Contesting Climate Injustice: Transnational Struggles for Rights in UN Climate Politics

• In Event: 536 - Section on Human Rights Paper Session. Human Rights and Inequality

Abstract

This article argues that scholarship on transnational advocacy networks (TANs) has not articulated the diversity and range of rights struggles that take place in international regimes, particularly those of networks representing marginal or vulnerable groups. I explore as case studies the engagements of three distinct TANs in the UN climate change regime: gender equality advocates, Indigenous Peoples and waste pickers. These networks have all sought to gain rights to counter what they refer to as forms of “climate injustice.” I develop a framework for 'regime rights' analysis, and identify four types of related network interventions. These include struggles for: rights recognition, representation rights, rights capabilities, and extended rights. I find that most network gains have been in the form of rights recognition, which have provided legitimacy to the regime without threatening core relations of power and inequality. The networks have realized comparatively fewer gains for extended rights, representation rights and rights capabilities.

Author

• David M. Ciplet, Brown University