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An innovative approach to mitigating climate change beyond the international negotiations and hard-law approaches is governing by disclosure – the acquisition and dissemination of information to influence the behavior of particular actors. This paper analyzes the institutionalization of carbon disclosure as an organizational field, focusing in particular on the role of governance entrepreneurs in this process. The emergence of carbon disclosure is scrutinized along four distinct stages of transnational institutionalization: start-up; competition and growth; convergence and consolidation; integration into international public policy. For each phase, the role and relevance of governance entrepreneurs is analyzed. The article finds that during the first stage, entrepreneurs mainly acts as innovators and "out-of-the-box" thinkers; in stage 2, entrepreneurs can be characterized as flexible adaptors and opportunity seekers, while in stage 3, the role of meta-governors in dominant. Finally, the last stage, entrepreneurs acts as connectors and bridge-builder between the transnational sphere of carbon disclosure and the wider international governance arena.

Climate change is widely acknowledged as a key business risk. Companies around the globe are taking action to mitigate their carbon emissions, develop climate-friendly products and services, and prepare for the negative impacts of climate change for their operations. Financial investors, on their part, are becoming more concerned about business responses to climate change and begin to demand concrete risk management strategies. In this context an increasing number of private initiatives are seeking to change business behaviour in a more sustainable direction. Key instruments used are governance by disclosure. This paper explores the agency of nonstate actors in manufacturing climate change into a key business risk, a development that enabled the use of disclosure-based governance mechanisms in global climate politics.

This article contributes to the broadening agenda of critical globalisation(s) research by analysing one of the most fundamental ideological foundations of the current global transformation in a historical perspective: the ideology of "domination over nature" that was implemented in Europe from 1500 onwards. Humans have always shaped and altered their environment according to their needs and aspirations. However, it is the distinct ideology of mastery and domination over nature that underlines this unprecedented enterprise. An ideology in this context is understood as a codified justification for social practices, codified in concrete as well as highly abstract systems of rule. The question I seek to answer in this contribution is why Europe – a backward civilisation up to the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance – was the birthplace of the distinct ideology of mastery over nature, globalising itself through exploration, discovery, and trade to nearly every corner of the planet. Key words: ideology of mastery, human-nature relations, ecological imperialism, historical political ecology

This article contributes to the broadening agenda of critical globalisation(s) research by analysing one of the most fundamental ideological foundations of the current global transformation in a historical perspective: the ideology of "domination over nature" that was implemented in Europe from 1500 onwards. Humans have always shaped and altered their environment according to their needs and aspirations. However, it is the distinct ideology of mastery and domination over nature that underlines this unprecedented enterprise. An ideology in this context is understood as a codified justification for social practices, codified in concrete as well as highly abstract systems of rule. The question I seek to answer in this contribution is why Europe – a backward civilisation up to the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance – was the birthplace of the distinct ideology of mastery over nature, globalising itself through exploration, discovery, and trade to nearly every corner of the planet. Key words: ideology of mastery, human-nature relations, ecological imperialism, historical political ecology

This article assesses the recent trend of cooperation among antagonistic private actors that results in the creation and implementation of issue‐specific transnational norms and rules and the subsequent shift from public to private forms of governance. Many political scientists agree that authority also exists outside of formal political structures. Private actors increasingly begin to make their own rules and standards that acquire authority beyond the international system. This observation is often referred to as private transnational governance as opposed to public or international governance. Although the concept of private governance gains prominence in academic debates, it is not clear how private governance on the global scale is constructed and maintained or what specific or general conditions are necessary for private governance to emerge. Based on the review of common theoretical propositions, this article develops an integrated model along which the necessary conditions for the emergence of private governance can be assessed and understood. As most research has hitherto focused on institutionalized cooperation between business actors (self‐regulation), this article takes a closer look at those transnational systems of rule that result out of the enhanced cooperation between profit and nonprofit actors (coregulation).

This article assesses the recent trend of cooperation among antagonistic private actors that results in the creation & implementation of issue-specific transnational norms & rules & the subsequent shift from public to private forms of governance. Many political scientists agree that authority also exists outside of formal political structures. Private actors increasingly begin to make their own rules & standards that acquire authority beyond the international system. This observation is often referred to as private transnational governance as opposed to public or international governance. Although the concept of private governance gains prominence in academic debates, it is not clear how private governance on the global scale is constructed & maintained or what specific or general conditions are necessary for private governance to emerge. Based on the review of common theoretical propositions, this article develops an integrated model along which the necessary conditions for the emergence of private governance can be assessed & understood. As most research has hitherto focused on institutionalized cooperation between business actors (self-regulation), this article takes a closer look at those transnational systems of rule that result out of the enhanced cooperation between profit & nonprofit actors (coregulation). 52 References. Adapted from the source document.

Der Beitrag setzt sich mit der Frage auseinander, welche Funktionen private Regelsetzungspartnerschaften im Bereich der globalen Umweltpolitik erfüllen und welche Chancen und Risiken sich aus einer steigenden Beteiligung privater Akteure bei der Setzung von global wirksamen Regeln ergeben. Als Beispiel dient der von Forstwirtschaft, Umweltorganisationen und sozialen Interessengruppen zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre ins Leben gerufene Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), eine der einflussreichsten globalen Public-Private-Partnerships. Aus der empirischen Analyse des FSC werden vier Bedingungen abgeleitet, die erfüllt sein müssen, damit Public-Private-Partnerships das soziale und ökologische Verhalten transnationaler Unternehmen verbessern: (1) Kontrolle durch nichtstaatliche Organisationen; (2) faire Entscheidungsmechanismen zum Ausgleich konkurrierender Interessen; (3) Transparenz bei der Entwicklung von Standards; (4) Unabhängigkeit von ökonomischen Interessen. (ICE2)

Targets are widely employed in environmental governance. In this paper, we investigate the construction of the 2 °C climate target, one of the best known targets in global environmental governance. Our paper examines this target through a historical reconstruction that identifies four different phases: framing, consolidation and diffusion, adoption, and disembeddedness. Our analysis shows that, initially, the target was science-driven and predominantly EU-based; it then became progressively accepted at the international level, despite a lack of broader debate among governments on the policy implications and required measures for implementation. Once the 2 °C target was endorsed at the level of the United Nations, the nature of the target changed from being policy-prescriptive to being largely symbolic. In this phase, the target became a disembedded object in global governance not linked to a shared agenda nor to coordinated and mutually binding mitigation efforts. The 2015 Paris Agreement marks the last stage in this development and may have further solidified the target as a disembedded object. In the final part of the paper, we suggest ways to overcome the current situation and to develop the 2 °C target into a fully fledged global environmental governance target.

Despite the proliferation and promise of subnational climate initiatives, the institutional architecture of transnational municipal networks (TMNs) is not well understood. With a view to close this research gap, the article empirically assesses the assumption that TMNs are a viable substitute for ambitious international action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It addresses the aggregate phenomenon in terms of geographical distribution, central players, mitigation ambition and monitoring provisions. Examining thirteen networks, it finds that membership in TMNs is skewed toward Europe and North America while countries from the Global South are underrepresented; that only a minority of networks commit to quantified emission reductions and that these are not more ambitious than Parties to the UNFCCC; and finally that the monitoring provisions are fairly limited. In sum, the article shows that transnational municipal networks are not (yet) the representative, ambitious and transparent player they are thought to be.

In the face of global environmental change, a key question for the social sciences is how to organize the co-evolution of societies and their natural environment. In this context, a new long-term research program, the Earth System Governance Project, proposes several key issues to be examined: architecture, agency, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation and access. The contributions to this special issue have focused on the analytical problem of agency. For example, they have examined newly emerging or understudied agents of global environmental governance, or offered a fresh assessment of agency in the context of existing governance mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. This concluding article outlines several insights provided by the contributions to this special issue regarding four key questions underlying the study of agency in global environmental governance. First, they call attention to the ingredients or processes that characterize agency in the first place and thus distinguish actors from agents. Secondly, the authors highlight the differences among agents and how they interact with each other. Thirdly, they point toward variation in the ways that agents may acquire authority. Finally, the contributions to this special issue suggest that there may be several approaches to evaluating agency, with different consequences. Thus, taken together, the contributions to this special issue provide a starting point for broadening our understanding of agency in earth system governance.