We’re pleased to announce a new deliverable from the CONNECT project. This time Flavia Dias Guerra has taken the lead in writing a technical report on mapping the institutional architecture in global forest governance. It paper operationalizes an analytical framework based on Abbott and Snidal (2009) for mapping the institutional architecture and explains much of the thinking the CONNECT projects first bits and pieces.

In short the paper explains how we map institutions that are (i) international or transnational scope; (ii) display intentionality to steer the behaviour of their members; (iii) explicitly mention a common governance goal; and, (iv) have identifiable governance functions. The mapping involves two stages of data collection: (1) transnational institutions – relying on a review of previous case studies and desk research; and (2) inter-state regimes – sorting through an online database of International Environmental Agreements.

You can find our paper here or visit our “resources” page.

Don’t be afraid to let us know what you think!

We’re happy to announce that the first publication from core-CONNECT members Philipp Pattberg and Oscar Widerberg in 2015 was just published online in Millennium Journal of International Studies.

We make a case that global environmental governance in the Anthropocene is fundamentally different from older conceptions of environmental policy-making since problem-solving is no longer concerned with isolated problems, but rather with reorganising the overall relation between humans and natural systems. We look at what is called the theoretical interregnum in global environmental governance by first sketching the key empirical trends in global environmental governance; secondly, discussing theory-building with regards to four broad areas of inquiry: the questions of agency and authority; the structural dimension of global environmental governance; the related normative questions about legitimacy, accountability, equity and fairness in the Anthropocene; and finally the integration of governance research into formal approaches and the related incorporation of non-social science concepts into environmental governance research., We conclude by proposing some initial ideas on how to move forward in the study of global (environmental) governance.

You can access the article here.

Just send an email or contact us in any other way should you be more interested, have comments or questions.

During the UNFCCC’s COP20 that took place in Lima, Peru, the Stakeholder  Forum issued daily briefings in their Outreach magazine on different climate related topics. CONNECT researchers Oscar Widerberg and Philipp Pattberg wrote a piece on the so-called International Cooperative Initiatives’ (ICI) potential to close the gap between national pledges to mitigate GHG emissions and the path we need to be on to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The ICI debate takes place in a wider discussion on if and how non-state actors and other climate related international and transnational governance arrangements can contribute to the global process under the UN.

Find the Outreach article here

Should you have any questions, comments or queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

We’re really happy to announce the online publication of a new study by Oscar Widerberg & Philipp Pattberg, both core members of the CONNECT-project. The paper critically assesses the merits of nine alternative climate governance arrangements that in UN speak have been termed “International Cooperative Initiatives” or in short, ICIs. These non-UN climate mitigation initiatives taking place between actors such as states, cities, regions, NGOs, philanthropists, companies and others, have become increasingly viewed as a complement to the UNFCCC. Now people are discussing to what extent the UNFCCC could or should do more to activate these ICIs, for example by setting up a mechanism within the UNFCCC secretariat to at least record current actions.

Here is the abstract:

To close the gap between existing country pledges and the necessary ambition level to limit anthropogenic climate change to not more than 2°C average global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels, decision makers from both the public and private domain have started to explore a number of complementary approaches to the top-down targets-and-timetables approach of international climate change policy. Referred to as International Cooperative Initiatives (ICI), these governance arrangements are now also officially acknowledged under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. While proponents see ICIs as important bridging devices towards more ambitious climate policy, in particular up to 2020, critical observers note that the voluntary nature of ICIs makes it difficult to assess their contribution to climate change mitigation. This article scrutinizes the potential of ICIs to meaningfully contribute to closing the emissions gap along the criteria of effectiveness, legitimacy and institutional fit. As means of illustration, the analytical framework is applied to a random sample of nine ICIs (out of a total of 45 listed on the UNFCCC Secretariat’s website). We find that while potential technical effectiveness is high, legitimacy and institutionalfit should be improved with a view towards integrating ICIs into the emerging post-2015 climate governance architecture.

You can access the article here (behind pay wall)