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Stakeholding as sorting of actors into categories: implications for civil society participation in the CDM

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Abstract

Following a deliberative shift towards public–private partnership networks in global environmental governance, the multi-stakeholder framework is increasingly advocated for engaging multiple actors in collective decision-making. As this arrangement relies on proper participatory conditions in order to include all relevant stakeholders, input legitimacy is crucial to achieving legitimate outcomes. However, ‘stakeholding’ implies that actors—recast into a specific institutional context—are sorted into new formal or informal categories. This paper scrutinizes the clean development mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol to interrogate the problematic issue of ‘stakeholding’—i.e. the ‘sorting’ of actors—in enacting the multi-stakeholder framework. Based on an analysis of 25 CDM projects that provides insight into the widest range of participation opportunities for civil society regarding specific projects, this paper considers how certain institutional context of the Mechanism’s stakeholder framework affects the involvement of civil society actors and the implications of this for balanced and fair input legitimacy. The findings suggest that, in practice, the informal corporate-induced sorting of actors into internal and external stakeholders keeps civil society actors outside the CDM’s inner circle, forcing them to voice their concerns regarding specific projects via CDM insiders or through irregular channels. Furthermore, the absence of a clear definition of stakeholder in local consultations results in the inclusion of unsorted actors, destabilizing the distribution of participation opportunities. The paper concludes that recasting the deliberative principles of openness and plurality into the CDM’s corporate-inspired stakeholding creates a specific institutional context that imposes more than one set of perhaps incompatible stakeholder categories while impairing input legitimacy.

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Abbreviations

CDM:

Clean development mechanism

CERs:

Certified emission reductions

COP:

Conference of parties

CMP:

Conference of the parties serving as the meeting of the parties

CSOs:

Civil society organizations

DOE:

Designated operational entity

DNA:

Designated national authority

EB:

Executive Board

ENGOs:

Environmental non-governmental organizations

GEG:

Global environmental governance

GSCs:

Global stakeholder consultations

GSOs:

Grassroots support organizations

KP:

Kyoto protocol

LSCs:

Local stakeholder consultations

NGOs:

Non-governmental organizations

NMM:

New market mechanism

PDD:

Project design document

PP:

Project participant

SBI:

Subsidiary body for implementation

VR:

Validation report

UN:

United Nations

UNFCCC:

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thematic Studies - Environmental Change, Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, Linköping University, 58183, Linköping, Sweden

    Magdalena Kuchler

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  1. Magdalena Kuchler
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Correspondence to Magdalena Kuchler.

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Kuchler, M. Stakeholding as sorting of actors into categories: implications for civil society participation in the CDM. Int Environ Agreements 17, 191–208 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-015-9314-5

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