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Working Groups

CSSN working groups bring scholars with shared interests together to produce published research on important areas of climate obstruction.

Working groups meet regularly and receive funding to coordinate these research efforts. To join a CSSN working group, CSSN members can contact the working group chairs listed at the top of each page.

Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power

Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power

This working group will bring together scholars from different disciplines, methodologies, and geographical locations to grapple with questions of discourse, power, and climate politics. We will analyze the role of media and other institutions in amplifying patterns of discourse that impede comprehensive and equitable responses to the climate crisis.

Global Census of Climate Obstruction Organizations

Global Census of Climate Obstruction Organizations

For over three decades, there has been a well-documented effort to obstruct climate action through the promulgation of climate misinformation. Its institutional makeup has been the topic of sporadic academic research. This working group aims to conduct a global study of this network.

Natural Resources, Energy and Climate Obstruction in the Global South

Natural Resources, Energy and Climate Obstruction in the Global South

Global South countries across the globe have markedly different endowments and dependencies on different natural resources. This working group will bring together scholars from different disciplines, methodologies, and geographical locations to focus on patterns of obstruction, exploitation, and repression in climate struggles in the Global South.

The politics and governance of research into solar geoengineering - image of plane leaving trail

The Politics of Geoengineering

The Geoengineering Working Group of the Climate Social Science Network brings together scholars focused on the politics of geoengineering technologies. These technologies pose a range of novel questions for climate policy and climate justice. This working group aims to analyze and challenge the ways in which geoengineering technologies are being or could be deployed to enable climate delay and obstruction.

Climate Accountability Research

Climate Accountability Research

There is an expanding global effort to hold corporations and governments accountable for their actions in failing to address climate change. This working group focuses on the research related to the ongoing effort to uncover institutional actions to obstruct climate action and the nature of climate litigation efforts.

Climate Conflict in the U.S. States

Climate Conflict in the U.S. States

Stalemate at the federal level has led the 50 U.S. states to innovate climate policy, but initial gains are being increasingly resisted by private interests who stand to lose with the transition away from fossil fuels. This working group brings together researchers with diverse approaches to diverse states to develop comparative insights and improve methodology.

Spinning Climate Change: The Role of Public Relations and Greenwashing

Spinning Climate Change: The Role of Public Relations and Greenwashing

This working group will bring together scholars from different disciplines, methodologies, and geographical locations to grapple with questions of greenwashing and the role of PR in driving climate change. We will analyze the role and strategies of PR, corporates, NGOs, governments and other institutions in amplifying patterns of delaying real actions to the climate crisis.

Special Interest and Industry Influence on Universities

Special Interest and Industry Influence on Universities Working Group

Fossil fuel companies have joined other special interest groups in influencing academic research and other activities at universities in the United States and other Anglophone settler societies such as Canada and Australia. This Working Group examines the scope of this influence, its direct consequences for researchers, universities, and knowledge production, and indirect consequences for democratic governance and climate change action.

"Net-Zero"

“Net-Zero”

It is increasingly clear that net-zero is being used by different actors in ways that lead to delay or obstruction through ambiguity and deliberate misinformation. The CSSN working group on “net-zero” aims to track, explain, and analyze how net-zero relates to climate delay and obstruction, particularly the associated complexity and ambiguity involving policy, finance, and projects, as well as anti-net-zero partisanship from the right.

Tractor in field loading crops onto a truck

Agriculture

Continuing business-as-usual in emissions-intensive food production is not an option. Improving understanding of how agriculture, fisheries, and aquaculture companies are obstructing meaningful policy reforms is necessary to shape effective strategies to combat them. This CSSN working group brings together scholars from different disciplines to analyze the role and strategies of agribusiness in delaying climate action.

Aerial view of industrial complex

Overcoming Obstruction

This working group identifies, synthesises and promotes effective strategies and tools to overcome climate obstruction across different sectors and scales, bridging scholarship on obstruction with research focused on advancing a just transition. We do so by developing, collecting, and sharing knowledge from across CSSN and by conducting original research about diverse strategies and efforts to counteract obstruction.