Conference of the Parties Meetings as Regularly Scheduled Critical Events for Global Climate Governance: Reflecting on COP 26 and the Glasgow Climate Pact

Abstract

In this commentary, we reflect on COP26, its outcomes, and the UNFCCC processes. While the value and results of COP meetings are often contested by researchers and activists, we highlight three areas that deserve more attention in post-COP assessments. First, the COP process creates an arena where state leaders, researchers, climate activists, and private actors regularly meet, which facilitates cooperation over time. Second, COP meetings are sites of parallel multi-level games that often result in bilateral or multilateral side agreements or initiatives. Third, COP meetings are regularly scheduled critical events, where social movements and civil society actors shape the public discourse around climate change. Our brief analysis illustrates there is still an urgent need for COP meetings as spaces that provide transparency for global climate governance, as well as media and public visibility for civil society voices, which would otherwise be lost.

Keywords:

• Civil society
• environmental governance
• environmental policy
• global climate change

Notes

1 In addition, the terminology of this clause is vague about emissions from other greenhouse gases such as HFCs, PFCs and SF6.

2 It is important to note that observers have been excluded from COP meetings before and this is not a one-off occurrence due to the pandemic. Furthermore, as Toussaint (2018) notes, many of the communities most affected by climate impacts—which includes marginalized and poor communities in the global north and global south—are rarely included in COP deliberations. While the voices of affected communities may be represented through international civil society groups, the accreditation process creates barriers for affected community organizations to obtain official observer status and directly participate in COP deliberations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by SSHRC under Insight Research Grant 435-2017-0505, and by the Swiss Network of International Studies.