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CISDL/GEM Working paper Series on Public Participation and Climate Governance

Call for PapersS

Deadline for submission of abstracts: rolling until May 15, 2014

The Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL) and the Governance, Environment & Markets Initiative at Yale University (GEM) are calling for papers for their new Working Paper Series on “Public Participation and Climate Governance.” The series will be edited by Sébastien Jodoin (GEM / CISDL); Sébastien Duyck (University of Lapland), and Katherine Lofts (CISDL).

The principle of public participation has long been recognized as paramount for effective and equitable climate policy and governance. Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) thus outlines States’ responsibilities to promote and facilitate, inter alia, education and public awareness, public access to information, public participation, training, and international cooperation with respect to addressing climate change and its effects. The Work Programme on Article 6, initially adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in 2002, encourages governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations to collaborate in matters of access to information and public participation. Under the Doha Work Programme adopted in 2012, a formal dialogue covering access to information, public participation, and public awareness is scheduled to take place in 2014.

With this Working Paper Series on “Public Participation and Climate Governance,” CISDL and GEM aim to encourage new and rigorous research of compelling interest to scholars and policy-makers active in climate law, policy, and governance at multiple levels. Contributions are encouraged from legal scholars, social scientists, and practitioners from several fields, including international law, comparative law, international relations, comparative politics, public policy, political economy/ecology, and environmental studies.

Contributions are most notably sought on the following themes and topics:

• Analysis of the legal developments, practices and discourses associated with public participation within the UNFCCC and other multilateral fora focusing on climate change;
• Case studies of the development and application of the concept of public participation with respect to particular sectors and mechanisms of climate governance (mitigation, adaptation, carbon trading, CDM, REDD+, etc.);
• Case studies highlighting best practices and challenges in the operationalization of the concept of public participation in the policy-making processes and governance mechanisms addressing climate change in particular countries or regions around the world;
• Analysis of experiences with public participation in other fields of environmental governance and how lessons learned might apply to climate governance;
• Theoretical and critical reflections on the notion of public participation and the opportunities and challenges it presents for equitable and effective climate governance.

Full papers (ranging between 6,000 and 8,000 words) should be submitted by 15 August 2014. The drafts of the working papers may also be discussed during a session of the 3rd Yale/UNITAR Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy, “Human Rights, Environmental Sustainability, Post-2015 Development, and the Future Climate Regime,” which will be held in New Haven, Ct., 5-7 September 2014. Prospective authors interested in participating in this conference are encouraged to submit an abstract.

The final versions of the working papers will be posted on the CISDL and GEM websites and will be launched at a side-event organized during the 20th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC to be held in Lima, Peru in November 2014. Selected working papers may also be collected into a book or special journal issue to be published at a later date.

Submissions of abstracts (of approximately 500 words) will be accepted on a rolling basis until 15 May 2014. Authors are encouraged to submit abstracts as soon as possible to ensure paper eligibility and avoid overlap between different papers in the series. While papers should not have been published elsewhere before being submitted to the series, inclusion in the series does not preclude future publication elsewhere.

Abstracts submitted for inclusion in the working paper series should be submitted as Microsoft Word Documents and should include a 500 word abstract and a 50 word biography of the author. All abstracts should be submitted to Ms. Katherine Lofts (CISDL) at klofts@cisdl.org.