Mathias Fridahl holds a PhD in Water and Environmental Studies (2013) on the topic Historical responsibility: Assessing the past in international climate negotiations, a bachelor in Human Ecology from Gothenburg University and a master in Environmental History from Linköping University. In autumn 2008, he was a guest researcher at the International Virtual Institute of Global Change at the Energy Planning Program (COPPE), the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Fridahl has acted as reviewer of book chapters and journal articles for publishing houses such as Earthscan, Routledge and Wiley. He has received several scholarships to study UN climate negotiations and has attended the 2010 UNEP/UEF training course for climate change negotiators. Since 2006, Fridahl has attended 16 sessions of UN Climate Change Conferences/Talks and the IPCC. He has also been entrusted to act as UNFCCC’s (since 2010) and IPCC (since 2014) designated contact points for Linköping University. Fridahl is an appreciated teacher and course leader at post- and undergraduate studies in subjects spanning from engineering and biology to environmental and political science.
Fridahl currently holds a postdoc at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research within the project Governing NAMAs: Matching Design and Support for Low Carbon Development. He acts as project coordinator for the GovNAMAs, with project partners in Brazil, Canada, and Germany. In his previous work, he has applied both framing and discourse analysis.
Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs)
Currently he is working on an overview of the governance of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) by developing countries as well as analysing its development and implementation phases. The preferences among bilateral and some multilateral donors broadly align with the proposals on NAMAs that has emerged in the last eight years. One risk is that African NAMAs, which often focuses on the agriculture sector, will be underfunded. In addition, NAMAs that focuses on long-term transformation of energy systems may lack the needed long-term support and be restrained from demands on too rigid systems for measuring direct emission reductions.
Green Climate Fund (GCF)
Fridahl also focuses on climate financing, especially various potential roles, as well as States' preferences for the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The fund has great potential to cover gaps in support for NAMAs, i.e. structural gaps that risk emerging from bilateral or private funding sources. One potential stumbling block in the negotiations on the Green Climate Fund, however, concerns the extent to which the promised long-term financing for climate action in poor countries should be administered by the GCF. There seems to be quite a broad consensus on the volume of public funds for support among negotiators, but little consensus on how much of these funds to be channelled through the GCF.
Finally, Fridahl focuses on alignment between the global energy system models' preferences for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), to limit climate change, and the politicians’ and the public’s preferences for these technologies.
The research is based on data from the International Negotiations Survey, observations of UN negotiations, and data from various sources on nationally appropriate emission reduction measures in poor countries as well as modelling of emissions scenarios.
