Global Climate Governance: Participation and Resistance - the Case of REDD+ and Swedish Environmental Organizations

Abstract

This study analyses contemporary global climate governance represented by the case of REDD+, and how Swedish environmental movement organizations (EMOs) participate and/or resist this governance. The aim of the study is to provide a detailed account of contemporary global climate governance and EMOs participation and/or resistance using the theoretical perspective of governmentality, which gives the possibility to distinguish the rationalities and technologies used in climate governance, and to identify different levels of participation and resistance by the EMOs. The major rationality identified in global climate governance is marketization that permeates programme proposals. Marketization is understood as an expression of advanced liberal governing, transforming political responsibilities into market principles and emphasizing active, responsible and accountable actors in the pursuit of personal fulfilment. Other important rationalities are scientization and managerialization and all three rationalities are reciprocally connected. The resistance of the EMOs is mostly directed against the marketization of global climate governance, which is seen as a threat to political and democratic influence. However, some of the EMOs resistance can simultaneously be interpret as participation. By taking part in technocratic argumentations, EMOs legitimatize and underpin the importance of certain forms of knowledge and perspectives in global climate governance.