National Socio Environmental Synthesis Center NGO and Civil Society Participation in United Nations Climate Conventions Introduction Climate change is arguably the most significant and all-encompassing environmental problem facing our human society. Making it even more difficult to solve, climate change is a global problem; the whole world community must work together to address it. In the past, the United Nations has held regular meetings, or Conferences of Parties (COPs), for state delegates to come together and develop international environmental treaties and regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change. Civil society has been included, to varying degrees, in these talks. Since civil society participants represent the wider public who is affected by climate change, as well as include some specialists with expertise and knowledge not held by diplomats, their involvement is important to the COP process. In this research, Earth Negotiations Bulletins (ENBs), published daily for each of the seventeen COPs, were examined for mentions of civil society. The research objective was to use the references for insight into how civil society is allowed to participate, how protests occur, and how an insider source such as the ENBs report this involvement. Materials and Methods The source materials used for this research were the daily Earth Negotiations Bulletins, written by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. This organization is a research group based in Canada. The ENBs, therefore, are written from an academic perspective. They differ from more traditional media outlets newspapers, magazines, television news because they are written by academics with a deep understanding of the climate negotiation process, for the negotiators, delegates, and civil society participants. In addition, they also differ from non-traditional media sources aimed at the environmental or climate justice community. This research supplements previous research, similar but for its use of conventional media and media written by and for environmental activists. Over the course of seventeen COPs and the meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (the body that met to develop a procedure and structure for the COPs), since 1992, there have been 215 ENBs. The software ATLAS.ti, a document coding software, was used to read and code each of the ENB documents. Relevant passages were coded for COP number, type of civil society participation or action, the type of group, the topic of concern, and so on. The entire list of codes and code families can be found in Appendix 1. Initially, passages were coded simply as civil society, without a greater level of specificity or detail. After coding the first five COPs, passages were reviewed for commonalities and a guiding codebook was created (Appendix 3). The specific does mentioned above were developed after reviewing the initial coded passages from the first five COP documents. 1
Results By the end of coding, there were a total of 260 coded passages, 192 codes, and 13 code families. A code word cloud can be found in Appendix 2 to see the frequency of different codes. Mentions of civil society involvement were overwhelmingly related to various interest groups making statements during the negotiations. Position statements were made throughout the entire conference in the earlier COPs. As they progressed, reporting of these statements decreased and the most mentions of civil society involvement were in the bulletins from the High Level segment. However, these mentions eventually were found less in the reporting of the actual day and just in the final summary bulletin for the entire conference. References to protests and civil society actions were similarly limited. Only once was a protest mentioned in the main content of the bulletin; other actions were described in the In the Corridors section of the bulletins or in the summary documents. Even when a protest involved an interruption to the proceedings (which was reported four times), the interruption was described not in the part of the bulletin discussing that portion of the proceedings, but in the In the Corridors section. Reports of protest activities were usually fairly detailed. Appendix 4 shows the breakdown of protest activity mentions by COP. Specific NGOs or civil society groups were often named when giving a position statement or official intervention. Occasionally, they were simply categorized as a NGO or business representatives. In the later COPs, designations for specific types of NGOs emerged: environmental NGOs (ENGOs), research NGOs (RINGOs), business NGOs (BINGOs), youth organizations (YOUNGOs). Women s or gendered-based, indigenous, and religious organizations did not receive this type of new NGO acronym. Notably, most protest actions or events did not name a specific group or organization as the leader behind them. This may have been because in some cases, there was no identifiable leader. As COPs progressed, a greater variety of groups both in type of group and specific organizations were represented and named (see Appendix 5). Discussion Overall, though there is frequent mention of civil society groups, NGOs, and protest activities, there is still an impression that the reporting is not as thorough as it could be. Official statements of groups were often given just a sentence or less in the bulletins, and mentions of protests, though detailed, were short and usually tucked into the summary document or end of the bulletin. It is also worth noting that the mentions of protest activities in the ENBs are not necessarily representative of all protests that occurred. Since these documents had an insider perspective, the writers may not have been concerned with outside protest activity. Conclusions 2
My study objectives were to examine ENBs for mentions of NGO and civil society participation in the climate talks. I achieved this by reading and coding the documents. The results are interesting mainly in their great detail reporting the names and types of groups, the detail in the protest activities, but simultaneously likely not reporting all protest activities. Future work, which will be undertaken by my mentor, Dr. Hadden, will be to compare these results to results from other media sources. This research has a clear link to socio-environmental concepts. Policy is a social way of remedying an environmental problem, in this case, climate change. Other social sciences are also at play in this research, such as social organization theory, international relations, and so on. 3
Appendices Appendix 1: All codes and code families used CODES: chile action China africa civil society arctic council climate action network arctic impact assessment Climate Action Network council climate alliance argentina climate justice article 13 climate justice network article 9 climate justice now australian youth climate climate network africa coaliation climate ngos award closed session banners COP1 bingo cop10 birthday party cop11 bonn agreement cop12 british council cop13 business cop14 business access to cop15 negotiations cop16 Business and Industry cop17 NGOs urg.. cop2 business council for a cop3 sustainable energy cop4 future cop5 business council for cop6 sustainable energy cop7 business involvement in cop8 implementation cop9 BUSINESS NGO crowds capacity building demonstration carbon sinks earth summit cdm energy and resources cdm watch institute center for clean air engo policy ENVIRONMENTAL chanting NGO europe european union events federation of the indian chamber of commerce and industry fire foro del buen ayre fossil of the day franciscan international Frank Loy friends of the earth G-77 gef gender cc-women for climate justice GENDER NGO germany global forest coalition global legislators organization for a balanced environment global south global water partnership global wind energy council global youth climate network greenpeace High Level ice sculpture INC India indigenous indigenous knowledge INDIGENOUS NGO indigenous peoples 4
indigenous peoples' organizations indigenous peoples caucus on climate change indigenous peoples forum on climate change institute for agriculture and trade policy institute of development studies international center for integrated mountain development international chamber of commerce international confederation of free trade unions international council for local environmental initatives international council for sustainable energy international emissions trading association international federation of agricultural producers international forum of indigenous peoples on climate change international trade union confederation italy japan agency for marine-earth science and technology kenya klima bundnis kyoto protocol Latin America latin american energy organization leaflets lobbying local government LOCAL GOVERNMENT NGO local governments for sustainability mapuche march meeting interruption munich climate insurance intiative national association of regulatory utility commissioners national center for atmospheric research NGO ngo access to negotiations ngo evaluation ngo involvement in implementation ngo party nicaragua norway OECD official intervention pan-african climate justice alliance pew center position statement potsdam institute for climate impact research press procession property damage protest question red cross RELIGIOUS NGO reponse to protest report Resau Action Climat research RESEARCH NGO RINGO russia sbsta sierra club signs sound bomb Southeast Asia statement states seeking ngo support stockholm environment institute summary document sustainable development sustainable markets foundation switzerland taking over podium tate energy and research institute The Pacific throwing cake trade union TRADE UNION NGO transparency tuvalu United Kingdom United States universal ecological foundation violent 5
women women's caucus women's environmental and development organization women for climate justice women for climate justice and gender women in europe for a common future working group workshop/roundtable world business council for sustainable development world council of churches world federation of engineering organizations world youth organization on climate change wwf south pacific yelling youngo youth CODE FAMILIES: Activity Type Actor Type Business COP # Group Name Indigenous Protest/action Region Research Topic Trade union Women Youth Appendix 2: Coding word cloud 6
Appendix 3: Guiding codebook COP # [Code each statement with the COP #] High Level [Code if in the final 2 Days of COP] Actor Type [Code if known] NGO/Business/Indigenous/Women/Research/Local Government/Trade Union/Etc. Actor Region [If Known] US/Europe/Africa/Etc. Activity Type [Code if know] Lobbying/Report/Protest/Contact Group/Statement/Official Intervention/Press Release/ Etc. Group Name [Code if know] Climate Action Network/Greenpeace/Etc. Topic [Code if know] NGO Access to the negotiations/business Access to the negotiations/transparency/gef/ NGO Position Statement Questions/Check 7
Appendix 4: Protests and Actions by COP COP17 COP16 COP15 COP14 COP13 COP12 COP11 COP10 COP9 COP8 COP7 Total Number of Actions/Events Number of Protests COP6 COP5 COP4 COP3 COP2 COP1 INC 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8
Appendix 5: Group types referenced Pre and Post Kyoto (COP3) Pre-Kyoto (INC, COP1, COP2) 1, 3% 0, 0% 0, 0% 2, 5% 24, 67% 0, 0% 1, 3% 8, 22% BUSINESS NGO ENVIRONMENTAL NGO INDIGENOUS NGO LOCAL GOVERNMENT NGO RELIGIOUS NGO RESEARCH NGO WOMEN'S/GENDER NGO YOUTH NGO Post-Kyoto (COP2-COP17) 24, 13% 9, 5% 8, 5% 8, 5% 9, 5% 20, 11% 35, 19% 67, 37% BUSINESS NGO ENVIRONMENTAL NGO INDIGENOUS NGO LOCAL GOVERNMENT NGO RELIGIOUS NGO RESEARCH NGO WOMEN'S/GENDER NGO YOUTH NGO 9