Workshop on “The Politics of Climate Governance: Resistance and Reactions to Change”
On November 16 and 17, 2023, Marte Samuelsen Skogen and Michaël Tatham organized a workshop, titled "The Politics of Climate Governance: Resistance and Reactions to Change".
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Workshop on Climate Politics
On November 16 and 17, 2023, Marte Samuelsen Skogen and Michaël Tatham organized a workshop connected to the SANE-Clim project (The Structure Acceptance Nexus in Climate Politics) and to Marte S. Skogen’s PhD project on “The Politics of Offshore Wind”. The workshop took place at Solstrand, just outside of Bergen. The name of the workshop was "The Politics of Climate Governance: Resistance and Reactions to Change", and the purpose was to learn about each other's research and expertise.
The workshop brought together a diverse group of researchers, including local participants from Bergen and guests traveling from Oslo, along with international guests. It mixed early career and more senior scholars. The workshop was financed by the SANE-Clim project, which is led by (PI) Professor Michaël Tatham from the Department of Comparative Politics.
The workshop was structured around three parts. The first part, titled “The Challenges of Offshore Wind: Governance, Attitudes, and Deployment”, featured presentations by Pierre Bocquillon (University of East Anglia, UK), Marte Samuelsen Skogen (Sampol/UiB, NO) and Michaël Tatham (Sampol/UiB, NO). Following that, the second part, titled “Populism, Yellow Vests, and Welfare”, consisted of presentations delivered by Håkon Grøn Sælen (CICERO, NO), Ida Marie Støp Meland (NMBU/CICERO, NO), Michaël Tatham (Sampol/UiB, NO), and Elin Lerum Boasson (UiO/CICERO, NO). Finally, the third part, titled “Markets and Parties”, included presentations given by Patrick Bayer (University of Glasgow, UK), Fay Madeleine Farstad (Sampol/UiB, NO), Lena Maria Schaffer (University of Luzern, CH).
- Climate governance is challenging as we need to make deep and dramatic changes in a short amount of time. The social sciences have a key role to play in helping smoothen this transition by providing a better understanding of how different actors react to change, be they markets, parties, or different groups within the citizenry, such as yellow-vest-profile citizens or those having populist preferences. New technologies – such as offshore wind – also ask new questions to which political and legal frameworks have to provide answers to. We felt privileged to be able to take 1.5 days to discuss together these issues at Solstrand among local, national, and international peers, says Michaël Tatham.
The workshop adds to the department’s growing commitment to research on climate politics. In addition to the SANE-Clim project, Fay Farstad started as new Associate Professor at the Department in October 2023. She will be the Principal Investigator of a research project titled “Political Parties and Climate Change: Positions, Polarisation and Policy Relevance”. She will also be teaching a new course in the department, called SAMPOL236 The Politics of the Environment.