Non-state actor perceptions of legitimacy and meaningful participation in international climate governance

We highlight three key findings for international climate governance research. First, NSAs involved in COP26 and COP27 hold moderate legitimacy beliefs toward the UN climate regime, surpassing their trust in local or national governments. This suggests that, despite ongoing grievances about the justice^5,23 and effectiveness^16,22 of the international climate regime, there is no immediate legitimacy crisis. However, NSAs appear divided: while about 60% view the mitigation regime as legitimate and 55% the adaptation regime, a large minority consider them illegitimate. These findings underline that NSAs hold diverging perspectives on international climate governance^1,24. Future research could distinguish between different social groups, such as Indigenous Peoples and women groups, and study the implications of their legitimacy beliefs for their engagement in the UNFCCC^12,23. These findings also raise questions about the reasons behind these different attitudes. One possible explanation is that the Paris Agreement has shifted mitigation target setting and action to the national level^40,41, which may lead NSAs to base their legitimacy beliefs toward the international climate regime on their perceptions of national-level government. Further research is needed to explore the factors driving the divergent attitudes observed in this study.

Second, we find that levels of legitimacy of the international climate regime are perceived to be similar by different types of NSAs involved in the UNFCCC, with the exception of business actors who perceive the UN mitigation regime as more legitimate than the adaptation regime. While much literature has studied corporate interests in climate governance^32,34, future studies could establish how business actors perceive their own lobbying opportunities in the international climate regime to influence climate policy. This becomes more relevant as the distributive consequences of domestic climate policies become more apparent⁴¹. Such future research could compare business elites’ legitimacy beliefs across different types of corporate actors, across sectors, and across climate governance institutions, both within and beyond the UN.

Third, about half of the observed NSAs perceive the UN climate regime to enable meaningful participation, indicating slightly greater skepticism about their opportunities for engagement than regime legitimacy. However, NSAs appear to be divided regarding their opportunities for meaningful engagement, particularly in the area of mitigation where business actors are generally more satisfied compared to civil society actors. This ties in well with critical assessments highlighting the limited opportunities for meaningful civil society participation in the international climate regime^12,23 and the dominance of powerful stakeholders, such as business actors^5,23. Our study findings suggest that despite important limitations and lack of decision-making authority, NSAs still maintain hope in the regime’s potential. Our findings invite future exploration of why the patterns of legitimacy beliefs and of perceived opportunities for participation differ.

In this study, we have provided a snapshot of attitudes about participation and regime legitimacy, which opens up further research that extends this investigation with novel longitudinal data. Surveying different samples of NSAs participating in the global climate regime at different points in time is important for two main reasons. First, such data would track NSA legitimacy beliefs and perceptions of the global climate regime over time. Second, such data could be used to analyze how the drivers of NSA attitudes change over time in response to changes in the procedures and performance of the adaptation and mitigation regimes.

To conclude, we highlight broader implications for future UNFCCC processes and NSA engagement strategies. Moderate levels of NSA confidence in the international climate regime may offer reasonably secure ground on which to craft climate policy, but such beliefs may change. Legitimacy beliefs are in part shaped by satisfaction with institutional qualities^1,9, suggesting that institutional reform in the UNFCCC could influence NSA perceptions. The UN and its member states should address observers’ dissatisfaction with changed participation rules, particularly with the aim to improve the participation opportunities for marginalized actors. If NSAs do not view international venues as an arena for meaningful participation, they may choose to collaborate in other arenas to influence climate policy, with potentially adverse consequences for the legitimacy and effectiveness of climate governance.

The main purpose of the article is to analyze perceptions of the legitimacy of and meaningful participation in the global climate governance regime in the eyes of non-state actors (NSAs). As no data is readily available, we conducted two surveys of NSAs participating in the United Nations (UN) climate regime during the periods 28 October–29 November 2021 and 5–30 November 2022. These time periods encompass the two-week periods of the Conference of the Parties 26 (COP26) in Glasgow and 27 (COP27) in Sharm El Sheikh. By conducting surveys both online and in-person at these climate summits, we were able to achieve robust response rates from NSAs.

Recruitment

We devised a purposive sampling methodology that is not intended to offer a representative sample, but rather suitable for an exploratory study such as the present study⁴². The rationale behind the sampling was twofold. First, it ensures the participation of vulnerable populations and Indigenous Peoples, in particular from the Global South, as their omission from the sample might have meant underestimating critical voices in the international climate regime⁴³. Marginalized groups, such as Indigenous Peoples, are affected by the UN climate change regime but do typically not participate in large numbers compared to other groups, such as businesses. Second, we have sought to survey a large sample of NSAs active in relation to UN climate governance.

Future research may consider alternative sampling techniques, depending on the character of the inquiry and the information available about the population to be surveyed. In elite surveys in global governance, a main alternative is quota sampling. This method is suitable for ensuring that respondents cover a wide variety of characteristics and contexts, and can be chosen when no exhaustive data on the full population is available for drawing a random sample, but when it is feasible to conduct the study among a guaranteed quota of interviews within different actor categories^44,45. However, quota sampling does not permit generalizing the survey results beyond the sample, just as in purposive sampling. Random sampling, which has the advantage that survey results can be extrapolated beyond the sample, is rare in the context of elite surveys in global governance but can be an option if an exhaustive list about the population to be surveyed is available⁴⁶.

We proceeded in two steps. First, we surveyed persons accredited as observers at the COPs. Both online and paper-based options were provided as the paper-based approach is particularly well suited to reaching marginalized actors⁴⁷. Second, we sent an email invitation with a link to the online questionnaire to all non-governmental organizations admitted as observers in the UNFCCC, using contact information provided in a public UNFCCC observers dataset.⁴⁸ We sent three reminders to NSAs that did not respond. This method was used during both field phases, as it allowed us to reach involved NSAs who might not have had the resources to travel to the COPs. As lists of accredited non-state organizations are typically incomplete^4,12, two surveyors approached observers at the COP26 venue in Glasgow and at the COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, with a paper-based questionnaire. On-site, the survey was conducted either face-to-face or self-administered by the respondent on paper or online after clicking on a QR code. The paper-based approach is yet another strategy for reaching marginalized actors with limited or no access to technology or technological literacy¹³.

For COP26, 316 people responded and 272 completed the questionnaires. Of these questionnaires, 68 were paper-based and 204 were electronic. For COP27, 340 responded and 293 completed the questionnaires. Of these, 6 were paper-based and 287 were electronic. Our analysis in the paper relies on the completed questionnaires. The completion rates are in line with earlier international NSA online surveys operating with similar resources⁴.

Regarding the central characteristics of actors in the sample, the respondents for COP26 come from 59 different countries, and respondents for COP27 come from 66 different countries (see Table S1). It is also notable that the pooled sample for both time periods contains responses mostly from NSAs that participated for the first time (31.3%), followed by 24.1% that participated for the second time, 11.6% that participated for the third time, whereas the remainder of the sample had participated between 4 and 25 times (26.5%). In Table S1, we also show the distribution of respondents across countries. Although about 20% of our sample comes from the US and a little more than 11% from the UK, in total we have respondents from 83 countries worldwide. This is owing to our efforts to include marginalized populations, particularly from the Global South, in our sample (see the SI for more information about the sample and the questionnaire).

The survey questionnaire took about 30 minutes to respond. For all questions, a “don’t know” option was provided (see Supplementary file for the exact question wording). Before getting to the questionnaire, the respondents were informed about the research project and its aims. They were ensured confidentiality and given the contact information of the researchers should they wish to inquire further about the use of the data. The respondents could also choose whether they wanted to fill in the questionnaire in English or Spanish. The latter language was added given the resources within the research team and considering the attendance rate of Spanish-speaking COP participants.

Operationalization of non-state actor group belonging

The NSAs studied fall into eight non-state observer categories specified by the UNFCCC: business and industry NGOs (BINGO), ENGOs, farmers and agricultural NGOs (Farmers), Indigenous Peoples organizations (IPO), research and independent NGOs (RINGO), trade union NGOs (TUNGO), women and gender (WGC), and youth NGOs (YOUNGO)³. These organizations are the private actors recognized as constituencies under the auspices of the UNFCCC, and thus exclude local governments. We included a question that asked respondents to place themselves in the constituency they feel the strongest belonging to.

For the sake of an efficient results presentation, we group actors into four overarching categories. Assuming that actors within certain categories have more in common in terms of their experiences and interests than actors across categories, and inspired by previous international NGO literature^32,33,34, we distinguish between business actors, ENGOs, and researchers. Based on previous environmental justice literature, we also create a category of vulnerable groups affected by climate change¹⁸. The result is a quite evenly distributed variable taking on four values: business (N = 32 (COP26); N = 31 (COP27), CSOs (N = 56 (COP26); N = 35 (COP27)), ENGOs (N = 85 (COP26); N = 102 (COP27)), and research (N = 99 (COP26); N = 94 (COP27)).

The validity of this actor grouping is underlined by the perceived closeness of the preferences of the respondents themselves and the constituency they identify most with. Indeed, almost 90% of the non-state actors at COP26 and 93% at COP27 indicate that the constituency they belong to “somewhat” or “to a great extent” pursues the same goals than they do themselves (rather than “not at all” or “very little”). Broken down by category, ca. 96% at COP26 and 91% at COP27 of the respondents indicate that this is the case in BINGO, 81% at COP26 and 96% at COP27 in ENGO, 93% at COP26 and 87% at COP27 in RINGO and 93% at COP26 and 96% at COP27 on average in the group of vulnerable actors.

Operationalization of legitimacy perceptions and meaningful participation

Legitimacy beliefs are operationalized by a question about confidence in the UN’s adaptation regime. While there are other operationalizations of legitimacy beliefs¹, the confidence measure has the advantage that it aligns well with our understanding of legitimacy as a deep-seated belief of the institutions in general, in contrast to specific support measures that invoke attitudes toward specific policies or office holders⁹. The question asked respondents to indicate their confidence in the UNFCCC in the area of adaptation on a four-point scale (3-a great deal, 2-quite a lot, 1-not very much, 0-not at all). We asked the same question about confidence in the UN’s mitigation regime by using the same answer categories.

We collected data on perceptions of meaningful participation. As elaborated in the article, this variable captures the UN adaptation and mitigation procedures often referred to as “meaningful participation” in the environmental justice literature¹². These measures were asked separately for the UN adaptation and mitigation regimes, as one of the aims of the article is to understand perceptions of meaningful participation in adaptation and mitigation policy. The question about meaningful participation related to the extent to which they themselves thought they could meaningfully participate in the UN’s adaptation and mitigation regimes (3-To a great extent, 2-Somewhat, 1-Very little, 0-Not at all).