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International negotiations concerning climate change are essential as global warming requires a common global response. For this reason, climate conferences represent the stage where states and civil societies can influence the international norms that would be enacted for facing this problem. This is why, Western civil societies and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have always tried to play a huge role at the negotiation table either by influencing the foreign policies of their respective states before the conference and even directly by issuing policy papers and suggestions for the attendees. These NGOs would also examine the results of these conferences and provide their analysis regarding the ways through which the final agreement adopted could be improved in order to ensure a more effective implementation of the agreed actions that were reached as a result of a consensus between all the participating states. In the chapter, “The Development of NGOs in China: A Case Study on their Involvement with Climate Change,” the author Zhixiong Huang examines the gradual development of the role of Chinese NGOs in climate change conferences while using Copenhagen conference as an example in this regard. Thus, the author acknowledged that Chinese NGOs involvement in international climate change negotiations is a recent phenomenon which has started with Bali conference in 2007 where Chinese NGOs had a modest contribution through the position paper that was presented at the conference. In contrast, at Copenhagen, Chinese NGOs really tried to shape and influence for the first time international climate change negotiations. That was reflected through the huge number of Chinese NGOs that were participating at the conference as well as the number of position and policy papers that were issued by these NGOs before and during the conference providing practical suggestions on how to further push the climate agenda at the local level in China but also at the international stage. The participation of Chinese NGOs in climate change conferences in general and the one of Copenhagen in particular is important as climate change matters require a global coordinated response by all the actors including the civil society. Moreover, through these conferences, Chinese NGOs could gain the necessary experience that they lack in this field by getting in touch with their Western counterparts that are also looking to influence the official position of the Chinese government on this topic due to the significant pollution levels emitted by the country. What is more important, is that such exposure would also strengthen the position of these Chinese NGOs when dealing with the government at home since the latters would enjoy international recognition which makes it harder for the Chinese state to ignore and neglect the policy papers or the suggestions that are made by these NGOs with a view of influencing the authorities position on certain matters related to climate change. However, it is worth mentioning that the Chinese NGOs still lacked the expertise at Copenhagen conference, which resulted in a situation where the latters were asking more questions, rather than actually providing important input to the discussion. Thus, it is important to overcome this gap in the future in order ensure that these NGOs would seriously influence public policies concerning climate change at home and abroad.
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