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In the evolution of national carbon markets, market intermediaries, whose role is to connect buyers and sellers of carbon credits, have emerged as key actors in shaping market development. We compare the carbon market intermediary communities in Brazil and India, two pioneers in establishing carbon market activity and expertise under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. Both Brazil and India witnessed rapid expansion of the CDM and remain global leaders in the number of projects, expected reductions, and depth of institutional capacity related to carbon trading. Despite these similarities, carbon market development varied across the two countries, reflecting the intersection of institutional structures and market agents. National differences in access to fossil fuel resources and domestic regulatory environments resulted in two distinct carbon market intermediary communities; in Brazil intermediaries were local entrepreneurs, specializing in the Brazilian carbon market, while in India carbon projects were promoted by the carbon market arms of major global consulting companies. The activities of these distinct market intermediaries then led to distinct outcomes in the timing of market development, the average size of CDM projects, and the reliance on international financing and technology transfer in CDM project implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of transnational civil society over the past decades led to increased expectations regarding a re-imagining world politics. Over time, expectations were tempered as research identified barriers which limit the influence of global civil society actors and networks. This article re-expands the scope of action of global civil society by focusing not only on the narrow project of influencing the outcomes of particular negotiations but also on the broader project of reshaping arenas of global governance to function as "global public spheres," i.e. political arenas in which legitimacy is predicated on rational deliberation of the common interest. There are three "public sphere" mechanisms by which transnational civil society can create opportunities for influence in international politics. First, civil society groups can engage in the longer-term project of creating governance arenas that function as public spheres. Second, they can shift the locus of decision-making from closed arenas, where structural and material power determine the outcomes of bargaining, to more public arenas, where positions must be justified in terms of widely shared interests. Finally, civil society groups can enhance their influence by framing their interests as being in the global public good and shaping definitions of the global public good embedded in various international governance arenas; a task achieved more easily by those representing broad public constituencies than those pursuing particular interests from positions of structural power. Each strategy is illustrated with empirical examples from the international negotiations on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents an emerging form of transnational advocacyâ€"which we term shareholder transnational advocacy networks (STANs)â€"that links local activists and domestic and international NGOs with shareholder groups to exert leverage over corporate behavior. The study develops the "corporate boomerang model" of STAN influence, building on Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model of TAN influence, to address recent shifts in NGO advocacy, including the growing focus on corporations as targets of civil society movements and the rise in shareholder advocacy as a means of changing corporate behavior. The emergence of shareholder transnational advocacy raises an important research question: What factors influence STAN effectiveness? The paper explores this question through a case study comparison of two STANs operating in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. The first case study examines a STAN aimed at Burlington Resources in Ecuador’s southern Amazonian region. Indigenous resistance to oil development in this region has successfully blocked all oil production, and shareholder advocacy has prompted company response to indigenous concerns. The second case study evaluates a shareholder network operating in conjunction with a class-action lawsuit filed by indigenous communities against ChevronTexaco for environmental damage caused by oil production in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon. This STAN has experienced limited success in forcing concessions from Chevron. The research findings show that the relative success of the Burlington STAN in comparison to the Chevron network can be explained by significant differences in both the strength and density of the networks, the specific vulnerabilities of the two target companies, and the varying contexts of the two networks. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most analyses would predict little dynamism in conflicts between environmental groups and the fossil fuel industry in the international climate change negotiations. However, fossil fuel interests did not dictate the trajectory of international climate policy. Rather, the environmental community was able, at least initially, to orient the international climate policy process towards its concerns. The rise and fall of environmental influence can be explained by the institutional terrain of the UN climate negotiations. The central argument of the paper is that the UN climate negotiations functioned as a Habermasian "public sphere," i.e. an arena in which decisions must be justified in terms of the common good and cannot simply reflect the particular interests of powerful actors. By pushing for climate change to be debated in the public sphere of the UN climate negotiations, by influencing the norms that shaped the terrain of debate, and by convincingly claiming that the environmental viewpoint represented the global common good, environmental supporters of climate protection they were able to challenge the structural and material influence of fossil fuel companies opposed to action on climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most social movements scholars identify a split in a counter-movement elite as a political opportunity for a social movement. Drawing on a case study of environmental NGO advocacy in the international climate debates, I challenge this consensus. I demonstrate that the split in the oil industry in the context of the UN climate change negotiations both undermined the parallel efforts of various climate advocacy NGOs, by bringing to the fore pre-existing tensions between groups, and undercut the movement's ability to sustain the kinds of public mobilization that led to the split in the oil industry in the first place. The paper contributes three arguments to the social movements literature. First, split elites are as likely to generate a political liability as a political opportunity. Second, the source of the liability is not the cooptation of individual NGOs but conflict between different branches of the movement community. Finally, the balance between opportunity and liability depends on communication across movement groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conundrum of international climate regulation is that it even exists. Global climate change has issue characteristics that pose major challenges to supporters of international climate policy. Nevertheless, the international community of states has embarked on a regulatory trajectory of binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, this trajectory lies much closer to the preferences of environmental NGOs than to the preferences of most fossil fuel companies and other conservative business interests. This article uses Habermas? concept of the public sphere to explain the trajectory of the international climate policy and to analyze the environmental community?s success in shaping that trajectory in the face of strong opposition from the structurally and materially powerful oil industry. I argue that the particular institutional characteristics of the climate negotiations?their ideology of science-based environmental stewardship, their global scope, their emphasis on the public good, and their commitment to public access and participation?enable the participatory parity, rational debate about the common interest, and formation of strong public opinion which define a public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the organizational efforts of the business and environmental communities in the multilateral climate negotiations reveals a startling difference. In the environmental domain, the Climate Action Network has been the single dominant association of environmental groups advocating on climate change. In contrast, the population of representative business and industry associations voicing the business view on climate change has been turbulent, with the prominence of different organizations fluctuating over time. This turbulence has two causes. First, policy shifts on the climate issue by key multinationals created tension within the business community. Second, this tension was exacerbated by the particular functions of business associations in the climate negotiations. Business associations provide three services?access, consensus, and anti-politics?for their members in the international climate negotiations. A comparison between the business and environmental communities reveals that the anti-politics function, which is particular to business associations, hampers them in accommodating internal conflict and in organizing consensus across different national political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functioning of markets is contingent on solving three market problems: 1) commodification, i.e. creating the commodity to be traded ; 2) market entry, i.e. attracting sufficient numbers of buyers and sellers to a new market, and 3) market stability, i.e. a market condition in which relationships among market actors and with market regulators are regularized and predictable. This framework is used to analyze the creation of new markets for carbon emissions reductions in the Brazilian and Indian sugar sector. Interview and archival data demonstrate that while problems of market entry have been solved by networks of carbon consultants, the commodification of carbon and the development of stable market relationships between market actors and regulators have proved more challenging. The failure to solve the commodification and stability problems has undermined efforts to build new carbon markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]