York University philosophy Professor Idil Boran held an official panel at the Bonn Climate Change Conference on building trust and inclusiveness in non-party stakeholder engagement in global climate action.
An official side event of the 10-day UN climate conference running May 8 to 18, the panel “Marrakech Partnership: Building Trust and Inclusiveness in Non-Party Stakeholder Engagement” was held on Saturday, May 13 in Bonn, Germany. The panel was organized by Boran in partnership with Colorado State University and in collaboration with York University Faculty of Science Professor Dawn Bazely.
The panel brought together researchers across disciplines from Canada, the U.S., India, Germany and regional government representatives.
At this event, researchers and practitioners discussed the role of multi-stakeholder dialogues under the Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action. They also discussed how new forums for non-party stakeholders can help address the climate action ambition gap and link climate action to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“The Paris Agreement came into force in 2016. Now, work is underway for its implementation,” said Boran. “There is a clear sense that a strong and comprehensive global climate pathway requires building inter-linkages between governments, sub-national, regional, non-party actors and Indigenous communities. There is also much interest in connecting climate action to sustainable development goals.”
The global climate effort is becoming increasingly more inclusive, she said, which presents an enormous potential; however, this new scope of action is also uncharted territory. Because of this, new questions arise on how to achieve inclusiveness and fair representation of diverse voices, and how to build relationships of trust between diverse actors on a transnational scale.
“Philosophy has always been about tackling the toughest problems and search, against all odds, for a common ground to find answers. It was always meant to be a conversation with people from diverse backgrounds and with different skill sets,” said Boran. “It is deeply moving to be able to interact with practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers with a wide range of expertise and experiences. Doing so gives a sense of working together in a way that was not previously imaginable.”
This event is part of a larger research project led by Boran, who is set to spend three months in Bonn this summer and fall during her sabbatical research leave starting in July. During this time, Boran will work with an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the German Development Institute – Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik in Bonn. This will be followed by two more months as a researcher in residence at the Centre for Excellence – Normative Orders, Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main, where she will be working on her research manuscript. The objective is to develop a political theory of a global public sphere of climate action.
For more on the event at the Bonn Climate Conference, visit enb.iisd.org/climate/sb46/enbots/13may.html#event-1.
For more on the Bonn Climate Conference – May 2017, visit unfccc.int/meetings/bonn_may_2017/meeting/10076.php.
For questions about Boran’s research project, contact iboran@yorku.ca.