Climate Policy Is Not Only Made by Nation States

The international Climate Change Conferences are exciting and challenging days not only for politicians. During the annually Conference of the parties (COP) tens of thousands of people and a lot of transnational initiatives gather to protest for a climate policy that recognises the need for concrete action.

The paper "Making initiatives resonate: how can non-state initiatives advance national contributions under the UNFCCC?" explores the roles of non-governmental players during the conference. In a second step, the paper analyses how successful transnational initiatives can resonate within the intergovernmental negotiation process in order to inspire more ambitious climate action also on the part of national governments. It traces existing processes and the Paris Agreement with a view to identifying inroads for a more direct feedback from non-state initiatives and derives recommendations.

The paper by Lukas Hermwille, Research Fellow in the Division Energy, Transportation and Climate Policy at the Wuppertal Institute, is part of his doctorate thesis with the title "Climate Change as Transformation Challenge – Perspectives on the Role of International Governance". The article was published in the journal "International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics" and can be found in the link below.