Thesis
“Sometimes reality enters the room” : spatial in/justice and the in/visibilisation of local actors within international biodiversity negotiations
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2022
- Thesis identifier
- T16401
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201754536
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- This thesis aims to understand the meaning and manifestation of participation by local actors within international biodiversity law-making, and the barriers that have arisen as a result. International negotiations, and international law as a result, carry with them particular cultures of practice, certain aims (explicit or implicit) and are the embodiment of historical practices, narratives and discourses, all which impact on the way that we understand and relate to nature, ourselves, and others. International legal negotiations, just like any decision-making process, also hold within themselves power dynamics between peoples, knowledge-systems, worldviews, etc., which impact on the ability of peoples to act and contribute within its spaces. ‘Public participation’ is an incredibly broad practice, with limited critical and socio-legal research having been done so far in looking at how it takes place, how it is conceived, and whether it achieves the transformative potential it professes to offer. In this thesis, I have unearthed barriers, sometimes more/less obvious, manifesting in various ways within these spaces. Their manifestations are diverse, yet on the whole they have the effect of inhibiting a person’s, or group’s, ability, or sense of ability, to participate and contribute meaningfully to discussions, as well as impact on their comfort within a space and the way that they are received. Within international environmental legal scholarship, there currently exists a gap in our understanding of the meaning and manifestation of local actor participation within international law-making processes. My research aims to fill this gap, by especially looking at the ways in which local actor’s contributions are received and filtered into the elaboration of conservation law and policy, and the ways this influence biodiversity governance across scales. When setting off to elaborating this project, I drew inspiration from scholars before me who have explored the possibilities of institutional ethnography of international law-making spaces and processes. I have identified and discuss commonalities between this and critical legal scholarship, the appreciation that any legal negotiating process is established, structured and managed in ways that goes beyond legal texts. This is especially true in the sense that the space within which they take place constitute political, social, as well as legal spaces. Therefore, my argument has been that for a deeper understanding to emerge of the role provided to local representatives within international law, this must be done in conjunction with understanding, from an emic perspective, the processes themselves – their spaces, actors, the sources and spatial manifestations of their dominant narratives and their in/formal rules of interactions and procedures. My theoretical framework is grounded on Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’ concept of spatial in/justice, which conceives of law and space as interconnected. Each provides the conditions for the other to emerge, giving us ways of understanding and relating of ourselves, our fellows in society (human and non-human, persons and non-persons), legal rules, a given place, and so on. By paying attention to the conditions of negotiations in terms of their spatio-legal organising, spatial in/justice has provided me with useful tools and lenses for unpacking the ways that participation takes place, and some of the barriers which have emerged from within international law, and its associated negotiating spaces. Carrying out an institutional ethnography of the CBD negotiating spaces has provided me unique insights into the everyday functions, practices, and cultures making up biodiversity negotiations. This, I believe, has enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of the ways that the legal processes form, and are formed by their wider social, political and historical contexts, and what this means for the actors involved. My research has thus built upon an integration of desk-based research of CBD meetings and engaging with actors in collaborative relationships, along with an array of ongoing dialogues/interviews with participants, including representatives from the caucus groups representing “local” experiences of biodiversity loss. My thesis has been organised as follows: The first two substantive chapters introduce my theoretical and methodological frameworks, including my ethical framework grounded in principles of respect, trust, reflexivity, and responsibility on behalf of myself as researcher vis-à-vis research partners and collaborators. The following chapter explores the “staging” of biodiversity negotiations and their participatory processes. I introduce critical participatory scholarship, alongside an overview of the institutional, governance and decision-making structures of the CBD negotiations. This chapter also provides some initial insights and reflections on the ways in which spatial injustice materialises by virtue of the spatio-temporal-legal conditions of these spaces. The next chapter explores the “casting” of actors, looking closer at terms such as “civil society”, “stakeholders” “knowledge-holders” and “rightsholders”. Here, the focus has been on exploring the various ways that such designations affect the positioning of actors within biodiversity discourse and decision-making spaces, and the potentials and pitfalls of each. The final substantive chapter interrogated the ontological (as a way of understanding the world) and epistemological (as a way of understanding, creating, and cherishing particular knowledges) conditions of the CBD negotiations, and the consequences this has for the participation of local actors within its processes, and the achievement of onto-epistemic pluralism/justice within biodiversity law and governance. Ultimately, my study has unearthed a paradox of sorts, where participation under the CBD, albeit highly constrained according to spatial justice ideals, provides for the simultaneous in/visibilisation of local actors and their perspectives. In ways, the very presence of local actors, and their contribution to processes, poses a challenge to traditional approaches of international legal-thought and study grounded in Westphalian concepts of legal positivism and political-legal-cultural imperialism. Yet, the nature of participation itself is heavily limited, with there only being a very occasional emergence of "other” worldviews, and with them alternative ways of framing biodiversity conservation, environmental knowledge and relating to/with nature. Conclusively, my argument is that the spatio-legal ordering of international negotiations, with the ensuing material positioning, discursive and linguistic conditions which set the stage for its processes, have established instances of what Mihalopolous describes as oppressive atmospherics, suppressing the visibilisation of opposition and diversity. It is only under certain circumstances, that input by these actors and their role as key contributors within the process of international law-making, emerges as a transformative potential.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Morgera, Elisa
- Vermeylen, Saskia
- Resource Type
- Note
- This thesis was previously held under moratorium until 14th October 2022 until 14th October 2024.
- DOI
- Funder
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PDF of thesis T16401 | 2022-10-28 | Público | Descargar |