Virtual Panel: Climate Governance & Policy Design

Abstract

This panel brings together four papers that examine climate and environmental policy design through the lenses of evidence use, actor preferences, institutional trust, and informal governance, spanning European and international settings. The first paper investigates how biodiversity impacts and uncertainty are handled in EU chemicals regulation across five major regulatory frameworks. Using a risk governance perspective, it shows that despite formal commitments to the precautionary principle, biodiversity protection remains weakly operationalised. The second paper analyses corporate sustainability reporting as a cornerstone of EU climate governance under the European Green Deal. Drawing on policy feedback theory, it traces how business preferences and lobbying coalitions evolve across successive reporting regulations. The third paper examines climate-related governance in Sri Lanka’s agri-food sector, analysing how national circular economy policies are translated into practice. It shows that fragmented mandates, weak enforcement capacity, and unclear compliance pathways undermine trust between enterprises and the state, limiting the scaling of circular solutions despite strong formal commitments. The fourth paper turns to the global level, examining side events in negotiations towards a global plastics treaty as informal spaces of climate and environmental governance. Based on survey and interview data, it shows how side events facilitate learning, perspective confirmation, and the diffusion of ideas into national and organisational practices, thereby shaping policy design beyond formal negotiations. Together, the papers advance an actor- and knowledge-centred understanding of climate governance, highlighting both the possibilities and limits of policy design in turbulent political contexts.

Title	Details
Side Events Beyond Negotiations: Impacts on National and Subnational Governance in the Plastics Regime	View Paper Details
Bottom-Up Federal Dynamics: Policy Entrepreneurs’ Strategies and Multilevel Policymaking in Switzerland	View Paper Details
Completing the Circle: Trust Negotiations for Circular Economy Between Private Sector and State Actors in Sri Lanka	View Paper Details
Chemical Pollution and Risks Towards Biodiversity - About the Role of the Precautionary Principle in the EU Chemical Risk Governance	View Paper Details
Going with the Flow or Withstanding the Tide? Policy Feedback and Lobbying Coalitions in Corporate Sustainability Reporting in Turbulent Times	View Paper Details