The Discourses of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change has been represented in a variety of ways. These representations have enacted their own discursive formations, which people discuss and act upon at local, national and global scales. Climate change was initially discussed within scientific disciplines and represented within a technical discourse. As it became popularised, through environmental organisations and the media, governments and intergovernmental bodies began to frame climate change within specific discursive formations, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Kyoto Protocol (KP). These gave rise to forms of governance and discourse that have attained an almost hegemonic status, where climate change was framed within an overall neo-liberal governmental framework and network. As discursive formations of climate change were moved from science to government, they were transformed from a technical to a technocratic discourse. Institutional distance was created, resulting in the exclusion of other stakeholders and alternative discourses. Governance structures became elitist and exclusionary. The framing of climate change within global and national economic frameworks became the point of entry for stakeholders in climate change discussions.