Voices for environmental action? Analyzing narrative in environmental governance networks in the Pacific Islands

5 years ago

Voices for environmental action? Analyzing narrative in environmental governance networks in the Pacific Islands

As climate change pushes against the shorelines of the Pacific Islands, strategies to coalesce power to mitigate for and adapt to environmental degradation become even more relevant. One mechanism employed by the Pacific Islands to overcome conflict is the formation of climate networks that work together to meet the needs of the islands as a region. During this process of networked governance, however, contestations occur between the local and global strategies and knowledges that must be navigated by state and nonstate organizations in these networks in order to achieve their respective aims. In order to gain authority to make decisions and govern on climate issues, these networks employ particular narratives—constructions of the hero, victim, and villain, both human and nonhuman, in the story of climate policy—that both produce and are produced by these local/global contestations. This article explores these issues in the context of the Pacific Island Forum and Pacific Island Development Forum summits leading up to the 2015 Conference of the Parties, and their final climate declarations. Through this investigation, two competing narratives are found—the global technical narrative and the local power narrative. These narratives impacted the deliberations and subsequent climate declarations in these Pacific summits, with both the global technical narrative of the Pacific Island Forum summit and the local power narrative of the Pacific Island Development Forum summit being evident in their final declarations. These narrative constructions have consequences for the representativeness of the decisions made in these networks.

Publisher URL: www.sciencedirect.com/science

DOI: S095937801730095X