From the Local to the Global: Learning About the Adverse Human Rights Effects of Climate Policies

Abstract

In this paper, I elaborate how transnational advocacy networks (TANs) use local experiences and knowledge to teach climate negotiators about the adverse human rights effects of climate policies. Employing a variety of tactics, including information politics, symbolic politics, leverage politics and accountability politics, they initiate instrumental and social learning processes among state representatives. Learning about rights impacts leads to a policy transfer between the human rights regime as the source institution and the climate regime as the target institution and institutional interaction through commitment. In this paper, I will concentrate on the activities of one particular TAN, the Human Rights and Climate Change Working Group, and how it has fostered the institutionalization of human rights into the Paris Agreement 2015. My research is based on a content analysis of primary and secondary documents, expert interviews and participatory observations at the COPs in Warsaw (2013), Paris (2015) and Bonn (2017).