Co-Chair: Danielle Falzon, Rutgers University
Co-Chair: Kari De Pryck, University of Geneva
Description
Climate obstruction knows no borders. Since climate change was put on the international agenda in the 1980s, state and non-state actors—such as trade associations and the fossil fuel industry—have worked to shape the UNFCCC and subsequent agreements. They have focused both on the process of negotiations, blocking progressive policies or weakening agreements, and on the substance of the deliberations, denying the scientific basis of climate change and its consequences or pushing for non-transformative solutions.
The Working Group on Obstruction in the UNFCCC and IPCC brings together scholars working on global climate governance and interested in developing and extending a shared framework to study obstruction at the international level, and in particular in the UNFCCC and IPCC (see for instance Falzon et al. 2023). The UNFCCC acts as the primary political forum for climate change decision-making, while the IPCC plays a crucial role in upholding the environmental integrity of the negotiations through the production of authoritative scientific assessments.
The Working Group aims to enhance our theoretical and empirical understanding of climate obstruction at the international level, utilizing innovative methods such as collaborative event ethnography and digital methods.
List of Objectives:
- Which actors engage in obstruction strategies, and why?
- How have these obstruction strategies evolved over time and across different topics?
- What impact have obstruction strategies had on the UNFCCC and its implementation?
- What efforts are being made to counteract obstruction at the international level?