Jessica F. Green is assistant professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University. Her research focuses on the ways private actors make rules and set standards in world politics, particularly in the environmental arena. Her interests include globalization and global governance, international law and organizations, global environmental politics, climate change, and transnational regulation.
She is author of the 2010 article, "Private Standards in the Climate Regime: The Greenhouse Gas Protocol," in Business and Politics (Volume 12, Issue 3), and co-editor with W. Bradnee Chambers of The Politics of Participation in Sustainable Development Governance (UNU Press, 2006) and Reforming International Environmental Governance: From Institutional Limits to Innovative Reforms (UNU Press, 2005).
Before beginning PhD studies, Green earned her MPA in International Environmental Policy at Columbia University. She then worked with the United Nations University in New York and Tokyo. She has also worked at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the World Resources Institute. In the fall, she will teach a new course in the Political Science Department, "Politics, Policy and the Global Environment."
Green received her PhD from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
Synopsis
Forests cover approximately 30 percent of the globe, and felling of forests accounts for about 25 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions. This paper examines the long and storied history of carbon sinks in the climate change regime. In particular, it traces the positions of civil society, represented by the transnational advocacy network Climate Action Network (CAN). It explains why CAN, once vehemently opposed to carbon sinks in the Kyoto Protocol, has become an active supporter of sinks in other parts of the climate regime, including in private carbon markets. The paper uses this case to draw out the implications for the role of civil society in shaping both public and private forms of regulation.
