The legitimation of contested carbon markets after Paris – empirical insights from market stakeholders

ABSTRACT

After the Paris Agreement the global carbon offset markets face regulatory uncertainty and new legitimation challenges. This paper examines the discursive legitimation of the carbon markets between 2015 and 2018 and is based on 37 qualitative interviews with market stakeholders. The results show that the carbon markets remain contested and require new ideas and concepts to construct legitimacy. Some stakeholders consider moving beyond carbon offsetting, mainly due to new risks of double counting. Others continue to portray carbon offsetting as a ‘false solution’. Nevertheless, the trust in carbon markets as an appropriate way to address climate change remains high. Therefore, new forms of international emission trading are likely to evolve under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.     

Monsanto’s Biotechnology Politics: Discourses of Legitimation

Since the first product became commercially available in 1995, biotechnology has become the fastest growing crop technology, dominating large shares of the global agricultural market. The development of biotechnology, however, has given rise to questions regarding human and ecological safety, culminating in local and global political battles. While researchers interested in biotech politics have focused on areas such as media framing, social movements, and campaign work, less attention has been paid to how the industry has historically promoted and legitimized this swift proliferation. In this study, we conduct a discourse analysis of documents available on live and archived websites to discern the legitimation strategies employed by one important corporate actor, Monsanto. Findings show that for nearly two decades, Monsanto consistently employed discursive resources that concealed details about actors and action, reflected trends among experts in global sustainability discourse, and reshaped narratives to promote itself, products, and biotechnology in general.     

Legitimating the environmental injustices of war: toxic exposures and media silence in Iraq and Afghanistan

During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US Department of Defense burned the majority of its solid waste in open-air pits or trenches, producing large amounts of potentially hazardous emissions. While journalists have covered stories of US service members who link their illnesses to these fumes, they have almost entirely ignored potential civilian impacts. However, satellite images demonstrate that pollution from open-air trash burning on US bases could not have impacted US personnel without also harming Iraqi and Afghan civilians living near bases, indicating that burn-pit pollution is an important, if unacknowledged, environmental justice issue. Content analysis of news articles shows the extent to which civilian impacts have been left out of mainstream US media reporting on burn-pit pollution. This selective attention is symptomatic of the way military violence is legitimated, which involves a complicit news media that typically overlooks the humanitarian impacts of war.