More Democratic Legitimacy through Civil Society Involvement in the UNFCCC Negotiations

The author examines the impact of civil society organizations (CSOs) on the democratic legitimacy of UNFCCC negotiations. While CSOs are widely integrated into delegations and observer roles, survey experiments indicate that citizens do not necessarily perceive their presence as an automatic improvement in transparency, representation, or effectiveness. However, the removal of CSOs from delegations leads to a dramatic decrease in perceived legitimacy, suggesting that their inclusion is essential for maintaining public support for global climate governance.

• Civil society organizations (CSOs) are deeply integrated into the UNFCCC process; in 2011, 1,490 organizations were accredited as observers and 70% of national delegations to the COPs included CSO representatives.
• Survey experiments show that individuals generally believe CSOs should be involved in global climate governance, though this preference is not specifically driven by goals of transparency, representation, or effectiveness.
• The mere presence of CSOs in a delegation does not significantly change a citizen's assessment of the negotiations' transparency, representation, or effectiveness compared to a government-only delegation.
• Perceptions of legitimacy are strongly affected by changes in CSO involvement: removing CSOs from a delegation causes ratings of transparency, representation, and effectiveness to fall dramatically, while adding them causes ratings to rise substantially.
• Respondents expressed a higher level of distrust toward business representatives compared to environmental NGOs, scientific institutions, and government officials.

APA

Gampfer, R. (2013). More Democratic Legitimacy through Civil Society Involvement in the UNFCCC Negotiations. Climate Strategies. https://climatestrategies.org/more-democratic-legitimacy-through-civil-society-involvement-in-the-unfccc-negotiations/

Chicago

Gampfer, Robert. More Democratic Legitimacy through Civil Society Involvement in the UNFCCC Negotiations. Climate Strategies, 2013. https://climatestrategies.org/more-democratic-legitimacy-through-civil-society-involvement-in-the-unfccc-negotiations/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Gampfer |first1=Robert |title=More Democratic Legitimacy through Civil Society Involvement in the UNFCCC Negotiations |publisher=Climate Strategies |date=23 April 2013 |url=https://climatestrategies.org/more-democratic-legitimacy-through-civil-society-involvement-in-the-unfccc-negotiations/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{gampfer2013more, author = {Gampfer, Robert}, title = {{More Democratic Legitimacy through Civil Society Involvement in the UNFCCC Negotiations}}, institution = {Climate Strategies}, year = {2013}, month = apr, url = {https://climatestrategies.org/more-democratic-legitimacy-through-civil-society-involvement-in-the-unfccc-negotiations/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }