— Global Climate Governance —

00. For a Universal Climate Agreement - Lima COP 20 Display (PHOTO - Widick 2014)

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Global Climate Governance

Richard Widick
— curator —

Richard Widick is a Sociologist and Visiting Scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at UC Santa Barbara, where he participates in the Environmental Justice and Climate Justice Studies Research Hub (EJ/CJ).

he nations of Earth have collectively recognized that global warming and climate change require an international response.

In the interest of supporting and deepening that response, educators and students need to bring these international efforts into the classroom with as much urgency as possible.

To that end, on this Topic page I provide everything you need as educators or students to begin developing your own critical educational initiatives and join the effort.

As a sociologist conducting field research in this arena for over 20 years, I bring terabytes of data and scores of hours of audio and visual documentation to the table, as well a few insights into integrated methods for research, publication and teaching about the soci0-cultural struggle over emergent global climate governance.

The first and biggest problem for teaching global climate governance is complexity, so it is important to begin by narrowing the topic down.

For our purposes, the generic term global climate governance will be used to indicate the collective response of human societies to produce democratic self-governance of the unfolding climate crisis.

This collective response must be understood as an emergent compromise formation of opposing social forces that can be broadly described as emerging from three reciprocally determining but relatively independent spheres of everyday modern life:

the economic sphere: working people, labor and ownership associations, and corporations in every sector of production — the sphere in which wealth and poverty are produced and maintained
the public sphere: an almost infinite collection of individual and collective social forces represented by voluntary organizations of every sort, including activists, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), public interest and citizens groups self-organized at every scale in every sector of everyday life — the sphere in which public opinion is forged
the political sphere: the organized, multilateral international processes for negotiation and cooperation among transnational entities and actors — the sphere in which collective power is codified and expressed as governance

For my purposes here, the term emergent global political sphere of climate governance specifically refers to the institutional spaces created and managed by:

The United Nations and its subsidiary bodies, including first and foremost the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its subsidiary bodies
The World Bank
The International Monetary Fund

Essential Background:

In May of 1992, the UN General Assembly adopted the text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and they opened the Convention for signing at the Rio Earth Summit in June of 1992.

On March 21, 1994, the UNFCCC entered into force, and the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention have been meeting every year since COP 1 in Berlin, in April 1995.

With my climate research partner John Foran (Professor of Sociology at UCSB and NXTerra co-director), I started my research on this international experiment in global climate governance at COP 17, Durban South Africa 2011, at which I represented the University of California as an Official Observer Delegate for the first time.

In that year, the UNFCCC launched the so-called Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), the process that delivered the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

I have been at every COP from 2011 to 2019 in that same official but autonomous capacity.

In 2011, Foran and I created The International Institute of Climate Action & Theory (IICAT) — a public-facing climate-focused transformative knowledge network, research collaboration think tank and media hub.

The IICAT website was and remains our climate research archive — a public file cabinet with which we share our sources and publish our work.

IICAT is a methodological experiment in conflict-seeking participatory ethnography and visual documentation — a tool for participating in the UN climate talks and engaging with the scholars, intellectuals, activists, politicians and business folks who gather each year inside the COPs as well as outside, in the streets.

In 2015 Foran and I put out an open call for UCSB scholars interested in environmental and climate governance, and in environmental and climate justice social movements to join us in forming the Environmental and Climate Justice Studies Research Hub (EJ/CJ) at the Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at UCSB.

EJ/CJ is constituted by 20 UCSB scholars and seven Constituent Projects, each of which is organized by one or more EJ/CJ scholars.

In 2016, John Foran (UC) and Sarah Jaquette Ray (CSU) created the UC-CSU Knowledge Action Network for Climate Justice Education, out of which grew the UC-CSU NXTerra Project.

In 2017, EJ/CJ adopted the UC-CSU KAN as one of its EJ/CJ Constituent Projects.

The KAN met and brainstormed the problem of teaching in climate change, and decided a powerful engagement with the concept and practice of climate justice was necessary.

In 2017, Foran and Sarah Ray (Professor of Environmental Studies and NXTerra co-director) and I proposed UC-CSU NXTerra as the next step toward shaping the study of climate change, critical sustainability, and climate justice, a tripartite conceptual attempt to capture what we see as crucial streams of related knowledge-creation (discourses) that can help us transform the way educators from both of California’s flagship public university systems think, act, and teach about the unfolding climate crisis.

A key component of the educational transformation we envision is bringing the global efforts to regulate/govern what I call carbon maldevelopment—to bring the extractive fossil fuel culture of corporations, private interests, public interests, and nations into the realm of democratic governance, and thus under the purview of climate science—what we know to be true, and thus what we know needs to be done.

Updated — February 21, 2021

The History of Global Climate Governance — QUICK LINKS for the Classroom

UNFCCC Timeline — Key Milestones in the Evolution of Climate Policy

UN’s 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment

The 1972 Stockholm Declaration

The UN Report on the Human Environment

The UN’s 1982 World Charter for Nature

The UN’s 1987 Brundtland Report (Our Common Future)

The UN’s 1992 Rio Earth Summit (THE RIO EARTH SUMMIT:
SUMMARY OF THE UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE
ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT, by Stephanie Meakin,
Science and Technology Division, 1992)

Rio Declaration on Environment & Development (1992)

Agenda 21

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

1997 Kyoto Protocol
2015 Paris Agreement on climate change

The Earth Charter Initiative (EHI) a project of the UN, UNESCO, and University for Peace.

Earth Charter Center for Education

— Certificate On Education for Sustainable Development

UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals

UNESCO Resources for Educators

KEY DOCUMENTS for the Classroom

1972 – Stockholm Declaration

1987 – Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development

1992 – United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

2015 – Paris Agreement on Climate Change

KEY CONCEPTS, presented in logical order for classroom presentation

Climate Science: This is what we know, and it comes inscribed with forces compelling us to act in the service of truth, first of all, and to achieve certain valuable outcomes, for example — a just and livable future on an environmentally friendly planet fit for human habitation.

NXTerra resources include Climate Science – Breaking and The Climate Crisis (see column left – Climate Science for the Classroom)

Global Political Ecology – Three Basic Spheres of Social Activity:

The Economic Sphere – Extraction, Production, Consumption, and Externalization
The Public Sphere – Speech, Communication, and Assembly
The Political Sphere – Governance, self- and otherwise

1. THE ECONOMIC SPHERE OF EXTRACTION, PRODUCTION, CONSUMPTION, ACCUMULATION AND EXTERNALIZATION: This is where economic activity takes place, producing and reproducing the social and environmental conditions for human life, as well as a number of external, unintended consequences, chief among which for our interests here is climate change.

In the exacting words of environmental sociologist James O’Connor, culture enters nature through work.

In the same vein, critical theoretical economic analysis should treat all economic activity as beginning in the appropriation of nature in and through a specific form of society.

From this perspective, there is no such thing as economic production in general, only every historically and materially specific action by which human beings direct their attention at the world (nature) and transform some piece of that world into something of value, claiming that valuable thing for themselves (or some group) in the process.

Wealth acquired by labor directed at nature accumulates and serves as the basis for more lobar to be so directed, leading to further extraction, production, consumption, and accumulation for further extraction, etc.

Thus begins the dialectic of nature and culture that informs the work of critical theoretical economists, sociologists, and geographers, among others. (On dialectics of nature and culture, see Foran and Widick 2016 essay Whose Utopia?, Nature & Culture).

2. THE PUBLIC SPHERE OF SPEECH, COMMUNICATION, AND ASSEMBLY: This is where people talk about what they know about climate change and educate themselves for participation in Climate Governance. It refers to the manifold activities of all stakeholders, including social movements, the non-government organizations, the nations, universities and researchers, journalists and writers, artists and humanists — everyone directing their sustained attention at the climate crisis and engaging in the public

Selected key sources on climate-crisis-focused public culture:

UNFCCC News Feed

Climate Action Network’s (CAN) Eco Newsletters (inside look at the UN climate talks)

Yale Program on Climate Change Communications

Environmental Justice and Climate Justice Research Hub (EJ/CJ), Archives of Climate Justice Movement Manifestos

3. POLITICAL SPHERE OF CLIMATE GOVERNANCE: This is where climate policy is made. It refers to policy making at every scale, local, municipal, state, region, territory, nation, and global. Here we provide links to explore this local to global scale from Santa Barbara up through the UNFCCC.

2020 Report, Politics & Global Warming, by Yale Program on Climate Change Communications and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication

KEY LINKS FOR CLASSROOM ENGAGEMENT WITH CLIMATE POLICY-MAKING INSTITUTIONS ON LOCAL TO GLOBAL SCALE:

City of Santa Barbara – Climate Action Plan
Santa Barbara County – Energy and Climate Action Plan
State of California, CalEPA Climate Action Programs
US State Department, Office of Global Change (manages US climate change policies and participation in UNFCCC activities)
United Nations (UN)
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

The UN Climate Talks

Teaching the Political Ecology of Emergent Global Climate Governance

The United Nations

After World War 2, and in the interest of preventing further catastrophic conflicts between the nations, the victors of the war set up the United Nations as a world deliberative body intent on establishing the principle of global environmental governance—and these victors went on to build the UN system in their own image.

By adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the UN Charter, the UN ensured that all further deliberations would occur under the auspices of liberal political science, with input from stakeholders rooted in three relatively autonomous rights-based and rights-driven spheres of social life:

1) the economic sphere: productive agents (individuals, unions, owners, corporations, associations) representing individual and collective economic forces in what can be called the property rights-driven global economic sphere;

2) the public sphere: individuals and voluntary associations individuals and groups of every type, including economic agents, speaking and assembling for self-education and preparation to participate in the economic and political spheres

3) the political sphere: this is the sphere of governance in which all parties struggle for

Each of the three spheres can be quickly identified in the UN Charter, the UN Universal Declaration of Human, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Paris Agreement—these are founding documents (speech) that called into being and action the current regime of global climate governance, as it has been achieved to date.

This “Three Spheres” analysis of emergent global governance is useful for teachers and students because it identifies how modern governance, to the extent that it is modern, legitimates itself as self-governance by following collectively self-established rules guaranteeing individual rights of free speech and assemble, property ownership, and political participation.

The following films and videos are presented here as teaching resources because they can be used in the classroom to demonstrate the value of the “Three Spheres” analysis and fertilize discussions about emergent global climate governance.

The Economic Sphere

In this clip from Climate Justice (Richard Widick, MGP 2019, post-production), I highlight the profound ways in which the economic forces dominate and inhibit both public and political forces engaged in emergent global climate governance.

https://vimeo.com/219563165

The Public Sphere

The following videos are useful classroom tools for showing how voluntary organizations and individuals from civil society increase their value as stakeholders in the Paris process.

The first video is produced by the UNFCCC itself and explains how all peoples and all groups are invited to interact engage in the process and help make sure it embodies the interests of all stakeholders.

The second video is a powerful example of how much expertise and prescient analysis can help clarify the complex problem of apportioning ‘fair shares’ of the massive burden that global warming and climate change.

VIDEO: Observer organizations in the UNFCCC process (UNFCCC 2018)

VISIT THE UNFCCC CLIMATE ACTION STUDIO YouTube Channel for additional videos serving as cicil society interventions in the UN climate talks.

The CIVIL SOCIETY REVIEW (website) VIDEO by Action Aid USA (below).

Climate Action and the Responsibility of the Rich, ActionAid USA 2019

DETAILS: Join Brandon Wu, Director of Policy and Campaigns at ActionAid USA, and Sivan Kartha, Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, to talk fairness in global climate action. What does ambitious climate action look like for rich countries who have done the most to cause the climate crisis compared to countries who have done the least?

Visit EcoEquity for classroom-ready materials on the ActionAid video and to download 1) the 2016 Civil Society Equity Review of the Paris Process (full title – Setting the Path Towards 1.5°C: Civil Society Equity Review of the Pre-2020 Ambition); 2) AFTER PARIS – INEQUALITY, FAIR SHARES, AND THE CLIAMTE EMERGENCY: A Civil Society Science- And Equity-Based Assessment of the NDCs.

The Political Sphere

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Sabine Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University

FILM: Climate Deadline (Richard Widick, IICAT Films, MGP 2015). I released this film on October 9, 2015, on the eve of the UN climate talks in Paris at which the Paris agreement was adopted.

MARKET & NON-MARKET MECHANISMS

1. UNFCCC: What are Market and Non-Market Mechanisms?

2. Webinar: Nobel Prize–Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz Discusses Carbon Pricing and the Green Economy Transition in HPCA Virtual Forum, Harvard Program on Climate Agreements, September 8, 2020

FEATURED VIDEO LECTURES

Neoliberal Dreaming — from Globalization to Climate Crisis

Dr. Richard Widick, UC Santa Barbara

When carbon pricing becomes ‘privatization of the air’ — Intro to Carbon Trading

Patrick Bond, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Gore & Kerry TED Talk:

QUOTE: “On his first day as president, Joe Biden signed a letter of acceptance that set in motion the 30-day process for the United States to re-join the Paris Agreement on climate. On the day the US returns to the accord, John Kerry, the US Special Envoy for Climate, sits down with Nobel Laureate Al Gore to discuss the make-or-break decade ahead of us. Listen as Kerry lays out how the US fits into the global plan to get to net-zero emissions, explains why the COP26 UN climate conference could be humanity’s “last best hope” to build international momentum and explores the role of business and youth activists in promoting environmental justice. (This interview features an introduction from Christiana Figueres, the principal architect of the Paris Agreement.)” — Ted.com, February 2021

Patrick Bond provides a critical 2021 update on the Paris Climate Agreement and the changing US role: Biden-Kerry International Climate Politricks, CounterPunch, February 1, 2021.

Neoliberal Legacies and Current Trends in Climate Change Policy

Dr. Tamra L. Gilbertson, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN)

Decolonizing Carbon: Indigenous Climate Change Mitigation in the Amazon Rainforest

Tracey Osborne, Associate Professor, Management of Complex Systems, UC Merced

Is White Innocence Holding Back Climate Movements?

Larry Lohmann, The Corner House, United Kingdom

MENU OF RESOURCES

COURSES

Methods of Global Climate Ethnography

New Media, Modernity, and Global Civil Society

Sociology of the Climate Change Media Spectacle

FILMS & MEDIA

UNEP Climate Action Youtube Video Playlist

Climate Justice Media Stack – EJ/CJ

Climate Change and Environment Films – EJ/CJ

YOUTH EMPOWERMENT & Participation in the United Nations Climate Talks via YOUNGO: Youth Constituency to the UNFCCC

MENU OF UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE:

THE 1993 CONVENTION (PDF)

HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF THE CONVENTION

UNFCCC DECISION – ADOPTION OF THE 2015 PARIS AGREEMENT (PDF)

THE PARIS AGREEMENT (PDF)

MENU OF UN and UNFCCC CLIMATE ACTION RESOURCES:

MITIGATION (efforts at decreasing emissions to slow climate change)

Mitigation defined and explained

Mitigation in the UNFCCC Climate negotiations

ADAPTATION (efforts to live with the changing climate)

UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2020 (PDF)

Adaptation defined and explained

UNFCCC Adaptation Knowledge Portal

About the UNFCCC Adaptation Portal

The Nairobi Work Program on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation to climate change (NWP)

UNDP: United Nations Development Program’s Climate Change Adaptation Program

MENU OF NASA SOURCES FOR IMAGES and DATA USEFUL FOR ILLUSTRATING and FRAMING CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS OF CLIMATE SCIENCE and GOVERNANCE:

NASA – Vital Signs of the Planet: The Evidence, The Facts, Effects, The Scientific Consensus, The Vital Signs using Graphics, Time Lapse Visualizations of COs levels, Ice Sheets, etc.

NASA – Images of Change

NASA’s Satellite Terra, The EOS Flagship

Climate Variability and Change

NASA – Earth Now – The Visible Planet

NASA Earth Observatory – Global Warming

NASA TV

MENU OF FOUNDATIONAL SCIENTIFIC BODIES & INITIATIVES ON WHICH EMERGENT GLOBAL CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE BUILDS ITS ANALYSES AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS:

IPCC – The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change

IPBES – The Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity

MENU OF UNITED NATIONS LEARNING RESOURCES & AND PLATFORMS

UN CC: Learn – The One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership

Learning Platforms

Climate Change: From Learning to Action – Free eCourse

Children and Climate Change- Free eCourse

Cities and Climate Change – Free eCourse

Gender and Environment – Free eCourse

ALL COURSES

United Nations University

Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability

United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC)

Search Courses

Free Resources

United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

Green Development and Climate Change Programme

MENU OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA TRAINING PROGRAMS IN CLIMATE SCIENCE AND POLICY

Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Master’s Degree in Climate Science and Policy (UCSD)

MENU OF CLIMATE LAW and GOVERNANCE

Climate Law and Governance Initiative

Mary Robinson, Keynote Address, Climate Law and Governance Day, COP 21, Paris, Dec. 4, 2015 (IICAT Films 2015)

DATABASE: CLIMATE CHANGE LAWS OF THE WORLD — Grantham Research Institute for the Study of Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics

FEATURED MEDIA SOURCES

Navigating the UNFCCC and COP (RINGO Pre-COP 24 Webinar, 2018) – by Second Nature

DETAILS:

Published by Second Nature, Inc. on Nov 20, 2018

This webinar was put together to help participants navigate the UNFCCC and COP24 in Katowice, Poland. View the presentation to learn how to effectively participate in and observe the UNFCCC COP negotiations. Highlighting the organizational and decision-making structure of the meetings, speakers share tools and resources to facilitate attendee’s navigation of the COP space both in person and online. While this webinar is targeted to the Research and Independent NGOs (RINGO) constituency group, all COP attendees will find it useful.

RELATED SOURCES
UNFCCC - What are Constituencies?

UNFCCC Video – At COP24 countries will finalize the Paris Agreement Implementation Guidelines

DETAILS:

This 59 second video is essentially a commercial for the UN climate talks, published by the UNFCCC’s climateconference YouTube channel.

UNFCCC COP 24, Katowice, Dec. 13, 2018 — High-Level Event: Stepping Up Climate Education

DETAILS:

UNFCCC COP 24, High-Level Event: Stepping Up Climate Education

Organiser: UNFCCC

Date: December 13, 2018 04:00 -08:00

Status: On-Demand

Location: Lubelskie Climate Action Room 3, Spodek Center, Katowice, Poland

Two Weeks of COP 21 in 10 Minutes

DETAILS:

UNFCCC climateconference

Published on Dec 16, 2015. [10 min 1 sec]

An historic pact to combat climate change and unleash actions and investment towards a low carbon, resilient and sustainable future was agreed by 195 nations in Paris. See the best moments of COP21.

ANALYSIS:

Here the UNFCCC puts its best face forward, displaying the official narrative of the conclusion of the Paris process and adoption of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Useful in the classroom for documenting the physical space of the historic talks, introducing many of the great personalities, showing the many heads of state and global dignitaries in attendance that helped establish the universal importance of the event.

RELATED SOURCES
UNFCCC Paris COP 21 Video Playlist

The International Response to Climate Change: Perspectives from within the UN System – Mark Radka, Chief of Energy and Climate at the UN Environment Program

DETAILS:

Published by UNFCCC University of California Television (UCTV) on September 23m 2019.

At the 24th meeting of the Parties to the UN Climate Change Convention, governments completed the so-called Paris Rulebook, the set of guidelines for implementing the Paris Climate Change Agreement, and attention is shifting to implementation of measures that cut greenhouse gas emissions. Mark Radka, Chief of the Energy and Climate Branch at UN Environment, describes how the UN works with countries, companies, and people to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Recorded on 04/08/2019.

The EARTH – 4K Extended Edition (NASA, 2017, 60 min)

Can we hack climate change to save us all? – Foreign Correspondent (ABC News, Australia, 2017, 60 min)

DETAILS:

Foreign Correspondent is the prime-time international public affairs program on Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC-TV. We produce half-hour duration in-depth reports for broadcast across the ABC’s television channels and digital platforms. Since 1992, our teams have journeyed to more than 170 countries to report on war, natural calamity and social and political upheaval – through the eyes of the people at the heart of it all.

ANALYSIS

The segment details several controversial geoengineering programs.