Element contents
Who Tells Your Story?
Women and Indigenous Peoples Advocacy at the UNFCCC
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 February 2025
Summary
Thousands of civil society organizations (CSOs) attend the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) every year. Through their advocacy work, CSOs define and redefine what “climate change” is really about. The Element focuses on climate advocacy for women and Indigenous peoples (IPs), two prominent climate justice frames at the UNFCCC. Which CSOs advocate for women and IPs? How and why do CSOs adopt gender and Indigenous framing? Bridging the literature on framing strategy and organizational ecology, it presents two mechanisms by which CSOs adopt climate justice frames: self-representation and surrogate-representation. The Element demonstrates that, while gender advocacy is developed primarily by women's CSOs, IPs advocacy is developed by a variety of CSOs beyond IPs organizations. It suggests that these different patterns of frame development may have long-term consequences for how we think about climate change in relation to gender and IPs.
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781009472920Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 13 February 2025
References
Abbott, Kenneth W., Green, Jessica F., and Keohane, Robert O.. 2016. “Organizational ecology and institutional change in global governance.” International Organization 70(2):247–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albin, Cecilia. 1999. “Can NGOs enhance the effectiveness of international negotiation?” International Negotiation 4(3):371–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, Howard E. and Pfeffer, Jeffrey. 1976. “Environments of organizations.” Annual Review of Sociology 2(1):79–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allan, Jen Iris. 2020. The new climate activism: NGO authority and participation in climate change governance. University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allan, Jen Iris and Hadden, Jennifer. 2017. “Exploring the framing power of NGOs in global climate politics.” Environmental Politics 26(4):600–620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bäckstrand, Karin and Lövbrand, Eva. 2006. “Planting trees to mitigate climate change: Contested discourses of ecological modernization, green governmentality and civic environmentalism.” Global Environmental Politics 6(1):50–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bäckstrand, Karin and Lövbrand, Eva. 2019. “The road to Paris: Contending climate governance discourses in the post-Copenhagen era.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 21(5):519–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bagozzi, Benjamin E. 2015. “The multifaceted nature of global climate change negotiations.” The Review of International Organizations 10:439–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balboa, Cristina M. 2018. The paradox of scale: How NGOs build, maintain, and lose authority in environmental governance. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia and Bearman, Peter. 2007. “Dynamics of political polarization.” American Sociological Review 72(5):784–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, Michael and Walker, Peter. 2015. “Regime change for humanitarian aid.” Foreign Affairs 94:130.Google Scholar
Baum, Joel A. C. and Oliver, Christine. 1991. “Institutional linkages and organizational mortality.” Administrative Science Quarterly 36(2):187–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belfer, Ella, Ford, James D., Maillet, Michelle, Araos, Malcolm, and Flynn, Melanie. 2019. “Pursuing an indigenous platform: Exploring opportunities and constraints for indigenous participation in the UNFCCC.” Global Environmental Politics 19(1):12–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benford, Robert D. and Snow, David A.. 2000. “Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology 26(1):611–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Steven. 2001. The compromise of liberal environmentalism. Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betsill, Michele M. and Corell, Elisabeth, eds. 2008. NGO diplomacy: The influence of nongovernmental organizations in international environmental negotiations. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bexell, Magdalena, Tallberg, Jonas, and Uhlin, Anders. 2010. “Democracy in global governance: The promises and pitfalls of transnational actors.” Global Governance 16(1):81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blei, David M., Andrew, Y. Ng, and Jordan, Michael I.. 2003. “Latent dirichlet allocation.” Journal of Machine Learning Research 3(Jan):993–1022.Google Scholar
Bob, Clifford. 2005. The marketing of rebellion: Insurgents, media, and international activism. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leticia, Bode, Hanna, Alexander, Yang, Junghwan, and Shah, Dhavan V.. 2015. “Candidate networks, citizen clusters, and political expression: Strategic hashtag use in the 2010 midterms.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 659(1):149–165.Google Scholar
Bond, Patrick and Dorsey, Michael K.. 2010. “Anatomies of environmental knowledge and resistance: Diverse climate justice movements and waning eco-neoliberalism.” Journal of Australian Political Economy 66:286–316.Google Scholar
Boscarino, Jessica E. 2016. “Setting the record straight: Frame contestation as an advocacy tactic.” Policy Studies Journal 44(3):280–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Danah, Golder, Scott, and Lotan, Gilad. 2010. “Tweet, tweet, retweet: Conversational aspects of retweeting on twitter.” 43rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences. IEEE, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
Bush, Sarah Sunn and Hadden, Jennifer. 2019. “Density and decline in the founding of international NGOs in the United States.” International Studies Quarterly 63(4):1133–1146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabré, Miquel Muñoz. 2011. “Issue-linkages to climate change measured through NGO participation in the UNFCCC.” Global Environmental Politics 11(3):10–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpenter, Charli. 2007. “Setting the advocacy agenda: Theorizing issue emergence and nonemergence in transnational advocacy networks.” International Studies Quarterly 51(1):99–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Glenn R. 1985. “Concentration and specialization: Dynamics of niche width in populations of organizations.” American Journal of Sociology 90(6):1262–1283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kathy, Charmaz, Belgrave, Liska, Gubrium, Jaber F., and Holstein, James A., eds. 2012. The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft. Sage.Google Scholar
Ciplet, David. 2014. “Contesting climate injustice: Transnational advocacy network struggles for rights in UN climate politics.” Global Environmental Politics 14(4):75–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Claeys, Priscilla and Delgado Pugley, Deborah. 2017. “Peasant and indigenous transnational social movements engaging with climate justice.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’études du développement 38(3):325–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comberti, Claudia, Thornton, Thomas F., Korodimou, Michaela, Shea, Meghan, and Ole Riamit, Kimaren. 2019. “Adaptation and resilience at the margins: Addressing indigenous peoples’ marginalization at international climate negotiations.” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 61(2):14–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooley, Alexander and Ron, James. 2002. “The NGO scramble: Organizational insecurity and the political economy of transnational action.” International Security 27(1):5–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moor, De, , Joost. 2018. “The ‘efficacy dilemma’ of transnational climate activism: The case of COP21.” Environmental Politics 27(6):1079–1100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Moor, , , Joost. 2022. “Alternative globalities? Climatization processes and the climate movement beyond COPs.” In Aykut, Stefan, and Maertens, Lucile, eds., The climatization of global politics. Springer pp. 83–100.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Simone and Murdie, Amanda. 2017. “Human rights shaming through INGOs and foreign aid delivery.” The Review of International Organizations 12:95–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Disch, Lisa. 2012. “Democratic representation and the constituency paradox.” Perspectives on Politics 10(3):599–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowling, Robyn. 2010. “Geographies of identity: Climate change, governmentality and activism.” Progress in Human Geography 34(4):488–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette. 2019. “Competition and strategic differentiation among transnational advocacy groups.” Interest Groups & Advocacy 8(3):376–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette. 2021. “What kills international organisations? When and why international organisations terminate.” European Journal of International Relations 27(1):281–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Charlotte. 2008. The power of words in international relations: Birth of an anti-whaling discourse. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. “International norm dynamics and political change.” International Organization 52(4):887–917.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn. 2001. “Taking stock: The constructivist research program in international relations and comparative politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 4(1):391–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Ford, Maillet, Michelle, Pouliot, Vincent, Meredith, Thomas, Cavanaugh, Alicia, and Research Team, IHACC. 2016. “Adaptation and indigenous peoples in the United Nations framework convention on climate change.” Climatic Change 139:429–443.Google Scholar
Fox, Jonathan A. and David Brown, L. 1998. The struggle for accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and grassroots movements. MIT press.Google Scholar
Freeman, John and Hannan, Michael T.. 1983. “Niche width and the dynamics of organizational populations.” American Journal of Sociology 88(6):1116–1145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Elisabeth Jay. 2003. “Gendering the agenda: The impact of the transnational women’s rights movement at the UN conferences of the 1990s.” Women’s Studies International Forum 26(4):313–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamson, William A., Modigliani, Andre. 1987. “The changing culture of affirmative action.” Research in Political Sociology 3(1):137–177.Google Scholar
William, Gardner, Mulvey, Edward P., and Shaw, Esther C.. 1995. “Regression analyses of counts and rates: Poisson, overdispersed Poisson, and negative binomial models.” Psychological Bulletin 118(3):392.Google Scholar
Gent, Stephen E., Crescenzi, Mark J. C., Menninga, Elizabeth J., and Reid, Lindsay. 2015. “The reputation trap of NGO accountability.” International Theory 7(3):426–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glaser, Barney and Strauss, Anselm. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Sociology Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie M. 2008. “Sticks and stones: Naming and shaming the human rights enforcement problem.” International Organization 62(4):689–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hafner-Burton, Emilie and Pollack, Mark A.. 2002. “Mainstreaming gender in global governance.” European Journal of International Relations 8(3):339–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannan, Michael T. and Freeman, John. 1977. “The population ecology of organizations.” American Journal of Sociology 82(5):929–964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannan, Michael T. and Freeman, John. 1989. Organizational ecology. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trevor, Hastie, Tibshirani, Robert, Friedman, Jerome H. and Friedman, Jerome H.. 2009. The elements of statistical learning: Data mining, inference, and prediction. Vol. 2 Springer.Google Scholar
Hemphill, Libby and Roback, Andrew J.. 2014. “Tweet acts: How constituents lobby congress via Twitter.” In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing. pp. 1200–1210.Google Scholar
Hendrix, Cullen S. and Wong, Wendy H.. 2013. “When is the pen truly mighty? Regime type and the efficacy of naming and shaming in curbing human rights abuses.” British Journal of Political Science 43(3):651–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hildebrandt, Timothy and Chua, Lynette J.. 2017. “Negotiating in/visibility: The political economy of lesbian activism and rights advocacy.” Development and Change 48(4):639–662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hjerpe, Mattias and Buhr, Katarina. 2014. “Frames of climate change in side events from Kyoto to Durban.” Global Environmental Politics 14(2):102–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopke, Jill E. and Hestres, Luis E.. 2018. “Visualizing the Paris climate talks on Twitter: Media and climate stakeholder visual social media during COP21.” Social Media+ Society 4(3):2056305118782687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Indigenous Peoples of North America. 1998. “A call to action: The Albuquerque declaration.”Google Scholar
Interview 1703. 2017. Women’s Environment and Develop Organization (WEDO) interviewed by Author B, Bonn, Germany.Google Scholar
Interview 1802. 2018. Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Center for Women (ARROW) interviewed by Author B, Katowice, Poland.Google Scholar
Interview 1803. 2018. Centre for 21st Century Issues interviewed by Author B, Katowice, Poland.Google Scholar
Interview 2203. 2022. Care International interviewed by Author A, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.Google Scholar
Interview 2204. 2022. Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy interviewed by Author A, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.Google Scholar
Interview 2205. 2022. Conservation International interviewed by Author A, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.Google Scholar
Interview 2206. 2022. Cultural Survival interviewed by Author A, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.Google Scholar
Interview 2212. 2022. Plan International Canada interviewed by Author A, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.Google Scholar
Jinnah, Sikina. 2011. “Climate change bandwagoning: The impacts of strategic linkages on regime design, maintenance, and death.” Global Environmental Politics 11(3):1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. Activists beyond borders. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kruskal, Joseph B. and Wish, Myron. 1978. Multidimensional scaling. Vol. 11 Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuyper, Jonathan W. and Bäckstrand, Karin. 2016. “Accountability and representation: Nonstate actors in UN climate diplomacy.” Global Environmental Politics 16(2):61–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, David A. 2021. “The organizational ecology of global governance.” European Journal of International Relations 27(2):345–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López-Rivera, Andrés. 2023. “Diversifying Boundary Organizations: The Making of a Global Platform for Indigenous (and Local) Knowledge in the UNFCCC.” Global Environmental Politics 23(4):52–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maldonado, Julie, Bull Bennett, T. M., Chief, Karletta, et al. 2016. “Engagement with indigenous peoples and honoring traditional knowledge systems.” The US National Climate Assessment: Innovations in Science and Engagement 135:111–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane. 2003. “Rethinking representation.” American Political Science Review 97(4):515–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merry, Melissa K. 2013. “Tweeting for a cause: Microblogging and environmental advocacy.” Policy & Internet 5(3):304–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkoff, Debra C. 1997. “The sequencing of social movements.” American Sociological Review 62(5):779–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morin, Jean-Frédéric. 2020. “Concentration despite competition: The organizational ecology of technical assistance providers.” The Review of International Organizations 15(1):75–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murdie, Amanda. 2014. “The ties that bind: A network analysis of human rights international nongovernmental organizations.” British Journal of Political Science 44(1):1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Joane. 2015. Gender and climate change: Impacts, science, policy. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisbet, Matthew C. and Scheufele, Dietram A.. 2009. “What’s next for science communication? Promising directions and lingering distractions.” American Journal of Botany 96(10):1767–1778.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1971. The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups, with a new preface and appendix. Vol. 124 Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Saffron J., Hulme, Mike, Turnpenny, John, and Screen, James A.. 2010. “Disciplines, geography, and gender in the framing of climate change.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 91(8):997–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pallas, Christopher L. and Nguyen, Lan. 2018. “Transnational advocacy without northern NGO partners: Vietnamese NGOs in the HIV/AIDS sector.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 47(4_suppl):159S–176S.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2000. “Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics.” American Political Science Review 94(2):251–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prakash, Aseem and Gugerty, Mary Kay, eds. 2010. Advocacy organizations and collective action. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Richard. 1998. “Reversing the gun sights: Transnational civil society targets land mines.” International Organization 52(3):613–644.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raffel, Sara. 2016. “Climate communication and the exclusion of indigenous knowledge.” In 2016 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC). pp. 1–5.Google Scholar
Arti, Ramesh, Goldwasser, Dan, Huang, Bert, Daumé III, Hal, and Getoor, Lise. 2014. “Understanding MOOC discussion forums using seeded LDA.” In Proceedings of the 9th workshop on innovative use of NLP for building educational applications. pp. 28–33.Google Scholar
Rashidi, Pedram and Lyons, Kristen. 2021. “Democratizing global climate governance? The case of indigenous representation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” Globalizations 20(8):1–16.Google Scholar
Saward, Michael. 2006. “The representative claim.” Contemporary Political Theory 5:297–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schapper, Andrea, Wallbott, Linda, and Glaab, Katharina. 2023. “The climate justice community: Theoretical radicals and practical pragmatists?” Global Society 37(3):397–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, Heike. 2010. “Agency in international climate negotiations: The case of indigenous peoples and avoided deforestation.” International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 10:317–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shawki, Noha. 2011. “Organizational structure and strength and transnational campaign outcomes: A comparison of two transnational advocacy networks.” Global Networks 11(1):97–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shawoo, Zoha and Thornton, Thomas F.. 2019. “The UN local communities and Indigenous peoples’ platform: A traditional ecological knowledge-based evaluation.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 10(3):e575.Google Scholar
Shearer, Elisa, Barthel, Michael, Gottfried, Jeffrey, and Mitchell, Amy. 2015. “The evolving role of news on Twitter and Facebook.” Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
Shibaike, Takumi. 2022. “Small NGOs and agenda-setting in global conservation governance: The case of pangolin conservation.” Global Environmental Politics 22(2):45–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shibaike, Takumi. 2023. “The power of specialization: NGO advocacy in global conservation governance.” International Studies Quarterly 67(2):sqad023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Tonya, Bulkan, Janette, Zerriffi, Hisham, and Tansey, James. 2019. “Indigenous peoples, local communities, and payments for ecosystem services.” The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien 63(4):616–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David and Byrd, Scott. 2007. “Ideology, framing processes, and Islamic terrorist movements.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 12(2):119–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David A., Rochford Jr., E. Burke, Worden, Steven K., and Benford, Robert D.. 1986. “Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation.” American Sociological Review 51(4):464–481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steffek, Jens. 2013. “Explaining cooperation between IGOs and NGOs – push factors, pull factors, and the policy cycle.” Review of International Studies 39(4):993–1013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steffek, Jens, Kissling, Claudia, and Nanz, Patrizia. 2007. Civil society participation in European and global governance: A cure for the democratic deficit? Springer.Google Scholar
Stroup, Sarah S. and Wong, Wendy H.. 2017. The authority trap: Strategic choices of international NGOs. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Tallberg, Jonas, Sommerer, Thomas, and Squatrito, Theresa. 2013. The opening up of international organizations. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney. 2005. The new transnational activism. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tormos-Aponte, Fernando. 2021. “The influence of indigenous peoples in global climate governance.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 52:125–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNFCCC. 2012. “Promoting gender equality and improving the participation of women in UNFCCC negotiations and in the representation of Parties in bodies established pursuant to the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol.”Google Scholar
Vanhala, Lisa and Hestbaek, Cecilie. 2016. “Framing climate change loss and damage in UNFCCC negotiations.” Global Environmental Politics 16(4):111–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watanabe, Kohei and Zhou, Yuan. 2022. “Theory-driven analysis of large corpora: Semisupervised topic classification of the UN speeches.” Social Science Computer Review 40(2):346–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willetts, Peter. 2001. “Transnational actors and international organizations in global politics.” The Globalization of World Politics 2:356–383.Google Scholar
Wong, Wendy, Levi, Ron, and Deutsch, Julia. 2017. “The Ford Foundation.” In Professional networks in transnational governance, ed. Leonard Seabrooke, and Henriksen, Lasse Folke. Cambridge University Press Cambridge pp. 82–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bei, Yu, Kaufmann, Stefan, and Diermeier, Daniel. 2008. “Classifying party affiliation from political speech.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 5(1):33–48.Google Scholar
Zeng, Fanxu, Dai, Jia, and Javed, Jeffrey. 2019. “Frame alignment and environmental advocacy: The influence of NGO strategies on policy outcomes in China.” Environmental Politics 28(4):747–770.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Bi. 2023. “Granting legitimacy from non-state actor deliberation: An example of women’s groups at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” Environmental Policy and Governance 34(3):236–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zurba, Melanie and Papadopoulos, Anastasia. 2023. “Indigenous participation and the incorporation of indigenous knowledge and perspectives in global environmental governance forums: A systematic review.” Environmental Management 72: 84–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
This Element is free online from 13th February 2025 - 27th February 2025