SDG 13 and the entwining of climate and sustainability metagovernance: an archaeological–genealogical analysis of goals-based climate governance
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 17 June 2020
Issue publication date: 20 October 2020
Abstract
Purpose
This paper brings insights from accounting scholarship to the measurement and reporting challenges of metagovernance approaches to sustainable development. Where scholarship on metagovernance—the combination of market, hierarchical and network governance—proposes deductive approaches to such challenges, we contend that a historically informed “abductive” approach offers valuable insight into the realpolitik of intergovernmental frameworks.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a Foucauldian “archaeological–genealogical” method to investigate the inclusion of climate change as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). It analyses more than 100 documents and texts, tracking the statement forms that crystallise prevailing truth claims across the development of climate and SDG metagovernance.
Findings
We show how the truth claims now enshrined in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change constrained the conceptualisation and operationalisation of SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The paper thereby reframes recent measurement and reporting challenges as outcomes of conceptual conflicts between the technicist emphasis of divisions within the United Nations and the truth claims enshrined in intergovernmental agreements.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrates how an archaeological–genealogical approach may start to address the measurement and reporting challenges facing climate and SDG metagovernance. It also highlights that the two degrees target on climate change has a manifest variability of interpretation and shows how this characteristic has become pivotal to operationalising climate metagovernance in a manner that respects the sovereignty of developing nations.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section Accounting’s contributions to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, guest edited by Jeffrey Unerman and Jan Bebbington.We are grateful to Jeffrey Unerman and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments. We also extend our thanks to participants of the AAAJ Special Issue workshop held in St. Andrews in August 2018 as well as for the support provided by the Departments of Accounting at the University of Birmingham and London School of Economics and Political Science. Finally, we are particularly indebted to Delphine Gibassier, Jan Bebbington, Brendan O'Dwyer, Andrea Mennicken and Peter Miller for their guidance and feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.
Citation
Charnock, R. and Hoskin, K. (2020), "SDG 13 and the entwining of climate and sustainability metagovernance: an archaeological–genealogical analysis of goals-based climate governance", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 1731-1759. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2018-3790
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited