The potential role of boundary organizations in the climate regime

• We extend Ostrom's notion of polycentricity to the arena of global climate politics.
• The concept of boundary organizations fills the gap left in the polycentricity thesis.
• We report the role of boundary organizations in operating climate change networks.

Ostrom's notion of polycentricity deepens our understanding of why collaborative networks can work better in coping with global environmental change than a monolithic system. While subscribing to her theory, we note that Ostrom's own work on climate change does not address explicitly issues of the advent of collaborative networks and extant power disparity prevalent in the international polity. The research presented here seeks to address the aforementioned concerns by employing the concept of boundary organizations as key to initiating and operating climate change networks among weak states. In so doing, we extend the applicability of Ostrom's approach into the arena of international environmental collaboration. Specifically, the research focuses on the activities undertaken by the UNEP Risø Center, which we identify as a boundary organization vital to the clean development mechanism. A case study reveals that boundary organizations can be a promising tool for organizing less developed countries to enter into small-scale multilateral collaboration by linking knowledge to action. A broad implication of the research for coping with collective action and global environmental challenges is the advantage of having a competent mediator that can offset the weak bargaining position of the less advantaged and provide leverage to level the playing field.