Negotiating the environment: civil society, globalisation and the UN

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- Acknowledgements -- Figures -- Abbreviations -- 1 The politics of nature and the nature of politics -- Ethnography: Into the belly of the beast -- 'Ethnographic snippet': UNFCCC COP16 -- Like oil and water: Fossil-fuel-based politics versus environmental sustainability -- Civil society in UN deliberations -- What a 'sociological imagination' brings to global environmental governance -- 'UN-conventional' methods: Observation, participation, and document analysis -- 'Text work': Analysis of a documentary reality -- Plus ça change… -- Chapters -- Notes -- References -- 2 Setting the scene: The UN as an ethnographic research site -- Introduction: 'Ethnographic snippet' to set the scene -- Background: The UN in context -- Inside the bureaucracy -- Digging through drudgery for data -- The UN as a research site -- Meetings: Location, duration, and procedure -- Texts: the UN documentary reality -- MEAs: History, context, and critique -- What is a 'normal' intervention? -- 'Ethnographic snippet': CBD SBSTTA22 -- What's in a meeting? -- References -- 3 The contested terrain of action: Civil society in UN climate negotiations -- Introduction: Raising issues-civil society and climate deliberations -- Whose space? Our space! -- Participation as process -- Strategic essentialism and civil society -- Anticipated and accepted actions -- UNFCCC and the climate movement -- Historical precedent: Conflict and action in Copenhagen -- Access: Shut out of the negotiations -- Copenhagen 'results' and beyond: Continued tensions for civil society -- What a difference half a degree makes -- Negotiations derailed: Participation jeopardised -- Damage control -- Maintaining a presence: Civil society and continued participation in UNFCCC -- Note -- References.

The politics of nature and the nature of politics -- Setting the scene : the UN as an ethnographic research site -- The contested terrain of action : civil society in UN climate negotiations -- Civil society engagement in regulating biotechnology under the UN -- The elephant in the room: the treadmill of production as the root cause of environmental harm.

Civil society participants have voiced concerns that the environmental problems that were the subject of multilateral environmental agreements negotiated during the 1992 Rio processes are not serving to ameliorate global environmental problems. These concerns raise significant questions regarding the utility of negotiating agreements through the UN. This book elucidates the complexity of how participants engage in these negotiations through the various processes that take place under the auspices of the UN--primarily those related to climate and biological diversity. By taking an ethnographic approach and providing concrete examples of how it is that civil society participants engage in making policy, this book develops a robust sense of the implications of the current terrain of policy-making--both for the environment, and for the continued participation of non-state actors in multilateral environmental governance. Using data gathered at actual negotiations, the book develops concepts such as participation and governance beyond theory. The research uses participant observation ethnographic methods to tie the theoretical frameworks to people's actual activities as policy is generated and contested. Whereas topics associated with global environmental governance are traditionally addressed in fields such as international relations and political science, this book contributes to developing a richer understanding of the theories using a sociological framework, tying individual activities into larger social relations and shedding light on critical questions associated with transnational civil society and global politics.