Organizing Business: Industry NGOs in the Climate Debates.

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]