Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T15:55:45.387Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Experiences

Reflecting and Comparing Research on Negotiations

from Part IV - Implementing and Adapting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2023

By
Arne Langlet ,
Timo Leiter ,
Ina Tessnow-Von Wysocki  and
Harriet Thew
Edited by
Hannah Hughes  and
Alice B. M. Vadrot
Hannah Hughes
Affiliation:
Aberystwyth University
Alice B. M. Vadrot
Affiliation:
Universität Wien, Austria
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides practical guidance on conducting fieldwork at international environmental conferences by drawing on the experiences of four advanced or recently completed PhD research projects: two on the climate change negotiations and two on biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions. The four cases focus on different actors and aspects of the negotiations and represent different degrees of immersion that the researchers had in the process. After a brief presentation of each of the projects, their commonalities and differences are analyzed in terms of four main aspects: access and preparation, data gathering, data analysis, and positionality. Through these case studies, the chapter explores the application of theories and methods from across the book and a range of challenges and opportunities faced during different stages of the research. The chapter also identifies adjustments to digital ethnography that were necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic and concludes with recommendations for early career researchers intending to study global environmental agreement-making as part of their PhD research.

Keywords

intergovernmental negotiationsCOPsclimate changemarine biodiversityevent ethnographyPhD experiencepositionalityresearch design
Type
Chapter
Information
Conducting Research on Global Environmental Agreement-Making , pp. 249 - 266
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

1.Dimitrov, R. (2012). The politics of persuasion: The UN climate change negotiations. In Dauvergne, P., ed., Handbook of global environmental politics, 2nd ed. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 72–86.Google Scholar
Emphasizes the important role of the dynamics and circumstances of the negotiation process and, consequently, the need to observe the negotiation sites in order to explain negotiation outcomes.Google Scholar
2.Bäckstrand, K., Kuyper, J. W., Linnér, B. O. and Lövbrand, E. (2017). Non-state actors in global climate governance: From Copenhagen to Paris and beyond. Environmental Politics, 26(4), 561–579.Google Scholar
Provides a good overview of the history of nonstate actor participation in the UNFCCC, and is a good introduction to a larger body of excellent critical work in this space.Google Scholar
3.Tessnow-von Wysocki, I., and Vadrot, A. B. M. (2020). The voice of science on marine biodiversity negotiations: A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Marine Science, 7, 1044.Google Scholar
Introduces the reader to the complex negotiations and highlights its relevance for future marine biodiversity governance by giving an overview of the current state of the art on the main topics identified in peer-reviewed literature related to the BBNJ process until 2020.Google Scholar
4.Paterson, M. (2019). Using negotiation sites for richer collection of network data. Global Environmental Politics, 19(2), 81–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Highlights the immense opportunities of negotiation sites for the collection of network data and pragmatically addresses issues researchers may encounter when sampling network data.Google Scholar

References

Bourdieu, P., and Wacquant, L. J. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago press.Google Scholar
Campbell, L. M., Corson, C., Gray, N. J., MacDonald, K. and Brosius, J. P. (2014). Studying global environmental meetings to understand global environmental governance: collaborative event ethnography at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Global Environmental Politics, 14(3), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Santo, E. M., Ásgeirsdóttir, Á. , Barros-Platiau, A. et al. (2019). Protecting biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction: An earth system governance perspective. Earth System Governance 2, 100029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2019.100029.Google Scholar
Dimitrov, R. (2016). The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Behind closed doors. Global Environmental Politics, 16(3), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eastwood, L. E. (2019). Negotiating the environment: Civil society, globalisation and the UN. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Flick, U. (2006). An introduction to qualitative research, 3rd ed. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Gaskell, G. and Bauer, M. W. (2000). Towards public accountability: Beyond sampling, reliability and validity. In Gaskell, G. and Bauer, M. W., eds., Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: A practical handbook for social research. London: Sage, pp. 336–350.Google Scholar
Guba, E. G. and Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S., eds., Handbook of qualitative research, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 163–194.Google Scholar
Hale, T. (2016). “All hands on deck”: The Paris Agreement and nonstate climate action. Global Environmental Politics, 16(3), 12–22.Google Scholar
Hammersley, M. and Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hughes, H., and Vadrot, A. B. M. (2019). Weighting the world: IPBES and the struggle over biocultural diversity. Global Environmental Politics, 19(2), 14–37.Google Scholar
Hughes, H., Vadrot, A. B. M., Allan, J. I. et al. (2021). Global environmental agreement-making: Upping the methodological and ethical stakes of studying negotiations. Earth System Governance, 10, 100121.Google Scholar
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission UNESCO. (2020). The science we need for the ocean we want: The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000265198.Google Scholar
Kahler, M. (2011). Networked politics: Agency, power, and governance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kawulich, B. B. (2005). Participant observation as a data collection method. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(2), 1–28.Google Scholar
Kerr, R. and Sturm, D. (2019). Moving beyond “insider or outsider”: The ethnographic challenges of researching elite sport facilities in New Zealand. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(9–10), 1137–1147.Google Scholar
Krauss, S. E. (2005). Research paradigms and meaning making: A primer. The Qualitative Report, 10(4), 758–770.Google Scholar
Leiter, T. (2021a). Progress in implementing adaptation: Insights from project proposals and scientific literature. In United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), ed., The Adaptation Gap Report 2020, pp. 33–40. www.unep.org/resources/adaptation-gap-report-2020.Google Scholar
Leiter, T. (2021b). Do governments track the implementation of national climate change adaptation plans? An evidence-based global stocktake of monitoring and evaluation systems. Environmental Science & Policy, 125, 179–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leiter, T., and Pringle, P. (2018). Pitfalls and potential of measuring climate change adaptation through adaptation metrics. In Christiansen, L., Martinez, G., and Naswa, P., eds., Adaptation metrics: Perspectives on measuring, aggregating and comparing adaptation results. Copenhagen: UNEP DTU Partnership, pp. 29–48.Google Scholar
Madden, R. (2010). Being ethnographic: A guide to the theory and practice of ethnography. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Mandani, K. (2013). Modeling international climate change negotiations more responsibly: Can highly simplified game theory models provide reliable policy insights? Ecological Economics, 90, 68–76.Google Scholar
Thew, H., Middlemiss, L. and Paavola, J. (2020). “Youth is not a political position”: Exploring justice claims-making in the UN Climate Change Negotiations. Global Environmental Change, 61, 102036.Google Scholar
Thew, H., Middlemiss, L. and Paavola, J. (2021). Does youth participation increase the democratic legitimacy of UNFCCC-orchestrated global climate change governance? Environmental Politics, 30(6), 873–894.Google Scholar
Thew, H., Middlemiss, L. and Paavola, J. (2022). “You need a month’s holiday just to get over it!” Exploring young people’s lived experiences of the UN climate change negotiations. Sustainability, 14(7), 4259.Google Scholar
Vadrot, A. B. M. (2020). Multilateralism as “site” of struggle over environmental knowledge: The North-South divide. Critical Policy Studies, 14, 233–245.Google Scholar
Vadrot, A. B. M., Langlet, A., Tessnow-von Wysocki, I. et al. (2021). Marine biodiversity negotiations during COVID-19: A new role for digital diplomacy? Global Environmental Politics, 21(3): 169–186.Google Scholar
Yin, R. K. (2011). Applications of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×