotiations, private actors have had a profound influence on the nature of
public climate governance. But the reverse is also true. As is clear from the
development of both market and voluntary approaches to governing cli-
mate change, the state continues to play a significant role in shaping private
climate governance. Abyd Karmali, managing director and global head of
carbon markets at Merrill Lynch puts it succinctly:

Those who assume that the carbon market is purely a private market
miss the point that the entire market is a creation of government policy.
Moreover, it is important to realize that, to flourish, carbon markets
need a strong regulator and approach to governance. This means, for
example, that the emission reduction targets must be ratcheted down
over time, rules about eligibility of carbon credits must be clear etc.
Also, carbon markets need to work in concert with other policies and
126 The private governance of climate change

measures since not even the most ardent market proponents are under
any illusion that markets alone will solve the problem.46

We are witnessing the continuation of a dynamic whereby innovative forms

of private governance either respond to the limits of public regulation or
strive to meet a market niche in doing so, such as the Gold Standard, or seek
to anticipate and preempt further public regulation which may be less sensi-
tive to their interests such as in the case of the VCS. In short, the shadow
of regulation looms large for some private sector actors as an incentive to
get their own house in order before governments threaten to do it for them.
For the shadow of regulation to be effective as a driver of more ambitious
voluntary action, public actors have to demonstrate that they will regulate
where voluntary approaches have failed. The European Union did this
when it abandoned a strategy for reducing CO2 emissions from cars based
on voluntary commitments by the car industry. Under the voluntary com-
mitments, European manufacturers had pledged to reduce emissions from
their new cars to an average of 140 g/km of CO2 by 2008. However, the
Commission’s review of the strategy concluded that the voluntary commit-
ments had not succeeded and that the 140 g/km target would not be met on
time without further measures. Hence it proposed a legislative framework
to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars and vans.47
Despite this “shadow of hierarchy,” a second feature of the emergence
of private forms of governance has been the breadth and scope of initiatives
that are underway, often going beyond standards required in international
and national policy. A positive reading of this new landscape of private
regulation is that it goes further and faster than state-based action on cli-
mate change and creates new channels of pressures on key contributors
to climate change.48 With the rise of CSR and voluntary regulation, social
expectations about the responsibilities of firms sometimes far outstrip those
that are expressed in legal instruments, where there remains an imbalance
between the rights and responsibilities of firms as they are constituted at
the global level.49 Voluntary standards are also quicker to approve, respond
to private and consumer needs, and potentially provide wide coverage if
adopted by large firms with extensive supply chain networks.50 When a com-
pany like the supermarket giant Tesco in the United Kingdom announces
its intention to ultimately label all the products it sells in its supermarkets
according to their carbon footprint, the global reach of the measure is sig-
nificant. A further contribution private governance can make is to improve
and systematize levels of reporting and disclosure about GHG emissions
which in itself is a form of governance and may support other standards or
 The private governance of climate change 127

forms of regulation. Beyond serving as a source of credible information on

GHG offsets, for example, the Offset Quality Initiative, founded in 2007 by
six non-profit actors (including the Climate Trust, Pew Centre on Global
Climate Change, and the Climate Group), seeks to advance the integration
of key principles on carbon offset quality in emerging climate change poli-
cies at the state, regional, and federal levels.
There is a key difference, nevertheless, between state regulation of and
for the private sector, and regulations established by and for private actors
themselves. Voluntary regulation is discretionary and derives from incentives
some leading firms have to demonstrate leadership or to seek to exploit a first-
mover advantage in the market. The problem with relying on such responses
is that only those firms under pressure (from within and outside the firm) and
in the public spotlight will act. Given the choice, many will not, leading to
problems of uneven obligations and free-riding by those that benefit from the
actions taken by others without making sacrifices themselves. This is true
within states and internationally, where, in the absence of global coverage,
action may be ineffective if key sectors and polluters are not on board and
unappealing for firms if private sectors elsewhere are not also making sacri-
fices, especially given the problems of “carbon leakage” described above. If
we rely on making the “business case” for action on climate change, sectors
that make their profits from burning fossil fuels may just not do anything.
A related concern is the issue of effectiveness. If the different mecha-
nisms of private governance discussed here are to make a meaningful
contribution to efforts to tackle climate change, they have to show that
they can bring down emissions. Yet the coverage of many instruments is
limited to market leaders or concentrated in particular sectors or regions.
In general, it seems that companies participate more frequently in infor-
mation-based climate change arrangements than in voluntary or legally
binding market-based arrangements, and geographically speaking there
tends to be a greater representation of European and North American tran-
snational companies in private governance arrangements.51 With the CDP,
for example, the majority of the institutional investors are based either in
Europe or North America. In their survey of corporate responses to climate
change in the global South, Pulver and Benney found that with a few excep-
tions in rapidly emerging economies, where access to carbon markets was a
driver, most private sector firms in the global South are not aware of or not
concerned about climate change.52
Moreover, assessments of the overall effectiveness of voluntary corpo-
rate measures to address climate change raise serious cause for concern.
Sullivan and Gouldson, for example, find:
128 The private governance of climate change

that there have been significant and steady improvements in energy

efficiency, but that these efficiency gains are often outstripped by the
impacts of business growth. For most companies, short of a radical rede-
sign of their business activities, or an expansion of the scope of their
energy management initiatives to include their indirect emissions, total
greenhouse gas emissions will tend to increase over time.53

Concerns remain, therefore, that while companies have shown themselves

willing to take low cost actions with immediate benefits, where reducing
emissions require significant capital investment and where the profitability
of such investments is highly sensitive to climate change policy, many com-
panies have opted for a “wait and see” strategy.54
There are also issues of process, of who participates and how, and of
accountability for actions and inactions. Some forms of private governance
allow for more participation, transparency and accountability than others.
The CDP questionnaire and reports, for example, are public and can be
accessed via the Internet. Responses from companies are available without
restriction. The CDP operates on an essentially self-select basis, in so far
as the initiative is voluntary. Yet the flexibility built into the CDP means
that firms are able to choose which of their operations they include in their
emissions disclosure. Indeed, most companies signed up to the CDP place a
disclaimer that the information they enclose does not include their activities
in some developing countries. Discrepancies also appear when a different
emissions profile emerges from the same company reporting on the same
site to two different reporting standards. Initiatives such as the Carbon
Disclosure Standards Board, created in 2010, seek to address this issue by
acting as a forum for collaboration on how existing standards and practices
can be used to link financial and climate change-related information with
its Climate Change Reporting Framework.
Nevertheless, there are often no institutional control mechanisms in
place to monitor and verify company responses, though the levels of public
access noted above do mean other actors are in a position, at least in theory,
to challenge or investigate for themselves claims made by firms submitting
data. Interestingly, bodies such as the US Financial Industry Regulatory
Authority handled verification and monitoring issues for some schemes,
because the organization is primarily a commodity trading body, suggesting
once again that private initiatives often fall back on state authority.55
Thinking about private governance generates interesting theoretical as
well as policy challenges, therefore. The everyday forms of governance
and regulation that firms generate, often on scales and overseeing resources
 The private governance of climate change 129

far greater than those over which governments have direct control, are
poorly captured by traditional explanations of governance which focus on
the public, the interstate, the global, and the formal. The increasing profile
of business in these debates reflects not just the turn towards market-based
solutions to climate change which affect and imply business involvement
(as we saw in Chapter 1), but also broader shifts in power between state and
market in a context of globalization. Among different sectors of business,
the key role of finance in contemporary forms of neo-liberalism is particu-
larly notable and explains the focus on carbon disclosure, efforts to woo the
insurance industry, and to work with leading banks such as HSBC.56 The
forms of governance deployed—the emphasis on partnerships with civil
society and other actors, voluntarism, and networks—reflect neo-liberal
modes of governance. More specifically, the way firms draw boundaries
around what is to be governed, how, by whom, and for whom, are very
different from the way states and international institutions or cities do, for
example. The ways in which they produce governance raises difficult issues
of transparency, representation, and legitimacy. And yet, whether it is oil
firms or banks, business actors are increasingly central to any effort to gov-
ern climate change. For all these reasons private governance forces us to
think more innovatively about how and where governance happens, and
who is served and who is disadvantaged by particular arrangements.

Notes
1 Rory Sullivan and Andy Gouldson, “Ten Years of Corporate Action on
Climate Change: What Do We Have to Show for It?,” Energy Policy 60
(2013): 733–40.
2 Stephen Schmidheiny and the Business Council for Sustainable Development,
Changing Course (Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 43.
3 Greenpeace International, “The Oil Industry and Climate Change: A Greenpeace
Briefing” (Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Greenpeace International, 1998).
4 UNFCCC, “Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change”
(Bonn, Germany: UNFCCC, 2007).
5 International Chamber of Commerce, “Statement by the International Chamber
of Commerce Before COP1,” Berlin, Germany, March 29, 1995.
6 Jonathan Pinske and Ans Kolk, International Business and Climate Change
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2009).
7 Yda Schreuder, The Corporate Greenhouse: Climate Change Policy in a
Globalizing World (London: Zed Books, 2009).
8 David Levy, “Business and the Evolution of the Climate Regime: The
Dynamics of Corporate Strategies,” in The Business of Global Environmental
Governance, eds David Levy and Peter Newell (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2005), 73–105.
130 The private governance of climate change

9 Cited in Peter Newell, Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and the Global Politics
of the Greenhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 100.
10 “Europe’s Industries Play Dirty,” The Economist, May 9, 1992.
11 Peter Newell and Mathew Paterson, “A Climate for Business: Global Warming,
the State and Capital,” Review of International Political Economy 5, no. 4
(Winter 1998): 679–704.
12 “Former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson to Deliver Keynote Speech at
Climate-Sceptic Organisation’s Lecture,” The Independent, July 18, 2014, avail-
able online at [Link]/news/uk/politics/former-environment-
secretary-owen-paterson-to-deliver-keynote-speech-at-climatesceptic-
[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
13 Carl Deal, The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-Environmental Organizations
(Berkeley, Calif.: Odonian Press, 1993).
14 Ross Gelbspan, The Heat Is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the
Prescription (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books Group, 1998).
15 Danny Hakim, “The Media Business: Ads are a Weapon in the Battle Over
Higher Fuel Standards,” New York Times, March 12, 2002, available online
at [Link]/2002/03/12/business/media-business-advertising-ads-
[Link]?pagewanted=all
[accessed January 21, 2015].
16 Newell, Climate for Change.
17 Harriet Bulkeley, “No Regrets? Economy and Environment in Australia’s
Domestic Climate Change Policy Process,” Global Environmental Change:
Human and Policy Dimensions 11, no. 2 (2001): 155–69.
18 Article 4 of the UNFCCC (1992), available online at [Link]
docs/convkp/[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
19 Kathryn Begg, Frans van der Woerd, and David Levy, eds, The Business
of Climate Change: Corporate Responses to Kyoto (Sheffield: Greenleaf
Publishing, 2005); Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Climate Capitalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
20 Robert Falkner, “Private Environmental Governance and International Relations:
Exploring the Links,” Global Environmental Politics 3, no. 2 (2003): 72–88;
Philipp Pattberg, Private Institutions and Global Governance: The New Politics
of Environmental Sustainability (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007).
21 David Levy and Peter Newell, “Oceans Apart? Comparing Business
Responses to the Environment in Europe and North America,” Environment
42, no. 9 (2000): 8–20; Ian Rowlands, “Beauty and the Beast? BP’s and
Exxon’s Positions on Global Climate Change,” Environment and Planning
C: Government and Policy 18, no. 3 (2000): 339–54; Ingvild Andreassen
Sæverud and Jon Birger Skjærseth, “Oil Companies and Climate Change:
Inconsistencies Between Strategy Formulation and Implementation?” Global
Environmental Politics 7, no. 3 (2007): 42–63.
22 GE Eco-Imagination Report, Investing and Delivering on Eco-imagination,
available online at [Link]
news/[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
23 The Bali communiqué on climate change, available online at [Link]-
[Link]/sites/default/files/documents/Bali%[Link]
[accessed January 21, 2015].
24 Carbon Reporting to Date: Seeing the Wood for the Trees (London: Deloitte
Touche, 2010).
 The private governance of climate change 131

25 CDM Gold Standard (2014), available online at [Link]/

[accessed January 21, 2015].
26 Adam Bumpus and Diana Liverman, “Accumulation by Decarbonization and
the Governance of Carbon Offsets,” Economic Geography 84, no. 2 (2008):
127–55.
27 Voluntary Carbon Standard, “Voluntary Carbon Standard Program Guidelines,”
available online at [Link]/sites/[Link]/files/Voluntary%20
Carbon%20Standard%20Program%20Guidelines%202007_1.pdf [accessed
January 21, 2015].
28 Voluntary Carbon Standard, “Voluntary Carbon Standard Program
Guidelines.”
29 The Climate Group, 2006. See [Link]
[accessed January 21, 2015].
30 Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance, State of the Voluntary
Carbon Market (2007), available online at [Link]
com/documents/acrobat/StateoftheVoluntaryCarbonMarket18July_Final.pdf
[January 21, 2015].
31 Anja Kollmuss, Helge Zink, and Clifford Polycarp, Making Sense of the
Voluntary Carbon Market: A Comparison of Carbon Offset Standards
(Germany: WWF, 2008).
32 The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Association, Climate, Community
and Biodiversity Project Design Standards (first edition) (Washington, DC:
The Climate, Community and Biodiversity Association, 2005), available
online at [Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
33 E-mail received from Joanna Durbin, director, Climate, Community and
Biodiversity Alliance, July 30, 2008.
34 Gold Standard, “Fairtrade Carbon Credit Standard: Second Consultation,”
available online at [Link]/public-consultation-fairtrade-car-
bon-credit-standard [accessed January 21, 2015].
35 The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative homepage, available online at www.
[Link]/ [accessed January 21, 2015].
36 ISO, “ISO, WRI, and WBCSD announce cooperation on greenhouse gas
accounting and verification” (2007), available online at [Link]/iso/
[Link]?refid=Ref1093 [accessed January 21, 2015].
37 Carbon Fund, “Carbon Footprint Protocol,” (2008), 3, available online at
[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
38 Simon Zadek, The Civil Corporation: The New Economy of Corporate
Citizenship (London: Earthscan, 2001).
39 Peter Newell, “Managing Multinationals: The Governance of Investment for
the Environment,” Journal of International Development 13, no. 7 (2001):
907–19.
40 Michael Mason, The New Accountability: Environmental Responsibility
Across Borders (London: Earthscan, 2005): 151.
41 Mason, The New Accountability, 150.
42 Peter Newell, “Civil Society, Corporate Accountability and the Politics of
Climate Change,” Global Environmental Politics 8, no. 3 (2008): 124–55.
43 Carbon Tracker Homepage, available online at [Link]
[accessed January 21, 2015].
132 The private governance of climate change

44 Ecowatch, “Divestment Goes Mainstream as Major Funds Kick the Fossil

Fuel Habit,” available online at [Link]/2014/02/03/divestment-
mainstream-kick-fossil-fuel-habit/ [accessed January 21, 2015].
45 Matthew Paterson, “Resistance Makes Carbon Markets,” in Upsetting the
Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets, eds Steffen Böhm and
Saddhartha Dabhi (Colchester: MayFlyBooks, 2009), 244–54.
46 ClimateChangeCorp, “Is Carbon Trading the Most Cost-Effective Way to
Reduce Emissions?” Climate News for Business, available online at http://
[Link]/es/node/5231 [accessed January 21, 2015].
47 European Commission, “Commission Plans Legislative Framework to Ensure
the EU Meets Its Target for Cutting CO2 Emissions from Cars,” IP/07/155
(Brussels February 7, 2007).
48 Peter Newell, Phillip Pattberg, and Heike Schroeder, “Multi-actor Governance
and the Environment,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37
(2012): 365–87.
49 Newell, “Managing Multinationals,” 907–19.
50 Timothy M. Smith, “Climate Change: Corporate Sustainability in the Supply
Chain,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 3 (2013): 43–52.
51 Harriet Bulkeley, Liliana Andonova, Karin Bäckstrand, Michele Betsill, Daniel
Compagnon, Rosaleen Duffy, Ans Kolk, Matthew Hoffmann, David Levy,
Peter Newell, Tori Milledge, Matthew Paterson, Philipp Pattberg, and
Stacy VanDeveer, “Governing Climate Change Transnationally: Assessing the
Evidence from a Database of Sixty Initiatives,” Environment and Planning C:
Government and Policy 30, no. 4 (2012): 591–612.
52 Simone Pulver and Tabitha Benney, “Private Sector Responses to Climate
Change in the Global South,” WIRES: Climate Change 4, no. 6 (2013):
479–96.
53 Sullivan and Gouldson, “Ten Years of Corporate Action on Climate Change,”
733.
54 Chukwumerije Okereke, “An Exploration of Motivations, Drivers and Barriers
To Carbon Management: The UK FTSE100,” European Management Journal
25, no. 6 (2007), 475–86; Øyvind Ihlen, “Business and Climate Change: The
Climate Response of the World’s 30 Largest Corporations,” Environmental
Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3, no. 2 (2009): 244–62.
55 Robert Falkner, “Private Environmental Governance and International
Relations: Exploring the Links,” Global Environmental Politics 3, no. 2
(2003): 72–88; Lars Gulbrandsen, “Accountability Arrangements in Non-State
Standards Organizations: Instrumental Design and Imitation,” Organization
15, no. 4 (2008): 563–83.
56 Peter Newell and Mathew Paterson, “The Politics of the Carbon Economy,”
in The Politics of Climate Change, ed. Max Boykoff (London: Routledge,
2009).
6
CONCLUSIONS

Once upon a time, studying and keeping track of the world of climate
governance was relatively simple. By attending the UN climate change
negotiations or reading Earth Negotiations Bulletin1 and the NGO newslet-
ter ECO you could essentially keep up to date with what was going on. If
you take the view that international institutions continue to be the primary
and most important site of climate governance, your task continues to be a
relatively straightforward one, even if the range of issues on the negotiating
table has grown more complex. If, however, you adopt a broader view of
climate governance—one that takes a broader and more open view about
how and where it happens and who is engaged in it—as we have done
in this book, your task is altogether more complex. In this final chapter
we summarize some of the key cross-cutting themes that have emerged
throughout the book, what they imply for governing climate change, and
how we can make sense of them.

The shifting terrain of governance

Claiming that the landscape of climate governance is more plural, diverse, and
multifaceted is not to say that the governance of climate change by and through
international institutions and nation-states does not continue to be a central part
of the story. Key decisions about overall targets and the means of delivering
them continue to be made at the international level by nation-states operating
within global institutions. We saw in Chapter 1 how historical and contempo-
rary conflicts along North–South and other lines continue to get played out in
the UN negotiations through debates about responsibility for the problem and
the appropriate responses to it. This includes contentious discussions about the
appropriate vehicles for delivering funding, such as the ongoing debates about
the governance of the Green Climate Fund as we saw in Chapter 2.
134 Conclusions

However, we have also seen examples of a tremendous proliferation in

governance initiatives around the world at all scales of politics (from the
local to the global) that enroll a vast array of state, non-state, public, and
private actors in different dimensions of governing.2 These have taken the
form of public–private and hybrid initiatives (such as REEEP and CDM),
of private codes and standard-setting (such as the VCS, Gold Standard, or
GHG Protocol), or community-based initiatives such as Transition Town
projects. As the dimensions of the challenge of tackling climate change
become clearer and the debate moves from setting goals to implementation,
it has become increasingly obvious that climate governance can no longer
be achieved by the actions and initiatives of international institutions or
national governments alone. Rather, the growth of new “sites” of climate
politics that we have documented in this book is testament to the increasing
mainstreaming of climate change—its integration into other policy domains
(biodiversity, trade, energy)—and its increasing uptake by a range of organ-
izations (be they corporate, donor, or civil society) beyond the realm of
what was traditionally considered as climate governance.
We have seen, though, that with this shifting terrain come a number of
critical challenges. Governing across so many scales and through so many
dispersed but overlapping networks presents huge problems of coordina-
tion and policy coherence. We saw in Chapter 2 how the number of banks,
donors, and NGOs clamoring to define a leading role for themselves in
the delivery of carbon finance is creating problems of duplication and turf
wars over who funds what. As a premium is placed on the delivery of clean
energy we have seen the REEEP initiative set up, the REN21 network cre-
ated, and numerous energy investments overseen by the World Bank and
regional development banks in Asia and Latin America. In such a crowded
field, there are challenges of ensuring a rational division of labor which
allows each actor to do what it does best in terms of regional, technological,
or sectoral focus.
Just as actors beyond the traditional world of climate policy are becom-
ing increasingly involved in its governance, so too actors concerned with
climate change involve themselves in the governance of other sectors, such
as energy, trade, industry, agriculture, and housing, to name but a few. This
creates problems of policy coherence at the national level; ensuring that
actions in such areas are compatible with and do not undermine climate
policy goals. But these issue linkages are also apparent at the international
level in debates about the compatibility of climate policy measures with
the international trade regime, for example. One potential trade conflict at
the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the fairness of China’s clean
 Conclusions 135

technology subsidies and domestic sourcing requirements (so-called import

substitution subsidies), was narrowly avoided in 2011 when China agreed to
end the use of the subsidies in question.3 In 2014, the WTO also established
a panel to hear a US complaint against India’s National Solar Mission on
the basis that India’s use of local content requirements in the scheme vio-
lates WTO’s subsidy rules. How this issue, and others, is resolved will be
shaped by who wields most power and whose rules rule. Managing the
shifting terrain and multiple sites of climate governance is not just a matter
of improved coordination. The power of key actors with interests at stake
will be brought to bear in determining what counts as legitimate climate
governance, and how, where, and by whom particular issues such as this
get resolved.

New actors, old politics?

The shifting terrain of climate governance is in part a reflection of the
realization that the resources, capacity, expertise, networks, and power of
actors as diverse as states, firms, cities, communities, civil society organi-
zations, and individuals are required to effectively address all aspects of the
problem. While nation-states and international institutions remain critical
actors, what we have found is that the delivery of the targets and agreed
commitments often implies an important role for many other actors such
as businesses and cities, and in reality is dependent on their support and
engagement if it is to be effective. As David Levy argues, “if an agree-
ment cannot be crafted that gains the consent of major affected industries,
there will likely be no agreement at all.”4 They are, after all, the “street
level bureaucrats” that will be expected to put regulation into practice.5
Often, however, as well as helping to realize the goals of the regime through
their own independent actions, these actors are going beyond the formal
climate regime by setting more ambitious targets than those contained in
Kyoto. For example, the 2007 Bali World Mayors and Local Governments
Climate Protection Agreement states that municipal authorities will seek
to reduce GHG emissions by 60 percent worldwide by 2050, with an 80
percent reduction in emissions from industrialized countries,6 or engage
in forms of governance innovation that precede and predate those adopted
by government. The oil giants Shell and BP had both developed intra-firm
emissions trading schemes from 2000, for example, three years before the
EU ETS was established.
The involvement of multiple actors in the governing of climate change
has not been a necessarily harmonious and consensual process, however.
136 Conclusions

We have seen how actors with conflicting interests in the debate compete to
assert their preferred understanding of the nature of the challenges associ-
ated with climate change. We saw in Chapter 1 how there has been fierce
contestation over whether sufficient scientific consensus exists to justify
potentially costly forms of action for some actors. Conflicts over which evi-
dence is highlighted in the policymakers’ summaries produced by the IPCC
reflect what is at stake in the recommendations that flow from how the risks
associated with acting or not acting are presented. We saw in Chapter 5 how
the business community throughout much of the 1990s sought to present
climate change as a threat to economic growth rather than an opportunity
to develop new successful forms of low-carbon business. Battles continue
today among and within firms about whether climate change is a threat or
an opportunity to their business.
The issue of who governs directly impinges upon the question of who
benefits from current governance arrangements. We saw in Chapter 1 that dis-
putes over the role of the World Bank in managing the Green Climate Fund
reflect developing country concerns about the Bank’s responsiveness to their
developmental needs and priorities. We have also seen how many smaller
developing countries, those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in
many cases, are poorly represented in the international negotiations, and lack
the legal and scientific capacity to engage fully in the discussions taking place.
We used the example of the legal support given by the environmental legal
NGO FIELD to the Alliance of Small Island States most affected by sea-level
rise to bolster their negotiating capacity vis-à-vis more powerful countries
and regions. At the same time, the mutual dependence of state and non-state
actors in realizing climate governance goals is leading to compromises and
new forms of partnership. In Chapter 4, we saw how various forms of com-
munity are being mobilized by states and international institutions in order to
address climate change. This can bring benefits, both in terms of addressing
climate change and for wider goals of social and environmental justice, but
can also lead to the exclusion of those actors’ interests and goals that do not fit
with particular interpretations of the climate governance “project.” Attending
to the politics of who governs, and on whose behalf, will be critical to ensuring
that addressing climate change does not come at a cost to those least able to
represent their interests.

The rise of market and voluntary governance

Throughout the book we have also seen that who governs, and importantly
how they govern, is in a continual state of flux in the world of climate
 Conclusions 137

politics. What is possible and likely from climate governance is a feature of

the health of the economy, the nature of relations between states, and which
other issues compete with climate change for resources and attention—all
of which are subject to change. This broader political and economic con-
text shapes and is shaped by climate governance. We saw in Chapter 2
how the popularity of market-based mechanisms in climate governance can
best be understood within a prevailing context of neo-liberalism; an ideol-
ogy and set of practices which assume a minimal role for the state and
view the market as the main provider of efficient outcomes. The embrace
of emissions trading and the creation of the CDM, where earlier they had
been opposed, can be understood as a result of the deepening hold of neo-
liberalism throughout the 1990s as well as the ability of its most powerful
proponent, the United States, to insist such solutions be part of the glo-
bal deal, even one they then refused to be part of! Likewise, the call for
communities to govern themselves in order to address climate change, as
discussed in Chapter 4, and the growth in partnership approaches, explored
in Chapter 3, are also means of governing global affairs that fit with neo-
liberal ideas about the respective roles of the state, of the private sector, and
of individuals.7
The cases in this book have also demonstrated a dynamic relationship
between formal and informal forms of soft regulation. The CDM Gold
Standard is a private non-governmental initiative that provides “compliance
plus” incentives for investments in projects that meet certain sustainable
development criteria. It does not compete with the CDM rules agreed under
the Kyoto Protocol, but rather provides the incentives and means for those
who want to go beyond them to do so. We also saw how voluntary gov-
ernance experiments, such as with forestry projects in voluntary carbon
offset markets, can prepare the way for their acceptance into the formal
climate regime. On the other hand, some initiatives such as the Asia–Pacific
Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, initially interpreted as an
attempt by the United States to develop an alternative approach to a glo-
bal legally binding emissions reductions framework by focusing on clean
technology cooperation among a select number of leading states, fade away
after a few years.
The normalization of market and voluntary approaches to climate gov-
ernance as a legitimate and appropriate response to the threat of climate
change has, therefore, not been without contest. In particular, with the
rise of carbon markets as a means of allowing wealthier countries to meet
their emission reductions obligations, we have seen contestation over their
consequences particularly for poorer communities whose resources (such
138 Conclusions

as land and forests) become subject to an international trade in emission

reductions (Chapter 2). This has resulted in instances of displacement and
conflict that critics refer to as “carbon colonialism”8 as local regimes of
resource management are brought into the realm of global climate govern-
ance.9 Likewise, Chapter 4 showed through the example of carbon forestry
projects in Mexico how important local institutions are in ensuring that
local communities can capture some of the benefits of engagement with
the carbon economy. These examples suggest the importance of the link
between the processes of governing climate change and the procedural and
distributional aspects of climate governance: who participates and who
decides exercises a powerful influence over who wins and who loses.

Consequences and contestations in climate

governance
Amid such diversity among actors and practices of climate governance,
it is difficult to form definitive judgments about what is working and for
whom. One answer is that it is difficult to know in quantitative terms who is
reducing by how much as more actors get involved in setting their standards
employing different baselines and covering different GHG (as we saw in
Chapter 5). As responsibility is diffused and governance tools proliferate,
maintaining a clear view of what is being achieved overall is very diffi-
cult.10 Symbolically, the fact that governments advance slowly towards a
successor to the Kyoto Protocol, as we saw in Chapter 1, or the fact that
many of the world’s leading firms now endorse the idea of action of climate
change, as we saw in Chapter 5, represents success on one level. Key actors
are engaged and the momentum is there.
And yet, despite the enormous proliferation of initiatives aimed at report-
ing, benchmarking, and measuring performance, at funding projects and
trading credits that we have seen throughout the book, it would be diffi-
cult to argue that the world is showing genuine progress in moving away
from a model of development that is fuelling climate change. Continued
emissions growth tells a different story. Economic growth and emissions
trajectories of GHG continue to be closely aligned, and governments and
corporations alike continue to scour the Earth for new sources of fossil fuels
in spite of full knowledge of the human and ecological consequences of burn-
ing them into the atmosphere.11 Rather than prioritize fundamental changes
in production and consumption of energy, the world’s most industrialized
countries are seeking to locate the lowest cost ways of reducing emissions by
identifying emission reduction projects in the global South, or to make more
 Conclusions 139

money by trading their way out of trouble through the buying and selling of
emissions permits. We have seen how climate justice movements and critics
of carbon trading in particular have sought to question the assumed efficiency
and effectiveness of such market-based governance instruments as well as
highlight the inequalities and injustices that they create or reinforce. But in a
context of such power inequalities within and between societies, the means
of holding to account those that benefit most from what has been called the
“un-governance” of climate change by those that are or will suffer the worst
consequences of inaction are often just not there.
One conclusion that can surely be drawn from the evidence presented
in this book, however, is that the landscape of climate governance is ever-
changing, and interesting and unpredictable alliances between actors,
even former adversaries, are increasingly common. It is to be hoped that
enough powerful allies in the world of finance and business can be brought
on board alongside enough governments with the will and power to lead
on action on climate change, and be pressured, cajoled, and shamed into
action by an increasingly active public and civil society, to adequately address
perhaps the greatest collective action problem the world currently faces.

Theoretical implications
How then are we to explain and make sense of the patterns of govern-
ance described above? In the Introduction we introduced some key themes
and literatures that we believe are useful in explaining this complex tapes-
try of climate governance. Here, we gather some of the key insights that
emerge from this book, having now examined a range of forms of climate
governance.
If we accept that climate governance now takes place in many more
places and is produced by a greater range of actors, it is clear that we need
to adopt theoretical tools and concepts that allow us to go beyond the state
as the primary focus of analysis. Emphasizing the role of non-state actors
and explaining their influence on international climate policy is one impor-
tant aspect of this.12 But given that many of these actors are cooperating and
working together in ways which bypass the climate regime altogether, we
need to explore their roles as governance actors in ways that are not defined
by whether and when they affect state policy. We saw in Chapter 3 how
organizations such as the Climate Group have been able to bring together
novel coalitions of cities, businesses, and civil society organizations to share
and build on successful initiatives to reduce GHG emissions. An emphasis
on networks that cut across national and international divisions is useful
140 Conclusions

here.13 We also saw how work on public–private partnerships can usefully

be applied to governance innovation in the climate arena.14 A key challenge
that remains is how to account for the fact that some partnerships are more
successful and more powerful than others.15
The political economy approaches that we discussed in the Introduction
offer promising ways forward for looking at the relations of power that
underpin political coalitions which seek to deliver or frustrate change.16
They emphasize in particular the role of economic actors in the very proc-
esses which are subject to regulation, where powerful interests are at stake
and from whence change ultimately has to come. By focusing on the
dependencies and material and political alliances that bind together state,
market, and civil society actors, they provide a sense of how much auton-
omy, “policy space,” and scope for effective action they have.17 This could
be the developing country governments dependent on World Bank finance,
or developed country governments reluctant to regulate the emissions of
businesses that threaten to relocate their operations elsewhere. But it could
also be the coalitions formed between financial capital in the city of London
and NGOs pushing business to commit to action or conflicts between differ-
ent business interests which create openings for change.18 This provides us
with a useful way to understand why climate is governed the way it is and
on whose behalf, by placing power at the heart of governance analysis.
All of this implies broader understandings of power than have tradition-
ally been used in the study of climate governance. Notions of “power over”
and the ability to demand actions of others continue to be important: the
power of states over firms and local authorities is critical to their ability to
ensure they enforce actions on climate change. But many of the forms of
private governance that we discussed in Chapters 3 and 5 show that even
without sanctions, forms of peer and consumer or activist pressure often
provide incentives for compliance.19 We have also seen how power oper-
ates in more subtle ways, through the presentation of knowledge and the
inclusion or exclusion of emphasis on some aspects of climate science and
economics and not others. Appeals to moral authority are strongly made
by developing countries and underpin NGO-led proposals on contraction
and convergence or the greenhouse development rights framework that was
discussed in Chapter 1. Considering power in these terms means under-
standing how it works through discourse and in the everyday practice of
policies and actions to address climate change.
The power that actors wield in climate governance is not just visible
within the self-proclaimed arenas of climate policy, nor does it derive pri-
marily from the power they wield in that area, however. As Susan Strange
argues in her critique of regime theories of international governance:
 Conclusions 141

since the chain of cause and effect so often originates in technology

and markets, passing through national policy decisions to emerge as
negotiating postures in multilateral discussions, it follows that atten-
tion to the resultant international agreement of some sort is apt to
overlook most of the determining factors on which agreement may,
in brief, rest.20

Likewise, the World Bank is an increasingly central actor in climate gov-

ernance, not primarily because of its Climate Investment Funds but because
it exerts such influence over the overall development strategies of so many
developing countries. Separating its role as the world’s largest lender from
its role as one among many actors in climate governance makes little sense,
because how developing countries engage with it as a climate actor is
shaped by the knowledge of the power the institution wields over so many
other aspects of their economies.
Climate governance is ironically both a microcosm of a larger global
political economy, but also a meta feature of that system in so far as virtu-
ally all areas of political activity have an impact on or might be understood
as forms of climate governance. For instance, the WTO or the World Bank
would not consider themselves environmental organizations or climate
agencies, but the mandates they have and the influence they wield mean
they have a tremendous impact on the level of GHG emissions that pass
into the atmosphere. Trade agreements that mean goods are transported
over larger distances and financial loans for coal-fired power stations in
the case of the World Bank make the work of the official climate regime
that much harder. Ultimately, whether we have the collective capacity and
will to address climate change in the time frames available to avoid its most
dangerous consequences will depend on fundamental change in policy
areas beyond the direct control of many of the actors and initiatives that we
have explored in this book.
Last but not least, the examples throughout this book of governance in
practice suggest it takes on a much broader range of forms in reality than
many theoretical accounts allow for. We have clearly observed, as others
have done in other areas, a shift from government to governance in which
more actors are involved in processes of governing.21 The tools of govern-
ance have also broadened from law and regulation to voluntary standards,
codes, and partnerships, but also day-to-day supply chain management
within firms whose decisions often dwarf those made in the traditional are-
nas of climate governance in terms of their impact on emissions of GHG.
Whilst the tremendous diversity and dynamism of climate governance
142 Conclusions

generates huge challenges of coordination, accountability, and effective-

ness, a fact which in itself makes it hard to get a handle on how effective
action is and who is benefiting, the plurality of sites of action could also be
a positive thing as actors move between arenas trying to advance action in
the fastest and most effective way they can, working with whom they need
to, wherever that happens to be. We surely have to hope for all our sakes
that the forms of climate governance we are now busy constructing are
up to the scale of the challenge we are faced with and can deliver change
within the time we have available to us to prevent the very worst scenarios
of uncontrolled climate change.

Notes
1 Back issues of Earth Negotiations Bulletin are available online at [Link]
[Link]/[Link] [accessed January 21, 2015].
2 Matthew Hoffman, Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting
with a Global Response after Kyoto (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011).
3 ICTSD, “China to End Challenged Subsidies in Wind Power Case,” Bridges
Trade BioRes June 13, 2011, available online at [Link]
news/biores/news/china-to-end-challenged-subsidies-in-wind-power-case
[accessed January 21, 2015].
4 David Levy, “Business and the Evolution of the Climate Regime: The
Dynamics of Corporate Strategies,” in The Business of Global Environmental
Governance, eds David Levy and Peter Newell (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2005): 73–105.
5 Michael Lipskey, Street-level Bureaucracy (New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1983).
6 The World Mayors and Local Governments Climate Protection Agreement,
available online at [Link] [accessed
January 21, 2015].
7 Peter Newell, Phillip Pattberg, and Heike Schroeder, “Multi-actor Governance
and the Environment,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37
(2012): 365–87.
8 Heidi Bachram, “Climate Fraud and Carbon Colonialism: The New Trade in
Greenhouse Gases,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 15, no. 4 (2004): 5–20.
9 Peter Newell and Adam Bumpus, “The Global Political Ecology of the CDM,”
Global Environmental Politics 12, no. 4 (2012): 49–68.
10 Harriet Bulkeley, Liliana Andonova, Karin Bäckstrand, Michele Betsill,
Daniel Compagnon, Rosaleen Duffy, Ans Kolk, Matthew Hoffmann,
David Levy, Peter Newell, Tori Milledge, Matthew Paterson, Philipp Pattberg,
Stacy VanDeveer, “Governing Climate Change Transnationally: Assessing the
Evidence from a Database of Sixty Initiatives,” Environment and Planning C:
Government and Policy 30, no. 4 (2012): 591–612.
11 Greenpeace International, Point of No Return: The Massive Climate Threats
We Must Avoid (Amsterdam: Greenpeace International, 2013).
 Conclusions 143

12 Bas Arts, “Non-State Actors in Global Environmental Governance: New

Arrangements Beyond the State,” in New Modes of Governance in the
Global System: Exploring Publicness, Delegation and Inclusiveness, eds
Mathias Koenig-Archibugi and Michael Zürn (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave,
2006): 177–201; Peter Newell, Climate for Change: Non-State Actors and
the Global Politics of the Greenhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000); Michelle Betsill and Elizabeth Correll, “NGO Influence in
International Environmental Negotiations: A Framework for Analysis,”
Global Environmental Politics 1, no. 4 (2001): 65–85.
13 Harriet Bulkeley, “Reconfiguring Environmental Governance: Towards a
Politics of Scales and Networks,” Political Geography 24 (2005): 875–902.
14 Karin Backstränd and Charlotte Streck, “New Partnerships in Global
Environmental Policy: the Clean Development Mechanism,” Journal of
Environment and Development 13, no. 3 (2004): 295–322.
15 Phillip Pattberg, “Public–private Partnerships in Global Climate Governance,”
WIREs Climate Change 1, no. 2 (2010): 279–87.
16 Jonas Meckling, Carbon Coalitions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011).
17 Kevin Gallagher, ed., Putting Development First (London: Zed Books,
2005).
18 Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, Climate Capitalism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
19 Peter Newell, “Civil Society, Corporate Accountability and the Politics of
Climate Change,” Global Environmental Politics 8, no. 3 (2008): 124–55.
20 Susan Strange, “Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,”
International Organization 36, no. 2 (1983): 488–90.
21 James Rosenau and Ernst Otto Czempiel, eds, Governance Without
Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992); Vasudha Chhotray and Gerry Stoker, Governance
Theory: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008); Rod A. W. Rhodes, “The New Governance: Governing
Without Government,” Political Studies 44, no. 4 (1996): 652–67.
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the ways in which assumptions about scale and space in political analyses affect
our understanding of the processes of governance.
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Paterson, M. Global Warming, Global Politics (London: Routledge, 1996). Assesses
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Biermann, F., Pattberg, P., and Zelli, F. eds, Global Climate Governance Beyond
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tecture, agency, and adaptation in the climate regime.
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Grubb, M., Vrolijk, C., and Brack, D. The Kyoto Protocol: A Guide and Assessment
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Hoffman, M. Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global
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breakdown of the “mega multilateralism” of the international negotiations process
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Adger, N., Paavola, J., Huq, S., and Mace, M. J. eds, Fairness in Adaptation to
Climate Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). Explores the impor-
tance of issues of equity, justice, and fairness in adapting to the effects of climate
change.
Roberts, J. T., and Parks, B. Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North–South
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Andonova, L., Betsill, M., and Bulkeley, H., “Transnational Climate Governance,”
Global Environmental Politics 9, no. 2 (May 2009): 52–73. Examines the origins
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Bulkeley, H., Andonova, L., Betsill, M., Compagnon, D., Hoffman, M., Hale, T.,
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Begg, K., van der Woerd, F., and Levy, D. eds, The Business of Climate Change
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INDEX

accountability 64, 81, 83–4 Berlin Mandate (AGBM) 30, 49

Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) Betsill, Michele 13
95 Big Green Challenge competition
Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban (NESTA) 101
Platform for Enhanced Action Blair, Tony 79
(ADP) 33 Bolin, Bert 34, 36
Ad Hoc Working Group on Further BP 2, 81, 114, 119, 135
Commitments 32–3 Brazil 52
Adaptation Fund 31–2, 55 BRICS countries 26, 52, 56
Adger, Neil 57 Brixton Energy 103
Alliance of Small Island States Brooks, Catherine 93
(AOSIS) 24, 136 Buenos Aires Plan of Action 31
Amoco 2, 114 Buenos Aires Programme of Work
Andonova, Liliana 69 on Adaptation and Response
Arrhenius, Svante 34 Measures 32
Asia–Pacific Partnership on Clean Bukaleba Forestry Reserve, Uganda 59
Development 52, 137 Bumpus, Adam 98
Asian Development Bank 53 Burton, Ian 93–4
Assessment Reports (IPCC) 27–98 Bush, George W. 39, 115
Australia 2, 39, 114, 117 Business Council for Sustainable
Australia–China Partnership 52 Development 113
Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Business Europe 115
Resource Economics (ABARE) Byrd–Hagel Senate Resolution 98 39
116–17
Australian Conservation Foundation 117 C40 network 76, 83
Canada 2, 33, 114
Bäckstrand, Karin 69, 77–8 Cancún meeting (2010) 33
Bali Action Plan (2007) 32–3, 51 Cannon, Terry 93–4
Bali summit (2008) 120 carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions: and
Bali World Mayors and Local carbon colonialism 59, 138–9; and
Governments Climate Protection “carbon leakage” problem 117;
Agreement 75, 135 carbon markets 41–2, 44, 62, 96–9,
Balling, Robert 115 121, 137–8; and the EU Covenant of
Baywind cooperative 100 Mayors 74; and EU strategy for car
Benney, Tabitha 127 emissions 126; and Fairtrade Carbon
Berera, Kentucky 103 Credits 122–3; and forestry schemes
148 Index

96–7, 101; and major oil, fossil and global governance 27–8; human
fuel, cement industries 2–3, see also contributions 115; international in
greenhouse gases (GHG) extent 6–10; scale of 2
Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) 72, Climate Community and Biodiversity
123–4, 127–8 Alliance (CCBA) 81
Carbon Disclosure Standards Board Climate, Community, and Biodiversity
(2010) 128 standard (CCB) 121–2
“Carbon Footprint Protocol” (Carbon Climate Council 115, 117
Fund) 123 climate governance: broader view of
Carbon Fund 123 133; enrolling more actors 64; how
Carbon Market Finance Initiative it takes place 16; market-based
(UK) 42 solutions 40–2; North–South politics
carbonn Cities Climate Registry 23, 37–40, 41, 52–3; shifting terrain
(cCR) 75 of 133–5; and the wider global
CCB standard 81 economy 43
CER units 42 Climate Group (UK) 119, 121, 139
Certified Emissions Reductions 55–6 Climate Investment Funds (CIFs)
China: adopted voluntary obligations 53, 141
to reduce emissions 39; fairness of Climate Leadership Group (C40) 74
clean technology 134–5; investment Climate Research Unit (University of
tended to flow to 55; and opposition East Anglia) 36
to Kyoto 117; part of northern “Climate Star” award 77
coalition 25, 50–2 “climate-gate” scandal 36
Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) 69, Clinton, Bill 117
73–5, 77, 82, 84 Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) 75–6
Clean Development Mechanism Coalition for Vehicle Choice 116
(CDM): accountability to Combat Climate Change (3C) 80
communities hosting projects Commission of the European
64; and the Adaptation Fund 55; Union 74
and the CCB 81; creation of 137; “Communiqué on Climate Change”
details of 30–2; and different forms (FT) 120
of governance 80; a form of joint communities: engaging the public
implementation 49; Gold Standard 91–5; forestry 95–9, 101, 106;
121, 137; managing/renewing forest governing climate change 102–5;
resources 95–8; and marketization governing 105–9; introduction 90–1;
40–2; and Mexican project 108; and renewable energy 99–101
mixed benefits for communities Community Action for Energy
84; reductions in GHG 79; sales of program 99
certified emission reductions 55; and Community Energy scheme 99
transnational networks 72; and the Community Renewables Initiative 99
VCS 122 community-based disaster preparedness
Clean Technology Fund (World Bank) (CBDP) 93–4
53–4 Confederation of British Industry
Clear Skies 99 (UK) 115
Climate Accountability Institute 2 Conference of the Parties to the
Climate Action Network (CAN) 13 UNFCCC (COP): and the 1995
Climate Alliance 69, 73–4, 76, 84 Berlin Mandate 30; COP 17. 54;
climate change problem: adaptation COPs 4 and 6. 31; COPs 7, 10–3,
58; and the business sector 118–20; 15, 21. 32, 75; description of 24
different levels of governance 10; Conservation International 81
 Index 149

consumers, role of 2 Fairtrade Carbon Credit standard 122–3

“Contraction and Convergence” Fairtrade International 122
proposal 50 faith-based institutional investors 124
Copenhagen Accord 26, 38, 54 FIELD (UK legal group) 61
Copenhagen summit (2009): and Financial Industry Regulatory
developing countries 38–9; Authority (US) 128
failure to agree legally binding “flexibility mechanisms” 40–1, 49
agreement 32; and growing power Food and Growing group (Brixton) 103
of BRICS countries 26; and the key Forest Stewardship Scheme project
deal-brokers 43; and Scaling up 98, 122
Renewable Energy Program 53; and forestry 95–9, 101, 106
South Africa 39 “fortress conservation” 95
fossil fuel industries 117–18, 124–5
Designated Operational Entities 78 Foucault, Michel 35
Du Pont 119 Foundation for International
Durban (2011) 33 Environmental Law and
Durban Platform for Enhanced Development (FIELD) 24
Action 24 Fourier, Joseph 34
France 2, 114
Earth Negotiations Bulletin 133 Free-riding 2
ECO (NGO newsletter) 133
Ecomagination (General Electric) 119 Garden Share project (Totnes) 103
Economic Commission for Latin General Electric 119
America and the Caribbean Geneva climate meeting (1990) 37
(ECLAC) 59 Global Climate Coalition (GCC)
Edison Electric Institute 116 115, 117
emission reduction units (ERUs) 31 Global Environment Facility (GEF)
Energy Cities 73–4, 76 38, 53
Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit global governance perspectives 12–6
Program 75 Global Warming Foundation 116
Energy White Paper 2003 (UK) 99 global warming resolutions 124
Eskom 63 globalization: changing nature of the
Estrada-Oyuela, Raúl 49 state 4; shifts in power between state
EU–China Partnership 52 and market 129; and transnational
European Mobility Week 76 climate change governance 69–70
European Round Table of Industrialists Gold Standard Foundation 122
(ERT) 115 Gore, Al 13
European Union (EU): abandoned Gouldson, Andy 127–8
strategy for reducing CO2 emissions Governance: challenge of 1–6; issues
from cars 126; and the carbon of equity and justice in 48–64;
tax 115; and the Climate Action making sense of the patterns of 139;
Network (CAN) 13; Covenant of tremendous proliferation in
Mayors 74; and emissions trading initiatives 134
30, 41; Emissions Trading Scheme “governance trap” 92, 107
(ETS) 30, 41, 120, 135; keen to see Gramsci, Antonio 15
a stronger agreement 25; and the Green Climate Cities 75
Kyoto Protocol 32–3; left out in the Green Climate Fund 33, 38, 53–4, 64,
cold 26; one of the top five emitters 133, 136
of CO2 50 Greenhouse Development Rights
Exxon 2, 114, 116–17 framework 51
150 Index

Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG) 123 Hinchliffe, Steve 92

greenhouse gases (GHG): alarm at Hopkins, Rob 102
increased levels of 1; and the Bali HSBC 129
World Mayors Agreement 135; and Hurrell, Andrew 6
carbon markets 98, 127; and carbon Hurricane Katrina 58
sequestration 95; and CCP 74; and Hurricane Mitch 59
CDM projects 56; decision making Hurst, Lionel 49
shaping trajectories of 3; demands
of US/Australia 39–40; discoveries IBM 119
by scientists 34; economic growth/ ICLEI 73–4, 77, 82
emissions trajectories closely aligned IETA 121
138; embedded nature of processes India 39, 50, 52, 55, 135
that lead to 2; and emission reduction Indonesia 93
pledges 33; emissions not covered by Information Council for the
international/national climate policy Environment (US) 116
83; engaging the public 91–2; first information-sharing 71
international assessment convened Intel 81
34–5; and first-movers 120; forms Inter-American Commission on Human
of individual behaviour that lead Rights 60
to 94–5; and General Electric Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
119; global protocol for 75; and Change (IPCC): alarming reports
individual TT initiatives 105, 107; from 1; appointments to 37–8;
and the Kyoto Protocol 30; multiple conflicts over evidence 136;
measures used to record reductions established in 1988 35–6, 114; and
of 82; and nation-states 4; and non- transnational governance of climate
state actors 5; and the private sector change 82–3
113, 119, 124, 126–7; public and International Council of Scientific
private financial flows 56–7; top five Unions (ICSU) 35
emitters of CO2 50; and transnational International Organization for
climate change governance 81; and Standardization (ISO) 123
the UN Conference 1992 29; and Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) 60
WTO and the World Bank 141, see Inuit community 60–1
also carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions IPCC report (2014) 57
Greenpeace International 2, 113–14
GRILA (Group of Latin American Jaeger, Carlo 92
countries) 52 Japan 26, 33, 50
Group of 77 (G77): absence of US JUSCANZ grouping 26
galvanized into action 32–3;
presentation of a united front by Karmali, Abyd 125–6
38, 49–50, 52; provides platform Kempton, Willet 92
for shared concerns about climate Keohane, Robert 68
change policy 25 Kyoto Protocol: areas not covered by
Group of Eight (G8) Gleneagles 39; bilateral deals in competition
summit on climate change 74 with 52; in brief 30–1; and the
business sector 118; and the CDM
Hagel, Chuck 39 78, 137; cities pledged to meet targets
Heal, Geoffrey 4 74; collective target of 5 percent
Helio International 121 reductions 9; coming into force of
High Level Advisory Group on Climate 28–30, 32; critical to the process
Change Finance (2010) 55 23–4; introduction 7–8; Japan
 Index 151

opposed to second commitment point of reference 10–1; and

period 26; and municipalities 76; regimes 7
national mitigation targets 51; National Association of Manufacturers
organisations opposed to 116; and (US) 115
reforestation/afforestation 95–6; National Coal Association of the
reliant on transnational hybrid United States 116
networks 79; role of NGOs in National Institute of Ecology 96
the development of 13; second National Mining Association 115
commitment period 33; successor Nature Conservancy Council 81
to 138; transnational arrangements NEG-ECP initiative to adopt a joint
69, 72; United States walked away Climate Change Action Plan
from 31–2; and US demands 39; use (2001) 73
of flexible market mechanisms 38, neo-Gramscian approach 15
40–1, 49; veto threats against 117 neo-liberalism 69–70, 129, 137
Netherlands 2, 114
Land-Use Change and Forestry Network of Regional Governments
(LULUCF) 123 for Sustainable Development
Lawson, Nigel 116 (nrg4SD) 73
Least Developed Countries Fund 32 non-governmental organizations
Least Developed Countries (LDCs) (NGOs): an important role
32, 52 monitoring public/private activity
Levy, David 135 59–60; and “astroturf” organizations
Liverman, Diana 98 116; can adopt “insider” strategies
Low Carbon Communities program 13; and hybrid transnational
101 governance 77; and the Kyoto
Protocol 13; as project developers,
Marrakesh Accords (2001) 32, 41–2 monitors and watchdogs 44; and
Mexico 96–8, 106–7, 138 REDD+ 98
Michaels, Patrick 115 Norway 125
Microsoft 75 Nye, Joseph 68
Milenio Coffee Producers
Organization 97 Obama, President 26
“Mind the Science Mind the Gap” Official Development Assistance
project 80 (ODA) 56
Mitchell, Timothy 5 Offset Quality Initiative (2007) 127
Mobil 2, 114, 116; see also Exxon Organization for Economic
Mozambique 59 Cooperation and Development
Mpingo Conservation and (OECD) 50, 56
Development Initiative (Tanzania) Organization of Petroleum Exporting
98 Countries (OPEC) 24, 52, 118
multinational corporations, role of 2 Ozone: depletion 5; and the Montreal
Museveni, President 49 Protocol 29

Nairobi Framework on Capacity- Paris summit (2015) 33, 50

Building for the CDM 32 Parks, Bradley 58–9
Nairobi Work Programme on participatory rapid appraisal (PRA) 93
Adaptation 32 Paterson, Owen 116
nation-states: co-operation of 6–7; Payments for Carbon, Biodiversity
critical actors 135; and governance and Agro-forestry services
of climate change 4–5; as the key (PSA-CABSA) 96–7
152 Index

Payments for Hydrological Services San Bartolomé Loxicha 97

scheme 96 Saudi Arabia 2, 114, 118
Pearlman, Don 117–18 Schlaes, John 115, 117–18
Petts, Judith 93 Scientific and Technological Advice
Pew Centre (US) 119 (SBSTA) 24
Philippines 93–4 sea-level rise 24, 39
Plantar project 60 Shell 2, 114, 119, 135
Poverty and Climate Change Shove, Elizabeth 94
(report) 58 Singer, Fred 115
poverty effects 58–9 SinksWatch (WRM initiative) 60
private sector: governance issues and South Africa 4, 39
challenges 125–9; private regulation Spain 2, 114
120–5 Special Climate Change Fund 32
private sector involvement: and state, the: conception of 15; need
climate change 113–14; introduction to reconsider way in which it
113; private governance 118–20, operates 108
137–40; shaping the climate Statoil 116
regime 114–18 “Stop Climate Chaos” coalition 62
public–private partnerships (PPP) 5, Strange, Susan 140–1
77–8, 134, 140 Streck, Charlotte 78
Pulver, Simone 127 sub-Saharan Africa 32, 57–8
Subsidiary Bodies for Implementation
Quantifiable Emissions Limitations (SBI) 24
and Reduction Obligations Sullivan, Rory 127–8
(QELROs) 30 Sununu, John 115
Surselva, Switzerland 92
Rainforest Alliance 81
Raymond, Lee 117 Tesco 126
Red Cross 93 Texaco 2, 114, 116
Reducing Emissions from The Climate Group (TCG) 74–5, 79
Deforestation and forest Degradation Totnes, Devon 102–3
(REDD+) 81, 96, 98–9 Transition Network 102–5
“regime complex” 13–4 Transition Towns (TT) 102–5, 106–8,
Regimes: approaches of 10, 12, 14–6; 134
shortcomings of 16; theory 12–3; transnational networks: challenges
understanding/defining 7–9 82–5; emergence of 69–70;
Reinstein, Robert 115 governing 70–3; hybrid 77–80, 81;
REN21 network 134 introduction 68; self-regulation/
Renewable Energy and Energy private 80–1; types of governance
Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) 52, 73–7
71, 78, 80, 134 Tyndall, John 34
Resilient Household project Type II partnerships 70, 77–8
(Kentucky) 103
Rio+20 Summit (2012) 75 UN-Habitat 75
Ripa di Meana, Carlo 115 United Kingdom: and feed-in-tariffs
Roberts, Timmons 58–9 (FIT) 100–1; and the “Helping the
Rockefeller Brothers Foundation 79 Earth Begins at Home” campaign
Rosenau, James 12 91–2; private sector/communities
Ruggie, John 80 and renewable energy 99–100;
Russia 26, 32, 50 promotion of wind energy 108;
 Index 153

reactions of UK-listed companies 25–6; role of 43; use of “flexibility

120; and renewable energy 106–7 mechanisms” 40–1; walked away
United Nations Conference on from Kyoto Protocol 7–8, 31–2
Environment and Development US Mayors’ Climate Protection
(UNCED) 29 Agreement (2005) 74
United Nations Development US–India bilateral agreement on
Programme (UNDP) 60, 62 nuclear energy 52
United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP) 33, 35 van Aalst, Maarten K. 93–4
United Nations Framework Convention Vattenfall 80
on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 7, Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)
13–14: aim of avoiding dangerous 121–2, 126
interference in climate system Vienna Convention 29–30
50–1; establishment of 114; notion Vietnam 93
of “common but differentiated Villach conference (1985) 35
responsibility” 38; overall goal of Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS)
the agreement 37; and reforestation/ 79, 121–2
afforestation 95–6; rules of Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment
procedure of 33 (VCA) 93
United Nations High Level Advisory
Group on Climate Change Walker, Gordon 99–100
(UNFCCC): agreed at the UN Wapner, Paul 14
Conference (1992) 29–30; and Watkins, Kevin 60
impacts on developing countries 118; Watson, Bob 37
and the private sector 113; Reducing Watt-Cloutier, Sheila 60
Emissions from Deforestation West Oxford Community Renewables
and Forest Degradation (REDD+) (WOCoRe) 101
34 mechanism 96; reliant on Western Fuels Association (US)
transnational hybrid networks 79; 115–16
report on investment and financial wind farms 106
flows 55 World Bank 38, 41, 53–4, 62–3, 75,
United Nations Industrial Development 136, 140–1
Organization (UNIDO) 62 World Business Council on Sustainable
United Nations (UN): involvement in Development (WBCSD) 80,
climate change 27; struggle to retain 121, 123
relevance 44 World Coal Association 115
United States: alternative approach to World Coal Institute 118
global legally binding emissions World Meteorological Organization
reductions 137; and the Byrd– (WMO) 35
Hagel resolution 117; doubts World Rainforest Movement
about the science of 115; and the (WRM) 60
grandfathering system for permits World Resources Institute (WRI)
51; and Inuit community petition 80, 123
60–1; one of top five emitters of CO2 World Summit on Sustainable
50; opposed to second commitment Development 1972 (WSSD) 70, 72,
period for Kyoto protocol 33; and 77–8
public understanding of climate World Trade Organization (WTO)
change 92; resolutely opposed 56, 134–5, 141
to legally binding cuts in GHG WWF International 121
ROUTLEDGE GLOBAL
INSTITUTIONS SERIES

104 Governing Climate Change (2nd edition, 2015)

by Harriet Bulkeley (Durham University) and Peter Newell
(University of Sussex)
103 Representing Islam in International Relations (2015)
Politics, Problems, and Potential of the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation
by Turan Kayaoglu (University of Washington, Tacoma)
102 Contemporary Human Rights Ideas (2nd edition, 2015)
by Bertrand G. Ramcharan
101 The Politics of International Organizations (2015)
Views from insiders
edited by Patrick Weller (Griffith University) and Xu Yi-chong
(Griffith University)
100 Global Poverty (2nd edition, 2015)
Global governance and poor people in the post-2015 era
by David Hulme (University of Manchester)
99 Global Corporations and Global Governance
by Christopher May (Lancaster University)
98 The United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (2015)
Corporate conduct and the public interest
by Khalil Hamdani (Lahore School of Economics) and Lorraine
Ruffing
97 The Challenges of Constructing Legitimacy in Peacebuilding
(2015)
Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, and East Timor
by Daisaku Higashi (University of Tokyo)
 Routledge Global Institutions Series 155

96 The European Union and Environmental Governance (2015)

by Henrik Selin (Boston University) and Stacy D. VanDeveer
(University of New Hampshire)
95 Rising Powers, Global Governance, and Global Ethics (2015)
edited by Jamie Gaskarth (Plymouth University)
94 Wartime Origins and the Future United Nations (2015)
edited by Dan Plesch (SOAS, University of London) and Thomas G.
Weiss (CUNY Graduate Center)
93 International Judicial Institutions (2nd edition, 2015)
The architecture of international justice at home and abroad
by Richard J. Goldstone (Retired Justice of the Constitutional
Court of South Africa) and Adam M. Smith (International Lawyer,
Washington, DC)
92 The NGO Challenge for International Relations Theory (2014)
edited by William E. DeMars (Wofford College) and Dennis
Dijkzeul (Ruhr University Bochum)
91 Standing up for the Polity (2014)
21st Century Democracy Promotion in the Americas
by Jorge Heine (Wilfrid Laurier University) and Brigitte Weiffen
(University of Konstanz)
90 BRICS and Coexistence (2014)
An alternative vision of world order
edited by Cedric de Coning (Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs), Thomas Mandrup (Royal Danish Defence College), and
Liselotte Odgaard (Royal Danish Defence College)
89 IBSA (2014)
The rise of the Global South?
by Oliver Stuenkel (Getulio Vargas Foundation)
88 Making Global Institutions Work (2014)
edited by Kate Brennan
87 Post-2015 UN Development (2014)
Making change happen
edited by Stephen Browne (FUNDS Project) and Thomas G. Weiss
(CUNY Graduate Center)
156 Routledge Global Institutions Series

86 Who Participates in Global Governance? (2014)

States, bureaucracies, and NGOs in the United Nations
by Molly Ruhlman (Towson University)
85 The Security Council as Global Legislator (2014)
edited by Vesselin Popovski (United Nations University) and Trudy
Fraser (United Nations University)
84 UNICEF (2014)
Global governance that works
by Richard Jolly (University of Sussex)
83 The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication (SWIFT) (2014)
Cooperative governance for network innovation, standards, and
community
by Susan V. Scott (London School of Economics and Political
Science) and Markos Zachariadis (University of Cambridge)
82 The International Politics of Human Rights (2014)
Rallying to the R2P cause?
edited by Monica Serrano (Colegio de Mexico) and Thomas G.
Weiss (The CUNY Graduate Center)
81 Private Foundations and Development Partnerships (2014)
American philanthropy and global development agendas
by Michael Moran (Swinburne University of Technology)
80 Nongovernmental Development Organizations and the Poverty
Reduction Agenda (2014)
The moral crusaders
by Jonathan J. Makuwira (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
University)
79 Corporate Social Responsibility (2014)
The role of business in sustainable development
by Oliver F. Williams (University of Notre Dame)
78 Reducing Armed Violence with NGO Governance (2014)
edited by Rodney Bruce Hall (Oxford University)
77 Transformations in Trade Politics (2014)
Participatory trade politics in West Africa
Silke Trommer (Murdoch University)
 Routledge Global Institutions Series 157

76 Committing to the Court (2013)

Rules, politics, and the International Criminal Court
by Yvonne M. Dutton (Indiana University)
75 Global Institutions of Religion (2013)
Ancient movers, modern shakers
by Katherine Marshall (Georgetown University)
74 Crisis of Global Sustainability (2013)
by Tapio Kanninen
73 The Group of Twenty (G20) (2013)
by Andrew F. Cooper (University of Waterloo) and Ramesh Thakur
(Australian National University)
72 Peacebuilding (2013)
From concept to commission
by Rob Jenkins (Hunter College, CUNY)
71 Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms, Strategic Framing,
and Intervention (2013)
Lessons for the Responsibility to Protect
by Melissa Labonte (Fordham University)
70 Feminist Strategies in International Governance (2013)
edited by Gülay Caglar (Humboldt University, Berlin), Elisabeth
Prügl (the Graduate Institute of International and Development
Studies, Geneva), and Susanne Zwingel (the State University of New
York, Potsdam)
69 The Migration Industry and the Commercialization of
International Migration (2013)
edited by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (Danish Institute for
International Studies) and Ninna Nyberg Sørensen (Danish Institute
for International Studies)
68 Integrating Africa (2013)
Decolonization’s legacies, sovereignty, and the African Union
by Martin Welz (University of Konstanz)
67 Trade, Poverty, Development (2013)
Getting beyond the WTO’s Doha deadlock
edited by Rorden Wilkinson (University of Manchester) and James
Scott (University of Manchester)
158 Routledge Global Institutions Series

66 The United Nations Industrial Development Organization

(UNIDO) (2012)
Industrial solutions for a sustainable future
by Stephen Browne (FUNDS Project)
65 The Millennium Development Goals and Beyond (2012)
Global development after 2015
edited by Rorden Wilkinson (University of Manchester) and David
Hulme (University of Manchester)
64 International Organizations as Self-Directed Actors (2012)
A framework for analysis
edited by Joel E. Oestreich (Drexel University)
63 Maritime Piracy (2012)
by Robert Haywood (One Earth Future Foundation) and Roberta
Spivak (One Earth Future Foundation)
62 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
(2nd edition, 2012)
by Gil Loescher (University of Oxford), Alexander Betts (University
of Oxford), and James Milner (University of Toronto)
61 International Law, International Relations, and Global
Governance (2012)
by Charlotte Ku (University of Illinois)
60 Global Health Governance (2012)
by Sophie Harman (City University, London)
59 The Council of Europe (2012)
by Martyn Bond (University of London)
58 The Security Governance of Regional Organizations (2011)
edited by Emil J. Kirchner (University of Essex) and Roberto
Domínguez (Suffolk University)
57 The United Nations Development Programme and System
(2011)
by Stephen Browne (FUNDS Project)
56 The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (2011)
An emerging collaboration architecture
by Lawrence Sáez (University of London)
 Routledge Global Institutions Series 159

55 The UN Human Rights Council (2011)

by Bertrand G. Ramcharan (Geneva Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies)
54 Responsibility to Protect (2011)
Cultural perspectives in the Global South
edited by Rama Mani (University of Oxford) and Thomas G. Weiss
(The CUNY Graduate Center)
53 The International Trade Centre (2011)
Promoting exports for development
by Stephen Browne (FUNDS Project) and Sam Laird (University of
Nottingham)
52 The Idea of World Government (2011)
From ancient times to the twenty-first century
by James A. Yunker (Western Illinois University)
51 Humanitarianism Contested (2011)
Where angels fear to tread
by Michael Barnett (George Washington University) and Thomas G.
Weiss (The CUNY Graduate Center)
50 The Organization of American States (2011)
Global governance away from the media
by Monica Herz (Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro)
49 Non-Governmental Organizations in World Politics (2011)
The construction of global governance
by Peter Willetts (City University, London)
48 The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) (2011)
by Ian Taylor (University of St. Andrews)
47 Global Think Tanks (2011)
Policy networks and governance
by James G. McGann (University of Pennsylvania) with Richard
Sabatini
46 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) (2011)
Creating norms for a complex world
by J.P. Singh (Georgetown University)
160 Routledge Global Institutions Series

45 The International Labour Organization (2011)

Coming in from the cold
by Steve Hughes (Newcastle University) and Nigel Haworth
(University of Auckland)
44 Global Poverty (2010)
How global governance is failing the poor
by David Hulme (University of Manchester)
43 Global Governance, Poverty, and Inequality (2010)
edited by Jennifer Clapp (University of Waterloo) and Rorden
Wilkinson (University of Manchester)
42 Multilateral Counter-Terrorism (2010)
The global politics of cooperation and contestation
by Peter Romaniuk (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)
41 Governing Climate Change (2010)
by Harriet A. Bulkeley (Durham University) and Peter Newell
(University of East Anglia)
40 The UN Secretary-General and Secretariat (2nd edition, 2010)
by Leon Gordenker (Princeton University)
39 Preventive Human Rights Strategies (2010)
by Bertrand G. Ramcharan (Geneva Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies)
38 African Economic Institutions (2010)
by Kwame Akonor (Seton Hall University)
37 Global Institutions and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic (2010)
Responding to an international crisis
by Franklyn Lisk (University of Warwick)
36 Regional Security (2010)
The capacity of international organizations
by Rodrigo Tavares (United Nations University)
35 The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(2009)
by Richard Woodward (University of Hull)
34 Transnational Organized Crime (2009)
by Frank Madsen (University of Cambridge)
 Routledge Global Institutions Series 161

33 The United Nations and Human Rights (2nd edition, 2009)

A guide for a new era
by Julie A. Mertus (American University)
32 The International Organization for Standardization (2009)
Global governance through voluntary consensus
by Craig N. Murphy (Wellesley College) and JoAnne Yates
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
31 Shaping the Humanitarian World (2009)
by Peter Walker (Tufts University) and Daniel G. Maxwell (Tufts
University)
30 Global Food and Agricultural Institutions (2009)
by John Shaw
29 Institutions of the Global South (2009)
by Jacqueline Anne Braveboy-Wagner (City College of New York,
CUNY)
28 International Judicial Institutions (2009)
The architecture of international justice at home and abroad
by Richard J. Goldstone (Retired Justice of the Constitutional Court
of South Africa) and Adam M. Smith (Harvard University)
27 The International Olympic Committee (2009)
The governance of the Olympic system
by Jean-Loup Chappelet (IDHEAP Swiss Graduate School of Public
Administration) and Brenda Kübler-Mabbott
26 The World Health Organization (2009)
by Kelley Lee (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
25 Internet Governance (2009)
The new frontier of global institutions
by John Mathiason (Syracuse University)
24 Institutions of the Asia–Pacific (2009)
ASEAN, APEC, and beyond
by Mark Beeson (University of Birmingham)
23 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (2008)
The politics and practice of refugee protection into the twenty-first
century
by Gil Loescher (University of Oxford), Alexander Betts (University
of Oxford), and James Milner (University of Toronto)
162 Routledge Global Institutions Series

22 Contemporary Human Rights Ideas (2008)

by Bertrand G. Ramcharan (Geneva Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies)
21 The World Bank (2008)
From reconstruction to development to equity
by Katherine Marshall (Georgetown University)
20 The European Union (2008)
by Clive Archer (Manchester Metropolitan University)
19 The African Union (2008)
Challenges of globalization, security, and governance
by Samuel M. Makinda (Murdoch University) and F. Wafula Okumu
(McMaster University)
18 Commonwealth (2008)
Inter- and non-state contributions to global governance
by Timothy M. Shaw (Royal Roads University)
17 The World Trade Organization (2007)
Law, economics, and politics
by Bernard M. Hoekman (World Bank) and Petros C. Mavroidis
(Columbia University)
16 A Crisis of Global Institutions? (2007)
Multilateralism and international security
by Edward Newman (University of Birmingham)
15 UN Conference on Trade and Development (2007)
by Ian Taylor (University of St. Andrews) and Karen Smith
(University of Stellenbosch)
14 The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(2007)
by David J. Galbreath (University of Aberdeen)
13 The International Committee of the Red Cross (2007)
A neutral humanitarian actor
by David P. Forsythe (University of Nebraska) and Barbara Ann
Rieffer-Flanagan (Central Washington University)
12 The World Economic Forum (2007)
A multi-stakeholder approach to global governance
by Geoffrey Allen Pigman (Bennington College)
 Routledge Global Institutions Series 163

11 The Group of 7/8 (2007)

by Hugo Dobson (University of Sheffield)
10 The International Monetary Fund (2007)
Politics of conditional lending
by James Raymond Vreeland (Georgetown University)
9 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2007)
The enduring alliance
by Julian Lindley-French (Center for Applied Policy, University of
Munich)
8 The World Intellectual Property Organization (2006)
Resurgence and the development agenda
by Chris May (University of the West of England)
7 The UN Security Council (2006)
Practice and promise
by Edward C. Luck (Columbia University)
6 Global Environmental Institutions (2006)
by Elizabeth R. DeSombre (Wellesley College)
5 Internal Displacement (2006)
Conceptualization and its consequences
by Thomas G. Weiss (The CUNY Graduate Center) and David A. Korn
4 The UN General Assembly (2005)
by M. J. Peterson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
3 United Nations Global Conferences (2005)
by Michael G. Schechter (Michigan State University)
2 The UN Secretary-General and Secretariat (2005)
by Leon Gordenker (Princeton University)
1 The United Nations and Human Rights (2005)
A guide for a new era
by Julie A. Mertus (American University)

Books currently under contract include:

The Regional Development Banks

Lending with a regional flavor
by Jonathan R. Strand (University of Nevada)
164 Routledge Global Institutions Series

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

For a people-centered development agenda?
by Sakiko Fukada-Parr (The New School)
The Bank for International Settlements
The politics of global financial supervision in the age of high finance
by Kevin Ozgercin (SUNY College at Old Westbury)
International Migration
by Khalid Koser (Geneva Centre for Security Policy)
Human Development
by Richard Ponzio
The International Monetary Fund (2nd edition)
Politics of conditional lending
by James Raymond Vreeland (Georgetown University)
The UN Global Compact
by Catia Gregoratti (Lund University)
Institutions for Women’s Rights
by Charlotte Patton (York College, CUNY) and Carolyn Stephenson
(University of Hawaii)
International Aid
by Paul Mosley (University of Sheffield)
Global Consumer Policy
by Karsten Ronit (University of Copenhagen)
The Changing Political Map of Global Governance
by Anthony Payne (University of Sheffield) and Stephen Robert Buzdugan
(Manchester Metropolitan University)
Coping with Nuclear Weapons
by W. Pal Sidhu
Global Governance and China
The dragon’s learning curve
edited by Scott Kennedy (Indiana University)
The Politics of Global Economic Surveillance
by Martin S. Edwards (Seton Hall University)
Mercy and Mercenaries
Humanitarian agencies and private security companies
by Peter Hoffman
 Routledge Global Institutions Series 165

Regional Organizations in the Middle East

by James Worrall (University of Leeds)
Reforming the UN Development System
The politics of incrementalism
by Silke Weinlich (Duisburg-Essen University)
The United Nations as a Knowledge Organization
by Nanette Svenson (Tulane University)
The International Criminal Court
The politics and practice of prosecuting atrocity crimes
by Martin Mennecke (University of Copenhagen)
The Politics of International Organizations
Views from insiders
edited by Patrick Weller (Griffith University) and Xu Yi-chong (Griffith
University)
The African Union (2nd edition)
Challenges of globalization, security, and governance
by Samuel M. Makinda (Murdoch University), F. Wafula Okumu (African
Union), and David Mickler (University of Western Australia)
BRICS
by João Pontes Nogueira (Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro) and
Monica Herz (Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro)
Expert Knowledge in Global Trade
edited by Erin Hannah (University of Western Ontario), James Scott
(University of Manchester), and Silke Trommer (Murdoch University)
The European Union (2nd edition)
Clive Archer (Manchester Metropolitan University)
Governing Climate Change (2nd edition)
Harriet A. Bulkeley (Durham University) and Peter Newell (University of
East Anglia)
Contemporary Human Rights Ideas (2nd edition)
Betrand Ramcharan (Geneva Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies)
Protecting the Internally Displaced
Rhetoric and reality
Phil Orchard (University of Queensland)
166 Routledge Global Institutions Series

The Arctic Council

Within the far North
Douglas C. Nord (Umea University)
Past as Prelude?
Wartime history and the future United Nations
edited by Dan Plesch (SOAS, University of London) and Thomas G. Weiss
(CUNY Graduate Center)

For further information regarding the series, please contact:

Nicola Parkin, Editor, Politics & International Studies
Taylor & Francis
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon
Oxford OX14 4RN, UK
[Link]@[Link]
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