Paper Titles & Abstracts

The drafting of climate change strategies and policies in Romania is an excellent example of a change in discourse driven by international commitments. While the EU informed discourse dominates the language of policy documents, this research will look at how in practice the understanding and use of this concept varies, especially when contrasting policy documents and declarations and speeches of key political actors. This paper argues that despite some advances in the development of the climate change discourse, the set up of a relatively stable network of experts and stakeholders in this policy area and some institutional change, there are significant barriers to the promotion of good governance in Romania and a piecemeal approach to addressing climate change. Even in the context of a dominant international discourse, some reversals to prior understandings of development, industrialization, pollution abatement and control have been present among the key political actors' discourse.