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: 2024-12-28T07:37:38.255Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Introduction

A Broadened Understanding of Global Environmental Negotiations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2023

By
Hannah Hughes  and
Alice B. M. Vadrot
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

The introduction explores why there is so much scholarly interest in global environmental negotiations and how the conceptualization and study of these has changed over time. It unpacks how to study global environmental negotiations and related sites as agreement-making defined as the multiple actors, sites, and processes through which environmental agreements are made, and the new sets and arrangements of actors, sites, and processes that are created by any specific agreement, which have the potential to reinforce or reorient the global political order. This approach is offered as a way to organize, spatialize, situate, and connect diverse forms of scholarship into, around, and related to negotiation sites and their products. The introduction provides an overview of the book chapters, which provide the methodological building blocks for conducting this research. As such, the book is relevant for many other nonenvironmental issue areas where collective action is at the core, such as global health, nuclear nonproliferation, security, and trade.

Keywords

agreement-makingnegotiationsglobal environmental politicsmethodolgical innovationparticipant observation
Type
Chapter
Information
Conducting Research on Global Environmental Agreement-Making , pp. 1 - 22
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.Hughes, H. and Vadrot, A. B. M. (2019). Weighting the World: IPBES and the Struggle over Biocultural Diversity. Global Environmental Politics 19, 14–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evidence for expanding sites of negotiation to the intergovernmental science bodies that inform these processes came from collaborative research that brought together observations from across sites, as presented in the cited article.Google Scholar
2.Hughes, H., Vadrot, A., 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
This collective piece authored by the contributors to this book introduces the term “agreement-making” and calls for methodological innovation and greater reflection on the ethical stakes of research on global environmental negotiations. The piece resulted from a workshop funded and organized by MARIPOLDATA in Vienna in September 2019.Google Scholar
3.Vadrot, A. B. M. (2020). Multilateralism as a “Site” of Struggle over Environmental Knowledge: The North-South Divide. Critical Policy Studies 14(2), 233–245.Google Scholar
This article discusses agreement-making sites as “sites of struggle over environmental knowledge.” It argues that CEE is crucial for studying the multiple and contested roles of science in global environmental negotiations, but needs to be combined with the social study of the scientific field, as exemplified by the European Research Council MARIPOLDATA project (www.maripoldata.eu).Google Scholar

References

Abbott, K. W. (2012). The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 30(4), 571–590.Google Scholar
Allan, J. I. (2020). The New Climate Activism: NGO Authority and Participation in Climate Change Governance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, S. (2006). Does Bureaucracy Really Matter? The Authority of Intergovernmental Treaty Secretariats in Global Environmental Politics. Global Environmental Politics 6, 23–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beier, J. M., ed. (2009). Indigenous Diplomacies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Betsill, M. M. and Bulkeley, H. (2004). Transnational Networks and Global Environmental Governance: The Cities for Climate Protection Program. International Studies Quarterly 48(2), 471–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betsill, M. M. and Corell, E. (2001). NGO Influence in International Environmental Negotiations: A Framework for Analysis. Global Environmental Politics 1(4), 65–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biermann, F. (2007). “Earth System Governance” as a Crosscutting Theme of Global Change Research. Global Environmental Change 17, 326–337.Google Scholar
Biermann, F. and Siebenhüner, B. (2009). Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Biermann, F., Betsill, M., Gupta, J. et al. (2010). Earth System Governance: A Research Framework. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 10(4), 277–298.Google Scholar
Brand, U. and Wissen, M. (2021). The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism. London: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Brysk, A. (2000). From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bulkeley, H. and Newell, P. J. (2015). Governing Climate Change. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bulkeley, H., Andonova, L., Bäckstrand, K. et al. (2012). Governing Climate Change Transnationally: Assessing the Evidence from a Database of Sixty Initiatives. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 30(4), 591–612.Google Scholar
Burch, S., Gupta, A., Inoue, C. Y. A. et al. (2019). New Directions in Earth System Governance Research. Earth System Governance 1, 100006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, L. M., Corson, C., Gray, N. J., MacDonald, K. I., 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
Campbell, L. M., Hagerman, S., and Gray, N. J. (2014). Producing Targets for Conservation: Science and Politics at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Global Environmental Politics 14(3), 41–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chasek, P. S. (2001). Earth Negotiations: Analyzing Thirty Years of Environmental Diplomacy. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.Google Scholar
Ciplet, D., Roberts, J. T., and Khan, M. R. (2015). Power in a Warming World the Global Politics of Climate Change and the Remaking of Environmental Inequality. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Constantinou, C. (1998). Before the Summit: Representations of Sovereignty on the Himalayas. Millennium 27, 23–53.Google Scholar
Corell, E. and Betsill, M. M. (2001). A Comparative Look at NGO Influence in International Environmental Negotiations: Desertification and Climate Change. Global Environmental Politics 1(4), 86–107.Google Scholar
Corson, C., Campbell, L. M., Wilshusen, P. and Gray, N. J. (2019). Assembling Global Conservation Governance. Geoforum 103, 56–65.Google Scholar
De Pryck, K. (2020). Intergovernmental Expert Consensus in the Making: The Case of the Summary for Policy Makers of the IPCC 2014 Synthesis Report. Global Environmental Politics 21(1), 108–129.Google Scholar
Depledge, J. (2004). The Organization of Global Negotiations: Constructing the Climate Change Regime. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Depledge, J. (2007). A Special Relationship: Chairpersons and the Secretariat in the Climate Change Negotiations. Global Environmental Politics 7, 45–68.Google Scholar
DiMuzio, T. (2015). Carbon Capitalism: Energy, Social Reproduction and World Order. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Doolittle, A. A. (2010). The Politics of Indigeneity: Indigenous Strategies for Inclusion in Climate Change Negotiations. Conservation & Society 8(4), 286–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunlap, R. E. (2013). Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction. American Behavioral Scientist 57(6), 691–698.Google Scholar
Falkner, R. (2005). The Business of Ozone Layer Protection: Corporate Power in Regime Evolution. In Levy, D. and Newell, P., eds., The Business of Global Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 105–134.Google Scholar
Farias, D. B. L. and Roger, C. (2023). Differentiation in Environmental Treatymaking: Measuring Provisions and How They Reshape the Depth-Participation Dilemma. Global Environmental Politics 23(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogel, C. (2005). Biotic Carbon Sequestration and the Kyoto Protocol: The Construction of Global Knowledge by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 5(2): 191–210.Google Scholar
Gray, N. J., Corson, C., Campbell, L. M. et al. (2020). Doing Strong Collaborative Fieldwork in Human Geography. Geographical Review 110(1–2), 117–132.Google Scholar
Haas, P. M. (1989). Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control. International Organization 43(3), 377–403.Google Scholar
Haas, P. M. (1992a). Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination. International Organization 46(1), 1–35.Google Scholar
Haas, P. M. (1992b). Banning Chlorofluorocarbons: Epistemic Community Efforts to Protect Stratospheric Ozone. International Organization 46(1), 187–224.Google Scholar
Hadden, J. (2015). Networks in Contention: The Divisive Politics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hjerpe, M. and Linnér, B. O. (2010). Functions of COP Side-Events in Climate-change Governance. Climate Policy 10(2), 167–180.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, M. J. (2011). Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, H. (2015). Bourdieu and the IPCC’s Symbolic Power. Global Environmental Politics 15(4), 85–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IPBES (2016). The Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production. Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany.Google Scholar
IPBES (2019). Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Bonn: PBES Secretariat.Google Scholar
IPCC (2018). Summary for policymakers. In: An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5˚C above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, p. 32.Google Scholar
IPCC (2022). Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jinnah, S. (2014). Post-Treaty Politics: Secretariat Influence in Global Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kanie, N. and Biermann, F., eds. (2017). Governing through Goals: Sustainable Development Goals as Governance Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Keohane, R. O. and Nye, J. S. (1989). Power and Interdependence. 2nd ed. Northbrook, IL: Scott Foresman and Co.Google Scholar
Keohane, R. O. and Victor, D. G. (2011). The Regime Complex for Climate Change. Perspectives on Politics 9(1), 7–23.Google Scholar
Kouw, M. and Petersen, A. (2018). Diplomacy in Action: Latourian Politics and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Science & Technology Studies 31(1), 52–68.Google Scholar
Krasner, S. D. (1982) Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables. International Organization 36(2): 1–21.Google Scholar
Lebreton, L., van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W. et al. (2017). River Plastic Emissions to the World’s Oceans. Nature Communications 8, 15611.Google Scholar
Levy, D. L. and Newell, P., eds. (2005). The Business of Global Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levy, M. A., Young, O. R. , Zürn, M., and Levy, M. A. (1995). The Study of International Regimes. European Journal of International Relations 1, 267–330.Google Scholar
Lidskog, R. and Sundqvist, G. (2014). When Does Science Matter? International Relations Meets Science and Technology Studies. Global Environmental Politics 15, 1–20.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, S. (2016). Global Indigenous Politics: A Subtle Revolution. Oxfordshire: Routledge.Google Scholar
Litfin, K. (1994). Ozone Discourse: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation. New York: Columbia University Press,Google Scholar
MacDonald, K. I. and Corson, C. (2012). “TEEB Begins Now”: A Virtual Moment in the Production of Natural Capital. Development and Change 43(1), 159–184.Google Scholar
Marion Suiseeya, K. R. (2014). Negotiating the Nagoya Protocol: Indigenous Demands for Justice. Global Environmental Politics 14(3), 102–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marion Suiseeya, K. R. and Zanotti, L. (2019). Making Influence Visible: Innovating Ethnography at the Paris Climate Summit. Global Environmental Politics 19(2), 38–60.Google Scholar
Marion Suiseeya, K. R., Zanotti, L., and Haapala, K. (2021). Navigating the Spaces Between Human Rights and Justice: Cultivating Indigenous Representation in Global Environmental Governance. The Journal of Peasant Studies 49, 604–628.Google Scholar
Maxwell, J. and Briscoe, F. (1997). There’s Money in the Air: The CFC Ban and DuPont’s Regulatory Strategy. Business Strategy and the Environment 6(5), 276–286.Google Scholar
Miller, M .A. L. (1995). The Third World in Global Environmental Politics. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, R. B., Andonova, L. B., Axelrod, M. et al. (2020). What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements. Global Environmental Politics 20, 103–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Newell, P. (2006). Climate for Change: Non-state Actors and the Global Politics of the Greenhouse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Newell, P. and Paterson, M. (2010). Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Okereke, C., Bulkeley, H. and Schroeder, H. (2009). Conceptualizing Climate Governance Beyond the International Regime. Global Environmental Politics 9(1), 58–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Neill, K. and Haas, P. M. (2019). Being There: International Negotiations as Study Sites in Global Environmental Politics. Global Environmental Politics 19, 4–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. M. (2012). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Orsini, A., Le Prestre, P., Haas, P. M. et al. (2020). Forum: Complex Systems and International Governance. International Studies Review 22(2), 1008–1038.Google Scholar
Paterson, M. (1996). Global Warming and Global Politics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Paterson, M. (2019). Using Negotiation Sites for Richer Collection of Network Data. Global Environmental Politics 19(2), 81–92.Google Scholar
Pickering, J. (2019). Deliberative Ecologies: Complexity and Social–Ecological Dynamics in International Environmental Negotiations. Global Environmental Politics 19(2), 61–80.Google Scholar
Picq, M. L. (2018). Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purdue, D. (1996). Hegemonic Trips: World Trade, Intellectual Property and Biodiversity. Environmental Politics 4(1), 88–107.Google Scholar
Ruggie, J. G. (1975). International Responses to Technology: Concepts and Trends. International Organization 29(3), 557–583.Google Scholar
Schroeder, H. (2010). Agency in International Climate Negotiations: The Case of Indigenous Peoples and Avoided Deforestation. International Environmental Agreements 10(4), 317–332.Google Scholar
Schroeder, H. and Lovell, H. (2012). The Role of Non-Nation-State Actors and Side Events in the International Climate Negotiations. Climate Politics 12(1), 23–37.Google Scholar
Scott, D., Hitchner, S., Maclin, E. M. and Dammert, B. J. L. (2014). Fuel for the Fire: Biofuels and the Problem of Translation at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Global Environmental Politics 14, 84–101.Google Scholar
Shiva, V. (1993). Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Strahan, S. E. and Douglass, A. R. (2018). Decline in Antarctic Ozone Depletion and Lower Stratospheric Chlorine Determined from Aura Microwave Limb Sounder Observations. Geophysical Research Letters 45(1), 382–390.Google Scholar
Tauli-Corpuz, V., Alcorn, J., Molnar, A., Healy, C., and Barrow, E. (2020). Cornered by PAs: Adopting Rights-Based Approaches to Enable Cost-Effective Conservation and Climate Action. World Development 130, 104923.Google Scholar
Tessnow-von Wysocki, I. and Vadrot, A. B. M. (2022). Governing a Divided Ocean: The Transformative Power of Ecological Connectivity in the BBNJ Negotiations. Politics and Governance, 10(3).Google Scholar
Thew, H. (2018). Youth Participation and Agency in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. International Environmental Agreements 18, 369–389.Google Scholar
UN Environment Programme (2019). Global Environment Outlook – GEO-6. Healthy Planet, Healthy People. Nairobi.Google Scholar
Underdal, A. and Young, O. R., eds. (2004). Regime Consequences: Methodological Challenges and Research Strategies. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
Vadrot, A. B. M. (2014). The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiversity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vadrot, A. B. M., Langlet, A. and Tessnow-von Wysocki, I. (2021a). Who Owns Marine Biodiversity? Contesting the World Order Through the “Common Heritage of Humankind” Principle. Environmental Politics 31(2), 226–250.Google Scholar
Vadrot, A. B. M. Langlet, A., Tessnow-von Wysocki, I. et al. (2021b). Marine Biodiversity Negotiations during COVID-19: A New Role for Digital Diplomacy? Global Environmental Politics 21(3), 169–186.Google Scholar
Vecchione-Gonçalves, M. (2009). Between the Leader of Virtù and the Good Savage. In Beier, J. M., ed., Indigenous Diplomacies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133–154.Google Scholar
Wacquant, L. (1989). Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu. Sociological Theory 7(1): 26–63.Google Scholar
Watts, V. (2013). Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!). Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2(1), 20–34.Google Scholar
Witter, R., Suiseeya, K. R. M., Gruby, R. L. et al. (2015). Moments of Influence in Global Environmental Governance. Environmental Politics 24(6), 894–912.Google Scholar
Young, O. R. (1989) The Politics of International Regime Formation: Managing Natural Resources and the Environment. International Organization 43(3), 349–375.Google Scholar
Young, O. R. (2010). Institutional Dynamics: Emergent Patterns in International Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Yusoff, K. (2018). A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.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
×