Who Gets to Make Climate Policy? A Research Commission on Inclusive Climate Policymaking

Who Gets to Make Climate Policy?

A Research Commission on Inclusive Climate Policymaking

As climate policy moves from ambition to implementation, governments are developing measures whose consequences extend far beyond their borders. The EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), carbon markets, emissions trading systems, and other mitigation policies increasingly shape trade, investment, production, and development pathways around the world.

Yet the processes through which these policies are designed remain far less global than their effects.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, Washington, DC invites emerging scholars and advanced graduate students based in Europe, the United States, or Canada to apply for a commissioned research paper examining a central question:

How can climate policies with global consequences be developed through processes that meaningfully include the people and countries they affect?

One researcher will receive a USD $4,000 stipend to produce an approximately 50-page original research paper suitable for publication in an academic or policy journal.

From legitimacy to inclusion

This commission builds on questions raised in Dr., Basile Chartier’s Climate, Trade & Legitimacy report, published earlier this year by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Washington, DC. While that research examined competing ideas of fairness, responsibility, and sovereignty surrounding climate-related trade measures, this project turns from policy outcomes to policymaking itself.

Policies developed primarily in Europe and North America can have profound consequences for governments, producers, workers, and communities across the Global Majority. Consultation often occurs only after the basic architecture of a policy has been established. How might these processes be designed differently?

We seek research that moves beyond calls for greater “stakeholder engagement” to identify concrete institutional and methodological approaches for meaningful participation.

Research focus

CBAM may serve as a central case study, but proposals may also consider carbon markets, emissions trading, international carbon standards, climate-related industrial policy, or other mitigation measures with significant international effects.

Methodology and comparative case studies will be particularly important. Applicants are encouraged to examine examples from climate and environmental governance as well as other fields—including international development, trade, Indigenous governance, participatory democracy, and international standard-setting—to identify practices that could be adapted to climate policymaking.

Questions might include:

• How can Global Majority actors participate in agenda-setting and policy design, rather than simply responding to proposals developed elsewhere?
• At what stages of policymaking can participation most meaningfully influence outcomes?
• How should policymakers determine who is represented when governments, industry, workers, communities, and civil society have different interests?
• What methods can address inequalities in resources, expertise, language, access, and negotiating power?
• How can policymakers determine whether participation actually changed a policy?
• Which existing models of co-design, deliberation, consultation, or shared governance could be adapted to CBAM and other carbon policies?

The final paper should translate its findings into specific, practicable recommendations for policymakers in Europe and North America.

Eligibility and application

This is a selective commission for emerging scholars and advanced graduate students based in Europe, the United States, or Canada, particularly those working on climate governance, political economy, international relations, trade, development, democratic governance, environmental justice, or related fields.

Applicants should submit:

• a 500–750 word proposal outlining the research question, methodology, proposed case study or cases, and anticipated contribution;
• a CV; and
• a relevant writing sample.

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the commission is awarded. Only one researcher will be selected, and early applications are strongly encouraged. 

Applications must be submitted via BambooHR. Applications submitted elsewhere cannot be considered.

The goal is not simply to argue that climate policymaking should be more inclusive. It is to identify how it can be—and to offer policymakers concrete ways to ensure that Global Majority perspectives help shape policies from the beginning, rather than being invited to respond once the most consequential decisions have already been made.

Email Brendan O’Donnell, Program Director Climate & Environment, at  brendan.odonnell[at]us.boell.org with questions.