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This paper provides a preliminary exploration of the social construction of climate science and policy in a range of sub-national, national, and international policies aiming to avoid dangerous climate change. The paper discusses the rationale that are most likely to result in substantive reductions of greenhouse gas emissions and the role science has played in justifying climate change policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is an increasingly salient issue within international environmental politics. Biodiversity, despite having become a focal point for conservation, has not risen to the same level of salience. Such disparity is interesting given that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) were linked to a similar negotiation process and collectively represent the foremost treaties addressing sustainable development. In light of the attention climate change has received over biodiversity, this paper revisits the old question of why some issues receive more attention than others. In seeking an answer, this paper will focus on the role of ideals and knowledge in the construction of issue-areas. In particular, it will examine how each issue was defined during the negotiation process and how this effected its perceived salience. This paper will ultimately argue that despite scientific uncertainty inherent in both issues, climate change is more saliently defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the conference paper "Abrupt Global Climate Change and the International Climate Change Regime" that was presented at the 46th annual meetings of the International Studies Association in Honolulu, Hawaii. It examines the science of abrupt climate change and its possible impacts. It says that long-term climatic oscillations have been attributed to a series of factors including variations in solar activity and tilt of the planet's rotational axis.

The proposed paper examines global negotiations on future climate change policy. The current international treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, expires in 2012. Negotiations on the successor agreement are currently under way and are proceeding in two parallel processes, one of which aims to renegotiate policy commitments of industrialized countries. The paper explores the political dynamics in the first year of these negotiations. Based on the author’s direct participation in international climate negotiations, the study examines the interplay of economic considerations and environmental concerns in shaping state preferences. It analyzes country positions and the configuration of political camps behind competing climate policy proposals. The recent declaration by the European Union of unilateral and ambitious policy commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emisisons is theory-relevant. The argument is that dramatic differences between negotiating positions of European and North American countries are conditioned by differences in their approaches to economic planning and cost-benefit analysis. Long-term economic benefits motivate European countries to pursue strong climate policy. These countries are shifting the dominant discourse, and now emphasize business opportunities and the economic reasons for combating climate change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on two ways that are frequently suggested for furthering climate negotiations. First, many paths to achieve the same goal is often forwarded as a crucial element of future architecture agreements within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The idea of many paths implies that several mechanisms, institutions and agreements are required to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The many paths is likely to involve climate action at various levels such as global, regional, national and local and will necessary require coordination of the potential vertical synergies. Second, both scholars and policy-makers increasingly emphasize potential synergies between climate change and world trade and argues that a closer inter-linkage is needed to fulfill the goals of the respective regimes. The paper analyses potential conflicts and convergences when these two approaches to reach international climate objectives meet. It studies how the synergies between climate and trade can affect the use of measures at other scales than the global, in particular climate policy at municipal level. This is done by comparing the major issues of trade and climate interaction with examples from the measures used in municipal climate strategies; in our case from Stockholm, Sweden. It also explores the possible future consequences of a higher degree of harmonization between climate and trade policy multilaterally for municipal climate action. We also suggest a set of research questions to further study the practical implications of a higher degree of interaction between the two regimes as well as an empirical study of how such linkages are made in international, national and local climate policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a draft of a chapter that will be included in the forthcoming edited volume entitled, "The Social Construction of Climate Change." The chapters in the volume present a number of potentially fruitful avenues for analyzing the "social construction of climate change." This paper focuses on the early framing of climate change as a political problem at the international level and the associated normative debates that emerged related to how states should respond to the threat. It then evaluates how the international framing of the problem and the normative debates were translated into the domestic political processes of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The early domestic framing of the problem had profound effects on the political debates in all three countries and played a major role in shaping the degree to which emergent international norms were translated into the domestic policy debates. The paper seeks to explain how and why the political framing of climate change evolved at the international and domestic political levels and explores the consequences of these changes for climate policy in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International environmental regimes have undergone a transformation in the last decade from a system based on centralized nation-state governance of resources to a devolved collaborative system of management in which non-state actors can play a significant role. One result is the growth of interlocal institutions which can provide local non-state actors a role in cross-scale environmental decision-making. This paper analyzes the local to global interplay of institutions managing four key arctic species: caribou, salmon, beluga whales, and polar bears. The research proposes that while global forces have reduced the capacity for non-state resource-users to control these species due to climate change and global market forces, representing a loss of power, interrelated global trends have caused an increase in the number of vertical institutions that are available to such resource-users to participate in species management. More narrowly, this paper proposes that central to the efficacy of non-state actor participation in transborder natural resources is the interlocal institution. These claims are supported through a threefold case study methodology. First, using Young?s (2002) theories of fit, the institutional pathways from local native co-management to global agreements are traced in order to evaluate the fit of institutional designs with ecological resource characteristics. Second, institutions come with certain discourses that empower some behaviors and forbid others (Escobar, 1995, 1999). This research articulates the extent to which different non-state actors wield power, and in what fashion, either through or in spite of institutions. Lastly, the paper demonstrates further support for the analysis of interlocal institutions, local transnational institutions for contiguously shared resources (Lovecraft, 2004), as a setting for local non-state actors to influence international environmental decisions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines progress made by EU and other European nations in achieving the targets they agreed to when they ratified the Kyoto Protocol and the additional goals some countries have set unilaterally, assesses the policies they have put in place to pursue these goals and how these policies compare; and explores the political factors that contribute to the political support for these efforts. The paper uses theories and frameworks from comparative public policy and politics to assess these policy and political developments, and seeks to identify lessons from Europe concerning how to generate political support for precautionary climate policies and the kinds of policies that are most effective in efficiently reducing greenhouse gas emissions that might help move climate policy forward in the United States. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is expected to bring about major global environmental change, although considerable uncertainties exist with regard to the extent and geographical distribution of these changes. Predicting scenarios for how climate related environmental change may again influence human societies and political systems necessarily involves an even higher degree of uncertainty. The direst predictions about the impacts of global warming warn about greatly increased risks of violent conflict over increasingly scarce resources such as freshwater and arable land. We argue that our best guess about the future has to be based on our knowledge about the relationship between environment and violent conflict in areas that already experience forms of environmental change that we think will increase with climate change. Previous rigorous studies in the field have mostly focused on national level aggregates. This paper represents a new approach to assess the impact of environment on domestic armed conflict by using geo-referenced (GIS) data and small geographical, rather than political, units of analysis. The paper addresses some of the most important factors assumed to be strongly influenced by global warming: productivity of land, freshwater availability, and population density and change. To contrast the neo-Malthusian emphasis on natural resource scarcity, we also address other environmental factors suggested to impact levels of conflict such as presence of resource abundance (diamonds, oil, timber and drug production) and of rough terrain (forests, deserts and mountains). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the international effort aimed at tackling climate change is related to the curbing of greenhouse gases emissions, while its human impact, especially in the South, is still vastly neglected by policy-makers. An important part of this human impact will be the forced displacement of populations, especially in low-elevated regions, such as islands, coastal and deltaic areas. Particularly at risk is the small atoll of Tuvalu, in the South Pacific Ocean, which is lowest-elevated state, and whose very existence is threatened by sea-level rise. The people of Tuvalu have reluctantly accepted the idea of relocation, and have started moving to New Zealand, under the terms of a negotiated migration scheme. Australia, which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, has refused to receive migrants from Tuvalu, and is now accused of ?eco-terrorism? by the authorities of the sinking atoll.Global warming is expected to force millions of people to relocate, and this paper looks at the possibilities of international cooperation in addressing this issue. Building on the case-study of Tuvalu, it examines how a global environmental responsibility could be shaped, and how the burden and responsibility of climate change-induced migrations could be shared and allocated. While the Kyoto Protocol provides an example of a burden-sharing scheme for the curbing of greenhouse gases emissions, such schemes are needed to meet the human cost of climate change such as the resulting forced migrations. Using the case of Tuvalu as a starting point, this paper tries to imagine which means of international cooperation could provide a new global public good : the protection of climate change ?refugees?. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the very nature of climate, scientists had to study it across national boundaries. Already in the 19th century, meteorologists formed occasional international collaborations and simple coordinating bodies. From the 1950s onward these expanded into ever larger and more elaborately organized global programs involving thousands of experts. The programs chiefly studied daily weather, but when research pointed to the possibility of global warming, it raised scientific questions that could only be addressed through international cooperative studies, and policy questions that required international negotiations. When governments formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), geoscientists comprised the core group. They imported the principles, mores, and many of the procedures that the scientific community had developed since the 17th century for establishing reliable statements about the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to explore an effective and efficient financing system for climate change adaptation that will reduce the vulnerabilities of underprivileged communities. Two approaches are used: One approach uses indicators to evaluate ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many observers have hailed the entry into force of the 'Kyoto Protocol' to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2005 as a landmark achievement in combating global climate change. However, this treaty is but a first step, and its core commitments will expire in 2012. Even full compliance with the Kyoto agreement will not prevent 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system' - the overall objective of the climate convention. This situation has led to wide-ranging debates among policy-makers, academics and environmentalists on the future of climate governance after 2012. This quest of finding stable, effective and equitable solutions for long-term climate governance stands at the centre of this chapter. It has also been the focus of the comprehensive research programme that is reported here: the research group 'Post-2012 Climate Governance' of the EU Integrated Project 'Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies' (ADAM). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years we have witnessed increasingly alarming language used in relation to climate change. Some writers have suggested that this is unwarranted, but the scientific evidence appears to justify the use of alarming language (Risbey). While in ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tackling climate change is increasingly recognized as a policy challenge of utter importance. One of the most interesting and innovative building blocks in the Kyoto Protocol climate regime is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Since its inception, this so-called flexible mechanism has evolved into a volatile and booming market for the first internationally traded commodity created by an international environmental agreement, certified emission reduc-tions (CERs). During the process of market establishment and its functioning, private actors such as companies, project verifiers, carbon funds and CER traders have become leading actors in the global CDM market. Although the market continues to be intimately policy dependent as demand derives from the stringency of emission allocations and future nation state commitments for greenhouse gas reductions, this article investigates the transformation of a market that has been initiated by public actors, kick-started by public-private partnerships (PPPs) and that has evolved into a market in which governments are withdrawing and private actors are increasingly taking up their governance function. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to fill a large and rather debilitating gap in recent literature on climate change by refining and advancing the concept of state-initiated 'industrial complexes' in the United States. Specifically, it aims to better understand the state’ ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the policy debate of today, unabated climate change is considered to be a security threat. Climate change related issues, such as desertification, flooding, and natural disasters pose potential security threats in form of migration, competition of scarce resources and social unrest. This development requires institutions with capacity to untangle complex causes and consequences. Furthermore, they need to be able to mitigate and respond to the problems ahead. Security issues are increasingly included on the international agenda to combat climate change. This raises questions of the capacity of international institutions. Can the climate change governance system cope with the increased complexity? Can institutions adapt to the challenges of climate changes' security implications? In order to answer these complex issues, this paper addresses the emergence of the climate change -security nexus and the institutions in this context. Further it discusses different approaches to study international institutions and the climate change - security nexus. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventionally understood mode of global environmental governanceâ€"universal, interstate, multilateral negotiations quintessentially represented by the 1997 Kyoto Protocolâ€"has essentially been stymied in climate change by the yawning gulfs that exist between the negotiating positions of major states. Yet stalemate at the state-centric level is not equivalent to the lack or demise of global governance of climate change. On the contrary, we are currently witnessing the emergence of multiple governance experiments at multiple levels of political organization (e.g. carbon offsetting, local governmental initiatives, regional initiatives, and carbon trading). This paper examines how the emergence of these governance experiments constrains and shapes the global response to climate change. It analyzes the politics of these experiments through the lenses of complex adaptive systems and social constructivism and examines how the experiments present both opportunities and obstacles for coherent and effective climate governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP) was announced in July 2005 and held its inaugural ministerial meeting in January 2006. While the partnership has been dismissed as a "red herring" to distract attention from the U.S.'s failure to address climate change, its members include some of the largest emitters and fastest growing economies in the world. Thus APP-member countries account for a much larger share of global greenhouse gas emissions than the 35 countries with binding emissions reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.In this paper we explore - in environmental as well as in political terms - whether the APP may be seen as a supplement or an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol. We argue that separately both approaches are likely to have a low environmental impact and that environmental impact is likely to be enhanced to the extent that they can be combined. Based on an analysis of the positions of two key actors, the U.S. and the EU, we further argue that there are interesting points of convergence between the U.S. position and the Kyoto approach as well as between the EU position and the APP approach. Our analysis indicates that there is potential for more coordination between these approaches than observers as well as the parties themselves seem to acknowledge. After a decade of trying - and failing - to develop internationally coordinated climate policies that include key actors, time may have come to start focusing on the extent of cooperation that is feasible given differences in national circumstances, both among and between developed and developing countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) was released in 2004, the Arctic became the first international region for a full-scale analysis of the impacts of climate change. Signs of climate change effects and ACIA?s focus on implications for indigenous peoples in the circumpolar North received large media coverage and shifted the emphasis in the framing of climate change from global climate-model averages to regional and local vulnerabilities. Based on an in-depth study of the ACIA-process, this paper discusses the forces behind this shift. It focuses on the interplay between scientific and political processes and the role of international regional regimes in allowing new actors into climate policy and knowledge production. It particularly analyzes the role of indigenous peoples? organizations, their relations to state actors, and how these relations were shaped by norms within a regional international regime: the Arctic Council. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though it is often viewed by environmentalists as defeatist to seriously discuss adaptation to climate change (as opposed to mitigation), it is evident that many regions will be affected by the advance of global warming. This paper will outline the predicted impact of climate change on the world's most destitute peoples, most of them in the southern hemisphere but some in the far north. It will then evaluate the normative implications of international responses to date, including various capital and technology transfer mechanisms, and argue that in order to pursue global justice on this issue a plethora of associated problems, such as the impact of invasive species, infectious diseases, and reduced livelihood possibilities, must be addressed as well. In this sense global warming might act as a catalyst towards global equity, though most models of international relations would suggest otherwise. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenology of Global Environmental Change, and Climate Change in particular, has potential to become the greatest threat that mankind may face in the 21st century. The ecosystem tipping point theory, established by natural scientists, identifies a ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pressing global environmental problems such as climate change lead states to attempt to coordinate efforts to address the issue through the establishment of multilateral environmental agreements. While many studies highlight the lack of strength and relat ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years, energy security and climate change have dominated the political agenda and engendered considerable academic attention. However, interest has overwhelmingly been focused on empirical aspects related to energy security rather than o ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the more inconvenient truths of the current climate change crisis is the questionable reliance upon applied aesthetics to capture the characteristics of this coming catastrophe. With the immensity and complexity of such change, even when it is we ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A countless number of business and industries are now actively expressing support for the international climate regime and engaging in various kinds of programs and measures to address climate change. But despite the significance of this new wave engageme ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2007 saw climate change rise to a general status of international security issue - symbolised by three events: the release of the 4th Assessment Report by the IPCC tightening the language about the certainty and severity of the prognoses for climate chang ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy security has top priority in policymaking, and is often used by politicians as a rationale for policy changes that also entail greenhouse gas emission reductions. This article investigates systematically the close relationship between energy security and climate change. We discuss the potential for whether U.S. climate policy stands to be altered through calculated policy choices that could both increase energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We find that when energy security and climate change concerns increase in the same time period it may incur changes in power relationships between the actors involved. Under such circumstances will the potential for issue linkage be high and consequently create room for new climate policy programs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work addresses how scenarios help distinguish between threats, vulnerabilities, and risk, and what are the best possible mechanisms to address the complex relationship climate change and human security impact. Well known scenario cases that have considered climate change and its security impact (such as the Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall case written for the U.S. Department of Defense?s Office of Net Assessment) have most often focused on how to mitigate risk, particularly in the context of ?national security.? Few scenarios, to date, have considered the usefulness of assessing human security impact and attempts to mitigate vulnerability and avoid conflictual outcomes that are considered in a framework other than a nation-state response to a potential/emerging/real ?threat.? Given that scenarios might prove most useful to how a person/group/decision-maker might benefit from climate change scenarios, we propose to assess how best to consider and evaluate appropriate scales of action for a scenario for a given purpose. While catastrophic climate change will affect the globe in a disastrous way, scenarios that consider the complex relationship?and uncertain outcomes?from direct impact on human security vulnerabilities might compel the serious development of a research agenda that moves beyond the nation-states as the best response mechanism to human security impact outcomes as a result of climate change and related vulnerability events. Specifically, if ?human security? is the appropriate social (decision making?) unit of analysis, who or what co-operative regime is best suited to provide response? Moreover, what influence or range of responses might be available for such mechanisms to be effective? Finally, given the complex dynamics of this workshop?s focus, we consider it likely suggests that one scenario will not work for all bases of action, and raise the issue of ?nested? scenarios with multiple options for decision as an effective policy mechanism for decision makers. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]