Global Census of Climate Obstruction Organizations

Co-chairs: Dieter Plehwe (Berlin Social Science Center) and Ruth McKie (De Montfort
University)

The Global Census on Obstruction working group brings together scholars working on the counter movements to develop, coordinate, and conduct a methodological robust survey needed to improve our knowledge about denial and obstruction in many countries around the globe, to establish the different ways it matters, and to identify the transnational linkages between groups. Given global denial and obstruction groups have built up power bases directing opposition energy against the IPCC and other international bodies in addition to domestic institutions (“contender matching capacity”), research on these groups must leave national container perspectives behind, in order to address both the national and the supra- and international dimension of the work of groups in different countries.  Preliminary key questions for the working group include:

• Who are the relevant actors locally involved in opposition to ambitious climate change mitigation? Which areas of the local landscape are they coming from (e.g. corporations, business interest groups, political party/factions, civil society groups like NGOs/Think Tanks etc.)
• Are there foreign partners of local groups? Where, what role do they play?
•  Which strategies, denial and other, are employed to oppose ambitious climate change mitigation in different countries?
• Which patterns emerge if we compare composition and strategies cross space and time? Are strategies developed / coordinated across borders and by whom or how?

In the first year of the working group, a team completed and published the CSSN policy briefing on the Mises Network. Available here.