INOGOV workshop on politics, policy, governance and the IPCC: Political science contributions to climate research

October 2016

INOGOV hosted a workshop in Oslo on the 3rd and 4th of October, in collaboration with the Research Council of Norway and CICERO – Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo. The workshop discussed how climate governance scholars can better communicate their findings to policy makers in general, with a specific focus on how to improve the way that climate governance research is communicated through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  Participants included a carefully selected group of leading scholars publishing on the politics and governance of climate change, in addition to Jim Skea, IPCC co-chair WGIII, and the Norwegian Minister of Climate and the Environment, Vidar Helgesen.

Natural scientists have done an outstanding job in detecting and exploring global warming and climate change. Engineers and economists have developed important technical solutions and economic steering ideas for climate mitigation, and these two lines of thinking have gained significant traction in the IPCC reports on mitigation (WG III). Aside from economics, the social sciences have been less involved and this has ramifications for the state of knowledge with respect to what we could do to address climate change. Research on climate policy and governance may inform policy makers and stakeholders on what they could and should do to mitigate climate change.

The Oslo workshop discussed what the political science community can do to create a better, more coherent and vibrant research community that targets the following themes: 1) Mapping climate mitigation governance; 2) Explaining governance similarities and differences; 3) Exploring the effectiveness and efficiency of various measures; and 4) Building a stronger political science community for studies of climate change.

More details about the outputs of the workshop will follow soon.

Photo credit: Chris Yakimov/Flickr