The Climate Action Network: A Glance behind the Curtains of a Transnational NGO Network (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs, 2018
The International Environmental Non-Governmental Organisation (IENGO) has become increasingly influential since the Rio Jeneiro conference in 1992. This paper seeks to investigate the pattern of NGO diplomacy in three countries, namely China, Brazil and Indonesia. Transnational advocacy networks apply boomerang pattern strategies to pressure governments by carrying out information politics, symbolic politics, political leverage and accountability politics. This strategy is also implemented by environmental NGO networks, for example, to drive a soy moratorium in Brazil aimed at mitigating the deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest. In one of the cases in Indonesia, the barriers to cooperation between the government and NGOs, as well as differences in the values and information held between the respective global and local perspectives involved in conservation management, resulted in unjust conservation policies.
Participation of Non-Governmental Organisations in International Environmental Governance
The importance of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in international environmental co-operation has increased tremendously over the last decades. Accordingly, the participation of non-governmental actors has become a prominent subject for research, resulting in a dynamically growing body of literature on the subject, especially in the legal and social sciences. However, limited effort has been spent at systematically analysing the relationship between the legal basis and the practical influence of NGOs in different areas of international environmental co-operation (broadly understood). Against this backdrop, this study first laid a conceptual basis by reviewing existing definitions of NGOs and developing an own working definition, elaborating the functions NGOs perform in international environmental policy-making and examining various criteria that can serve to distinguish different types of NGOs (I). It then analysed in more detail the legal basis and the practice of NGO participation in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), economic institutions, and other relevant international institutions and identified constraints of the role of NGOs. Part of this analysis was also an appraisal of the question to what extent NGO participation in international institutions can be considered legitimate against the background of the state of development of related principles of international law (II). Finally, the study identified and discussed a number of options for enhancing the role of NGOs in international environmental co-operation (III). The full study also contains detailed case studies on the role of NGOs in two environmental treaty systems (climate change and trade in endangered species) and two economic institutions (International Organisation for Standardization, ISO; and the World Bank). A total of close to 40 representatives of governments and different NGO constituencies as well as secretariat staff were interviewed in undertaking these case studies. 17.