Hvordan fortolkes klimavidenskabelige resultater i EU's politiske beslutningsproces

Abstract

How is climate change science interpreted and utilized in the European Union’s policy process? This master thesis analyses the role of knowledge in the agenda setting phase of the EU’s policy process, using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith and Haas’ theoretical framework of Epistemic Communities. The focus is the specific case of the European Commission’s proposal to limit global warming to 2° C in reference to pre-industrial levels. In 2004 the Commission issued an invitation to a stakeholder conference and thus invited interested actors to participate in developing the proposal. This thesis focuses on their replies to this invitation and the course of development from the communication that stems from the stakeholder conference to the finished proposal in 2007. The ACF provides a framework for analyzing how actors in a policy process form into coalitions based on core values and beliefs, and through these coalitions try to influence a given policy. In the case of the 2° C objective, it is shown how three major coalitions are present in this particular agenda setting phase. One with a core belief that economic growth comes before climate protection, a green coalition arguing the opposite and a third that believes a sound climate policy is very important, but that it should take competition and economic growth into consideration. The Commission can be perceived as both a policy broker between coalitions and as an actor in the third coalition with its own interest at stake. It is shown how The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can be seen as an epistemic community and how they have become an institutionalized part of the Commissions basis for climate policies. The core issue of the debate is how the first coalition challenges the science behind the 2° C objective, claiming that there is no basis for this in the IPCC’s findings. Since the objective seems to be firmly based on IPCC’s evaluation reports, this effectively shuts the first coalition out of the struggle over formulating a new policy, and shows that they have misjudged the situation, leaving the third coalition and the Commission’s and partly the second coalition’s interpretation as the winning interpretation.