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"At the 2019 UN climate change conference, activists and delegates for groups representing Indigenous, youth, women, and labour rights were among those marching through the halls chanting "Climate Justice, People Power." In The New Climate Activism, Jen Iris Allan looks at why and how these social activists came to participate in climate change governance while others, such as those working on human rights and health, remain on the outside of climate activism. Through case studies of women's rights, labour, alter-globalization, health, and human rights activism, Allan shows that some activists sought and successfully gained recognition as part of climate change governance, while others remained marginalized. While concepts key to some social activists, including gender mainstreaming, just transition, and climate justice are common terms, human rights and health remain "fringe issues" in climate change governance. The New Climate Activism explores why and how these activists brought their issues to climate change, and why some succeeded while others did not."--

After a decade of negotiation, countries adopted a new, legally binding agreement on climate change. Excitement for a new era in the climate regime is palpable among pundits and policy makers alike. But such enthusiasm largely overlooks that most of the Paris Agreement's provisions represent continuity with existing climate policy, not a break with the past. This forum argues that the Paris Agreement is a dangerous form of incrementalism in two ways. First, it repackages existing rules that have already proven inadequate to reduce emissions and improve resilience. Second, state and nonstate actors celebrate the Agreement as a solution, conferring legitimacy on its rules; I suggest that, beyond the strong desire to avoid failure, developing countries and nongovernmental organizations accepted the Paris Agreement to secure the participation of the United States and to uphold previous agreements. Given the reification of existing rules, the ratchet-up mechanism and nonstate actors offer the last remaining hopes in global efforts to catalyze climate action on a scale necessary to safeguard the climate.

AbstractToday's global climate movement is substantial and diverse. In the mid‐2000s, an influx of activists and organizations advancing social issues, such as gender, labor, justice, development and indigenous rights (to name a few) arrived at the UN climate negotiations, fragmenting civil society. I argue that, in part, the rise of these 'new' climate activists can be explained by the ongoing negotiations for a legally binding treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which added new issues that became 'discursive hooks' for NGOs' claims to belonging in the climate regime. Linking to a specific institution had two effects: it served as an entry point to frame climate issues as social issues; and it helped NGOs carve a niche in climate policy in which they were authorities. In the Paris regime, this history matters, as some NGOs will fare better under the new rules than others. First, those established in institutions enshrined in the Paris Agreement will continue to have a foothold in the regime. Second, those that built their authority on their expertise or their capacity to deliver mitigation results may find more opportunities than those making moral claims.

AbstractConservation biologists and environmental economists popularized ecosystem services as a governance concept in the 1990s. The concept, it was hoped, would valorize biodiversity conservation to place it on a level playing field with the economic concerns of the world's finance ministers and private sector. Has this valorization promise been realized within the international community? We examine this question by interrogating a constructed dataset of 272 international activities undertaken by international actors (e.g. non‐governmental organizations, inter‐governmental organizations, and other international organizations) that invoke or use the ecosystem services concept. We find that ecosystem service practice is dominated by capacity‐building not the valuation of nature. This suggests that the international community is not extensively using the concept to value nature in order to inform governance decisions. We posit that budget and management pressures facing international organizations along with priorities of countries help explain the dominance of capacity‐building. But we also suggest that a deeper understanding of the concept of ecosystem services – particularly its implied programme of action – is necessary to account for its unfulfilled promise to date. We close with implications from this study for broader work on global environmental governance.