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Climate justice and bargaining coalitions: a discourse analysis

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Abstract

This article adopts a perspective of climate justice as an object of discourse and takes the bargaining coalitions at the Conference of the Parties as the relevant units to map the heterogeneous discourse on climate justice at the Cancun COP16. Based on the statements of nine coalitions, the analysis identifies three discourses on climate justice. The conflict discourse articulates the North–South duality over issues of historical responsibility for climate change. The transition discourse points to solving the problem of sharing the cost of mitigating climate change through a process of global low-carbon growth. The vulnerability discourse focuses on the urgency of ambitious actions by all parties. These three discourses, and their appropriation by the bargaining coalitions, are inherent of new alignments among developed and developing countries alliances and blocs that simultaneously reproduce and surpass the North–South ideological divide.

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Notes

  1. The coalitions were selected on the basis of their status in the UNFCCC and the availability of the textual material. The G77 was not included in the group of coalitions analysed in this research. The reason for this decision largely relates to the methodological problem of cross-membership among coalitions, since most of the developing countries’ coalitions are composed of G77 members. Internal validity of the statements samples would have been hazardous for the G77. For the sake of this research, it was also decided that looking at the smaller coalitions would give a better account of the diversity of discourses on climate justice. We have however tried to indicate when developing countries coalitions draw inspiration from the G77 position papers or other statements.

  2. Author’s translation from French.

  3. See http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_16/statements/items/5777.php.

  4. One exception (with the BASIC Group) is justified by the unavailability of other statements, the BASIC Group being composed of only 4 countries. The fifth text included is a BASIC Group Commiqué of 5 December 2010 (see “Appendix 1”).

  5. Sentences written with italic at the end of each account of coalition discourse are the author’s wording. They aim at outlining and summarising the central coalitions’ enouncements on climate justice.

  6. All translations from French and Spanish are from the author.

Abbreviations

ALBA:

Latin America Bolivarian Alternative

AOSIS:

Alliance of Small Island States

BASIC:

Brazil, South Africa, India and China

CO2 :

Carbon dioxide

COP:

Conference of the Parties

EIG:

Environmental Integrity Group

EU:

European Union

G77:

Group of 77 Developing Countries

GATT:

General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs

IEA:

International Energy Agency

IGLAC:

Informal Group of Latino American Countries

LDC:

Least Developed Countries

OECD:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OPEC:

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

PACJA:

Pan African Climate Justice Alliance

UN:

United Nations

UNFCCC:

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

US:

United States

WTO:

World Trade Organization

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, postdoctoral fellowship programme. He would also like to thank Catherine Potvin, Anne Rosenthal and the organisers of the May 2011 conference Revisiting the Socio-Political and Technological Dimensions of Climate Change, from the Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département stratégie, responsabilité sociale et environnementale, École des sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal, Case postale 8888, succursale Centre-Ville, Montreal, QC, H3C 3P8, Canada

    René Audet

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Correspondence to René Audet.

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

See Table 2.

Table 2 Relative distribution of the categories and sub-lexica, by coalition
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Audet, R. Climate justice and bargaining coalitions: a discourse analysis. Int Environ Agreements 13, 369–386 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-012-9195-9

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