The gender and climate change literature has set out to underscore the differential impacts of climate change within populations. Much of this literature has conflated gender to equate to women, and has focused mostly on women in the developing world, mainly in rural areas where women are usually assigned reproductive social roles and seen as victims of climate change. This overlooks the intersecting and multiple identities of women, their role and voice as agents of change in all regions, and does not use the full range of feminist theory and methods. This dissertation uses feminist geography to challenge the dominant scales and sites of climate change governance and draws attention to the micropolitical, situated, and relational practices through which power relations surrounding climate change are (re)produced. The overarching research question is: How can we include gender and intersectional voices in the study and practice of climate governance? More specifically, I examine how gender and climate policies were and are created; I expose how discourses of gender and climate change are perpetuated and by whom; and I make clear the relationship between these discourses and social inequality and vulnerability to climate change. Paper A examines the experiences of women who are authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and finds that while some women experience active forms of gender discrimination such as silencing or being dismissed, other have a more positive experience, but encounter barriers such as lacking childcare or support from their employers. Paper B shows how feminist geography can investigate the micropolitical and everyday interactions in important geopolitical spaces. It finds that the simple formulation around gender in international climate debate erases important differences amongst women and their struggles; creating an identity politics that excludes people with similar goals, weakening potential for positive change. Paper C contests the mainstream climate change and gender discourse that constructs the ‘third world women’, showing women in rural Mexico as agents of change instead of vulnerable and passive victims and including self-reflection on my own fieldwork. The appended paper shows that, in most cases, carbon offset projects have consolidated gendered regimes of differential access to markets and economic opportunities while also reifying property tenure structures that may further exacerbate gendered distinctions.

Natural disasters are on the rise in the Caribbean due to climate change that affects several OECS member states in the Eastern Caribbean region. However, OECS governments have developed structures for reducing vulnerability and building resilience. Climate change and disaster resilience projects were implemented, and regional, national, and local support is provided. A prominent voice in climate governance debate is late Elinor Ostrom, who argues that global climate agreements should be decentralized and taken place locally rather than centrally. According to Ostrom, a bottom-up approach creates a more multilevel governing system. This approach is described as a "polycentric approach" by Ostrom. A polycentric governance is argued to provide several benefits and is effective in combating climate change. Our study examines whether the existing regional and local climate projects and programmes of the OECS member states follow a polycentric approach to climate governance. In this study, the data were analysed by employing two frameworks that are related to the theory of polycentric approaches to climate governance, that have been used in previous studies. With this we aim to capture the multifaceted nature of polycentric climate governance.

Since various public and private actors at the international, supranational, national and subnational levels started to adopt long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, low-carbon scenario analyses have flourished. Literature reveals an increasing number of analyses envisioning and exploring alternative images of low-carbon futures, as well as their adjacent transition pathways. Scenario approaches or “foresight” is intended to help policy-makers to navigate the maelstrom of confusion and conflicts associated with highly complex societal challenges such as climate change – i.e. the “super-wicked” problems. Typical scenario exercises aim at coping with uncertainty and conflicting values, and hence are often claimed as a suitable approach for knowing and governing super-wicked problems. When reviewing the scenario literature published over the recent years, we observe significant methodological developments, in particular at the level of the calculus or data-sets. These contributions have generated an increasing technical sophistication of scenario building methods, and contrast with the relative absence of social sciences research on scenarios. Scenario analyses have received little academic attention from social sciences, whether they are political science, sociology, philosophy of science or science and technology studies. By providing a SHS-analysis of low-carbon scenarios, the present thesis contributes to bridge this research gap. Scenarios are here understood as “boundary objects” linking different social worlds: science and policy, but also natural and social sciences. This thesis aspires to create an enhanced understanding on how scenario analyses perform such “boundary work”. More specifically, the following analysis of low-carbon scenarios is based on a twofold perspective focusing, on the one hand, on the interactions between low-carbon scenarios and governance (i.e. link between science and policy), and, on the other hand, on the making of knowledge about governance in low-carbon scenarios (i.e. link between natural and social sciences). In other words, it explores “scenarios in governance” and “governance in scenarios”. The thesis project includes three research axes, each based on its particular empirics. A first study explores the interactions between low-carbon scenarios and governance on the basis of a multiple case study analysing the role of four energy foresight studies in policy-making. The other two studies focus on the making of knowledge about governance in low-carbon scenarios. One of them provides an assessment of the knowledge needed to steer the low-carbon transition. The other one aims at contributing to the debate on the relations between quantitative modelling and social sciences by exposing a critical review of socio-technical energy transition models. The objective of the present thesis thus consists in providing an empirical contribution to social sciences research on low-carbon scenarios. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as a privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. However, the success of local climate governance in industrialized countries has been limited. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology-oriented ecological modernization and individual behavior change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex socioeconomic patterns. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of "low-carbon municipalities" (top-down initiatives) and those of "intentional communities" (bottom-up initiatives). We were interested to determine to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Using an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low-carbon municipalities face difficulties in transforming carbon-intensive social practices. While offering some additional low-carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon-intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organizational options to intervene in the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low-carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridization for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models.

Ever since the governments began to meet for the Conferences of the Parties (COP) to try to come to agreement over an international climate agreement, civil society organizations involved in the climate issue have also gathered for their own conferences in relation to the COP. Still the role of these re-occurring “COP counter summits” in global climate governance have not been researched in depth. In order to contribute to a better understanding of the role the COP counter summit in climate governance in general, the aim of this study is to conduct a qualitative single-case study of one of these meetings. This is carried out by a field study to the COP counter summit in Paris 2015 with methods of participatory observation and semi-structured interviews with informants. An analytical framework was developed based on theory within related research fields, like parallel summits, social movements and globalization studies. The study contributes with research about what functions of the COP counter summit in Paris had for civil society and how these functions were performed.

This study sets out to examine the factors driving consumption-based emission on the political agenda of Umeå municipality in northern Sweden. The paper attempts to contribute to the understanding of how climate change related issues can be given a more salient role on the political agenda of municipalities. Building on agenda-setting theories and previous studies on the subject of urban climate governance, a hypothesis was formulated to test existing theories and previous findings. Semi-structured interviews with elected politicians and municipal officials were used to gather empirics, to be analyzed and tested against the hypothesis. The main findings point towards the importance of engaged officials/politicians in bringing an issue to the municipal agenda and a supportive political context, created by policy tradition and history. Political trends and movements and external expertise were important factors in facilitating the implementation of the project encompassing consumption-based emissions on the municipal level, possibly fostering the emergence of it on the political agenda. No clear factor was found to be accountable for the transition of the issue from the municipal to the political agenda, being a product of multiple variables.

The role of intermediation in the development of transformative climate governance capacities in cities is insufficiently examined, which is concerning given that research on transformative climate governance  has shown low degrees of  actual capacity on-the ground. As transformative climate governance is produced in the relational activities of urban stakeholders, the potential role intermediary actors can play in strengthening transformative governance capacities in cities warrants in-depth investigation.  The aim of this study  is to  examine the role intermediaries can play in advancing transformative climate governance capacities in cities, using the case of the Swedish Strategic Innovation Programme (SIP) Viable Cities and the work they do in supporting cities towards climate neutrality.  The study uses four dimensions of transformative climate governance capacity - stewarding capacity, unlocking capacity, transformative capacity, and orchestrating capacity  -  to examine what kinds of transformative climate governance capacities Viable Cities promote and incentivize as an intermediary working together with a network of several cities, varying in size and geographical location.  The study adopted a qualitative case-study approach, examining  Viable Cities through interviews with practitioners as well as participatory observations and document analysis.  The results show that Viable Cities stimulate novelty creation and identification of possible application contexts, while creating alignment and strengthening linkages between actors and resources, specifically between the networks of municipalities they engage with and the institutions they enlist to develop the conditions necessary for cities to become climate neutral. The results also indicate that Viable Cities put great emphasis on transformative capacity and orchestrating capacity through the strategies and tools they utilize, while lesser emphasis lies on stewarding capacity and unlocking capacity. This is not surprising, given the explicit focus Viable Cities has on stimulating innovation and facilitating collaboration – both in their own way of working as well as the strategies and tools they promote towards the participating municipalities.  The application of the transformative climate governance framework to the case of Viable Cities and the intermediation they perform across several cities was a novel feature of this study. The concept of transformative climate governance capacities have proven useful to assess what kinds of transformative climate governance intermediaries promote and incentivize for entities they engage with, and it can potentially be used as a tool to improve strategies to ensure that they actually have the potential to contribute to transformative climate governance. / Medlande aktörers roll i utvecklingen av transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet i städer är i nuläget otillräckligt undersökt; vilket är oroande med tanke på att forskning om transformativ klimatstyrning har visat låga grader av faktisk kapacitet i praktiken. Eftersom transformativ klimatstyrning produceras i relationella aktiviteter mellan urbana aktörer, kräver den potentiella roll som medlande aktörer kan spela för att stärka transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet vidare utredning. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilken roll  medlande aktörer  kan spela för att främja transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet i städer,  genom att undersöka det strategiska innovationsprogrammet Viable Cities och det arbete de gör för att stödja städer i resan mot klimatneutralitet.  Studien utgår från fyra dimensioner av transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet - förvaltningskapacitet, upplåsningskapacitet, transformativ kapacitet och orkestreringskapacitet - för att undersöka vilka typer av transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet Viable Cities främjar och stimulerar  i deras  arbete tillsammans med ett nätverk  av städer och myndigheter. Studien är utformad som en kvalitativ fallstudie och undersöker Viable Cities genom intervjuer med nyckelpersoner inom organisationen samt genom deltagande observationer och dokumentanalys.  Resultatet visar att Viable Cities stimulerar innovation och identifiering av möjliga tillämpningskontexter, samtidigt som de skapar likriktning och stärker kopplingar mellan aktörer och resurser, särskilt mellan nätverken av kommuner och  myndigheter  de  arbetar mot. Resultatet indikerar också att Viable Cities lägger stor vikt vid transformativ kapacitet och orkestreringskapacitet genom de strategier och verktyg de använder, medan mindre vikt ligger på att utveckla förvaltande kapacitet och upplåsningskapacitet. Detta är inte förvånande med tanke på det uttalade fokus Viable Cities har på att stimulera innovation och underlätta samarbete  –  både i sitt eget sätt att arbeta såväl som de strategier och verktyg de främjar gentemot de deltagande kommunerna.  Tillämpningen av  ramverket för transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet på en  medlande aktör som Viable Cities var ett nytt inslag i denna studie. Konceptet transformativ klimatstyrningskapacitet har visat sig användbart för att bedöma vilka typer av transformativa klimatstyrningskapaciteter medlande aktörer kan främja och stimulera, och ramverket kan potentiellt användas som ett verktyg för att förbättra och skräddarsy mellanhänders strategier.

A growing awareness of the severity of the climate crisis caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has led to an increased effort to find governance strategies to transition society towards sustainable development. One recently adopted strategy is the adoption of local carbon budgets, derived from the so-called global carbon budget, within local governments across Sweden. In this thesis, I explore this happening through a case study of the county of Västra Götaland, Sweden using the concept of governmentality to provide critical analysis of the use of local carbon budgets in an attempt to encourage reflexive governance. By conducting semi-structured interviews with persons involved in the adoption of local carbon budgets in Västra Götaland, I seek to gain a greater understanding of how local carbon budgets impact the way actors seek to govern climate through the adoption of new programs of conduct that seek the reform of the current regime of practices that exist within the county. I explore how such carbon budgets construct the problem of climate change and the need for rapid decarbonization to discover what practices are limited or made possible through such a construction. I find that local carbon budgets are problematizing several areas of municipal and regional governance, conceptually and practically, particularly in the way actors understand climate change and the decarbonization challenge. I argue that a reterritorialization of the climate into local ‘emission spaces’ allows for the quantification and distribution of limited ‘emissions resources’ amongst actors in the county. This territorialization and quantification of a constructed resource contribute to a perception of urgency critical to motivating action to decarbonize. These conditions create a mandate for political action to resolve the constructed problem of scarce ‘emissions resources’ within a municipality or county’s ‘emissions space’ to ensure a ‘fair’ distribution in society. I further suggest that actors adopting local carbon budgets should consider the application of common-pool resource management strategies to move governance beyond an internal carbon budgeting approach.

This master’s thesis deals with international climate agreements and their legitimacy, using the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol as examples. The thesis examines sociological legitimacy as a possible reason for implementation deficiencies of international climate agreements. Sociological legitimacy of an international agreement, as defined by Bernstein (2005), is hinged on a normative consensus among the international community adopting the agreement in question. In order to determine the degree of sociological legitimacy in the illustrative cases, a critical discourse analysis is employed as a method to identify and sort the explicit and implicit norms of the agreements according to various and contrasting sustainability discourses. This analysis allows for an assessment of the internal consistency of the norms in each case, ultimately leading to conclusions about the extent to which sociological legitimacy is present or not. The results show that neither of the two cases portray an internally consistent application of norms, and therefore lack sociological legitimacy. Further research into the sustainability norms in a given nation or society is needed for determining the external sociological legitimacy of both agreements, thus providing a final conclusion.

<p>In this thesis, I investigate the effects of social and political context on the process and outcomes of science communication in two different settings, using Dietram Scheufele’s interpretation of science communication as political communication. </p> <p>In the first setting, I examine the communication of climate tipping points at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) using 26 semi-structured interviews and 271 surveys administered to members of the UNFCCC policy community. Survey results revealed that only a small minority (14.3%) of policymakers defined climate tipping points consistently with the scientific community. Interview responses revealed that many policymakers believed they were not responsible for incorporating new scientific advice into their work on negotiations, and that this was the responsibility of scientists. Scientists interviewed expressed frustration that policymakers were not willing to hear scientific information they saw as irrelevant to their work on the negotiations. Policymakers responding to interviews were also unwilling to defy social norms by introducing a topic they saw as “complicated” into negotiations. Interview respondents who believed climate tipping points should be discussed within formal negotiations also noted that they interpreted the effects of climate change as temporally or spatially immediate to themselves. </p> <p>In the second setting, I examine how the United States print media incorporated discussion of climate change into coverage of the 2017 hurricane season via a content analysis of hurricane coverage in six major US newspapers. Conservative papers and liberal papers displayed significant differences in frequency and directness of references to climate change, as well as a significant difference in the references to climate denial messages, climate consensus messages, and use of proximity cues. However, the conservative paper near a 2017 hurricane consistently displayed significant differences in coverage from the other conservative papers. This paper frequently used social norms in messaging to shift narratives of acceptability of climate change discussion among conservatives. Both conservative and liberal papers near a 2017 hurricane used proximity cues to indicate the effects of climate change are both physically and temporally near at greater rates than elite and regional papers not near a 2017 hurricane.</p> <p>Taken together, these results reveal that three major factors influenced climate change communication in these two settings. First, power to define direction and content of science communication explains the lack of communication about climate tipping points at the UNFCCC. Policymakers’ hold legitimate power over science communication. This power is codified within UNFCCC structure. Policymakers’ expert power is also interpreted as more relevant to negotiations processes than scientists’ expert power; meaning policymakers are free to define what information is “policy relevant” and therefore, what is communicated. Second, social norms influenced how and whether communication occurred. Social norms prohibiting behavior disruptive to consensus building influenced policymaker definitions of “policy relevant.” Social norms among US conservatives prohibiting serious discussion of climate tipping points were also apparent. Finally, perceptions of climate change as immediate and nearby seemed related to willingness to defy social norms around climate change communication. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>