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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
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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

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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

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