Report on the 5th ArCS II International Politics Seminar “The politics of knowledge in black carbon mitigation”
Reported by Daiju Narita (The University of Tokyo)
Related Research Program: International Relations
On February 6, 2023, Professor Pami Aalto from the University of Tampere, gave a lecture on the politics of knowledge in black carbon mitigation: policy entrepreneurship by Finland in the Euro-Arctic context and the CCAC in the Asian context at the 5th ArCS II International Politics Seminar.
The problem of black carbon, which means particulate carbon made of combustion processes and is a contributor to global warming, is a major environmental issue in the Arctic region including Finland.
The lecture introduced the results of a content analysis regarding the issue framing of the black carbon mitigation adopted by the Finnish government, the Finnish research and development cluster, and CCAC (Climate Clean Air Coalition: an international policy framework on air pollution and climate change).
The analysis revealed that compared to the other two, CCAC had the tendency to utilize wide frames of the problem in order to appeal to diverse actors including the governments of Asian nations.
In the discussion part, based on the insights drawn from the Finnish case, Prof. Aalto provided his views on what type of issue framing would be effective for further promoting decarbonization in Japan.