Abstract Timber-consuming countries are increasingly holding transnational businesses accountable for environmental change, sparking calls for enhanced transparency in global supply chains. Applied to the timber supply chain, this study examines by whom, for whom, and to what end the issue of transparency is framed in forest governance policies of the Congo Basin. Focusing on case studies from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we explore the assumptions underlying forest policy. We lean on problematization approaches to conduct a critical analysis of transparency in national and international policy documents and interviews. Additionally, we consider alternative representations and potential resistance strategies based on interview insights. Our findings suggest that impromptu enforcement of transparency as an end in itself may exacerbate power asymmetries by favoring entities with a monopoly on the “transparency market” (e.g., consultancy firms from the Global North). Transnational transparency legislation may also provoke resistance from the recipient countries. We discuss how framing transparency as an information fix overlooks the complex power dynamics and inequalities involved. We conclude with implications of implementing the European Union Deforestation Regulation.
Abstract Sites of global environmental governance (GEG), like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (UNFCCC COP), are critical spaces where state and nonstate actors grapple with our planet’s most pressing challenges. Failure to address the unequal impacts of the climate crisis has led scholars and decision makers to call for more transparent, inclusive, and accountable decision-making processes. However, the ever-increasing number and variety of participants has failed to translate into more equitable outcomes. How do institutional structures and relations of power at sites of GEG privilege certain actors and shape participant experiences? This article argues for a retheorization of access in GEG. Based on collaborative event ethnography at COP26, we find that discriminatory design, technological disparities, and recognitional injustice hamper meaningful sustained access, reify power disparities, and undermine inclusion. Integrating critical disability studies, we show how the COVID-19 pandemic drew into sharper focus the distinctions among inclusion, access, and accessibility that structure GEG and can offer lessons for addressing these inequities.
Climate finance is central to the politics of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. Drawing on Beckert's conceptualization of promissory legitimacy, I argue that the reported results of adaptation finance projects facilitate claims about the future, which consolidate the political authority of the UNFCCC. Drawing on thinking from science and technology studies and the sociology of monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), I explore the knowledge politics of adaptation finance. Specifically, I ask how the Green Climate Fund's (GCF) adaptation portfolio contributes to the governance of climate change. I demonstrate how the Fund's results processes incentivize projects to be designed for approval, rather than for implementation. The GCF Secretariat gains credibility and political authority via promissory claims about its results. Theoretically, my analysis clarifies how MEL underlies powerful claims about adaptation, despite ambiguity about the impacts of projects.
The urgency of political action to safeguard against anthropogenic climate change is widely acknowledged. Much of this urgency stems from environmental scientists' projections that have consistently shown dire future risks. A key part in providing such projections with political legitimacy is institutional "science-policy interface" (SPI) arrangements, which influence the ways in which environmental knowledge is produced and the ways in which political actors respond. In this contribution, building on the scholarship on the interaction between scientific knowledge and policy, we investigate the "script" of the SPI and its implicit rules. We identify seven well-established performative routines that most actors adhere to, often implicitly. Drawing on the literature on the coproduction of knowledge and governmentality, we investigate this script as a technology of governance. On the basis of secondary analysis of academic literature, prior interviews, document analysis, and autoethnographic observations, we show how these routines are upheld and challenged.
