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"Climate change has come to hold a central position within many policy arenas. However, a particular framing of climate change and climate science, underpinned by modernist assumptions, dominates policy discourse. This leads to restricted policy responses reflecting particular interests and socio-political imaginaries. There is little public debate concerning this framing or the assumptions underpinning approaches to climate policy. The implications of this are illustrated by considering the ways in which UK planning policy has adapted to reflect commitments to mitigate climate change. It is shown that the importance attributed to climate change mitigation has had negative impacts on democratic involvement in planning processes. Given the uncertainty and high stakes of climate science (typical of post-normal science), value may be gained by incorporating the views and perspectives of 'extended peer communities', to question not only the processes and findings of climate science but also the ways in which the science is interpreted and responded to through policy."

"There is a widespread perception that power is shifting in global politics and that emerging powers are assuming a more prominent, active and important role. This article examines the role of emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa (BASIC) in climate change politics and the extent to which their rise makes the already difficult problem of climate change still more intractable-due to their rapid economic development, growing power-political ambitions, rising greenhouse gas emissions and apparent unwillingness to accept global environmental 'responsibility'. By reviewing the developments in global climate politics between the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and Rio+20, this article unsettles the image of a clear shift in power, stressing instead the complexity of the changes that have taken place at the level of international bargaining as well as at the domestic and transnational levels. Within this picture, it is important not to overestimate the shifts in power that have taken place, or to underplay the continued relevance of understanding climate change within the North-South frame. Emerging powers will certainly remain at the top table of climate change negotiations, but their capacity actively to shape the agenda has been limited and has, in some respects, declined. Even though emerging powers have initiated and offered greater action on climate change, both internationally and domestically, they have been unable to compel the industrialized world to take more serious action on this issue, or to stop them from unpicking several of the key elements and understandings of the original Rio deal. At the same time, developing world coalitions on climate change have also fragmented, raising questions about the continued potency of the 'global South' in future climate politics"

The Copenhagen Climate Summit, held from 7th to 18th December 2009, was a milestone in the relationship between democracy and climate change. As government negotiators at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Climate change will undoubtedly affect the lives and lifestyles of nearly every person who inhabits the planet. But although climate change is a global issue, today's international institutions are incapable of managing such a complex and far-reaching pro

"The global governance of climate change represents one of the more profound and, to date, intractable sets of problems confronting humanity. Legitimacy, accountability, fairness, and representation matter as well as effectiveness. In the absence of effective centralised authority, these democratic norms need to be sought in a polycentric context. An approach to democratisation is advanced that de-emphasises authoritative formal institutions, and instead operates in the more informal realm of the engagement and contestation of discourses in global public spheres. Democracy here is conceptualised not in terms of elections and constitutions, but in aspirations for inclusive, competent, and dispersed reflexive capacity. Based on empirical analysis of discursive engagement in several structured settings, key challenges for improving the democratic quality of global climate governance are assessed."

The 'Asian People's Climate Tribunal' was held in a banquet hall of a hotel a short distance away from where government negotiators from the developing and developed world are meeting at the two-week-long United Nations climate change talks that commenced

The articles that follow are usefully located in the context of four dimensions of 'climate justice', defined here as the study of the special problems of obligation and participation posed by climate impacts and policies for their management. The themes

In this paper, which forms Paper Two in FDSD's project on The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change, the authors review a range of definitional approaches to democracy. They discuss the relevance of existing approaches in the light of climate

As a quintessential long-term policy problem, climate change poses two major challenges. The first is to develop, under considerable uncertainty, a plan for allocating resources over time to achieve an effective policy response. The second is to implement

The urgent challenge of climate change poses a critical test for modern democracy and rules-based international politics. Democracies need to shift from loose policy commitments to real and binding action. Yet, there are enormous collective action problem

Rising energy costs and the eco-social consequences of climate change are causing anxieties about the future to increase, while trust in the ability of political elites to solve these problems is evaporating. Reaching eco-political targets calls for more

In this article we examine the emergence and implications of transnational climate-change governance. We argue that although the study of transnational relations has recently been renewed alongside a burgeoning interest in issues of global governance, the

"This article considers China's participation in two key areas of international affairs, climate change and nuclear non-proliferation, taking as its focus the high-profile global summits of 2009 and 2010, with a view to examining how it seeks to operationalise its foreign policy goals. Drawing on Cox's critical view of multilateralism as a 'terrain of struggle' between a conservative developed North and a transformative developing South, the discussion examines the agendas of the USA as the world's leading power, on the one hand, and the developing countries and China on the other, the conference contexts, processes and outcomes. Neither simply acquiescent nor seeking to forge an 'adversarial anti-hegemonic front', China's role is seen as one of bridge-builder between developed and developing nations, using both resistance and compliance to deflect US power plays and gain leverage in pursuit of a transformative 'multipolar developmentalism' towards a new fairer international governance."

"Global environmental politics is emerging as a key field for South African diplomacy and foreign policy, in which Pretoria is endeavouring to lead by example. Environmental summits and conferences such as Johannesburg (2002) and Copenhagen (2009) have been crucial stages for the performance of this role as an environmental leader, and in December 2011 Durban will host the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are also signs from within policy-making circles that 'the environment' is seen as a field in which some of the lustre of South Africa's post-1994 international high moral standing could be recovered. However, tensions remain between South Africa's performance and rhetoric on the global stage, and domestic development paths which continue to be environmentally unsustainable. The article concludes by suggesting that while the visibility and prominence of South Africa as an actor in global environmental politics is likely to grow, it remains doubtful whether this represents a sustained and committed new direction in South African foreign policy."

"This article argues that recent de-democratization in Iran can be best understood by analysing the interplay of domestic Iranian politics and two external developments. These were the colour revolutions in several post-communist states and the hostile US policies toward Iran after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Together they generated a political climate in Iran conducive to hardliner attempts to discredit and neutralize the reformist opposition. The regime tried to delegitimize the opposition by portraying it as being in the service of foreign elements and claiming it was seeking to foment a popular uprising. The consequences were twofold. On the one hand, the regime's identification of civic and political activism as threats to national security greatly reduced the manoeuvrability of the reformist opposition and contributed to their marginalization. These developments point to the limits and unintended consequences of democracy promotion in Iran. On the other hand, the post-electoral protests of 2009 exposed the limits of conspiracy discourse in silencing mass discontent. This article argues that the regime's attempt to portray the unrest as a foreign conspiracy failed to convince a large segment of the population."

Considering the challenges the world is facing today, including the financial, energy and climate crises, there is an urgent need for an inclusive global governance structure with a high-level body fully representing the world population. A new discussio

There is much concern in the social sciences and humanities today about how people are connected with and responsible to those who live in distant places. Recent examples are abundant: from climate change to the cyclone that hit Burma in 2008. At the same

Cooperation is crucial in addressing the current global issues, including the economic crisis and climate change, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed to an international gathering of parliamentarians today in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

"As patterns of global governance have undergone significant changes over time, there is a need for new theoretical concepts that are less oriented towards formal hierarchies and give more emphasis to social processes. A framework, however, that takes account of complex interactions and tangling relations bears the danger of losing analytical power. The article addresses the question of the extent to which complexity theory can overcome this problem by combining scientific rigour with contextual sensitivity. A dynamic mechanistic approach is explored that addresses the underlying processes that generate new collective patterns based on changed actor constellations and relational orders. An activator-inhibitor interaction model is introduced as a framework for analysing the multi-level processes that drive international change, using the example of climate protection. Global governance is theorized as it grows within the system fleshing out a new logic of collective action based on decentralization and clustering."

It is well-acknowledged that there is an imbalance between the existing structures and processes for global governance and the threats that the world is facing to its environment and natural resources. When swift responses to risk and uncertainty are requ