Environmental Negotiations Research Articles

Seizing a venue linking opportunity: China’s strategy to advance its sea cucumber interests in global environmental governance

This study explores how China strategically advances its position and interacts with institutional contexts to shape environmental negotiations. By employing process-tracing methods and conducting expert interviews on the case of sea cucumber negotiations, we find that China intends to garner international support in a policy venue (CITES) while actively engaging in another policy venue that better aligns with China's interests (FAO). Building upon existing studies on institutional change and negotiation strategy, we highlight two aspects of a venue-linking framework, including the institutional settings enabling countries to deploy such a strategy in environmental negotiations and the actors’ capacity to seize the opportunity. In doing so, we show how China has strategically engaged in multiple policy venues to advance its preferences through a particular, more amenable venue. Our findings offer new empirical insights into how China navigates the complex political dynamics in global environmental governance when multiple policy venues with overlapping jurisdictions are involved.

Disruptive data: How access and benefit-sharing discourses structured ideas and decisions during the Convention on Biological Diversity negotiations over digital sequence information from 2016 to 2022

In 2016, negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity on access and benefit-sharing policies were shaken up by the emergence of digital sequence information (DSI) as policy issue. Open access to DSI on genetic resources in genetic databases is standard practice in data-driven biological research, but such access was argued to bypass access and benefit-sharing policies of the Convention. As Parties and observers had to take a position on governing DSI, this research investigated the influence of discourses on the negotiations through argumentative discourse analysis. Actors in international environmental negotiations mobilize ‘background’ discourses – both consciously and unconsciously – to define and ‘foreground’ issues, which in turn shape negotiation and decision-making processes. The analysis shows that existing discourses on access and benefit-sharing and biodiversity structured actors’ statements aimed at defining DSI, thus applying and redefining access and benefit-sharing principles in the context of DSI. Actors with similar and slightly varying interests formed discourse-coalitions on the basis of shared storylines. Developing countries formed a separate discourse-coalition to push for DSI regulation wherein ideas about sustainable development and environmental justice were integrated, and to a lesser extent about biopiracy (the notion that open access to DSI enables the misappropriation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge). In response, developed countries adopted narratives put forward by industry and research, advocating that open access to DSI is essential for science, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. A third coalition, consisting of Indigenous peoples and local communities and civil society, also mobilized environmental justice and biopiracy discourses, but more prominently a unique holistic discourse on nature. Finally, holistic and biopiracy discourses were marginalized in official negotiation documents, while scientific and sustainable development discourses were adopted in official negotiation documents. The research provides a novel understanding of the DSI-negotiations as discursive politics, and highlights how different positionalities in discourses structure and are structured by statements in this political arena.

Transboundary fine dust pollution in China and Korea: How has international politics impeded environmental negotiations?

AbstractTransboundary fine dust has been a leading cause of dispute between China and Korea since the mid‐2010s. This study observes that transboundary fine dust is not purely an environmental issue, but rather mixed with political and diplomatic challenges. Despite the emerging bilateral and multilateral efforts to tackle this issue, this research sheds light on how political and diplomatic factors have undermined the outcomes of environmental negotiations between China and Korea. We highlight three dimensions of policy‐based studies: scientific joint research on source‐receptor relationships, interstate environmental negotiations, and multilateral environmental institutions in Northeast Asia. This study argues that transboundary fine dust cooperation has been extensively entangled with national political interests and proceeded via diplomatic channels, leading to the current absence of binding agreements and policy commitments. Therefore, a steady process of de‐linking environmental cooperation and diplomatic fluctuations would be the best direction to proceed in a long‐term perspective.

The EU's External Action after Lisbon: Competences, Policy Consistency and Participation in International Environmental Negotiations

The EU's External Action after Lisbon: Competences, Policy Consistency and Participation in International Environmental Negotiations

The EU’s strategic approaches in international environmental negotiations

Cet article étudie l'approche stratégique de l'UE dans les négociations environnementales internationales. En analysant les approches argumentatives, de marchandage et de résolution de problèmes, cet article répond à la question suivante : comment différents facteurs expliquent-ils l'approche stratégique que l'UE applique ? À travers l’analyse d’entretiens avec des délégués, de documents officiels et de rapports, l’article souligne qu’une ambition élevée, une saillance élevée et des négociations en phase finale conduisent l’UE à utiliser des stratégies argumentatives ou de marchandage. Une ambition et une saillance faibles et des négociations à un stade précoce conduisent l’UE à utiliser la résolution de problèmes.

How Australia’s Middle Power Identity Has Informed Its Behaviour at the BBNJ Negotiations

Abstract The negotiations for a new international legally binding instrument to conserve and sustainably utilise marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) have been the subject of much analysis and commentary since their commencement. Yet there is still relatively little consideration of what can be learnt about state behaviour from the BBNJ negotiations. This article engages in an analysis of Australia’s behaviour as a case study of the often-overlooked category of middle power states. Hence, this article is envisioned as an exploratory study into middle powers in international environmental negotiations, with the goal of prompting further exploration of both the BBNJ negotiations specifically, as well as the role of different kinds of states in the creation of international environmental law. The overarching question being asked here is “How has Australia’s middle power identity informed its behaviour at the BBNJ negotiations?”

Growing Apart: China and India at the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol

Abstract Developing countries are growing apart on environmental issues. International environmental negotiations are no longer characterized merely by the North–South conflict. Rising powers have come to divide the Global South and redefine the Common-But-Differentiated Responsibilities principle. This article explains the divergence of China and India at the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, one of the first global environmental agreements to differentiate obligations between developing countries. China and India, the world’s two largest hydrofluorocarbon producers, ended decades of collaboration and split the rest of the developing world behind them. I argue that developmental strategy and political institutions shape the preferences and influences of industrial, governmental, and social stakeholders, thereby explaining their negotiation behavior and outcome. This article explains why China moved faster and further than India on negotiations for hydrofluorocarbon regulation. It has important implications for the two rising powers’ implementation of the Kigali Amendment and for their position formulations on other environmental issues.

Redefining Development: The Extraordinary Genesis of the Sustainable Development Goals

How do states who are not typically leaders in multilateral negotiations change this role and become leaders in shaping negotiation outcomes? The book Redefining Development: The Extraordinary Genesis of the Sustainable Development Goals provides an in-depth look into the role that Colombia played in the negotiations that made the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the key outcome of the Rio + 20 Conference in 2012. Paula Caballero, with Patti Londoño, provides the inside account of how Colombia spearheaded the idea, built initial coalitions with Guatemala and others, convinced major players both of the idea and specific aspects, and pushed the idea relentlessly through preparatory meetings. The inside look into the process provides an insightful story into international environmental negotiations and provides a unique perspective on how changes can occur in multilateral negotiations. The 88 pages of appendices, the majority of which are key documents from the negotiation process, are of particular interest for researchers of the SDGs process.

Persuasive innovators for environmental policy: green business influence through technology-based arguing

ABSTRACT Green industries and companies provide crucial political support for ambitious environmental policy. In this article, I examine through which mechanisms green business interests influence international environmental negotiations. I theorize technology-based arguing as an influence mechanism that builds on combined technological and discursive power and can outstrip relational and structural business power rooted in material resources. I probe these propositions in a process-tracing case study of new wastewater regulations for ships in the Baltic Sea negotiated in the Helsinki Commission and International Maritime Organization. I find that green business built, expanded, and sustained state support for ambitious nutrient removal standards by persuasively arguing that advanced treatment was feasible. Provision of tangible evidence of technology development, availability, and uptake undermined the influence of reluctant and materially superior business interests. I conclude that even small green business actors can facilitate ambitious environmental policy when communication channels between innovators and policymakers are strong.

How about a Green Caliphate?

Over fifty years into global environmental negotiations since the first UN Conference in 1972 on the Human Environment in Stockholm, to the Climate Change Conference COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh in 2022, the major environmental concerns of our time are no closer to being resolved. Negotiations continued to fall by the wayside. Given the commitment to economic development and sovereignty of the nation states, the deadlocks are understandable. Against this background, this article proposes a “Green Caliphate” as a faith-motivated global environmental governance for a network of Sharia-based countries and devout local Muslim communities around the world. The article offers a set of rationales for considering the Green Caliphate in the light of climate emergency from multiple perspectives: social justice, knowledge sharing, and cultural transformation. Drawing on Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful and Ovamir Anjum’s “Who Wants the Caliphate”, this article broaches the concept of a socially and environmentally-responsible caliphate governance which might be in congruent with the Schumacherian pursuit of the “Fourth World” where government and economics are under genuine human control because the size of such units are small, sensible, and human scale, and where the pace of development is in accordance with the religious cosmology of their members to adapt. The Green Caliphate is envisioned on a decolonial horizon of pluriversality towards a multipolar world order. In the cycle of nature there is no such things as victory or defeat; there is only movement. Within that cycle there are neither winners nor losers, there are only stages that must be gone through. Both will pass. One will succeed the other, and the cycle will continue until we liberate ourselves from the flesh and find the Divine Energy. —Paulo Coelho, “Manuscript Found in Accra”

Trade and Environment Negotiations Status under the WTO: An Investigation into the Tariff-Alone Approach

Trade and Environment Negotiations Status under the WTO: An Investigation into the Tariff-Alone Approach

Optimal climate policies under fairness preferences

Integrated assessment models are tools largely used to investigate the benefit of reducing polluting emissions and limiting the anthropogenic mean temperature rise. However, they have been often criticized for their underlying assumptions, often leading to low levels of abatement. Countries and regions that are generally the actors in these models are usually depicted as having standard concave utility functions in consumption. This, however, disregards a potentially important aspect of environmental negotiations, namely its distributive implications. The present paper tries to fill this gap assuming that countries/regions have Fehr and Schmidt (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(3):817–868, 1999) (F&S) utility functions, specifically tailored for including inequality aversion. By adopting the RICE model, we compare its standard results with the ones obtained introducing F&S utility functions, showing that, under optimal cooperation, the level of temperature rise is lower in the last scenario. In particular, the peak temperature, reached in 2155 under standard assumptions and one or two decades later under F&S preferences with, respectively, heterogeneous and homogeneous F&S inequality aversion parameters (α and β), is of 2.86 ∘C in the former scenario and of 2.65 ∘C and 2.67 ∘C in the latter two. Furthermore, it is shown that potentially stable coalitions are easier to be achieved when F&S preferences are assumed. However, potentially stable coalitions are far from reaching environmental targets close to limiting the mean temperature rise below 2 ∘C despite the adoption of F&S utility functions. The 2 ∘C target is almost achieved in all scenarios when the payoffs in the F&S utility function are given by the per-capita consumption rather than utility of consumption, with F&S preferences and heterogeneous F&S inequality aversion parameters leading to a peak temperature rise of 2.04 ∘C.

Is it only about science and policy? The 'intergovernmental epistemologies' of global environmental governance.

Although international actors operating under the United Nations umbrella put much faith in the possibility of bridging science and policy through various institutional arrangements, research in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition suggests that different civic epistemologies revolve around environmental degradation issues. Civic epistemologies, which imply peculiar understandings of knowledge across cultures, are not easily bridged. This paper contends that conflicting (civic) epistemologies inevitably emerge in epistemic debates at the intergovernmental level, with strong implications for how science and knowledge are dealt with and understood in environmental negotiations. Drawing on the experience of global soil and land governance and building on the idiom of civic epistemologies, the concept of intergovernmental epistemologies is introduced as an analytical tool to capture the diverging ways of appreciating and validating knowledge in intergovernmental settings. Placing state actors and their perspectives center stage, intergovernmental epistemologies account for the tensions, contestations and politicisation processes of international institutional settings dealing with environmental issues. The paper concludes discussing the consequences of intergovernmental epistemologies for the study of global environmental governance: it cautions about overreliance on approaches based on learning and all-encompassing discourses, emphasizing the value of using STS-derived concepts to investigate the complexity of international environmental negotiations.

Digital Multilateralism in Practice: Extending Critical Policy Ethnography to Digital Negotiation Sites

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the use of online tools in the conduct of multilateral environmental negotiations. Although scholars have recognized that information and communication technologies have gradually been reshaping traditional diplomatic practice, such technologies are not considered to be transformative of diplomatic practice itself. However, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic states have had to rush into unprecedented and unpredictable forms of digital cooperation that are poorly understood. To illuminate this uncharted area, our research applies combined digital and critical policy ethnography to two online dialogues within the framework of ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea toward a new treaty for the protection and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction. Digital critical policy ethnography conducted at two online sites enables us to study the political effects of emerging international practices. We re-interpret digital diplomacy in terms of “communities of practice” developing across, and connecting physical and digital sites. Virtual communications amongst state and non-state actors mirror traditional forms of diplomacy whilst introducing new practices that may change conventional forms of international treaty-making. We propose the term digital multilateralism to capture these new forms and conclude that it can have two effects: deepen the background knowledge of actors that form a community of practice and create new inequalities.

A review of behaviour mechanisms between government and society in bargaining water pollution issues

Water pollution causes serious damage to people's lives, health and safety. As a prominent issue impacting social stability and development, protests to water pollution issues have become a great challenge for governments at all levels in recent years. This study aims to analyze the complex behaviour mechanism between participants and government, which is of great significance to the prevention and treatment of such incidents. This paper also discusses the cooperative and interactive relationship between government and society in the governance structure. In order to clarify the research progress of water pollution protest in the past decade, a systematic review has been used to identify 40 research papers related to social and governmental environmental negotiation mechanisms of water pollution events from the CNKI, SCOPUS, EIVL-LAGE2 and other databases. As a single management subject, a government can neither realize the efficiency and fairness of water resources allocation, nor effectively coordinate the contradictions among stakeholders such as the government, enterprises and the public. In order to protect the public's right to know, government must improve information disclosure, which also provides theoretical support for the government and relevant departments to control such events. Finally, the cooperative governance between government and society in water pollution events should be strengthened to improve the democratic governance ability of the government and achieve social governance innovation. Therefore, society-government cooperation should be taken as the breakthrough point, establish the concept of effective participation between government, enterprises and the public in the joint treatment of water pollution events. The study can be act as a reference for local authorities to better manage water pollution incidents with the public. Keywords: Behaviour mechanisms, clean water, government and society, water pollution protest

When does the structural power of business fade? assessing business privileged access at global climate negotiations

ABSTRACT Which non-state actors gain privileged access to policymakers during global environmental negotiations? This paper offers a first systematic answer to this question. I argue that, overall, business non-state actors gain more access to policymakers compared to NGOs. Importantly however, the privileged position of business groups becomes less pronounced – sometimes even disappears – if countries are more developed, less reliant on fossil fuels, more democratic, or the impact of climate change is higher for a country. For the empirical analysis, I first analyzed all business groups and NGOs that participated in country delegations at UN climate conferences between 1997 and 2012 (n = 3,734). To evaluate privileged access, I compare actors which gained access to country delegations (n = 804) with the organizations that participated during the conferences as observers (n = 2,930). The results confirm that business has more privileged access in general but not in all countries.

Networked territoriality: A processual–relational view on the making (and makings) of regions in world politics

AbstractThis article proposes a processual–relational perspective on region-making and its effects in world politics. It revisits the concepts of regionalism and regionalisation to unearth the relational mechanisms underlying these archetypical pathways of regional emergence. Regionalism refers to the bounding of regions – the definition of its inside and outside, and of which actors fall on either side. Regionalisation denotes the binding of regions, the amalgamations of relations around a shared territoriality. I argue that regions affect world politics in their making through the boundaries raised and relations produced in the process. I then mobilise network theory and analysis to propose a framework for studying the making and makings of regions. Regions’ binding and bounding are rooted in brokerage dynamics that sustain clusters of relations denser inside a regional boundary, rather than outside, and allow some actors to control interactions across that boundary. I illustrate this framework with a case study on the emergence of the Amazon as a region in world politics. I analyse interaction networks in UN-level environmental negotiations involving the ecosystem. The analysis shows how the making of the Amazon has been tied to preserving the position of Amazonian states as the main brokers, speaking for and acting on behalf of the region.

Interests, Institutions, and the Environment: An Examination of Fisheries Subsidies

Abstract Protecting the environment has emerged as one of the major challenges in international relations. In international environmental negotiations, countries hold divergent positions because of domestic politics and specifically the interaction of interests and institutions. Domestic political institutions privilege the interests of some groups over others, depending on their geographic distribution. This observation matters for global environmental cooperation because groups with varied interests in protecting the environment often exhibit different geographic patterns, as illustrated in negotiations over fisheries subsidies at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The fishing industry tends to be concentrated in geographic space because of its reliance on a geographically specific natural resource. The industry’s geographic concentration gives it relatively more political clout in countries with plurality electoral systems. Environmentalists, who tend to be more diffuse geographically, enjoy greater political influence in countries with proportional representation systems and party-centered electoral competition. These political dynamics, as well as the electoral success of Green political parties, influence governments’ spending priorities as well as states’ positions in international environmental negotiations.

Explaining EU influence in international environmental negotiations

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to explain variation in the EU’s influence on specific issues negotiated in international environmental forums. Analysing twelve issues in the United Nations Environment Assembly, the Convention on Biological Diversity as well as the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, the paper identifies combinations of conditions that explain the EU’s level of influence. Through a qualitative comparative analysis, it studies the impact of the EU’s ambition, flexibility and isolation on the EU’s influence. It finds a high ambition combined with a low isolation as a key explanation of the EU’s high influence. For the EU’s low level of influence, a variety of causal paths are possible, such as a low ambition combined with a low degree of flexibility. The paper’s primary data source are interviews with EU delegates, who were closely involved in the negotiations.

Embodied CO2 in China’s trade of harvested wood products based on an MRIO model

International trade of goods is also flows of CO2. As a key exporter of harvested wood products (HWPs), China emits a large amount of CO2 to meet the consumption of other countries. This article uses an MRIO model to quantify the embodied CO2 emissions of China’s HWP sectors in international trade based on the WIOD database. China’s CO2 emissions from a production perspective were 121.25 Mt, more than four times those from a consumption perspective. China was a net exporter for embodied CO2 in HWP sectors, while the US was China’s largest importer. In addition, the furniture sector exported more embodied CO2 by international trade than those from the wood and paper sectors. Based on the unbalances of exports and imports, establishing a common international standard to share the responsibility for CO2 emissions is of great urgency in HWP sectors. This article facilitates promoting CO2 emission reduction in HWP sectors and references China’s future participation in international trade and environmental negotiations.