Forest plantations or so-called carbon sinks have played a critical role in the climate change negotiations and constitute a central element in the scheme to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations set out by the Kyoto Protocol. This paper examines dominant discursive framings of forest plantation projects in the climate regime. A central proposition is that these projects represent a microcosm of competing and overlapping discourses that are mirrored in debates of global environmental governance. While the win-win discourse of ecological modernization has legitimized the inclusion of sink projects in the Kyoto Protocol, a green governmentality discourse has provided the scientific rationale necessary to turn tropical tree-plantation projects operational on the emerging carbon market. A critical civic environmentalism discourse has contested forest sink projects depicting them as unjust and environmentally unsound strategies to mitigate climate change. The article examines the articulation and institutionalization of these discourses in the climate negotiation process as well as the wider implications for environmental governance. Copyright (c) 2006 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative solutions to these complex challenges. In this article, we propose a research agenda that advances the methodological and theoretical understanding of what SS can be, how it can be pursued and what it can contribute. The key focus is on knowledge structuring. For that purpose, we designed a generic research platform organised as a three-dimensional matrix comprising three components: core themes (scientific understanding, sustainability goals, sustainability pathways); cross-cutting critical and problem-solving approaches; and any combination of the sustainability challenges above. As an example, we insert four sustainability challenges into the matrix (biodiversity loss, climate change, land use changes, water scarcity). Based on the matrix with the four challenges, we discuss three issues for advancing theory and methodology in SS: how new synergies across natural and social sciences can be created; how integrated theories for understanding and responding to complex sustainability issues can be developed; and how theories and concepts in economics, gender studies, geography, political science and sociology can be applied in SS. The generic research platform serves to structure and create new knowledge in SS and is a tool for exploring any set of sustainability challenges. The combined critical and problem-solving approach is essential.

The role and design of global expert organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) needs rethinking. Acknowledging that a one-size-fits-all model does not exist, we suggest a reflexive turn that implies treating the governance of expertise as a matter of political contestation.

Together now!' was the slogan used in the invitation to the Marrakesh Partnership for Global Climate Action (GCA), an initiative launched on the second day of the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakesh in November 2016. During this event, the two high-level champions nominated by COP as an outcome of the Paris Agreementthe French Ambassador in charge of climate negotiations Laurence Tubiana and the Moroccan Minister of Environment Hakima El Haitécalled upon businesses, regions, cities, industries and NGOs to showcase their climate activities and partner with states in the transition to the low carbon society. The champions' effort to mobilize non-state climate action pre-2020 coincides with the launch during the last week of COP 22 of the 2050 Pathway Platform. Informed by the same cooperative spirit, this multi-stakeholder initiative rests upon a broad coalition among 15 cities, 22 states and 200 companies seeking to devise long-term, net zero, climate-resilient and sustainable development pathways. 1 These efforts to accelerate climate action by facilitating dialogue, knowledge exchange and cooperation among state and non-state actors intensify a trend in global climate politics: rapprochement of the realms of multilateral diplomacy and transnational climate action with the rationale to enhance the pre-2020 ambition. Officially, this process was set in motion during the 'Action Day' of COP 20 in Lima in 2014, when the Lima-Paris Action Agenda (LPAA) and the Non-State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA) were launched to 'galvanize the groundswell of actions on climate change mitigation and adaptation from cities, regions, businesses and civil society organizations' (Chan et al. 2015, p. 467). However, in practice, this "widened frame" for climate diplomacy' (Christoff 2016, p. 770) has a much longer history and reflects the growth and impact of transnational private actors, NGOs, social movement and transnational advocacy networks in world politics (Hoffmann 2011). Ever since the UNFCCC was signed at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, it has formed a veritable center of gravity for a multiplicity