Introduction

This chapter looks at the political influence of environmental pressure groups on the way in which the issue of climate change has been addressed at the international level. The focus here is essentially advocacy organisations, and not primarily research or think-tank oriented NGOs, despite a degree of cross-over between the two. The scope of analysis is further narrowed by a focus on groups that have a key interest in global warming and are active at the international level on the issue.

Despite an emerging literature on global environmental politics that acknowledges, in passing, the increasing part played by environmental non-governmental actors in the resolution of global environmental problems (more often than not through brief reference to the astronomical rise in their number and size in recent years), relatively little has been written on the actual impact of the groups upon global policy, besides vague and unexplored references to their centrality in the development of international environmental policy.

The literature on environmental NGOs can be divided into three broad categories: (1) Potter (1996a, 1996b) and Willetts (1982, 1996c) examine the institutional roles performed by NGOs in a case study format;(2) Chatterjee and Finger(1994) and Finger (1993) provide a critical perspective on the role of NGOs at the global level, centring on the issue of co-option by global ‘powerbrokers’ and (3) Wapner (1996) and Princen and Finger (1994) look at the ways in which NGOs transform the nature of world politics.