| 1. |
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Anthropocene Encounters : New Directions in Green Political Thinking
- 2019
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Editorial collection (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Coined barely two decades ago, the Anthropocene has become one of the most influential and controversial terms in environmental policy. Yet it remains an ambivalent and contested formulation, giving rise to a multitude of unexpected, and often uncomfortable, conversations. This book traces in detail a broad variety of such 'Anthropocene encounters': in science, philosophy and literary fiction. It asks what it means to 'think green' in a time when nature no longer offers a stable backdrop to political analysis. Do familiar political categories and concepts, such as democracy, justice, power and time, hold when confronted with a world radically transformed by humans? The book responds by inviting more radical political thought, plural forms of engagement, and extended ethical commitments, making it a fascinating and timely volume for graduate students and researchers working in earth system governance, environmental politics and studies of the Anthropocene.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Beck, Silke, et al.
(author)
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Towards a reflexive turn in the governance of global environmental expertise : The cases of the IPCC and the IPBES
- 2014
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In: GAIA. - : oekom verlag. - 0940-5550 .- 2625-5413. ; 23:2, s. 80-87
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Bohman, Anna, 1975-, et al.
(author)
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More than one story: remaking community and place in Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society
- 2024
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In: Local Environment. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1354-9839 .- 1469-6711.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article, we study how Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society is interpreted and experienced by communities whose livelihoods and cultural identities are entangled with carbon-intensive industries. The study draws upon interviews with citizen groups in the coastal city of Lysekil, located next to Scandinavia’s largest oil refinery. Our analysis speaks to a growing scholarly literature on just transitions where we argue that a better understanding of place attachment as an active and operating force in local transition processes, can provide important information for just transition policy design. Based on our research on place attachment in Lysekil, we suggest that inclusivity in just transitions, implies acknowledging and addressing more than material aspects of loss, involving loss of direction, loss of identities and loss of imagined futures. Moreover, we argue that the vision of an inclusive transition requires a more nuanced approach to the concept of “community” which recognises different stories, voices, and perspectives and challenges taken for granted assumptions about local people's priorities in debates on just transitions. Finally, based on our experiences from Lysekil we contend that inclusivity requires communicative spaces where citizens can meet to listen, speak, and discuss future pathways towards a fossil free society. The visions of just and inclusive transitions, we argue, can only be realised if driven by a place-based dialogue on future pathways and if agendas for a fossil free transformation are locally anchored.
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| 7. |
- Brodén Gyberg, Veronica, 1978-
(author)
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Aiding science : Swedish research aid policy 1973-2008
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The purpose of research aid is to contribute to development in different ways through the use of research. Sarec (the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries) was one of the pioneers within state research aid, and existed between 1975 and 2008. This dissertation studies Sarec’s policy from a historical perspective with the help of official documents and interviews with former directors. Discourse theory together with concepts from Science and Technology Studies comprise the theoretical framework of the study. One of the central questions asked is how the view of the relationship between research and development has changed over time. One of the conclusions is that there are two main policy discourses that are established early on and that can be traced throughout the entire period studied. The two discourses share the starting point that modern science can contribute to development and that national research capacity is an important component in this. The localist discourse represents a more multifaceted view of how research can contribute to development, and what that development consist of. It is more explicitly anti-colonialist and to a greater degree prioritizes the local context as basis for decisions regarding support. The universalist discourse places less emphasis on where knowledge is produced since it can be used anywhere, as long as the right structures and priorities are in place. The discourses reflect different views of knowledge and development. Some decades one discourse dominates over the other, and other decades they are more equal.
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| 8. |
- Brodén Gyberg, Veronica, PhD, 1978-, et al.
(author)
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Catalyzing industrial decarbonization : the promissorylegitimacy of fossil-free Sweden
- 2022
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In: Oxford Open Climate Change. - : Oxford University Press. - 2634-4068. ; 2:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In 2017, the Swedish parliament adopted a new climate policy framework that lays the foundations for an ambitious decarbonization of all sectors in Swedish society. To live up to the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets, the parliament decided that Sweden should arrive at net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by year 2045 and thereafter aim for net negative emissions. This progressive climate policy agenda is embedded in a strong collaborative discourse. To begin the transition to a fossil-free society, the Swedish government has invited a wide array of actors to join forces in the formulation and implementation of low carbon initiatives. In this paper we examine the fossil-free society as a powerful socio-technical imaginary that underpins this collaborative effort. We trace the promise attached to this future dreamscape and how it is mobilized by the government initiative Fossil-Free Sweden (FFS) to gain support for industrial decarbonization in the present. Our study draws upon roadmaps produced by FFS together with the Swedish steel, cement, and petroleum industry, as well as semi-structured interviews with selected industry actors. We find that the FFS roadmaps work as powerful “techniques of futuring” that invite industry actors to anticipate the risks and opportunities attached to the fossil-free society and at the same time contribute to shaping that society. While effectively involving incumbent actors in the political project of decarbonization, our study suggests that the roadmaps consolidate around an imagined future that is a techno-optimistic extension of the fossil-intensive present
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| 11. |
- Bäckstrand, Karin, et al.
(author)
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Environmental politics after the deliberative turn
- 2010
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In: Environmental politics and deliberative democracy. - Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing. - 9781849806411 - 9781848449541 ; , s. 217-234
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Bäckstrand, Karin, et al.
(author)
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Planting trees to mitigate climate change: Contested discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism
- 2006
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In: Global Environmental Politics. - : Mit Press. - 1526-3800 .- 1536-0091. ; 6:1, s. 50-75
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- 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.
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| 14. |
- Bäckstrand, Karin, et al.
(author)
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The promise of new modes of environmental governance
- 2010
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In: Environmental politics and deliberative democracy. - Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing. - 9781849806411 - 9781848449541 ; , s. 3-27
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)
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| 15. |
- Bäckstrand, Karin, et al.
(author)
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The Road to Paris : Contending Climate Governance Discourses in the Post-Copenhagen Era
- 2019
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In: Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. - : Routledge. - 1523-908X .- 1522-7200. ; 21:5, s. 519-532
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper, we advance discourse analysis to interpret how the state and direction of climate governance is imagined or interpreted by the multitude of actors present at UN climate conferences. We approach the annual Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as active political sites that project ideas, assumptions and standards for the conduct of global politics. This paper examines to what extent the discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernization and civic environmentalism identified by Backstrand and Lovbrand [(2006). Planting trees to mitigate climate change. Contested discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism. Global Environmental Politics, 6(1), 51-71; Backstrand, K., & Lovbrand, E. (2007). Climate governance beyond 2012. Competing discourses of green governmentality, ecological modernization and civic environmentalism. In M. Pettenger (Ed.), The social construction of climate change. Ashgate] a decade ago still inform how climate governance is imagined and enacted in the post-Copenhagen era. After reviewing scholarship on climate governance and International Relations, we introduce our discursive framework and systematically compare three contending discourses of climate governance articulated at COP 17 in Durban (2011), COP 19 in Warsaw (2013) and COP 20 in Lima (2014). We end by discussing whether the discursive struggles played out at UN climate conferences represent a shift in the ways in which climate governance was imagined and enacted on the road to Paris, and to what extent our findings may help to extend scholarship in this field.
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| 16. |
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Environmental politics and deliberative democracy. : examining the promise of new modes of environmental governance
- 2010. - 1
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Editorial collection (other academic/artistic)abstract
- 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.
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| 17. |
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| 18. |
- Gupta, Aarti, et al.
(author)
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In pursuit of carbon accountabiity : the politics of REDD+ measuring, reporting and verification systems
- 2012
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In: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. - : Elsevier. - 1877-3435 .- 1877-3443. ; 4:6, s. 726-731
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article reviews critical social science analyses of carbon accounting and monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems associated with reducing emissions from deforestation, forest degradation and conservation, sustainable use and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+). REDD+ MRV systems are often portrayed as technical. In questioning such a framing, we draw on perspectives from science and technology and governmentality studies to assess how MRV systems may exercise disciplinary power (through standardization, simplification and erasing the local) but also mobilize counter-expertise, produce resistance and thus have necessarily contingent effects. In doing so, we advance the concept of ‘carbon accountability’ to denote both how forest carbon is accounted for in REDD+ and the need to hold to account those who are doing so.
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| 21. |
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| 22. |
- Jerneck, Anne, et al.
(author)
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Structuring Sustainability Science
- 2011
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In: Sustainability Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1862-4057 .- 1862-4065. ; 6:1, s. 69-82
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative solutions to these complex challenges. In this article, we propose a research agenda that advances the methodological and theoretical understanding of what SS can be, how it can be pursued and what it can contribute. The key focus is on knowledge structuring. For that purpose, we designed a generic research platform organised as a three-dimensional matrix comprising three components: core themes (scientific understanding, sustainability goals, sustainability pathways); cross-cutting critical and problem- solving approaches; and any combination of the sustainability challenges above. As an example, we insert four sustainability challenges into the matrix (biodiversity loss, climate change, land use changes, water scarcity). Based on the matrix with the four challenges, we discuss three issues for advancing theory and methodology in SS: how new synergies across natural and social sciences can be created; how integrated theories for understanding and responding to complex sustainability issues can be developed; and how theories and concepts in economics, gender studies, geography, political science and sociology can be applied in SS. The generic research platform serves to structure and create new knowledge in SS and is a tool for exploring any set of sustainability challenges. The combined critical and problem- solving approach is essential.
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| 23. |
- Jernnäs, Maria, 1992-, et al.
(author)
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Accelerating Climate Action : The Politics of Nonstate Actor Engagement in the Paris Regime
- 2022
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In: Global Environmental Politics. - : MIT Press. - 1526-3800 .- 1536-0091. ; 22:3, s. 38-58
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The 2015 Paris Agreement is often depicted as a turning point for global climate governance. Following years of diplomatic gridlock, it laid the foundations for a new global climate regime that invites states to partner with nonstate actors in the transition to the low-carbon society. This article critically examines the political rationalities that inform the pluralization of climate politics after Paris and the turn toward cooperative modes of governing. Drawing on an analysis of initiatives led by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that were launched to engage nonstate actors in the evolving Paris regime, we identify a global governmentality that mobilizes nonstate actors as active and responsible partners in the quest for rapid and deep decarbonization. In its search for cooperative and efficient forms of problem management, we argue, this form of rule nurtures a global space free from friction and opposition where businesses, investors, and industry are elevated as the real partners of government.
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| 24. |
- Jernnäs, Maria, 1992-
(author)
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Governing Climate Change under the Paris Regime : Meeting Urgency with Voluntarism
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The climate is changing. As the global mean temperature continues to rise, the immense urgency of addressing the climate change crisis is evident. Since climate change entered the international political agenda in the 1980s, efforts to construct an effective global response have been organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Recently, this UN-led interstate diplomacy has been criticized for its inability to grapple with the polycentric, multiactor landscape of today. In this context, the 2015 Paris Agreement altered the formal context of global climate politics by institutionalizing a ‘hybrid,’ ‘catalytic’ regime where states are to outline, submit, and periodically enhance their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the global response. While the continuous submission of NDCs is legally binding, their content and design are largely determined by states’ ideas about the appropriate means and ends of climate action. The Paris regime also entails an unprecedented position for nonstate actors who were welcomed as an integral part of climate mitigation and adaptation and invited to pledge their contributions to the global effort through various UNFCCC-led initiatives. Through this supposedly cata-lytic design, the Paris regime pins its hopes on continuous increases in ambition levels and implementation rates of states’ and nonstate actors’ pledges to stave off the urgent crisis that is climate change. Global climate governance research has delved into the characteristics of this new architecture to examine how the disperse climate action pledges can be understood, aggregated, and enhanced, and how this hybrid design can ensure legitimate orchestration of a plurality of actors. While providing valuable suggestions for enhanced effectiveness of and participation in the Paris regime, this thesis suggests that post-Paris climate governance research to a large extent center around issues of improving the functions of the Paris model and that there is a lack of critical accounts of how the hybrid, catalytic, and largely voluntary Paris design rests upon and projects particular ways of ordering world politics. To fill this gap, this thesis draws upon Foucauldian governmentality studies to critically examine how climate change is governed through voluntarism under the Paris regime and its political implications in terms of shaping the idea of what constitutes appropriate climate conduct. It asks how climate change is constructed as a problem for government by exploring the rationalities that inform climate governance under the Paris regime and the technologies through which governing is conducted. By illuminating the ideas and practices that underpin governing through voluntarism, the thesis contributes to a critical discussion on the means and ends of this mode of governing which, in turn, carves space for articulation of alternative problem descriptions and solutions. The thesis builds on four studies that, in turn, examine how climate change is problematized in states’ NDCs in terms of climate policy discourses employed (Paper I) and suggested roles for the state in climate action (Paper II), and how climate action is mobilized through the NDC (Paper III) and UNFCCC-led initiatives to engage nonstate actors (Paper IV). The thesis demonstrates that governing climate change through voluntarism under the Paris regime is characterized by efforts of coordination that emphasize a need for quantifiable, comparable, and aggregable climate actions. Rather than merely a technical necessity for organizing disperse climate pledges, it argues that coordination is a governing strategy that posits climate action as a non-conflictual project of problem-management and shapes the idea of appropriate climate conduct by constructing states and nonstate actors as responsible actors charged with keeping their conduct in check. At the same time, the thesis also finds that the Paris regime leaves some room for resistance where alternative ideas on the appropriate means and ends of government can be advanced and debated. It argues, however, that the overwhelming emphasis on coordination shapes the field of possibilities for resistance by treating resisters as ‘those not yet convinced,’ rather than as ex-pressors of fundamental political differences. In essence, by illuminating how current modes of government shape the idea of appropriate climate conduct, the thesis stresses that the urgency of the climate change challenge must not foreclose critical discussions on how governing climate change under the Paris regime is accomplished.
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| 25. |
- Jonsson, Anna, 1967-, et al.
(author)
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Participatory Research in Theory and Practice: Why, How and When?
- 2009
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In: Climate Science and Policy Research. - Norrköping : Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research. - 9789173935791 ; , s. 1-60
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The scope of climate change research has grown immensely over the last decade. Beyond the extensive efforts to map and understand how the various components of the climate system interact and respond to human forcing, academics from a range of fields are today deeply involved in the social and political struggle to develop effective and legitimate climate change policies. While initially focused on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, we have in recent years seen a growing academic interestin local, national, regional and trans-national climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.In a time when decision makers have linked such efforts to other policy areas such as energy security, finance, land use, and social development, new academic fields have also become involved in the study of climate change. Hence, climate change research is increasingly conducted at the interface between the natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities. This development spurs self-reflection in the research community. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with the mandate to assess the latest research for decision-makers, is currently working and deliberating on how to design the nextround of assessment in the light of a widen agenda of climate change policy. It is at this dynamic interface that we find the expanding field of climate science and policy research.Climate science and policy research is by no means a stable academic field. Rather, it is byvirtue a broad, diverse and hybrid enquiry that includes a range of epistemological, theoretical and methodological orientations. While much of the research under this umbrella has developed in parallel to (and often in direct response to) climate change policy, the field also includes a wide set of scholarly efforts to challenge and problematise the ideas and discourses underpinning such policies. This scholarly diversity may question climate science and policyresearch as a meaningful academic label. And indeed, as indicated by the various contributions to this report, the interpretations of what this field is all about vary considerably. However, despite this variety, we argue that the different academic contributions to this field converge around the quest to interpret, understand, problematise and, at times, solve the challenges facing society under a changing climate. Some of this scholarly work has, directly or indirectly, sought to inform climate change policy. In other cases climate change has emerged as a vantage point for advancing the academic understanding of how links between nature and society, science and policy, development and environment, North and South are constituted and sustained.In this report we draw attention to a set of conceptual and methodological challenges that wethink arise from this broad scholarly enquiry. In the first chapter, Simonsson examines the importance of scale in climate change research. In order to effectively inform policy, she suggests that the academic study of climate change needs to adjust to the geographies ofclimate change policy-making. However, since science may not be able to deliver climate information at the spatial resolution asked by decision-makers, Simonsson also calls for greater scholarly awareness of the scalar challenges in climate science for policy. In the second chapter, Ostwald and Kuchler trace the conceptual genealogy of climate science and policy research. Starting in the historic development of the climate sciences, they end up in amuch more complex and inter-disciplinary research landscape. Ostwald and Kuchler ask how researchers in the field of climate science and policy research can relate to this complexity.In the third chapter, Glaas, Friman, Wilks and Hjerpe situate climate science and policy research in the scholarly debate on Mode 1 and Mode 2 science. Following a long-standing debate on the role of science in climate policy making, they ask whether this field of enquirygains its legitimacy from autonomous basic research produced in sites distinctly demarcatedfrom the world of policy (Mode 1), or from knowledge produced in the context of application (Mode 2). While it may be challenging for scholars of climate science and policy to engage inboth modes of knowledge production at the same time, the authors point at examples where the distinction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 breaks down into a new research domain whichthey label as Mode 1.5. A similar discussion is raised by Hansson and Wibeck in chapter four.While climate science and policy research can be interpreted as an academic field in its own right, its close links to action can also result in a difficult balancing act for researchers. Drawing upon examples from public acceptance studies, Hansson and Wibeck highlight problems that arise when climate researchers advance a normative agenda and hereby influence the people they study. Finally, in chapter five, Jonsson, Lövbrand and Andersson offer examples of research produced in direct collaboration with affected stakeholders. While such participatory research. often is said to increase the legitimacy and problem-solving capacity of climate science and policy research, the authors discuss how and when thatpromise holds true.The conceptual and methodological challenges discussed in this report are the result of a seminar series held at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research (CSPR) at Linköping University from autumn 2007 to spring 2008. As such the chapters reflect an ongoing debate and internal self-reflection at a centre that still is young and under development. Since its establishment in 2004, the CSPR has grown steadily and today functions as an interdisciplinary platform for more than 20 senior and junior researchers active in the field of climate science and policy research. In this report we do not set out to give a comprehensive picture of the challenges facing researchers at the CSPR, nor scholars inthe broader field of climate science and policy research. Neither is it a statement of whatCSPR is, but rather a bouquet of thoughts around our own research. By sharing our reflections with a broader scholarship, we do, however, hope that this report will contribute to theongoing debate on the scope, direction and function of this expanding and dynamic academic field.
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