Karin Bäckstrand

Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Experts, Policy-Makers and Citizens in Environmental Governance

The essay reviews the notion of civic science in global environmental governance and how it is articulated in international relations, science studies, democratic theory and sustainability science. Civic science is used interchangeably with participatory, citizen, stakeholder and democratic science, which are all catch words that signify various attempts to increase public participation in the production and use of scientific knowledge. Three rationales for civic science are identified: restoring public trust in science, re-orienting science towards coping with the complexity of environmental problems and installing democratic governance of science. A central proposition is that the promotion of civic science needs to be coupled with a theoretical understanding of its institutional, normative and epistemological challenges. The science-politics interface needs to be reframed to include the triangular interaction between scientific experts, policy-makers and citizens.

Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change: Contested Discourses of Ecological Modernization, Green Governmentality and Civic Environmentalism

Forest plantations or so-called carbon sinks have played a critical role in the climate change negotiations and constitute a central element in the scheme to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations set out by the Kyoto Protocol. This paper examines dominant discursive framings of forest plantation projects in the climate regime. A central proposition is that these projects represent a microcosm of competing and overlapping discourses that are mirrored in debates of global environmental governance. While the win-win discourse of ecological modernization has legitimized the inclusion of sink projects in the Kyoto Protocol, a green governmentality discourse has provided the scientific rationale necessary to turn tropical tree-plantation projects operational on the emerging carbon market. A critical civic environmentalism discourse has contested forest sink projects depicting them as unjust and environmentally unsound strategies to mitigate climate change. The article examines the articulation and institutionalization of these discourses in the climate negotiation process as well as the wider implications for environmental governance.

Accountability of Networked Climate Governance: The Rise of Transnational Climate Partnerships

Public-private partnerships (PPP) have been advanced as a new tool of global governance, which can supply both effective and legitimate governance. In the context of recent debates on the democratic legitimacy of transnational governance, this paper focuses on accountability as a central component of legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to map transnational climate partnerships and evaluate their accountability record in terms of transparency, monitoring mechanisms and representation of stakeholders. Three types of partnerships are identified with respect to their degree of public-private interaction: public-private (hybrid), governmental and private-private. Most of the climate partnerships have functions of advocacy, service provision and implementation. None are standard setting, which indicates that governmental actors are less willing to contract out rule-setting authority to private actors in the climate change. Some partnerships, such as the World Summit on Sustainable Development climate partnerships and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects represent new modes of hybrid governance with high degree of public-private interaction. However, many partnerships, not least the voluntary technology agreements such as the APP, rest on old form of governance based on the logic of lobbying, corporatism, co-optation and interstate bargaining. Private (business-to business) climate partnerships are to varying degrees geared toward quantitative targets in the Kyoto Protocol. The accountability record is higher for hybrid climate partnerships, such as the CDM, due to extensive reporting and monitoring mechanisms, while lower for the governmental networks, such as voluntary technology agreements. Partnerships do not necessarily replace or erode the authority of sovereign states, but rather propels the hybridization and transformation of authority that is increasingly shared between state and nonstate actors.

Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance

The United Nations conference in Rio de Janeiro in June is an important opportunity to improve the institutional framework for sustainable development. Science assessments indicate that human activities are moving several of Earths sub-systems outside the range of natural variability typical for the previous 500,000 years (1, 2). Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change (3). This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.

Democratizing Global Environmental Governance? Stakeholder Democracy after the World Summit on Sustainable Development

One of the most pressing problems confronting political scientists today is whether global governance has democratic legitimacy. Drawing on an analysis of the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002, this article advances and empirically deploys an ideal-typical model of a new approach to key areas of global governance—‘stakeholder democracy’. This work is located in the context of the changing practices of global governance, in which concerns about legitimacy, accountability, and participation have gained prominence. Sustainability is an arena in which innovative experiments with new hybrid, pluri-lateral forms of governance, such as stakeholder forums and partnership agreements institutionalizing relations between state and non-state actors, are taking place. A central argument is that sustainability governance imperfectly exemplifies new deliberative stakeholder practices with general democratic potential at the global level. In examining these governance arrangements, we draw together the nascent elements of this new ‘model’, such as its distinctive takes on political representation and accountability.

Governing climate change transnationally: Assessing the evidence from a database of sixty initiatives

With this paper we present an analysis of sixty transnational governance initiatives and assess the implications for our understanding of the roles of public and private actors, the legitimacy of governance ‘beyond’ the state, and the North–South dimensions of governing climate change. In the first part of the paper we examine the notion of transnational governance and its applicability in the climate change arena, reflecting on the history and emergence of transnational governance initiatives in this issue area and key areas of debate. In the second part of the paper we present the findings from the database and its analysis. Focusing on three core issues, the roles of public and private actors in governing transnationally, the functions that such initiatives perform, and the ways in which accountability for governing global environmental issues might be achieved, we suggest that significant distinctions are emerging in the universe of transnational climate governance which may have considerable implications for the governing of global environmental issues. In conclusion, we reflect on these findings and the subsequent consequences for the governance of climate change.

The EU's role in climate change negotiations: from leader to 'leadiator'

We start with two puzzles: first, how to explain the European Union (EU)s decline as a climate change leader at the Copenhagen summit? Second, how to understand the partial revival of its leadership position at the Durban climate summit? We advance a twofold explanation, focusing on changes in relative power relations among major powers but also on negotiation strategies and coalition building. In Copenhagen, the EU had a normative agenda and unrealistic expectations and thereby failed to forge any bridge-building coalitions. In Durban, it had moved towards a pragmatic strategy, attuned to the realities of changing power constellations. The EU approached developing countries that shared its desire for a legally binding regime covering all major emitters and probed compromises with veto players, such as China and the US. This bridge-building strategy was combined with a conditional pledge to agree to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol. In sum, the EU acted as a ‘leadiator’, a leader-cum-mediator.

The Promise of New Modes of Environmental Governance

This important new book provides an excellent critical evaluation of new modes of governance in environmental and sustainability policy. The multidisciplinary team of contributors combine fresh insights from all levels of governance all around a carefully crafted conceptual framework to advance our understanding of the effectiveness and legitimacy of new types of steering, including networks, public private partnerships, and multi-stakeholder dialogues. This is a crucial contribution to the field. Frank Biermann, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands Can new modes of governance, such as public private partnerships, stakeholder consultations and networks, promote effective environmental policy performance as well as increased deliberative and participatory quality? This book argues that in academic inquiry and policy practice there has been a deliberative turn, manifested in a revitalized interest in deliberative democracy coupled with calls for novel forms of public private governance. By linking theory and practice, the contributors critically examine the legitimacy and effectiveness of new modes of governance, using a range of case studies on climate, forestry, water and food safety policies from local to global levels. Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy will appeal to scholars, both advanced undergraduate and postgraduate, as well as researchers of environmental politics, international relations, environmental studies and political science. It will also interest practitioners involved in the actual design and implementation of new governance modes in areas of sustainable development, food safety, forestry and climate change.

The democratic legitimacy of orchestration: the UNFCCC, non-state actors, and transnational climate governance

ABSTRACT Is orchestration democratically legitimate? On one hand, debates concerning the legitimacy and democratic deficits of international politics continue unabated. On the other, the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has progressively engaged in processes of orchestration culminating in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Scholarship on orchestration has almost exclusively focused on how to ensure effectiveness while excluding normative questions. This lacuna is addressed by arguing that orchestration should be assessed according to its democratic credentials. The promises and pitfalls of orchestration can be usefully analyzed by applying a set of democratic values: participation, deliberation, accountability, and transparency. Two major orchestration efforts by the UNFCCC both pre- and post-Paris are shown to have substantive democratic shortfalls, not least with regard to participation and accountability. Ways of strengthening the democratic legitimacy of orchestration are identified.

Old Wine in New Bottles? The Legitimation and Delegitimation of UN Public-Private Partnerships for Sustainable Development from the Johannesburg Summit to the Rio+20 Summit

Abstract Global public–private partnerships for sustainable development have been framed as new instruments that can increase the democratic credentials and effectiveness of global governance. This article revisits 10 years of scholarship and practice of the 348 Johannesburg partnerships, adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and reaffirmed at the UN Rio+20 summit in 2012. The article analyzes the contending processes of legitimation and delegitimation of partnerships. First, it makes a quantitative assessment of the Johannesburg partnerships to examine to what extent they correspond to the UNs discursive legitimation of partnerships as implementation tools and deliberative mechanisms. Second, drawing upon interviews with civil society and UN officials, we argue that the Rio+20 summit marked the delegitimation of Johannesburg partnerships, aligned with the phase-out of the Commission on Sustainable Development. Yet, the idea of partnerships as such was relegitimized as a symbolic asset. Partnering is a legitimation strategy for UN agencies to maintain their relevance and mission in an era when multilateralism relies on collaboration between state, market, and civil society actors.