Anthropogenically induced environmental change is causing increasing environmental challenges worldwide. Countries are trying to address these through international climate negotiations. They are forming coalitions and trying to frame the field of possible solutions to the challenges through discourses. This master thesis explores how two separate coalitions, namely the European Union and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries framed their interests at the COP28 climate negotiations in 2023 and how these discourses were reflected in their policy outcome, the Global Stocktake. The theoretical-conceptual section introduces the formation of the international climate regime and the major COPs, then defines the discourse and climate justice through the lens of social constructivist theory, and explains the main four discourses on environmental policies (constraints and survivalism, ecological modernisation, green politics and economic rationalism). The empirical section tests these assumptions with a case study of the EU and OPEC coalitions at the COP28 climate negotiations through a relational content analysis. The content analysis in the first part shows that the two coalitions used both similar and different discourses. The EU used the discourses of survival and constraints, human rights and ecological modernisation and rationalisation, while OPEC used the discourse of development rights. Then, in the second part, it demonstrates that both coalitions participated in the creation and reproduction of discourses that were then (to some extent) institutionalised in the political outcome of COP28, the Global Stocktaking.
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