"We need all hands on deck," stated the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on December 12, 2015, just before the Paris Agreement was adopted at the final day of the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations... [ view full abstract ]
"We need all hands on deck," stated the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on December 12, 2015, just before the Paris Agreement was adopted at the final day of the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21). In doing so, Ban Ki-moon addressed not only the commitment of all states but, above all, the many small and large initiatives of subnational and nonstate actors (in the following called non-party stakeholders) that were no longer marginalized but placed at the center of the Paris agreement. The launch of the Nonstate Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA), a global platform that gathers and presents the involvement of businesses, cities, sub-national governments, investors and civil society organizations, has been a key tool in Lima-Paris Action Agenda and an impetus for the successful adoption of the Paris Agreement. Along with the transformation of climate negotiations from a "regulatory" to a "catalytic and simplified" regime, the emphasis on the importance of non-party actors was a clear signal of the need for a bottom-up approach in the negotiation and implementation of climate strategies. This Paris momentum has been taken up by the Fijian presidency at the latest COP 23 in Bonn where the first open dialogue between parties and non-party stakeholders took place. However, sub- and nonstate actors are not only playing an important role in the governance of projects and programs initiated by themselves but also within the implementation of projects that are funded by the states themselves, through e.g. official development assistance (ODA). As knowledge providers, non-party stakeholders contribute valuable local knowledge to the projects, form the basis for a successful knowledge transfer within their networks and remain as a local carrier of newly generated knowledge, especially when international actors withdraw after the end of a project. These three key functions of knowledge introducers, disseminators and keepers are important conditions for ensuring the sustainability of climate projects and thus climate compatible development. In addition, non-party actors have been identified as innovators for future projects with catalytic functions as facilitators of improved international cooperation. This contribution reviews the role of non-party stakeholders in climate compatible development in past development projects and summarizes the research that has been conducted on how particular roles influence their participation. In addition, it will provide an outline of further research on cooperative or conflicting relationships in respective projects in order to investigate how governance structures influence the nature of participation of non-party stakeholders.
Keywords: non-party stakeholders, sustainable development, international cooperation
9c. Public participation, role of stakeholders
