Intra-societal, international, and systemic articulations of climate justice: A discourse analysis of WEDO and GenderCC’s use of ‘climate justice’ as a rhetorical strategy at the Copenhagen 2009 and Paris 2015 UNFCCC conferences
Summary
[""The use of climate justice in English speaking media sharply rose during the Copenhagen 2009 and Paris 2015 UNFCCC conferences. This thesis constitutes a discourse analysis of the use of climate justice as a rhetorical strategy by two women’s NGOs seeking to further gendered perspectives to climate change at the UNFCCC, the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO) and GenderCC - Women for Climate Justice (hereafter GenderCC). I identify three main articulations of climate justice: intra-societal, international, and systemic. By mapping the three articulations onto the organisations’ preparations, proceedings and follow-up of the Copenhagen and Paris conferences, the thesis examines the historical developments of the use in practice of the concept. The greater orchestration of civil society organisations by the UNFCCC Secretariat and the more established activity of the Women and Gender Constituency at Paris 2015 resulted in the greater institutionalisation of the concept of climate justice, and a more harmonised use of the concept between the two organisations. This compares to a misalignment apparent at Copenhagen 2009. While GenderCC exhibited a strong alignment to the more radical principles of the climate justice movement at Copenhagen, using systems-change rhetoric, this was toned down at Paris 2015. From WEDO’s small references to the intra-societal aspects of climate change at Copenhagen, the organisation moved to embracing the concept as an important rhetorical device at Paris 2015, finally employing a systemic articulation. In doing so, the research bridges recent efforts to understand the climate justice community as a community of practice and histories of feminist activism within the UNFCCC.""]