Non-state governance and climate policy: the fossil fuel divestment movement

Abstract

This article charts the evolution of the divestment movement, a transnational advocacy network that uses a range of strategies to shame, pressure, facilitate, and encourage investors in general, and large institutional investors in particular, to relinquish their holdings of fossil fuel stocks in favour of climate-friendly alternatives. It describes the movement's central characteristics and the strategies it employs, it maps its basic architecture and the potential role it plays in the broader climate change regime complex, and shows how it represents a novel form of private investor-targeted climate change governance, operating primarily through symbolic political action and as a norm entrepreneur. Given the potential importance of the movement, the model it may provide for other forms of private governance, and the paucity of analysis of its implications for climate change mitigation, this article addresses an important descriptive and analytical gap in the climate policy literature. Show more