Paper short abstract:

We show the enactment of legitimate stakeholders and issues at Green Climate Fund board meetings. This enactment is connected to actors' position in power relations and how they make both stakeholders and issues visible or invisible in the GCF.

Paper long abstract:

Global climate finance has become one of the most conflictual aspects of climate politics, which makes the stakeholder arrangement of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) a crucial case of stakeholder engagement in climate governance. We understand the GCF board meetings as important sites for the enactment of legitimate global climate governance. We analyse how both stakeholders and issues are made legitimate or invisible at the GCF board meetings. This enactment must be understood not only in relation to the proximity of the meetings but also in relation to socio-material conditions that goes beyond these immediate settings. These socio-material conditions consist of infrastructures and different combinations of dependencies and commitments which makes for actors' position in power relations, and their ability to take part in shaping climate governance. The GCF is dedicated to support developing countries but rather consolidate power relations between the Global North and the Global South. E.g. the limited constituencies for observers in the GCF forces especially civil society organizations to talk with 'one voice' at meetings, at the same time as they try to represent the plurality of excluded constituents like 'indigenous people'. Actors from the South often lack the economic resources to attend the meetings, and the introduction of web casted meetings to solve this problem, gave attending actors more time for informal pre-board meetings, as a way for the GCF to control issues discussed at web casted meetings, excluding non-present actors in issue formation.