How does multilateralism occur in global climate negotiations?: The common principles and values behind the COP26 negotiations
Toivanen, Venla (2023)
Toivanen, Venla
2023
Master's Programme in Leadership for Change
Johtamisen ja talouden tiedekunta - Faculty of Management and Business
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2023-05-22
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202304274736
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202304274736
Tiivistelmä
The global climate governance architecture consists of both public and private actors addressing the issue of climate change, aiming to decrease pollution’s causes and impacts. This architecture has been inadequate in reaching this goal and also fragmented, largely due to multiple actors in it. One of the most central institutions in the global climate governance architecture is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The ultimate goal of the UNFCCC is to prevent the severe human intervention with the climate system. Then again, the Conference of the Parties (COP) is the Convention’s primary decision-making body and the focus of this study.
The aim of the research is to contribute to the discussion of multilateralism as well as to the global climate negotiations and to analyse the relation between them. The research question is the following: “How are the values and principles of multilateralism reflected in the COP26 speeches?”. The idea to look at the principles and values of multilateralism draws inspiration from Julieta Zelicovich’s research. The COP26 was the annual Conference held in 2021 in Glasgow. The COPs in general have also been important in communicating and raising awareness about the urgency of the climate change. Multilateralism is a specific type of international cooperation referring to coordination of national policies in groups if states. This happens without giving attention to the state parties’ specific interests or the strategic difficulties possibly occurring. Multilateral cooperation is an ambitious one to achieve but its “rigidness” can also make multilateral negotiations’ results more durable. It is said that global cooperation is necessary to answer our global issues and climate change is at the moment one of the most severe and urgent one. The topic of this research was motivated by that. Multilateral cooperation was chosen because it is often referred to in the political speeches but at the same time it still remains somewhat ambiguous.
The method of the research is content analysis, more specifically conceptual analysis with the help of coding. As data, I use speeches of states and the EU representatives held at the COP26 (89 in total). In practice, the analysis for this research was done by first identifying a set of chosen concepts (23 in total) from the theory of multilateralism, representing in particular principles and values. Secondly, the speeches were read and the concepts were identified in the speeches. The analysis was done based on this.
On the basis of the concept analysis, successful multilateralism seems possible, but it is not without challenges. Although cooperation is seen necessary, the states are still reluctant to share their national sovereignty. Climate change all in all is seen as a security threat which we need to tackle together with solidarity and equity. The level of ambition varies between states. In the end, resilient and reciprocal arrangements for the issue of climate change are needed with multilateral cooperation part of this solution.
The aim of the research is to contribute to the discussion of multilateralism as well as to the global climate negotiations and to analyse the relation between them. The research question is the following: “How are the values and principles of multilateralism reflected in the COP26 speeches?”. The idea to look at the principles and values of multilateralism draws inspiration from Julieta Zelicovich’s research. The COP26 was the annual Conference held in 2021 in Glasgow. The COPs in general have also been important in communicating and raising awareness about the urgency of the climate change. Multilateralism is a specific type of international cooperation referring to coordination of national policies in groups if states. This happens without giving attention to the state parties’ specific interests or the strategic difficulties possibly occurring. Multilateral cooperation is an ambitious one to achieve but its “rigidness” can also make multilateral negotiations’ results more durable. It is said that global cooperation is necessary to answer our global issues and climate change is at the moment one of the most severe and urgent one. The topic of this research was motivated by that. Multilateral cooperation was chosen because it is often referred to in the political speeches but at the same time it still remains somewhat ambiguous.
The method of the research is content analysis, more specifically conceptual analysis with the help of coding. As data, I use speeches of states and the EU representatives held at the COP26 (89 in total). In practice, the analysis for this research was done by first identifying a set of chosen concepts (23 in total) from the theory of multilateralism, representing in particular principles and values. Secondly, the speeches were read and the concepts were identified in the speeches. The analysis was done based on this.
On the basis of the concept analysis, successful multilateralism seems possible, but it is not without challenges. Although cooperation is seen necessary, the states are still reluctant to share their national sovereignty. Climate change all in all is seen as a security threat which we need to tackle together with solidarity and equity. The level of ambition varies between states. In the end, resilient and reciprocal arrangements for the issue of climate change are needed with multilateral cooperation part of this solution.