Research article

Procedural justice and (in)equitable participation in climate negotiations

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This article is a preprint and is currently undergoing peer review by UCL Open: Environment.

Abstract

Formally, state parties are equal in all UN negotiations. In theory, every state, regardless of its size, economic, or political power, has the same opportunities and rights to participate. Nevertheless, UN negotiations, such as those on climate, are often considered highly unequal in practice. Many states struggle to meaningfully engage in complex and highly technical multilateral negotiations, including because their delegations are smaller. We here examine delegation size in UN climate negotiations through a procedural justice lens. Starting from normative principles of procedural justice, we argue that equitable negotiations demand the capability of all parties to send a sufficient number of delegates – around 15. Using descriptive analysis of data on delegation sizes of recent COPs, we then highlight that many parties in practice send smaller delegations. Based on these results, we suggest two routes for making climate negotiations more equitable: (i) providing additional resources to poor states to increase their delegation size; and (ii) trimming the overall negotiation agenda to lower the sufficiency threshold. 

Keywords: Climate Negotiation, Climate Justice, Delegation Size, Procedural Justice, UNFCCC