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 wellestablished 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.
J. Oomen, Maarten A. Hajer· Global Environmental Politic...· 0 citations
This special issue reflects on the state and direction of global climate governance ten years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Informed by Michel Foucault’s political thought and the wider field of climate governmentality studies that his work has inspired, we trace the power/knowledge regimes, political rationalities, and many practical tools and techniques that make climate change thinkable and knowable as a political problem. In this introduction, we draw upon the contributions to this special issue to examine how the Paris climate regime reinvents itself to maintain legitimacy amid geopolitical rivalry, rising anti-climate populism, and accelerating climate crises. We identify four practices that work to stabilize this governmental regime by promising future improvements, governmentalizing new frontiers, normalizing overshoot and climate disaster, and funneling climate expertise. We conclude by reflecting on the role and responsibility of global environmental politics scholarship in upholding, resisting, or rewriting this script for international climate cooperation.
Florian Steig, Eva Lövbrand, Angela Oels et al.· Global Environmental Politic...· 0 citations
