Bourdieu and the IPCC’s Symbolic Power

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Symbolic Power ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Climate Skepticism ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Assessment Activities

This article introduces Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of field, interest, and symbolic power into the study of global environmental politics, for the purpose of positioning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) within the international field of climate politics. Revisiting historical accounts of the IPCC’s establishment, the article explores the IPCC’s role in generating international interest in climate change and the field of forces and struggles that has emerged around the organization and its assessment activities as a result. The IPCC continues to hold a central position within the climate field because of its symbolic power to construct the meaning of climate change. This makes the organization, its assessment activities, and the knowledge it produces central objects of struggle within the climate field, and the forces that this contestation produces structure all aspects of the IPCC and its work. The article identifies how developing-country attitudes, climate skepticism, and bandwagoning impact the IPCC’s place in climate politics and its assessments of the climate problem.

Ecomedia: Of Angelic Images and Environmental Values

2008 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Kitty van Vuuren ◽  
Libby Lester
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
An Inconvenient Truth ◽  
Traditional Research ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Influential Book

The prominence of media events in 2006, including the release of former US Vice President Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the publication of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even the death of ‘eco-celebrity’ Steve Irwin, suggested a need to devote an issue of Media International Australia to media and the environment. The study of environmentalism through the lens of media, journalism and communication is all but absent in Australia, with some notable exceptions. This issue of MIA goes some way towards redressing the absences identified by Tom Jagtenberg and David McKie in their influential book Eco-Impacts and the Greening of Postmodernity, published more than 10 years ago, which claimed for the environment an equal status with traditional research foci: class, race and gender. The current public interest in environmental issues emphasises this point, although it is not unprecedented. History shows that environmental issues move in waves to and from the heart of public debate. As well as showcasing some of the field's distinct approaches and traditions, the articles in this issue contribute to a better understanding of this current wave and its likely aftermath. In doing so, it goes some way towards moving the environment in the direction of a more central position on the research and public agenda.

The Third World and Global Environmental Negotiations: Interests, Institutions and Ideas

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Williams
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Third World ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
The Third ◽  
Environmental Negotiations ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Third World

Marian Miller provided an engaging and persuasive analysis of the role of Third World states in global environmental negotiations. While Miller focused on the strategies of individual states, this article examines the collective agency of the Third World in global environmental negotiations. The first part of the article explores the debates on the continuing relevance of the Third World as a concept, and contends that the Third World retains relevance in the context of global bargaining processes. The second part of the article highlights the role of ideas and institutions in the continued reproduction of the Third World as an actor in global environmental politics. The final part of the article explores the ways in which the negotiations on climate change have tended to reproduce a distinctive Southern perspective.

scholarly journals Fighting for King Coal’s Crown: Business Actors in the US Coal and Utility Industries

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Downie
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Energy Sector ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Us

Over the last two decades, business actors have received growing attention in global environmental politics. In the context of climate change, scholars have demonstrated the capacity of business actors to directly shape outcomes at the national, international, and transnational levels. However, very little work has focused exclusively on business actors in the coal and utility industries. This is surprising, given that resistance from these industries could delay or even derail government attempts to address climate change. Accordingly, this article focuses directly on the preferences of business actors in the coal and utility industries. Drawing on interviews with executives across the US energy sector, it considers business preferences on two of the most important attempts by the Obama administration to limit emissions from coal: the Waxman-Markey bill and the Clean Power Plan. In doing so, it provides new insights about the preferences of these actors and the divisions within these industries that could be exploited by policy-makers and activists seeking to enact climate change regulations.

Global Environmental Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Frédéric Morin ◽  
Amandine Orsini ◽  
Sikina Jinnah
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Hazardous Waste ◽  
Water Consumption ◽  
Ozone Depletion ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Diverse Field ◽  
New Research

Global Environmental Politics provides an up-to-date introduction to the most important issues dominating this fast-moving field. Going beyond the issue of climate change, the text also introduces readers to the pressing issues of desertification, trade in hazardous waste, biodiversity protection, whaling, acid rain, ozone-depletion, water consumption, and over-fishing. Importantly, the text pays particular attention to the interactions between environmental politics and other governance issues, such as gender, trade, development, health, agriculture, and security. Adopting an analytical approach, the text explores and evaluates a wide variety of political perspectives, testing assumptions and equipping readers with the necessary tools to develop their own arguments and, ultimately, inspiring new research endeavours in this diverse field.

The Paris Agreement as Analogy in Global Environmental Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Nicholas Chan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Potential Significance ◽  
Environmental Negotiations ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental

Abstract The Paris Agreement is increasingly being used as an analogy in global environmental politics to discuss issues beyond climate change. This Forum article explores the two main ways in which this analogy has been discursively employed: as a symbol of diplomatic success to be emulated and as a model for institutional treaty design. It illustrates the broader meanings associated with the Paris Agreement, reflecting its preeminent public and political profile among environmental issues just a few years into its history and its potential significance in shaping subsequent global environmental negotiations.

Climate Crisis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin R. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Climate Crisis

International relations scholarship on climate change exists primarily in the field of Global Environmental Politics (GEP) and outside the substantive purview of mainstream International Political Economy (IPE). This chapter argues that the climate crisis is fundamentally an IPE problem, and it requires attention from IPE scholars as a primary subject of interest. To facilitate engagement, the chapter reviews a diverse literature at the intersection of IPE and climate across three substantive areas: the global climate regime, trade, and renewable energy transitions. Each section offers avenues for research, and provides ideas on how to put concepts and ideas from IPE to work in climate crisis scholarship.

COP-15 in Copenhagen: How the Merging of Movements Left Civil Society Out in the Cold

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana R. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
Climate Negotiations ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Global Environmental

What happened to non-governmental organizations' participation at the COP-15 round of climate negotiations in Copenhagen? Although the climate regime has been seen as relatively open to civil society, everything changed in Copenhagen and civil society became increasingly disenfranchised. This article discusses the three main forces that led to civil society's disenfranchisement at this round of the climate negotiations: increased registration, poor planning by the Danish organizers and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, and the merging of movements. I conclude by discussing implications of the increase in civil society disenfranchisement to the climate regime and to the study of global environmental politics more broadly.

scholarly journals Public Engagement in Climate Communication on China’s Weibo: Network Structure and Information Flows

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yixi Yang ◽  
Mark C. J. Stoddart
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Information Flows ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
The Public

This article provides an empirical study of public engagement with climate change discourse in China by analysing how Chinese publics participate in the public discussion around two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and how individual users interact with state and elite actors on the pre-eminent Chinese microblogging platform Weibo. Using social network analysis methods and a temporal comparison, we examine the structure of climate communication networks, the direction of information flows among multiple types of Weibo users, and the changes in information diffusion patterns between the pre- and post-Paris periods. Our results show there is an increasing yet constrained form of public engagement in climate communication on Weibo alongside China’s pro-environmental transition in recent years. We find an expansion of public engagement as shown by individual users’ increasing influence in communication networks and the diversification of frames associated with climate change discourse. However, we also find three restrictive interaction tendencies that limit Weibo’s potential to facilitate multi-directional communication and open public deliberation of climate change, including the decline of mutually balanced dialogic interactions, the lack of bottom-up information flows, and the reinforcement of homophily tendencies amongst eco-insiders and governmental users. These findings highlight the coexistence of both opportunities and constraints of Weibo being a venue for public engagement with climate communication and as a forum for a new climate politics and citizen participation in China.

A Comparative Look at NGO Influence in International Environmental Negotiations: Desertification and Climate Change

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 86-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Corell ◽  
Michele M. Betsill
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Environmental Negotiations ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Global Environmental Policy ◽  
International Environmental Negotiations

There is a need to better understand the significance of NGOs in global environmental politics. Addressing a number of weaknesses in the current literature on NGOs, we have developed an analytical framework for analysis of NGO influence in international environmental negotiations. This paper demonstrates the utility of our framework by applying it to two cases: the negotiations of the Desertification Convention and of the Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Change Convention. We argue that the use of our research framework enables researchers to compare with confidence NGO influence across cases and that such comparison allows for a much needed examination of factors that explain variation in NGO influence in international environmental negotiations. Analysis of explanatory factors contributes to an improved understanding of the degree to which NGOs matter in global environmental policy-making.

scholarly journals Teaching and Practicing Climate Politics at College of the Atlantic: Student-inspired, Student-driven

2015 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 24-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doreen Stabinsky
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
Student Interest ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Youth Movement ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Environmental Diplomacy ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Climate Change Politics

College of the Atlantic students past and present play leadership roles in the international climate justice youth movement. Student interest in climate change politics at the global level, particularly within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has inspired the development of a range of courses at COA in global environmental diplomacy. The courses provide a climate justice framework for understanding the geopolitics and political economy of the negotiations, serve to link students with key actors in the climate justice movement, and ultimately to contribute to their own development as climate justice leaders.

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