News & Events

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is an international treaty that sets out the legal framework for ocean activities and boundaries.
While UNCLOS defined marine Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ), commonly called the high seas, no international instrument exists to protect the exceptional marine biodiversity from these territories.
In order to address this challenge, the UN General Assembly aims to develop an international legally binding instrument under UNCLOS on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (resolution 69/292 of 19 June 2015) by 2020.
Between March 25, 2019 and April 5, 2019 the 2nd Session of the Intergovernmental Conference on BBNJ will take place in New-York.
Two members of the MARIPOLDATA team have been nominated by the International Studies Association (ISA) to participate which will allow them to pursue MARIPOLDATA WP1 research objectives aiming at observing how governments position themselves within these negotiations and how is scientific knowledge used.

More information: https://www.un.org/bbnj/

The International Studies Association (ISA) is one of the oldest interdisciplinary associations dedicated to understanding international, transnational and global affairs.

The International Studies Association’s 60th Annual Convention will take place in March 2019 in Toronto. This conference brings together international affairs experts from across the world to discuss issues related to international, transnational and global affairs.

At this occasion, Alice Vadrot will participate in Panel FA 81 “Great Power Responsibility and Global Environmental Protection” organized by Barry Buzan (LSE). She will present a co-authored article written with Hannah Hughes (Cardiff University).

More information: https://www.isanet.org/Conferences/Toronto-2019

Healthy oceans contribute significantly to combating climate change. However, a lack of ocean scientific knowledge continues to challenge efforts to protect ocean ecosystems. This gap is steadily closed by global initiatives like the International Census of Marine Life programme. Furthermore, detection methods, observing infrastructures and data management have significantly improved over the past two decades, reconfiguring how oceans are studied and monitored.

In many respects, the study and monitoring of the oceans represent a new form of knowledge production. Challenges include producing systemic insights into ocean ecology; working toward industrial-scale production of innovations; providing scientific data to support environmental policy; and operating against the backdrop of a highly research-focused academic system. These developments are amplified by data scarcity, complicating the command of funding and shaping policies and practices of studying, monitoring and protecting the oceans.

This panel invites contributions on the socio-technical, epistemic, (geo)political, historical and ethical dimension of these developments, including case studies related to global and national policies and practices of ocean science and monitoring. Which dynamics occur when ocean science becomes (even more) subject to multiple valuation registers, including those associated with steering efforts toward more interdisciplinary engagement, societal relevance and demands from policy-makers? How do monitoring policies and practices contribute to the scientific representation of the ocean and its manifestation as a site, where different technological innovations compete for scientific legitimacy and marketability? What are key innovations in ocean science and marine technology and how do they shape the policies and practices of the field?

On the 6th of February Dr Alice Vadrot visited Cardiff University to discuss the Work-In-Progress paper entitled ‘Conceptualising the establishment of intergovernmental organisations: Learning from the IPCC and IPBES’, co-authored with Dr Hannah Hughes. Dr Hannah Hughes is a lecturer in International Relations and Co-director of the Environmental Justice Research Unit at Cardiff University. The two have a long-standing collaborative relationship having first started working together in September 2015. Among other publications, they have a forthcoming article titled ‘Weighting the world: IPBES and the struggle over biocultural diversity`, which will be published as part of a special section in Global Environmental Politics.

To read the whole blog by Rosa Maryon, please click here: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/isru/2019/02/20/conceptualising-the-establishment-of-intergovernmental-organisations-learning-from-ipcc-and-the-ipbes-dr-hannah-hughes-dr-alice-vadrot/