Our article aims to better understand the role of the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the increasingly complex global climate governance structure. We employ an innovative approach to addressing this issue by systematically examining the climate secretariat’s relations with the main groups of actors involved in this policy domain, in particular with nonparty actors. In a first step, we use social network analysis (SNA) to examine the secretariat’s relations with nonparty and state stakeholders and to identify its position in the UNFCCC policy network. An understanding of where the climate secretariat stands in the global climate governance network and which actors it interacts with most allows us to draw preliminary conclusions about the ways in which it connects with other stakeholders to influence global climate policy outputs. In a second step, we conduct thirty-three semistructured interviews to corroborate the results of the SNA. Our findings lend support to the argument that the climate secretariat may gradually be moving from a rather neutral and instrumental stance to playing a proactive and influential role in international climate governance. It aims to increase its political influence by establishing strategic links to actors other than the formal negotiation parties.

He holds a PhD in political science from Freie Universität Berlin and his research focuses on environmental and climate policy analysis, the diffusion of policies, and the influence of international public administrations.

Education is considered an essential tool for achieving sustainability-related goals. In this regard, education for sustainable development (ESD) and climate change education (CCE) have become prominent concepts. The central characteristics of both concepts influence the non-hierarchical network governance structure that has formed around them: (1) their international origin, (2) the conceptual ambiguity that surrounds them, and (3) the limited implementing power of international organizations who developed these concepts. Hence, networks are essential to ESD and CCE, however, only few studies have used social network analysis (SNA) techniques to analyze their governance structure. The aim of this article is to illustrate how to use SNA, based on Twitter data, as an approach to examine the governance structure that has developed around ESD and CCE. We conduct an illustrative SNA, using Twitter data during three global climate change summits (2015-2017) to examine CCE-specific debates and identify actors exerting the most influence. We find that international organizations and international treaty secretariats are most influential across all years of the analysis and, moreover, are represented most often. These findings show that using SNA based on Twitter data offers promising possibilities to better understand the governance structure and processes around both concepts.

Meeting the Paris Agreement targets requires strong near-term climate change mitigation in all sectors of the economy. Increasing demand-side emission abatement efforts is one important area to pursue, yet there are significant barriers that must be overcome in order to realize its potential. We ask: What barriers may be hindering deep emissions reduction at the household level? What kinds of levers are available to achieve emission reductions? Based on an original and extensive qualitative dataset, our in-depth study of households in Bergen, Norway, shows that individuals perceive they are confronted with considerable individual, economic, and infrastructural barriers that prevent them from taking deep mitigation actions. Our results however also suggest that some barriers can be overcome with motivational levers such as the availability of more sustainable alternatives, support networks and by the positive emotions felt when having a positive impact on the environment. Other barriers are more difficult to overcome, pointing to the overarching lesson from our study that households will need to be forced or incentivized beyond voluntary efforts to achieve rapid and comprehensive decarbonization. The current policy approach, aimed mostly at nudging for voluntary mitigation actions, is wholly inadequate to achieve significant emission reductions. Our study indicates that households are open for increasingly including more “sticks” into climate policymaking. While there are significant challenges to individuals taking stronger mitigation action, these can be overcome by strengthening government policies targeting the patterns and, importantly, volumes of household consumption.