Climate Changing Civil Society? - Norwegian non-state actors channels, strategies, and influence in the UNFCCC negotiations

There has been a tremendous civil society presence at the UNFCCC negotiations. However, the extent to which they work strategically to influence the negotiations have varied. In this thesis, I consider the following research questions: 1) Which channels of influence are available for the Norwegian non-state actors into the UNFCCC negotiations from 2009-2014? 2) What type of strategies do these NGOs apply? 3) To what extent do they succeed in reaching their strategic goals? There is a growing academic literature on NGO influence in the climate negotiations, particularly looking at transnational networks. However, there is limited research on the Norwegian civil society specifically, that sheds light on their efforts to influence the international negotiations. The ambition of this thesis is therefore to contribute to the academic debate from this angle. In order to allow that and increase the applicableness to further research, the analytical framework on NGO influence in environmental negotiations developed by Michele M. Betsill and Elisabeth Corell is applied. In this qualitative case study three different type of Norwegian non-state actors were chosen: a) a membership based activist environmental NGO, the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature; b) an intellectually based advisory environmental NGO, Bellona Foundation and; c) a lobbyist business NGO that represents an important sector in the national economy, Norwegian Shipowners' Association. Based on informant interviews, document analysis, fieldwork, and former research, I find that these organisations apply a wide repertoire of strategies in order to influence various policy levels with an implication for the UNFCCC negotiations. Although the thesis started with a pessimistic perspective, through the empirical data and analysis, I conclude that there are in fact evidence of influence – at times quite significantly so