Producing the Climate: States, Scientists, and the Constitution of Global Governance Objects

Abstract

This paper argues that the climate came to take on a geophysical rather than a bioecological form in global governance because it emerged from a dynamic, interactive process between states and scientists. In the 1950s, state agencies, especially elements of the US military, steered and accelerated the development of the geophysical sciences, which set the discursive frame within which climate politics now plays out. In the 1990s, scientists and IO experts responded to states' requests to study carbon sinks by expanding the climate to include new greenhouse gases and land-use practices. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies as well as discursive theories of global governance, I theorize object constitution as a process of co-production in which states steer the development of scientific knowledge and scientists assemble epistemic objects. This contingent interaction of political and scientific actors shapes the form and content of global governance objects. The argument extends and challenges the epistemic communities literature and theories of the global governance life cycle that focus on how problems end up on the agenda of states rather than the processes of problem construction.