1.3.1 Women and Gender Advocacy

The linkage between women and climate change came forth during the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro, where the frame connecting women’s rights and sustainable development first emerged (Friedman, Reference Friedman2003). After the UNFCCC was established in 1992, however, the regime had little to say about gender equality. From research scientists to national delegates, men have constituted the majority of the research and policymaking forces (Nagel, Reference Nagel2015). The demand for awareness of the linkage between women and climate change started to surface in the early 2000s. In 2001, gender concerns were officially brought into the UNFCCC process, in which the Secretariat was tasked with examining the gender composition at the UN climate governance. However, no mechanism was adopted to ensure gender quality. The failure of Copenhagen, the rising doubt about the UN setup, and the fact that the system was dominated by men, indicated that it was time to call for the participation of women in global climate governance (Buckingham, Reference Buckingham2010).

The endeavor to organize movements around women’s rights in climate governance came into public view in 2007 during the COP13 meeting in Bali, Indonesia. The Women’s Caucus was founded, which later gained the official UNFCCC constituency status as the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC). The initial women and gender CSOs included Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), Gender Climate Change, Women’s Environment and Development Organization, and Life.e.V. They, along with other CSOs, demanded the UNFCCC be a “gender-sensitive regime.” At the same time, they started “holding joint meetings, lobbying delegates, organizing side events, participating in protests, and advocating for the inclusion of gender-specific text in the negotiations” (Ciplet, Reference Ciplet2014: 81). Despite the short-lived attention for gender equality in Indonesia, the COP13 established a fertile ground for the participation of influential women’s CSOs in climate governance. For example, in 2008, GenderCC – Women for Climate Justice established a clear linkage between climate change and gender inequality and called for fundamental changes beyond including women in the climate change establishment.

The WGC was formally established in 2009. In the same year, members of the WGC lobbied at the COP15 in Copenhagen for the inclusion of a shared vision “Preamble to the Convention” with the “full integration of gender perspectives” (Ciplet, Reference Ciplet2014: 82). However, despite CSOs’ persistent advocacy, the Copenhagen Accord did not contain any reference to women or any gender-sensitive language. Overall, the institutional inclusion and engagement of women at the UNFCCC did not gain real momentum between 2009 and 2011, except for a few gender-specific provisions added in the Cancun Agreement in 2010 and reiterated in the Durban Platform in 2011. However, these commitments remained vague and more of a lip service than a sincere policy change, unable to influence any practices at the national level.

Finally, in 2012, at the COP18 meeting in Doha, Qatar, the mobilization of women’s CSOs started paying off. The decision adopted at COP18 included the language of “promoting gender balance and improving the participation of women in UNFCCC negotiations and in the representation of Parties in bodies established pursuant to the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol” (UNFCCC, 2012). The emphasis on the importance of women negotiators in the formal text was heralded by many as the “Doha Miracle.” The decision reflected an official commitment to include women in the UNFCCC process and required that data on gender participation be collected and made public, which would make research on women’s representation much easier than before.

The following year, the UNFCCC again recognized the need for gender balance in its decision-making processes. As a result, expert bodies of the UNFCCC directed the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to include the language of gender in its 2013 report. Although women’s representation was formally mandated, representatives of CSOs claimed that a mere numerical increase had not improved the quality of women’s participation. The initiative to increase women delegation is only a “tick-box” approach: the rising number of female delegates cannot be translated into gender equality in climate governance. Mandating women’s representation was the first and vital step (Alston, Reference Alston2015).

The WGC did not stop after the inclusion of gender-specific clauses into the formal texts in 2012 and 2013. They kept advocating for the cause in the years that followed. At the COP20 in Lima, Peru in 2014, the WGC argued that “the COP parties were failing to implement solutions that considered the critical role of women and the importance of gender equality in tackling climate change” (Kuyper and Bäckstrand, Reference Kuyper and Bäckstrand2016: 62). After the 2015 Paris Agreement was adopted at the COP21, the WGC was concerned about how to implement the hard-fought languages of human rights, gender equality, and other principles included in the preamble of the Paris Agreement into practical steps and policy instruments. The WGC successfully persuaded the Parties during the COP22 in 2016 to develop a “Gender Action Plan (UNFCCC, 2017, Decision 3/CP.23)” as an implementation roadmap for them. The Plan was a milestone that underlined the urgency of integrating gender into climate-related policymaking. The goal was to ensure that women have a say in climate change decision-making and that the interests of all genders are sufficiently represented at the UNFCCC.

1.3.2 Indigenous Peoples Movement

IPs began attending the UNFCCC COPs in 1998. The first groups of IPs at the COP4 in Buenos Aires came from North America who issued “A Call to Action: The Albuquerque Declaration” (1998). Over the years, IPs’ presence increased, and several institutional platforms have formed to gather IPs coming to the UNFCCC process. In response to the growing IPs’ presence at the COP7 in 2001, the UNFCCC recognized the IPs as one of the non-state observer constituencies, known as the Indigenous Peoples Organizations (IPO) (Belfer et al., Reference Belfer, Ford, Maillet, Araos and Flynn2019). Several years later, in 2008, the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) was established as the caucus for IPs and their allies in the UNFCCC process.Footnote ³ Its mandate was to agree specifically on what IPs will be negotiating for in the UNFCCC process, hence providing a channel to develop unified positions for the IPs coming to the venue.

The development of IPs advocacy inside the UNFCCC has drawn heavily from the international legal framework developed outside of the UNFCCC. For instance, the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues was established in 2000 to serve as a high-level advisory body to the UN Economic and Social Council.Footnote ⁴ Its composition – a mixture of nation-states and IPs – has become a template for developing proposals for advisory bodies at the UNFCCC (López-Rivera, Reference López-Rivera2023). One important legal framework developed outside of the UNFCCC is the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) adopted in 2007. The UNDRIP positions the right to self-determination and collective rights to lands, territories and resources at its core principle. It addresses the relationships between indigenous peoples and their land and resources, and how such relationships are essential to their identity and well-being.Footnote ⁵

Parallel to the UNDRIP, the REDD (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) program was introduced in 2007. It has been a controversial decision among IPs because of the risk of dispossession of IPs’ lands (Claeys and Delgado Pugley, Reference Claeys and Delgado Pugley2017: 3). A range of reactions spawn from the IPs community, ranging from explicit opposition to participation in the program in exchange for cash and a point of contact with the broader mitigation effort. At the same time, many of the IPs’ organizations sought to integrate the UNDRIP into the UNFCCC mitigation mechanism. They launched a No Rights, No REDD campaign, as many UNFCCC Parties refused to make an explicit mention of the UNDRIP (Claeys and Delgado Pugley, Reference Claeys and Delgado Pugley2017: 4). IPs expressed disappointment at the lack of political will by Parties to include any reference to the language of indigenous rights crafted under the UNDRIP. The IPs also saw the COP15 in Copenhagen as an opportunity to reverse this political stalemate; however, the COP15 turned out to be a complete disaster for CSOs, as it severely restricted CSO participation in response to disruptive protest events. But the event became an awakening point for CSOs to reconsider the governance of climate change and triggered the climate justice movement worldwide. It prompted the People’s Climate Summit in 2010 in Bolivia, where representatives of IPs voiced their views on the management of indigenous territories, extractive industries, and REDD. The consensus among the IPs community was to support the process of recognition of the UNDRIP (Claeys and Delgado Pugley, Reference Claeys and Delgado Pugley2017). They were successful in this effort as the UNDRIP was noted as a safeguard provision of the REDD mechanism in 2010 (Claeys and Delgado Pugley, Reference Claeys and Delgado Pugley2017: 5). However, in the following years, no concrete action was taken based on the Safeguard Information System, which was supposed to guide international reporting on how countries address and respect safeguard standards (Claeys and Delgado Pugley, Reference Claeys and Delgado Pugley2017: 6).

While the IPs’ voices and the REDD have been entangled for years without a clear resolution, the recognition and inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the Paris Agreement was a notable victory. More specifically, the Paris Agreement encourages Parties to consider “the best available science” along with “traditional knowledge, knowledge of Indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems” (UNFCCC, 2017: Article 7.5). The accompanying decision to the Paris Agreement introduced an institutional innovation that materialized this formal recognition by establishing the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP).Footnote ⁶ It was a unique achievement, as it established the first formal, permanent, and distinct space created for IPs within the UNFCCC. Unlike existing initiatives, the LCIPP was designed to feed directly into the negotiation process as a working group. It is a forum for fostering dialogue between Parties and IPs about what inclusive national and international climate actions should look like, while increasing the capacity of IPs to implement their own projects (Belfer et al., Reference Belfer, Ford, Maillet, Araos and Flynn2019; López-Rivera, Reference López-Rivera2023).

Despite its importance, the LCIPP created under the Paris Agreement has been an inadequate mechanism for IPs participation in the UNFCCC process, as it fails to acknowledge IPs’ participation as inherent rights and avoids recognizing the colonial systems and practices that marginalize IPs (Maldonado et al., Reference Maldonado, Bull Bennett and Chief2016; Raffel, Reference Raffel2016; Tormos-Aponte, Reference Tormos-Aponte2021). It also left much ambiguity for interpretation when Parties seek implementation based on the LCIPP. Following the COP21 in Paris, the interpretation and design of the LCIPP have been in disarray due to its vague language, allowing for various interpretations and submissions from Parties regarding how to implement Paragraph 135, which called for strengthening indigenous knowledge in climate actions. Some Parties, such as Canada and Ecuador, become the champions for IPs, while others have not (for example, Brazil only called for a website to “deposit” indigenous knowledge) (López-Rivera, Reference López-Rivera2023). Therefore, from the IIPFCC to the REDD+ and then to the LCIPP, the right to self-determination and the right to natural resources on indigenous lands and territories remain insufficiently fulfilled.

2.2.1 Organizational Ecology and Niche

The theory of organizational ecology was developed in the field of sociology to explain the diversity of organizations in a given market (Hannan and Freeman, Reference Hannan and Freeman1977). In this theoretical framework, a similar type of organizations (e.g. private organizations as opposed to intergovernmental organizations) are treated as an organizational population. Different populations depend on different resources for organizational survival, just like different species require different sets of resources for subsistence in an ecosystem. The set of resources on which a given organizational population subsists is referred to as a niche (Freeman and Hannan, Reference Freeman and Hannan1983).

The concept of a niche is important to our understanding of change and survivability of organizations. The traditional notion of a niche typically emphasizes the availability of material and economic resources for organizational survival (Hildebrandt and Chua, Reference Hildebrandt and Chua2017). We expand the concept of a niche and include both material and social resources. A niche can be material in the sense that physical assets, such as land, buildings, and raw materials, provide functional requirements for organizations (Baum and Oliver, Reference Baum and Oliver1991; Hannan and Freeman, Reference Hannan and Freeman1977). A niche can also be social, as non-material support from a variety of actors, including peer organizations, allows organizations to survive. Their survivability does not rely exclusively on financial resources because many CSOs operate on a small budget. In this sense, well-connected organizations in advocacy networks, often referred to as “gatekeepers” (Carpenter, Reference Carpenter2007), have abundant social resources. CSOs can also leverage a stock of social and moral support for particular ideas and norms, which provide them with legitimacy and authority (Stroup and Wong, Reference Stroup and Wong2017). The abundance and poverty of those resources determine the rise and fall of organizational populations.

2.2.2 Niche Development and Specialization

As any resource, including social one, is finite, competition among organizations for niche occupancy is inevitable. In the early stage of niche formation, a niche is populated by a small number of organizations (Abbott, Green, and Keohane, Reference Abbott, Green and Keohane2016; Hannan and Freeman, Reference Hannan and Freeman1989). That is, the density of an organizational population is low, and competition among organizations is relatively moderate. However, once the number of organizations in the niche begins to grow, an increasing density of organizations intensifies market competition. This is reflected in framing strategies as well. For example, in environmental policymaking, CSOs develop competing frames and seek to establish rhetorical control over the terms of policy debate (Boscarino, Reference Boscarino2016). As organizations begin to experience a lack of material and social resources for survival, the growth of an organizational population will be severed. This competition will eventually lead to an inflection point, where a negative relationship starts to display between population density and the growth rate of organizations within the niche.

Once the growth of an organizational population slows down, some organizations start targeting a narrower niche than existing organizational populations do. Organizational ecologists call such organizations as specialist organizations. Specialist organizations are able to survive in the same market with generalist organizations by focusing on a particular set of social and material resources for subsistence (Carroll, Reference Carroll1985). For example, specialist conservation CSOs like Save the Rhino International can co-exist with generalist conservation CSOs like the Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) in the same market by appealing to a particular set of resources (Bush and Hadden, Reference Bush and Hadden2019; Shibaike, Reference Shibaike2023).

When the study of global governance adopted organizational ecology, many studies focused on the rise and fall of organizational populations (Abbott, Green, and Keohane, Reference Abbott, Green and Keohane2016; Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Reference Eilstrup-Sangiovanni2021; Lake, Reference Lake2021). For example, Bush and Hadden (Reference Bush and Hadden2019) demonstrate that the rate of NGO founding declines as the sector becomes densely populated. Others focused on the strategies of niche exploitation, namely specialism and generalism, among CSOs (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Reference Eilstrup-Sangiovanni2019; Shibaike, Reference Shibaike2023). Generalist CSOs tend to be more materially well-resourced than specialist CSOs, as the former has access to a wide range of supporters, including governments, corporations, and the general public.

However, the size of material resources that CSOs enjoy does not necessarily translate into their abilities to shape narratives around them. As Stroup and Wong (Reference Stroup and Wong2017) argue, large CSOs tend to take moderate strategies that are unlikely to expand or curve out a new niche. By contrast, specialist CSOs may be supported by highly engaging supporters who can bring in more resources into their niche (Shibaike, Reference Shibaike2023). We advance existing insight by demonstrating that there are different ways in which organizations specialize into particular niches.

2.2.3 CSO Framing as Niche Development

Connecting organizational specialization with CSOs’ framing choices, we argue that CSOs use frames and narratives to extract social and economic resources within their niche. In line with Eilstrup-Sangiovanni’s (Reference Eilstrup-Sangiovanni2019: 381) work on an “advocacy niche,” we conceptualize the niche as a set of material and social resources that include “dominant ideas, norms, and cognitive frames relevant to an issue, information about policy preferences and choices.” While Eilstrup-Sangiovanni’s work highlights the niche created by technological advances and legal changes, we focus on the fact that CSOs can expand their niche by their own advocacy work. That is, the fluidity and variability of climate discourse are produced by CSOs’ framing efforts themselves. A stock of social and moral support for a particular frame becomes a unique type of resources that can help sustain the lives of CSOs. Thus, there is an interdependent relationship between the abundance of resources (or lack thereof) within a given niche and the CSOs that subsist on it.

In the context of climate advocacy, CSOs make framing efforts in order to guide their audiences to understand climate change from a particular angle and to extract economic and social resources for organizational survival. The complex nature of climate change provides a large number of framing options, and we observe a wide variation in the frames that CSOs use on the ground. That is, the meaning of climate change is constituted by a collection of various frames that emphasize different elements of climate change (Hjerpe and Buhr, Reference Hjerpe and Buhr2014; Nisbet and Scheufele, Reference Nisbet and Scheufele2009; O’Neill et al., Reference O’Neill, Hulme, Turnpenny and Screen2010). As such, frames for climate change – climate frames – are empirically fluid and variable, and hence less restrictive in terms of who can engage with a certain climate frame.

The UNFCCC process, in which nation-states gather annually to negotiate greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and other climate-related issues, provides an ideal venue for tracing the evolution of climate frames. Traditionally, climate change was framed as a scientific problem. Scientific experts acquired technologies to monitor and provide evidence of global environmental degradation, which formed the basis of climate change advocacy from the period leading up to the establishment of UNFCCC in 1992 (Bäckstrand and Lövbrand, Reference Bäckstrand and Lövbrand2006). This scientific frame has continued to occupy mainstream discourse. In the past decade, however, climate advocacy began to emphasize alternative frames, especially those highlighting social and ethical concerns about climate change (Allan and Hadden, Reference Allan and Hadden2017; Hadden, Reference Hadden2015). Frames emphasizing climate justice, rights-based approaches, development, and marginalized groups, such as women and IPs, are now widely accepted among CSOs.

Empirically, a niche for CSOs at the UNFCCC corresponds to the advocacy frames since CSOs adopt frames to garner material and social resources for their advocacy efforts. Such frames include mitigation, adaptation, climate justice, gender equality, and the rights of indigenous peoples, to name a few. These frames also define the key characteristics of supporters who provide resources for organizational survival. By focusing on the frames that constitute the relationship between the niche and CSOs, we distinguish the ecology of climate CSOs and the ecology of the climate frames that they construct. That is, the presence of CSO representing specific interests, such as rights of people groups and solutions to specific issues, does not automatically translate to a clear and loud voice for those interests. Importantly for CSOs, organizational identities, often defined in their mission statements or membership in a UNFCCC constituency,Footnote ⁷ do not necessarily correspond to the behaviors of CSOs.

Therefore, while CSOs at UNFCCC can be defined in terms of the characteristics of their missions, those attributes do not tell us about their framing efforts on the ground. We motivate our analysis of CSOs with the idea of organizational specialization, but we depart from existing research by focusing on different ways in which CSOs specialize framing efforts at the UNFCCC.

While recognizing that organizational ecology is primarily a structural theory, we emphasize that specialist CSOs have the power to shape the institutional environment by themselves. In so doing, we demonstrate that specialist CSOs develop their frames differently. That is, specialization is not a uniform phenomenon but has a variation within it. In particular, in the process of finding their own niche of specialization, CSOs do not always conform to the sectors they nominally belong to. For example, a CSO in the public health sector may take on narratives around gender equality, or a CSO works on forest conservation can develop discourse and understanding about the local IPs who have a close connection to forests. In the following sections, we detail how populations of CSOs can leverage particular climate frames to formulate and shape specialization.

3.1.1 Data Collection and Processing

We focused our data collection efforts on COP21 in Paris, a milestone event in global climate governance. We posit that CSOs were highly active in disseminating their messages during COP21, for which there was a strong expectation that the meeting would produce a new international agreement on climate change. In fact, the conference witnessed the highest number of non-state observers at the time, with a total of 1,109 participants. This record turnout of participants was only exceeded during COP26 in 2021.

To analyze how different CSOs used different frames for climate change, we assembled two types of data for all registered CSO participants for COP21. First, we collected all English-language tweets from the registered observers, including retweets, during the entire 14-day period of COP21 (November 30–December 12, 2015). We used the hashtag #COP21 as a keyword to focus on CSOs’ intentional efforts to shape climate change discourse during COP21. CSOs are also much more likely to use hashtags than ordinary users (Boyd, Golder, and Lotan, Reference Boyd, Golder and Lotan2010). Although some CSOs do not have Twitter accounts or do not actively engage in online discussions, such negative data (i.e. the dog that didn’t bark) are also valuable in evaluating CSOs’ representation in climate change discourse. We collected a total of 20,851 tweets.

We coded the tweets based on the climate change frames represented by each tweet. Since there has been a proliferation of frames in climate change discourse in recent years (Jinnah, Reference Jinnah2011), different studies use different numbers of frames in their analyses (Allan and Hadden, Reference Allan and Hadden2017; Hjerpe and Buhr, Reference Hjerpe and Buhr2014; Hopke and Hestres, Reference Hopke and Hestres2018). As we are interested in the different mechanisms under which gender and indigenous frames are established, these two categories are included in our coding scheme. We also included well-established frames identified in the literature: science, energy, and economy. Finally, we added two categories specific to COP21: invite (event invitation) and treaty.

To code a large number of tweets, we adopted the semi-supervised machine-learning (ML) model called the seeded Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). The LDA is a method to classify documents, such as tweets and newspapers, into any number of groups (or clusters) based on the probability distribution of each word in the text (Bagozzi, Reference Bagozzi2015; Blei, Ng, and Jordan, Reference Blei, Andrew and Jordan2003). For example, if relatively unique words, such as “indigenous” and “native,” appear across a subset of documents, these documents will be clustered together.Footnote ⁹ In other words, words like “climate” will not be a useful identifier for clusters because a large majority of tweets include “climate” regardless of the frame they use.

A major problem of unsupervised-ML (non-seeded LDA) is that the interpretation of the results is necessarily ad hoc. Researchers can specify the number of clusters, but they must ensure that each of the clusters mean anything useful after the model outputs results. The seeded LDA has an advantage over non-seeded LDA models in that it allows us to specify keywords – seed words – for document classification based on our prior knowledge. Here, the model uses the co-occurrence of seed and non-seed words for document classification (Ramesh et al., Reference Arti, Goldwasser, Huang, Daumé III and Getoor2014; Watanabe and Zhou, Reference Watanabe and Zhou2022). The seeded LDA finds the words that are likely to co-occur with seed words and group together the documents that use them. The seeded LDA also offers an advantage over supervised ML models, which are heavily influenced by our selection and coding of “training” sets (Hastie et al., Reference Trevor, Tibshirani, Friedman and Friedman2009; Yu, Kaufmann, and Diermeier, Reference Bei, Kaufmann and Diermeier2008). In short, seeded LDA attempts to take a middle ground between supervised and unsupervised ML models.

We chose three to four words as the seed words of each frame in our model.Footnote ¹⁰ The model then sorted each tweet into one of the eight categories based on the seed and co-occurring words. Note that, in addition to the seven categories discussed previously, the model added a residual category, other, to handle ambiguous cases. Table 1 shows the top ten words most strongly associated with each frame and a total number of tweets sorted in each frame category.

Second, we collected organization-level data by web-searching every CSO on the list of admitted non-state observers (1,109 organizations) at the COP21. We collected the mission statement, the geographic scope of operation, and headquarter locations, from each CSO’s official website. If a CSO has no online presence and thus no information about the organization, we dropped them from the analysis. We collected organization-level data for a total of 834 CSOs. Based on the mission statements, we identified the sectors to which each CSO belonged in the context of climate governance. We used Cabré’s (Reference Cabré2011) CSO sectors at the UNFCCC, such as “Business & industry” and “Rights & justice,” as a starting point. We then added a few other categories for COP21 to update Cabré’s categorization based on COP15 (2009). The added sectors include “Conservation,” “Finance & market mechanism,” “Health,” and “Pollution & waste.”

In addition, to operationalize the concept of specialization in the context of environmental and climate CSOs, we took into account the scope of each CSO’s mission and categorized them into three groups. Each CSO was categorized into one of the groups. We treated organizations such as universities, businesses, and churches as separate categories. Table 2 summarizes the statistics of CSO categorization. A full list of CSO sectors and summary can be found in Appendix A.

1. 1. Multi-issue CSOs: Generalist CSOs that cover a broad range of issues belong to the climate change and environmental sectors. For example, Greenpeace International is coded as a multi-issue CSO, as its mission statement encompasses a wide range of issues, including forest, ocean, air and water quality, and food security, among many others.

2. 2. Issue-specific CSOs: Specialist CSOs with a specific environmental focus, such as food, agriculture, energy, forest, health, transport, water, and ocean, belong to this category. Kenya-based African Forest Forum is an example of issue-specific CSOs. In this case, the mission of the CSO focuses specifically on Africa’s forest and tree resources.

3. 3. People-specific CSOs: Specialist CSOs with a focus on the welfare of a specific people group, such as women, youth, and indigenous peoples, belong to this category. For example, GenderCC, a women’s CSO in Germany, is coded as a people-specific CSO. Its endeavor is exclusively in gender equality and women’s rights in battling climate change.

Regarding geographic information of CSOs, we focused on two kinds of organizational data. First, the operating scope indicates the primary areas of operation for each CSO. The scope has three levels: whether its activities take place locally and nationally, regionally (such as within the European Union or in Southeast Asia), or globally. Second, we coded whether each CSO’s headquarter is located in the global North or South. Table 3 summarizes the geographic information of CSOs.

3.2.1 Discursive Map of CSOs

Our coding of tweets allows us to empirically observe the framing choices of CSOs without reducing them to CSOs’ sector-based attributes. For example, Greenpeace International is a generalist, multi-issue CSO. We can measure what are bundled in this “multi-issue” package by analyzing the composition of its tweets: 9 tweets with scientific frames, 54 with gender, 26 with indigenous, and so on. We posit that this variation indicates how Greenpeace International distributed its advocacy efforts between different climate change frames during COP21.

CSOs tweeted with various frequencies during the COP. Among 834 CSOs, 458 CSOs tweeted at least once, ranging from a single tweet to 1,540 tweets. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the total number of tweets by CSOs. As there is a variation in CSOs’ tweet frequency, we standardized framing efforts with a total number of tweets for each CSO. In short, framing variables measure the ratio of tweets adopting each of the eight frames introduced earlier (Appendix B). In this analysis, we removed CSOs with 14 or fewer tweets (i.e. one tweet per day on average), so extreme values are generated by framing choices rather than the small number of total tweets.Footnote ¹¹ A total of 213 CSOs are analyzed.

Figure 1 Histogram of total number of tweets by CSOs

We used these eight framing variables (corresponding to Table 1) to represent the positions of CSOs in the discursive space of climate activism during COP21. More concretely, we treat each framing variable as a dimension in the discursive space (with a total of eight dimensions). Although impossible to visualize (as there are eight dimensions), each CSO’s position is determined by the eight framing variables. Doing so allows us to compare the similarity of CSOs in terms of actual tweets, completely independent of organizational attributes. To provide an intuitive visualization, we plotted each CSO on a two-dimensional space with multidimensional scaling (MDS). MDS is a method to reduce any number of dimensions to a useful number while preserving similarity among units as much as possible (Kruskal and Wish, Reference Kruskal and Wish1978). In our case, MDS reduced eight to two dimensions so that we can visualize the relative positions of CSOs on the plane. In Figure 2, CSOs close to each other share similar compositions of framing choices. By contrast, CSOs far apart from each other are dissimilar in terms of framing choices. At the center of this discursive map are “average” CSOs, such as Sierra Club, Practical Action, and the United Church of Canada, leaning more toward pragmatic approaches than radical actions in their climate advocacy. By contrast, the further a CSO is from the center, the CSO is more “extreme” in terms of focusing on a particular framing strategy.

Figure 2 Discursive map of CSOs with five clusters indicated by color circles. Labels indicate CSOs (Twitter handles) that belong to women’s and IPs sectors. Node shapes represent generalist and specialist CSO categories. The distance between any given CSOs indicates the similarity of framing choices during the COP21.

To visualize the clusters of CSOs (i.e. groups that share similar frames), we conducted a k-means clustering analysis on the eight framing variables. The k-means cluster analysis is a method to find clusters (groups) of units by minimizing the distance to units from the center of each cluster (Bode et al., Reference Leticia, Hanna, Yang and Shah2015). Here, we assume that there are five important clusters because, among the eight framing variables, five are substantive topics (science, energy, economy, gender, indigenous). Doing so allows us to see which organizations belong to which cluster (i.e. share similar framing choices) on the discursive map. This grouping is important and novel because it does not rely on organizational attributes or the UNFCCC constituency that existing research frequently uses. The clusters are visualized in color in Figure 2.

We find three major groupings in this discursive space. First, the orange circle (Cluster 5) consists of CSOs that focus mainly on gender frames. We find that specialist CSOs representing the interest of women, such as GenderCC, WEDO (Women’s Environment & Development Organization), 1 Million Women, are “pulling” this circle toward the upper right. As gender issues constitute a well-established niche populated with various CSOs, these women’s CSOs must distinguish themselves by spearheading their own narrative in the context of climate change. We also find a concentration of people-specific CSOs, suggesting that they may find easier ways to connect their group identities, such as youth and students, with women and gender.

Second, the blue circle (Cluster 2) consists of CSOs tweeting mainly with indigenous frames. Unlike the gender cluster, IPs organizations, such as ICC Canada and IWGIA (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs), are located in the center of the circle rather than on the fringe. CSOs at the bottom of this circle are specialist CSOs focusing on specific issues, such as forest and health – issues that are connected to IPs. This suggests that a different set of specialist CSOs, the issue-specific ones, rather than IPs’ organizations, are pushing the narrative of IPs. Moreover, this IPs’ cluster occupies a distinct area in this discursive space, suggesting that their framing profiles are unique and potentially making it difficult to collaborate with the rest of the CSO participants in COP21.

Finally, three clusters (Clusters 1, 3, and 4) overlap significantly on the left side of the quadrant, suggesting that CSOs in this discursive space share similar framing choices. These are a mix of CSOs that focus on traditional frames, such as science, energy, and economy. Toward the left, we find research institutes, such as Edison Electric Institute and IGSD (Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development), that focus heavily on scientific frames.

We also measured the distance of each CSO from the mainstream climate change discourse at COP21. The mainstream climate discourse is defined here as the average of each framing variable. Drawing on the strategy of measuring ideological distances developed by Baldassarri and Bearman (Reference Baldassarri and Bearman2007), we interpret this distance as a measure of extremity for CSOs’ framing choices. That is, the further a CSO deviates from the average framing choices, the more extreme is its framing strategy relative to the rest of CSO participants at COP21. On the discursive map, CSOs at the fringe tend to have high extremity. Formally, the distance (D) of each CSO i is computed as follows:

$D_i=\sqrt{\sum _{n=1}^j(p_{i_j}-q_j{)}^2}$(3.1)

where p is each CSO’s (i) framing variable (the ratio of each frame adoption) and q is the global average of each framing variable j.

We used an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model to evaluate the relationship between the framing extremity (D) of each CSO and its organizational attributes. This analysis shows us what kind of organizations are “pulling” climate discourse in their own directions rather than trying to appeal to the largest possible number of audiences. We found that specialist CSOs focusing on particular issues were more likely to be extreme in their framing choices relative to generalist CSOs (Appendix C). The result suggests that generalist CSOs occupy the middle ground in climate change discourse at COP21, using largest-common-denominator strategies in framing efforts. Interestingly, specialist CSOs focusing on people groups are positively associated with the extremity measure but statistically insignificant (p = 0.08). The result could mean two things. First, frames that people-specific CSOs adopt are considered mainstream discourse at the UNFCCC. Given the strong presence of people-specific CSOs in the gender cluster (Figure 2), this could be another indication of the mainstreaming of gender discourse in global governance (Hafner-Burton and Pollack, Reference Hafner-Burton and Pollack2002). Second, it is also possible that people-specific CSOs are taking more pragmatic approaches than issue-specific CSOs to advance their agendas. The finding here highlights different ways in which specialist CSOs are represented in the discursive space of COP21 and shows how specialization alone cannot predict the extremity of specialist CSOs.

3.2.2 Who Contributes to Climate Change Discourse?

Having established that framing choices are not necessarily reducible to organizational attributes, we take a close look at the relationship between organizational attributes and framing choices. First, we examine what kind of CSOs were more likely to engage in online activism during COP21. We used the total number of tweets during COP21 for each CSO to measure online engagement. We applied negative binomial models (Gardner, Mulvey, and Shaw, Reference William, Mulvey and Shaw1995) to fit our event-count dependent variable (i.e. the number of tweets). We first constructed a baseline model, predicting the number of tweets with a categorical variable for the CSO type (multi-issue, issue-specific, people-specific, or other CSOs), operating scope (national, regional, or global), and location of CSO headquarter (South or North) (Appendix D). We then added two specifications (Appendix E) where Model 1 replaces the CSO type variable with a binary variable for each of the CSO types, and Model 2 includes specific sectors.

The baseline model shows that generalist CSOs that focus on multiple issues are the most active actors in climate change tweets. Using multi-issue CSOs as a reference category, we find that all other categories of CSOs show a negative coefficient. The result indicates that specialist CSOs are less active in tweeting during COP21 than the generalist CSOs. To visualize this effect, Figure 3 shows the number of tweets from each CSO type. CSOs whose work covers an expansive geographic region and those from the global North are more likely to be active tweeters. Model 1 is consistent with the baseline model, showing that multi-issue CSOs tweet most actively, and Northern CSOs are more likely than Southern CSOs to be active on Twitter. According to the baseline model (Figure 3) and the marginal effect analysis (Figure 4, Panel a), generalist CSOs are likely to tweet more than the other types of CSOs.

Figure 3 A box plot for the number of tweets by each CSO type. The sample includes CSOs with 14 or more tweets, excluding outliers for visualization.

Figure 4 Average marginal effect on the number of tweets

The findings here offer two important insights. First, generalist CSOs have a greater capacity than specialist CSOs to appeal to a broader set of audiences, as they have can pick and choose from a wide variety of climate change frames. Among the top ten tweeters during COP21, seven are multi-issue generalist CSOs working in climate and environmental sectors, and all are based in either Europe or the United States. Backed by relatively abundant resources, these generalist CSOs can create what can be seen as “mainstream” discourse in climate change activism.

Second, the findings also illustrate the lack of representation by Southern CSOs. The UNFCCC COPs are known to be more accessible venue than many other multilateral processes, where the participation of non-state actors is restricted. While CSOs may find it relatively easy to register as attendees, not everyone contributes to the construction of climate change discourse. Generalist CSOs that are based in the global North and work in a variety of geographic areas are far more likely to contribute to climate change discourse than their global Southern peers. The North-South asymmetry in global governance has been criticized by many (Barnett and Walker, Reference Barnett and Walker2015), but we also find this asymmetry in the social media space.

However, we know from the previous analysis (Figure 2) that climate change discourse is fragmented and is not dominated by large generalist CSOs. Specialist CSOs, especially those that engage with gender frames, have a strong presence in the overall discourse of climate change. Although specialist CSOs tweet less frequently than generalist CSOs, this does not mean that they are absent or even marginalized. Therefore, Model 2 unpacks the two specialist categories (issue-specific and people-specific CSOs) and uses CSO sector attributes as estimators.

Model 2 shows that five sectors of specialist CSOs are particularly active on Twitter during COP21: the built environment community, climate financing and market mechanisms, environmental rights and justice, women, and youth. The average marginal effect of each sector is plotted in Panel b of Figure 4. Most CSOs working in the first two sectors – built environment such as urban management and planning and market mechanisms such as carbon trade – are from the global North. While these CSOs are specialists in certain issues within climate change, their sectors have so far been dominated by Northern expertise. Their activeness supports the previous finding that Northern groups enjoy higher online engagement.

However, the other three sectors – rights and justice, women, and youth groups – include many Southern organizations and groups, and, more importantly, represent the interest of disadvantaged social groups. These CSOs are specialized in social issues related to justice and equity, the frames that recently became popularized at UNFCCC. Their clear presence on Twitter signals the rise of CSOs that do not derive their expertise from scientific or technological knowledge, but from the ability to access and represent the people who are disproportionately affected by climate change. While large generalist CSOs do enjoy privileged positions, being specialists is also a source of power in engaging with climate change discourse. Our analysis thus joins the recent effort to re-imagine a dichotomous portrait of the powerful gatekeepers versus their followers among CSOs (Shibaike, Reference Shibaike2022; Zhao, Reference Zhao2023), providing a nuanced picture of an ecological space of climate framing where different groups can thrive at the same time.

3.2.3 Stories We Tell: Gender Advocacy

The previous section established that specialist CSOs are important contributors to climate change discourse, but it did not tell us how they frame climate change. As women and gender advocacy continues to gain attention at the UNFCCC, we investigated what kind of groups developed this particular frame during COP21. We used the gender framing variable (one of the framing variables in Appendix B), which is the ratio of gender frames each CSO chose out of all tweets. In other words, this measures the extent of efforts that each CSO made in constructing gender framing during COP21. As the percentage data is bounded between 0 and 1, we used binomial generalized linear models to predict the outcomes (Appendix F).

As the frame is primarily around women and gender topics, we first tested whether women’s CSOs are active in constructing this frame. Model 1 from Appendix F shows that women’s CSOs are highly active in choosing gender frames. Although only 18 CSOs belonged to the women’s sector based on an explicit commitment to the cause in their mission statements, almost all of them dedicated their COP21 tweets to advocating women’s rights and gender equality. Eight of the 18 women’s CSOs have at least one-third of their tweets focusing on women and gender issues. Those women’s CSOs together formed a community that is highly vocal about their activities and goals at COP21, representing the interest of women from both the global North and South. Although the North-South divide is a persistent problem among most sectors, we find little evidence of that among women’s CSOs.

We also explored whether CSOs from other sectors contribute to women and gender frames compared to women’s CSOs. Model 2 expanded Model 1 to include generalist and specialist categories; people-specific CSOs are not included, as women’s CSOs exclusively belong to this category. As the marginal effects in Figure 5 show, CSOs from no other types stand to be noteworthy co-contributors of gender frames. In particular, although generalist CSOs could have taken on gender issues as a major part of their multi-issue agenda, we found no evidence that they concentrated their advocacy resources on this frame. Generalists avoid overcommitting to gender framing despite being active contributors of climate change discourse. Instead of generalists, the prominent voice comes from women themselves.

Figure 5 Average marginal effect on the number of gender tweets

The findings have three implications. First, women’s CSOs not only work inside the UNFCCC venues to have themselves heard, but also use social media to amplify their voices. Huairou Commission, a grasssroots women’s movement, had all their tweets tightly surrounding women and gender issues. 1 Million Women from Australia adopted a gender frame for 75% of their tweets at COP 21. The tweets from these CSOs and other women’s SCOs did not shy away from their agendas. They demanded representation: “If you are not at the table you are often on the menu. We need more #women at the #cop21 table. #ClimateJustice” (1 Million Women). They also called for mainstreaming gender into the formal agreement: “#COP21: Gender is cross-cutting & must be included in Purpose Section in the agreement! #WhatIsThePurpose #WEDOecho” and “You cannot trade off half the population on women and gender issues disappearing at #COP21” (WEDO). They portrayed women as agents of change: “Women bring solutions both at COP and on the ground” (WEDO). A clear message insisting on gender balance and women’s rights is found in many of their tweets.

Second, a clear division of labor is emerging between CSOs constructing and shaping women and gender frames and those adopting them as a part of, but not necessarily the center of, their advocacy agendas. Women’s CSOs are committed to shaping their own stories. They are the main drivers of the agenda. Other CSOs do not exhibit a consistent effort to adopt the gender perspective and be an advocate for women’s rights and gender equality in their narratives. This supports our idea about self-representation, in which a populated niche pushes specialist CSOs to develop genuine ownership of an issue – gender in this case.

Finally, the strong presence of networks among women’s CSOs may have contributed to the formation of similar framing strategies among them. As we discussed in Section 2 and will detail in Section 4, the WGC had a disciplinary process in developing a unified voice among CSOs. This mechanism is further strengthened by network organizations like GenderCC, in which member CSOs share similar strategies.

3.2.4 Stories They Tell: IPs Advocacy

We investigated another group of people-specific CSOs, IPs’ organizations, to understand their framing efforts. Just like previously, we used the indigenous framing variable (Appendix B) as the outcome variable and examined how different types of CSOs contributed to the development of indigenous frames in climate change discourse. The results from statistical models are shown in Appendix G.

We constructed Model 1 to test whether IPs themselves are active contributors to indigenous frames. We find no evidence that IPs’ organizations spent significant portions of their tweets about their own stories. Moreover, the substantive effect of the IPs sector on indigenous framing is negative. These results indicate that IPs’ organizations are no more likely to use indigenous frames than CSOs from other sectors. Forty CSOs have at least half of their COP21 tweets devoted to indigenous framing. Only one IPs’ organization, Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact Foundation, was found among them.

Other IPs organizations were also active on Twitter, but they did not engage with IPs’ advocacy with an effective communication strategy that other SCOs did (as we see next). For example, the ICC Canada tweeted an update on their activity, “ICC meets with US Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell #COP21 #climatechange.” Others were invitees to the events that they or their allies hosted: “Join #IndigenousPeoples Pavilion at COP21 Grand Opening Ceremony 1 Dec 14.15” (IWGIA) and “Happy International #Youth and Future Generations Day” (ICC Canada). While IPs’ organizations did tweet about themselves, the ratio of such tweets was relatively low.

An optimistic interpretation about this finding is the mainstreaming of indigenous discourse: many non-indigenous CSOs not only chose indigenous framing for their climate advocacy but also focused on it during COP21, so IPs organizations were not alone in talking about their climate concerns. However, there is also a possibility of tokenism in which stories about IPs were appropriated by other CSOs to create emotional appeals.

To look more closely at organizational attributes in relation to IPs’ advocacy, we expanded our model to include CSO types (multi-issue, issue-specific, and other CSOs) in Model 2 and all sectors of the registered CSOs in Model 3. Model 2 shows that issue-specific CSOs, instead of IPs organizations, are helping to build an indigenous-climate narrative. Model 3 further corroborates the finding that some of the issue-specific specialist CSOs are dedicated to constructing indigenous framing for climate change. Panel c of Figure 6 shows the sectors of CSOs actively using indigenous frames: conservation, forest, environmental health, and rights and justice.

Figure 6 Average marginal effect on the number of indigenous tweets

Global Witness, the UK-based organization that seeks justice for environmental and climate defenders, is an example of such issue-specific CSOs. Its mission statement emphasizes the people who are not necessarily IPs but ill-treated or murdered by governments and corporations because of their efforts to protect the environment and fight against climate-wracking industries.Footnote ¹² Global Witness is committed to forest and biodiversity conservation and justice for those disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. During COP21, Global Witness mentioned IPs in roughly half of their tweets, including “Stop the murder of Indigenous peoples Guardians of our forests #PaddleToParis #COP21.”

Several CSOs focusing on forest conservation established a close connection to IPs in their advocacy discourse. Among them are FERN from Belgium,Footnote ¹³ Forest Peoples’ Programme from the UK,Footnote ¹⁴ and California and Oregon-based NGO Pacific Forest Trust.Footnote ¹⁵ The primary goals of these organizations are the protection and sustainability of forests, to benefit climate, water, wildlife, and people’s well-being. At COP21, more than half of their tweets were concerned with issues related to IPs. They highlighted the vulnerability of IPs around the world, from Cameroon to Indonesia to Brazil, advocating for a rights-based forest protection plan that includes indigenous traditional knowledge. For example, FERN tweeted, “Nice video about #indigenous Ecuadorian people fighting exploitation of their forest at #COP21 #PaddletoParis” with a link to the video.

A final example is Ford Foundation, the US-based funding giant for rights and justice-related causes. Over 65% of its tweets during COP21 adopted indigenous frames. Although initially founded as a tax scheme for the Ford family, Ford Foundation shaped our understanding of human rights over many years through its funding programs (Wong, Levi, and Deutsch, Reference Wong, Levi, Deutsch, Leonard Seabrooke and Henriksen2017). Many of the Ford Foundation’s tweets reflected firm support for IPs’ rights in tackling climate change. For example, it tweeted, “If we protect indigenous rights, we fight #climatechange.” Several of its tweets underscored the threats posed by deforestation toward IPs.

Concerns around IPs may be a relevant area for these issue-specific CSOs, but they are not central to their missions. The findings suggest that the interest of IPs is reflected in surrogate-representation, where IPs themselves may not be spearheading to fill in the niche emerging for themselves. Instead, the indigenous discourse related to climate change is co-constructed by CSOs with a variety of issue interests.

We speculate two reasons why the IPs sector is not saturated like the women’s sector. The first reason is substantive. The “surrogate-representation” pattern we observed from online data could very well be a reflection of the marginalization of IPs’ participation in global climate governance in general. A substantial literature suggests that IPs’ participation inside the UNFCCC COPs has been unequal, insufficient, and tokenized, as IPs face various obstacles at the international stage (Rashidi and Lyons, Reference Rashidi and Lyons2021; Shawoo and Thornton, Reference Shawoo and Thornton2019; Zurba and Papadopoulos, Reference Zurba and Papadopoulos2023). Such obstacles include a lack of financial and technical resources and the capacity to navigate a Western-dominated paradigm, which can also be translated into social media platforms. In particular, the finding suggests that IPs’ organizations did not use social media as an effective tool for advocacy, although we do not know whether or not it was a conscious choice.

The second reason is methodological. Since indigenous frames are identified with co-occurrences of the seed words, such as “indigenous” and “native,” they may have included false positives that are not quite indigenous tweets. Even if this is the case, however, the co-occurrence of words like “rights,” “forests,” and “health” reveals the nature of indigenous frames with which CSOs discuss their own issues in relation to IPs.

4.2.1 Gender Framing: Issue Linkages and a Unified Voice

We observe a high level of specialization in women and gender advocacy at the COPs, as different CSOs seek to occupy different areas of expertise through their own messages around gender equality and climate change. Women’s CSOs at the UNFCCC share a strong need to raise awareness of the connection between gender and climate change. Despite the successful mainstreaming of gender languages into the Paris Agreement and the Gender Action Plan of 2017, interviewees noticed that most people coming to COPs still did not recognize the connection between gender and the impact of climate change. One interviewee said, “You go into the climate movement and say that you’re involved in this process as a feminist, often it’s the first time people ever hear that gender equality and climate have something to do with each other” (Interview 1701). An interviewee from Plan International shared a similar experience when she talked to people about how child marriage had become more common during post-disasters and rising menaces of food shortage and natural resources scarcity: “They were shocked; it’s evident that this is not in anyone’s head here” (Interview 1801).

Women’s CSOs also recognize that many social, political, and economic factors can further exacerbate gender inequality. An interviewee of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Center for Women (ARROW) pointed out, “The interlinkage between climate change and women’s rights is just not direct. There are many other contributing factors involved, such as poverty” (Interview 1802). Another interviewee from GenderCC expressed her concern in explaining a feminist approach to understanding climate impacts (Interview 1702). According to her, ignorance stems from the deeply rooted social institutions and norms based on masculinity. The current understanding of climate change as a collective action problem and the neoliberal economic context in which climate debate takes place need to be challenged and unsettled. She said:

The shared sense of marginalization of gender discourse in climate governance has led to the proliferation of different frames for gender-climate issue linkage. Almost every CSO we interviewed was very intentional about explaining why a gender-sensitive perspective matters in combating climate change. As specialist CSOs, their specialty and expertise in particular areas gave them the legitimacy to fully explain the causal linkage between the impact of climate change and gender inequality. For example, one interviewee explained how water and food shortage disproportionately impacted women from resource-dependent communities (Interview 1803). As essential resources become scarce in nature, women as resource collectors are more likely to be exposed to the impact and the violence associated with the shortage. The interviewee from ARROW expanded on how negative climate impacts such as natural disasters can exacerbate women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health (Interview 1802). Another interviewee coupled the issue of urban planning and gender equality (Interview 1702). She gave an example of urban design and development to illustrate how deeply entrenched the masculine approach is in everyday life and how gender inequality and fossil fuel dependence share the same fundamental cause:

Many others draw on their expertise to articulate a gender-climate story with different thematic areas, including poverty, education, investment, trade, transportation, human rights, and loss and damage. These issue areas allow specialist CSOs to garner support from their audiences, which in turn expands social resources available for women and gender advocacy. Women’s CSOs are also good at identifying a new linkage and incorporate it into the broader gender advocacy. For example, an interviewee from Plan International said:

The variety of narratives surrounding gender-climate advocacy not only strengthens the advocacy potential but also elevates gender as an overarching theme that can thread through many problems.

The diversity of narratives is a result of increasing density in the gender advocacy niche. Increasing density gave prominence to gender advocacy in the UNFCCC, but it also compelled CSOs to demand further action for gender equality so that they can maintain the ownership of gender advocacy. Many mentioned that gender should be considered in the entire problem-solving process and in every stage of decision-making and project planning (Interview 1801; Interview 2212). An interviewee from the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy in Berlin said, “I think if we cut back on that [demand for feminist policy], a lot of people will only meet us halfway anyway. So I think we have to strive for utopia” (Interview 2204). Similarly, a program director from Care International explained,

The continuous push for gender equality led to the popularity of gender frames featuring various aspects, such as poverty and education, of injustice that women face as a result of climate change. At the same time, the diversity of narratives all pointed to the same conclusion: climate action must address gender inequality.

4.2.2 IPs Framing: Increasing Density to Diverse Voices

The CSOs we interviewed represented three types of organizations that work on IPs: the first is composed of and managed by IPs themselves. For example, the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) consists of Inuit from Canada, the United States, Russia, and Greenland (Denmark); the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nations (NEFIN) represents IPs who reside in Nepal. We consider them specialist CSOs, rather than general governing bodies, as they solely focus on representing the interest of specific people groups.

The second kind is “broker” organizations that help connect IPs with other organizations, donors, and corporations. They also bring IPs to COPs and help connect IPs among themselves. Examples include Cultural Survival, a Boston-based CSO that builds capacity for IPs; Conservation International, which helps to allocate funding from the World Bank to IPs; and WWF, which partners with local communities and bring them to COPs under WWF’s delegation. This second kind of CSOs is a mixture of both generalists (Conservation International, WWF) and specialists (Cultural Survival).

The final type of organizations work on an issue related to the IPs. They are often specialists who are experts on issues such as forest, conservation, or agriculture, but they seek to integrate IPs into their programs. Among our interviewees, Forest Trend and World Agroforestry are examples of this type of specialist CSOs. Based in DC, Forest Trend focuses on including indigenous communities in corporate-based carbon offset programs at COP27. World Agroforestry advocates for the inclusion of IPs in fertilizer programs. While all these CSOs draw on the issues facing IPs in the context of climate change, their narratives vary significantly more than what we observed in gender advocacy.

4.2.3 Self-Representation by IPs

The narratives produced by IPs groups are often based on their own understanding of their identity, culture, and history, instead of specific climate policy or solutions. A common theme that many IPs offered during the interviews was a critique and challenge of the Westphalian paradigm embedded in global climate governance. IPs have expressed marginalization in two ways. First, IPs do not have equal representation as the Parties, which are exclusive to nation-states in the UNFCCC process. Second, their knowledge and epistemology about nature and the environment are often sidelined or tokenized in the UNFCCC, which has been dominated by the idea that Western science is the best and only way to understand climate change. IPs thus demand the recognition of their unique status that allows them to participate in decision-making processes.

In particular, several IPs organizations commented that the category of “observer” or “non-governmental organization” is not an appropriate description about their organizations. The concept of “nongovernmental” is based on the Western, post-colonial definition of countries and national governments. To IPs, it clearly ignores the fact that IPs existed long before the establishment of Westphalian nation-state system. An interviewee from ICC Canada, representing Inuit, said:

A representative from the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) shared a similar thought, “Our organization is not an NGO. It is more than an NGO. It’s actually a movement. It’s a movement for equality (with other governments)” (Interview 2211). He described their status as “a sovereign nation. Sovereign in the sense that we are entitled to continue our distinct lifeways, distinct worldviews, distinct identity, culture, language, all of these.” He pointed out further that the fact that they are made an observer is ironic:

IPs are diverse and heterogeneous groups themselves, and so their traditional approaches to nature, including concrete steps toward climate actions, are also diverse. However, they are unified in demanding equal participation, that is, participation substantively equal to nation-states in climate governance. IPs do not simply seek a legal status as Parties to the UNFCCC, but their ultimate goal is to gain recognition of indigenous rights among national governments. The representative of NEFIN pointed out that the lack of awareness persisted because there was not enough conversations or messages around IPs. IPs are acutely aware of the lack of space in international institutions, where their interest could be represented (Belfer et al., Reference Belfer, Ford, Maillet, Araos and Flynn2019). The demand for equal participation was more than just an awareness-raising campaign. The ICC actually took the initiative and drafted the “Circumpolar Inuit protocols for ethical and equitable engagement” for decision-makers as a guideline to work with Inuit (Interview 2209).

The political marginalization of IPs also meant that indigenous worldviews regarding natural resources and the environment were sidelined from the UNFCCC. The representative of NEFIN said,

He argues that the change in our ideas can ultimately save the planet from climate change because attitude change at such a fundamental level would make conservation initiatives and investments obsolete. From this vantage point, IPs expressed their frustration that Western science is regarded as the only reality and evidence that is applied to climate change policymaking.

A Western-centric mindset is not only found among national governments or decision-makers. Several interviewees from the IPs community expressed opposition toward market solutions to climate change such as forest carbon offsetting programs. For example, a representative from IBON was highly skeptical of the corporate interests embedded in these programs and the international institutions that manage the funding. Using an example of the REDD+ program in Kenya, he said,

A representative from Cultural Survival echoed his observation:

4.2.4 Surrogate-Representation from Non-indigenous CSOs

Specialist CSOs from other sectors such as forest and agriculture have also been actively engaged with IPs. These specialist CSOs emphasize the role of IPs and their contributions in tackling climate change, while acknowledging the difficulties of IPs participation in climate governance. For example, a representative from Forest Trend said,

However, being experts of specific issues also means that their narratives are centered around the programs that they promote. Their relationship with the IPs community can be intricate, as it could be seen as a form of cooptation. Specialist CSOs carefully emphasize that their work is capacity-building for IPs and that they are not taking agency away from IPs.

Specialist CSOs also recognize the knowledge of IPs concerning nature conservation and sustainable agriculture. Another example comes from World Agroforestry, a specialist CSO working to ensure food security and environmental sustainability.Footnote ¹⁷ The organization’s representative discussed its fertilizer program and his plan to work with IPs in Africa. The organization is aware of the IPs’ various approaches to agriculture. The interviewee said, “The knowledge that indigenous communities have is also important. As you can imagine, farmers’ knowledge comes from many years of observation and it has been transmitted through many generations. So they have been running the longest experiment than anybody can imagine.” However, rather than following the IPs’ approaches to agriculture, he argues, “we need to understand how [indigenous] knowledge supplements and compliments the knowledge that is technical” (Interview 2213).

Well aware of the pushback on using fertilizers in agriculture, he argued that access to fertilizers was an equity issue. He mentioned that the organization’s program would achieve both improved agricultural productivity for the local community and increased carbon sink for the world. To further support the argument, he connected the program with a rights-based approach to IPs:

Certainly, the organization uses its expertise and the scientific languages, such as “nitrogen fixation,” “mechanisms of runoff,” and “leaching,” which we rarely hear from IPs in their narrative. These CSOs have a strong desire to work with local indigenous communities, but whether IPs will welcome their initiatives is an open question.

4.3.1 Women and Gender: Leadership and Discipline

The emergence of gender frames at the UNFCCC was credited to a core group of specialist CSOs with a focus on women’s rights and gender equality. CSOs like WEDO, GenderCC, WCEF, and APWLD have taken leadership during the early days when a gender perspective first started to surface at the UNFCCC (Interview 1702). These CSOs were also mostly from the global North and thus able to bring funding with them to the UNFCCC process. They became magnets that drew more CSOs into the space (Interview 1702). From the organizational ecology perspective, these early-comer CSOs not only developed a new niche for other CSOs with similar issue foci but also expanded the niche by providing crucial material and social resources.

What they also brought to the UNFCCC was their previous advocacy experience in other multilateral institutions. Talking about the formation of WGC, an interviewee commented that there was a “big step forward when a number of women’s groups who had before attended the General Sustainability process in the Major Groups process joined the UNFCCC process” (Interview 1702). They built upon existing collaborative relations and carried over the knowledge of how to engage in the multilateral process. Another interviewee also mentioned a similar process of knowledge accumulation outside of the UNFCCC, mostly through the Global Gender and Climate Alliance and Women’s Major Groups that engaged in the Sustainable Development Goals process, public health, and biodiversity. Their previous experience in multilateral processes helped them to navigate a new space at the UNFCCC (Interview 1703).

Over the years, the early-comer CSOs accumulated political knowledge of how to navigate the UNFCCC process. When talking about the institutional opportunities provided by the UNFCCC, one interviewee said:

Their political experience enabled them to produce reports and documents that would engage with policymakers. A representative from Plan International Canada said,

The early-comer CSOs also see the need to discipline the women and gender advocacy community. By disciplining, we mean the efforts of early-comer CSOs to shape and unify gender-climate narratives and help other CSOs to learn the norms and rules of engagement in the UNFCCC process. The WGC has always been open for newcomers and collaborations, as an interviewee said, “We try to provide the space and environment capacity and resources to have an open caucus. We try to host a space where everyone can come and share, that is really a space for co-learning and for movement building” (Interview 1703). At the same time, early-comer CSOs continue to lead the process of shaping the key demands from the WGC. In short, any CSOs are welcomed to join the gender-climate advocacy community, but they need to follow the footsteps of the early-comer CSOs.

The early-comer CSOs do recognize the need to have a centralized voice for the entire WGC. One interviewee said that “It’s impossible to work as one organization to follow all aspects of the process,” and “collective advocacy is necessary to be able to have an influence” (Interview 1703). Another also commented, “For us to be truly effective, we need multiple organizations speaking from the same songbook and pushing for the same agenda” (Interview 2212). While an increasing number of women’s CSOs have joined the WGC over the years, only a few are actively involved in strategizing for the entire WGC: “Within the constituency, what makes it effective for advocacy, you have to have a small, dedicated team of individuals who are following the process, who are building relationships with governments” (Interview 1703). The centralized approach is reflected in the list of “key demands” that the WGC put forward at every COP. In an increasingly populated space, this is made possible only when there is a small number of CSOs intentionally shaping the list. They do not necessarily “gatekeep” what is included and what is not, but by providing guidelines and perimeters, they ensure that their collective advocacy would stay focused and consistent throughout the UNFCCC process.

At the same time, there are inevitable drawbacks when a few CSOs try to discipline the entire gender-climate advocacy community. In particular, Southern CSOs often feel pressured into the practices of Northern CSOs and their values. While Northern CSOs were the first ones that started to establish women’s advocacy space at the UNFCCC, Southern CSOs felt excluded during the early years. Between 2007 and 2008, when the women’s CSOs gathered together at the UNFCCC to plan for institutionalized participation and bolster their political influence, some of those Southern CSOs were excluded from the initial caucus where CSOs deliberated participation strategies (Nagel, Reference Nagel2015). Southern CSOs still gathered with their Northern peers at the COPs, but the exclusion from major decision-makings was felt keenly.

The North-South divide is further complicated when the Northern CSOs are usually the donors or help connect their Southern partners with donors. Northern CSOs often explicitly demand certain characteristics for local partner organizations. ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency), an international humanitarian organization, has a large number of local partners worldwide to implement gender-related programs such as education for women. This screening process is a top-down approach, where it is ADRA that chooses its partners rather than local partners coming to work with ADRA. Program directors from ADRA Canada explained how those partners are selected:

Similarly, a program director from Care International explained their partnership with local organizations. He emphasizes that Care International is moving toward decolonization and genuine partnership with local organizations. At the same time, he admitted, “We used to take donor money, and we would subcontract with the organizations to implement projects that, fundamentally were designed either by the donor or us” (Interview 2203).

At times, CSOs find themselves in a difficult situation where they have a mandate from donors to ensure certain gender quotas for local projects but local communities are not ready for women’s leadership. A representative from Conservation International mentioned:

Finally, the disciplinary process is also reflected in how experienced CSOs from the global North helped newcomers to socialize into the UNFCCC process. Several interviewees mentioned a major challenge, that is to navigate the multilateral space, including the knowledge of the process and the ability to speak the “acceptable language” at the COP. One interviewee commented:

Another interviewee also made the observation that, “at that time [when the WGC was established], there were a lot of training, which we all attended, and which gave us a whole lot of knowledge about how to address gender and climate change and the kind of activism we can start doing from our own” (Interview 1803). Therefore, the early-comer CSOs of the WGC not only bring Southern women to the UNFCCC but help them translate their stories into the language of the multilateral processes and give them skills and tactics to become effective advocates of gender equality and women’s rights (Interview 1701; Interview 1702; Interview 1805).

Tracing the establishment and shaping of the gender-climate niche at the UNFCCC, we observe that the niche has developed a pattern through an experienced leadership and their disciplinary efforts. The group of CSOs that had carved out the niche brought strong leadership and provided knowledge and experience to navigate the space for those who followed. Those CSOs were able to set the tone of collaboration, professional engagement, and continuity over the years of UNFCCC process.

4.3.2 Indigenous Peoples: Diverse Voices

IPs have been present in the UNFCCC process for the past twenty-five years. Despite establishing platforms for caucusing and sharing information, IPs advocacy at the UNFCCC still experiences numerous barriers to participation. Formal acknowledgment does not automatically translate into meaningful participation and policy outcomes for IPs. In our research, we move beyond the common critique that IPs are “marginalized” in the UNFCCC process and feature the agency of IPs. Based on the strategies and core beliefs of IPs organizations, we find that the indigenous-climate niche is open to other CSOs who can shape and produce advocacy discourse on IPs. If IPs do not (or cannot) discipline the narratives about themselves, who is filling the space? While we are unable to project with certainty what might happen in the future of IPs advocacy at the UNFCCC, we highlight some of the implications around the current state of IPs advocacy and what it could mean to IPs as well as other CSOs.

Multiple interviewees have mentioned the barriers for IPs to meaningfully engage at the UNFCCC space (Interview 2206; Interview 2208; Interview 2214). The literature on IPs and climate governance has also pointed out the issue of marginalization (Comberti et al., Reference Comberti, Thornton, Korodimou, Shea and Ole Riamit2019). Politically, IPs are recognized as non-Party observers without decision-making power in the negotiation processes (Belfer et al., Reference Belfer, Ford, Maillet, Araos and Flynn2019; Comberti et al., Reference Comberti, Thornton, Korodimou, Shea and Ole Riamit2019). Lumping them into one big constituency of IPs also erases the diversity and heterogeneity of IPs themselves (Belfer et al., Reference Belfer, Ford, Maillet, Araos and Flynn2019). Different IPs organizations have different priorities and capacities, which could sometimes lead to disagreements and conflicts among the IPs community (Zurba and Papadopoulos, Reference Zurba and Papadopoulos2023).

Economically, IPs generally suffer from the lack of resources to attend COPs. This has been a challenge mentioned by our interviewees as well. In the broader context, IPs worldwide have experienced colonial subjugation and destruction of their culture, peoples, and lands. They were forced out of their lands and often resided in remote places with adverse climate conditions. Comberti et al. (Reference Comberti, Thornton, Korodimou, Shea and Ole Riamit2019) use the example of the Navajo Nation in the United States, where their reserve is in the areas that recorded the highest temperature increase in the country.

The lack of political and economic capacities among IPs’ organizations leaves the space for surrogate-representation. CSOs have mentioned the lack of capacities in the context of IPs frequently during our interviews. For example, an interviewee from Conservation International mentioned, “What we found out was that there were not too many indigenous organizations had the capacity to manage that amount of funds” (Interview 2205). An interviewee from Forest Trend also acknowledged the need for capacity-building:

Epistemologically, IPs often hold a different set of worldviews about nature that are not commensurate with Western science (Interview 2211). While there is a great diversity of views among IPs too, they often give nature significant spiritual and relational meaning instead of treating them as resources for use. IPs manage the natural environment according to their traditional beliefs, which could be in a fundamental disagreement with Western science and knowledge. When the interpretation of reality has been sidelined for a long time, it is difficult for IPs to have a meaningful dialogue in the venue based on the diplomatic norms and understandings that had developed with a history of colonialism.

Fundamentally different views about nature also prevents IPs from disciplining advocacy discourse among non-IPs CSOs; instead, conflict and disagreement may emerge. For example, Inuit hunt wildlife for subsistence. To Inuit, the hunting of wildlife, such as seals and caribou, is an integral part of their culture that has continued from the origin of their history. An interviewee from the ICC Canada mentioned that some environmental CSOs were “too radical” and that animal rights movement has led to the trade ban on seal skin products in Europe and the United States (Interview 2209). This has had a direct damage to the livelihood of Inuit and their relationship with wildlife.

The interviewee also commented on the double standard of these environmental movements. As Inuit butcher animals on the ice, their photos can easily be repulsive to people who live in urban areas. But “the Western world is depending on butchers as well to eat cows, pigs, ducks, fish, all kinds of animals. But the Western world doesn’t see the butchering happening and what it looks like and all the blood that comes out of it” (Interview 2209). Although both IPs and other environmental CSOs are considered pro-environment on the surface, the deeper philosophical basis differs significantly between IPs and the environmental movements developed in the West. While Western scientific knowledge and principles about environmental protection are prioritized at the UNFCCC, the voices of IPs continue to be sidelined as anecdotal (Comberti et al., Reference Comberti, Thornton, Korodimou, Shea and Ole Riamit2019).

IPs generally do not, or cannot, discipline the narratives against traditional practices. Instead, it is a time-consuming process of demanding their own rights. The interviewee acknowledged that there had been some progress in terms of how non-IPs CSOs understand IPs’ traditional practices:

She then noted that the major CSO that contributed to the ban on seal trade in Europe and the United States made an official apology in 2014 for their misguided campaigns in the 1970s–80s.

4.3.3 The Leadership Void and Possible Consequences

Unlike the WGC, where there is a clear leadership structure, the IPs’ caucus at the UNFCCC is more loosely structured. No group of CSOs discipline advocacy discourse or strategies for IPs. Leadership may not be a necessary condition for successful advocacy, but from the perspective of organizational ecology, early-comers create a frame that carves out their niche, and late-comers will emulate or advance the framing effort to populate it. By generating a unified voice, CSOs expand mutually beneficial collaborative opportunities (Allan and Hadden, Reference Allan and Hadden2017).

We find that the absence of a disciplinary process in IPs advocacy has to do with the broader structural conditions in which IPs are embedded. Unlike women and gender advocacy, the multilateral institutions that recognize IPs organizations are still limited. For example, the ICC became the first IPs organization to receive a provisional consultative member of the International Maritime Organization in 2021. However, the representative of the ICC noted its limitation:

While the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues established in 2000 provides a useful model for IPs participation in global governance, it has not spread broadly across multilateral institutions. The lack of participatory arrangements in global governance prevents IPs from establishing a standard of appropriate languages and behaviors for other CSOs when they engage in IPs advocacy.

The diversity of IPs worldviews has also contributed to the diversity of narratives around IPs. To be sure, the diversity of IPs still lacks wide recognition at the UNFCCC. One of the obstacles that IPs face at the UNFCCC that they are often treated as a homogeneous group of people rather than diverse peoples. However, because diversity is a core belief shared among IPs (as evident in their approaches to nature conservation from the Amazon to the Antarctic), their climate frames also vary widely. This in turn makes it difficult to create a unified frame for the IP community as a whole beyond their demand for participation in the UNFCCC process.

Another factor is that IPs have historically faced exploitation by market-oriented actors. Initiatives like REDD+ are still contested among IPs, and there is no consensus as to whether they will be beneficial to IPs’ right to self-determination, one of the few claims that have a consensus among IPs and their allies. IPs are also very careful in choosing CSO collaborators due to the epistemological differences discussed previously. Although there are institutional mechanisms to utilize the lands of IPs for the purpose of climate change mitigation, the history of exploitation by market actors prevents IPs to unanimously support such initiatives or CSOs, and in reality, nobody knows whether such market actors can sufficiently reflect the interests of IPs.

We highlight what diverse voices for IPs could mean to the future of IPs advocacy. First, it can be that the niche for IPs advocacy will be left open for non-IPs CSOs to fill in and possibly dominate. As discussed earlier, the UNFCCC is an intergovernmental venue where nation-states are the primary participants with ultimate decision-making power. This is one issue that IPs and their allies have a consensus: IPs should be allowed to participate in decision-making processes (Interview 2209; Interview 2211). Because the issue of participation is closely tied to the right to self-determination, specific issues concerning the use and protection of IPs’ lands, for example, may remain as a secondary issue. As such, unless IPs are given the status similar to Parties to the UNFCCC, it may be difficult to find a unified voice. Instead, CSOs may borrow, or even appropriate, IPs advocacy to advance their positions at the UNFCCC.

Second, the prioritization of Western scientific knowledge at the UNFCCC would disproportionately favor those who can speak the same language – not just English but also technical terms for science and diplomacy. Even though there has been a movement toward acknowledging IPs’ knowledge in scientific assessments and, more specifically, within the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (Ford et al., Reference James, Maillet, Pouliot, Meredith, Cavanaugh and Research Team2016; Maldonado et al., Reference Maldonado, Bull Bennett and Chief2016; Tormos-Aponte, Reference Tormos-Aponte2021), historical discrimination and the lasting impact of colonialism may make it difficult to mainstream IPs’ approaches to nature and climate change. By contrast, CSOs with scientific approaches may be able to shape IPs advocacy, as they can use the language that can easily appeal to Western audiences.

Finally, who exercise disciplinary power can shape the future of IPs advocacy at the UNFCCC. If, for example, conservation CSOs can dominate IPs advocacy by highlighting the aspects of carbon emissions reduction through IPs’ forests, other concerns facing IPs could be sidelined. To be sure, no CSOs at the UNFCCC would argue that other concerns, such as non-economic loss and damage to IPs, are of little importance, but given the scarcity of resources for the IPs community, some issues inevitably gain more attention and support than other issues. The current state of IPs advocacy is inclusive of various policy positions, but if it changes in the future, it could potentially hinder solidarity among IPs.