within the context of an international framework that shapes related actions and decisions at all levels.1 This framework is defined here as the spectrum of agreements, mechanisms, instruments and actors governing and driving climate change action globally. The overall structure of this framework is complex and multidimensional in that it is comprised of elements that are quite different and distinct in many of their functions and approaches, constituencies, scope and focus.2 While international agreements negotiated by national governments such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol remain crucial aspects of the framework, they are not the only mechanisms governing climate change action. Other layers of intervention have become equally important in implementing innovative climate change responses and policies, including those at the regional, subnational and local levels. Cities have a vital role to play in the implementation and achievement of commitments within the international climate change framework. They also stand to benefit from the opportunities created by this framework for local responses to climate change. Yet, local-level actors and authorities often lack an understanding of the nature and functioning of the various components of the international climate change framework and how they could utilize these to enhance their mitigation and adaptation strategies. For instance, many decision-makers operating at the city level lack a working knowledge of the opportunities and constraints associated with international financing options, including those established as part of the UNFCCC.3 In view of this, the aim of this chapter is to highlight the key elements of the international climate change framework and its effects on interventions at the local level. It is also intended to frame discussions of climate change conditions, trends and policies in the rest of this Global Report. The chapter starts by briefly describing the process by which climate change emerged as an issue of international concern culminating in the establishment of the UNFCCC as the key element of the international regime governing climate change issues. The core mechanisms, instruments and financing strategies of this Convention are then outlined. The Kyoto Protocol is also reviewed as the main international treaty with legally binding emission reduction commitments. Subsequently, the key actors, components and actions of climate governance at the international, regional, national and sub-national levels are considered. Finally, the implications of the international climate change framework for local action at the city level are outlined.

United nations framework convention on climate change

1. Introduction 2. Emergence 3. Cause 4. Social ontology and social structure 5. Agency 6. Normative institutions 7. Organisations 8. Social events 9. Conclusion.

The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency

The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance

The practice of community based participatory research (CBPR) has evolved over the past 20 years with the recognition that health equity is best achieved when academic researchers form collaborative partnerships with communities. This article theorizes the possibility that core principles of CBPR cannot be realistically applied unless unequal power relations are identified and addressed. It provides theoretical and empirical perspectives for understanding power, privilege, researcher identity and academic research team composition, and their effects on partnering processes and health disparity outcomes. The team's processes of conducting seven case studies of diverse partnerships in a national cross-site CBPR study are analyzed; the multi-disciplinary research team's self-reflections on identity and positionality are analyzed, privileging its combined racial, ethnic, and gendered life experiences, and integrating feminist and post-colonial theory into these reflections. Findings from the inquiry are shared, and incorporating academic researcher team identity is recommended as a core component of equalizing power distribution within CBPR.

Reflections on Researcher Identity and Power: The Impact of Positionality on Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Processes and Outcomes.

This article explores the potential for grounded theory to be adapted for use within a critical realist paradigm. Critical realism can provide a solid philosophical framework for social work research, but its lack of connection to a familiar research methodology may be limiting its application. Grounded theory is one of the most widely used and well-described methodologies in the social sciences. Its recent adaptation by constructivist and critical researchers demonstrates the ways in which concerns about the methodology’s empiricism, individualism and focus on induction might be resolved to meet the needs of critical realist inquiry. Critical realism and grounded theory then become highly compatible, sharing a focus on abduction and commitment to fallibilism and the interconnectedness of practice and theory. Attending to evidence and meaning, individual agency and social structure, theory-building and the pursuit of practical emancipatory goals, the resulting approach is ideally suited to social work research.

Critical Realist Grounded Theory: A New Approach for Social Work Research

This article theorizes the inseparable relationship of power and knowledge. It argues that there is a transhistorical constant in the production and dissemination of knowledge: a dialectical contradiction within its institutional heart. The production, dissemination and, importantly, the consolidation of knowledge, is bound up with the obfuscation of this and restriction or prevention of knowledge dissemination. These latter processes are part of the concept I call structural mystification. The article explains and theoretically justifies this concept and details the manner of its working, using the example of educational systems.

Power and Knowledge

This paper revisits the controversy surrounding Bhaskar's ‘spiritualisation’ of critical realism (CR), formally introduced with the publication of From East to West. It describes the principal divisions amongst realists with respect to the five moments of CR theoretical development signified by Bhaskar in terms of his own publications. The article critiques some of his later arguments, such as that for reincarnation; but it also locates and identifies a much earlier error as being consistent with, and fundamental to, the later ideas that so many realists had problems with. The principal error is to be found in the concept of ontological truth.

Reopening the Wound

(2003). Critical Realist Strengths and Weaknesses. Journal of Critical Realism: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 161-165.

Critical Realist Strengths and Weaknesses

The problem of justifying induction has vexed philosophers for centuries. It has been entangled with issues concerning logic and probability and the philosophy of science. This article proposes a new approach to untangling these issues and resolving the overall problem. This new approach is by way of the perspective of realist ontology. Induction should not be seen as a debased form of logic and the search for inflexible rules for justifying particular sorts of inductive inference should be abandoned. Rather, induction can be justified pragmatically as a general practice because reality possesses ordered patterns. Induction, being dependent on repetition, can sometimes identify aspects of those patterns simply because the instances of repetition really do occur. Thus, confidence in conclusions based on inductive inferences is not properly to be derived from unchanging logical rules governing when and where inductive inferences may be successfully applied, but from the involvement of such inference...

Induction and Ontology

Canadian higher education has been heading in a general neoliberal direction for quite sometime with most universities employing similar strategies. The example of Wilfrid Laurier Univeraity is used to first illustrate some of those strategies and then later on to show a relatively new one. WLU’s Integrated Planning and Resource Management (IPRM) process is very much like similar processes being undertaken at a number of Canadian Universities. It is a management strategy to more easily enable unpopular cuts to staff and programs and legitimate the process through enlisting faculty “cooperation”. The APRM is the faculty union’s commissioned alternative report and will be a focal point of resistance with its very different set of recommendations. However, an argument is also made that, though while worthwhile, such-like actions will not nearly be enough to prompt a significant change in institutional direction. It is argued that though there are many prongs to the neo-liberal attack upon higher education, the most significant one is the casualization of its teaching labour force. It is argued that strong action by tenured and tenure track faculty is required to not only eradicate the injustices inherent in the situations of our contract academic colleagues but that this is actually the key to preserving quality education.

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Garry Potter

Papers

Power and Knowledge

Reopening the Wound

Critical Realist Strengths and Weaknesses

Induction and Ontology

Rebellious Responses to the Walmartization of Canadian Higher Education