Doctoral School Sustainable Development - Protection- and Transformation-Impacts of Voluntary Climate Policies

Today’s Climate Politics stretch across different hierarchical levels and have to be addressed within numerous political sectors and resorts, therefore such modes of political steering have become more and more attractive which are of incorporative nature. Voluntary Climate Instruments with their shift away from hierarchical implementation towards integrative, cooperative measures are prominent examples of such incorporative attempts. This study seeks to investigate what effects Voluntary Climate Programs have, namely how ‘good’ they are at protecting the environment (protection impacts) and secondly if there are other effects to be noticed that cannot be captured in mere quantification of emissions reductions. These effects, so called transformation effects, describe changes in the way climate politics are perceived, negotiated and conducted.