Global Climate Governance in the Face of Obstruction

 

Why This Conference?
The effort to address climate change has been inadequate, in spite of decades of work and growing certainty on the science, technology, and policy solutions. A key reason for the lack of progress in developing local, national and global governance adequate to the problem is the obstruction of climate action by a sophisticated and well-funded network of organizations, connected to but going far beyond the fossil fuel industry and other "vested" interests. The strategies of those obstructing climate action have evolved significantly, recently including far less denial of the scientific reality of human-caused climate change, and far more delay tactics and discourses. The nature, role and strategy of these organizations is our focus of research in the Climate Social Science Network. We believe the UNFCCC negotiations could benefit from participants better understanding the nature of climate obstruction networks, how their strategies are changing, and what approaches are proving successful in combating these efforts.

 

Co-Hosts and Motivation
The Climate Social Science Network (CSSN), a global network headquartered at Brown University in the USA, was launched in October of 2020 to create community, collaboration, and communications for researchers studying actors obstructing action on climate change. Because of the COVID epidemic, CSSN has not yet had any face-to-face meetings, which we believe could be helpful in creating community and some new collaborations. The Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik / German Development Institute (DIE) through its Klimalog project is dedicated to research and dialogue towards a climate-smart and just transformation towards sustainable development and the global common good. Together, CSSN, Brown and DIE offer important research we believe will be highly informative for practitioners of climate governance within and beyond the UNFCCC, and for the media and experts who attend the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body sessions (SB-56) in Bonn, 6-16 June 2022. 

 

Format
Most of the conference will be open to the public, discussing key issues of how climate action is being framed in public discourse. It will engage key UNFCCC participants--delegates from the Global North and South, international organization representatives, researchers, civil society and business actors for substantive science-policy-dialogue. Parts of the online event will be closed working meetings for the working groups of CSSN, and the full network.