Project Events

Ethics and the BBNJ Agreement

Date: 23 September 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30 (CEST)

Venue: Virtual Meeting

The MARIPOLDATA Reading Group had the opportunity to engage with Dr. Carl Safina, ecologist and founding president of the Safina Center, to discuss our ethical responsibility towards the ocean.

Summary of the exchanges here.

How do practitioners view our work? A transdisciplinary debate about the relevance of (studying) intergovernmental negotiation sites

Conveners: Hannah Hughes, Alice Vadrot

Date: 15 September, 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Conference Room – Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna

The central objective of this innovative panel is to facilitate an inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue between scholars studying intergovernmental environmental negotiation sites and the various actors (including national delegates, representatives of NGOs, treaty secretariats, youth movements and local and indigenous communities) in the field.

The panel will be organized as a roundtable, inviting participants 1) to share their experience and expert knowledge on the current state and development of environmental agreement making and so-called mega-events and 2) to reflect on scholarship using these sites for empirical research. The aim of the session is twofold: firstly, to provide an interactive space, where practitioners reflect on the relevance and value of empirical research and give feedback on current efforts to innovate methods for studying negotiation sites. Secondly, we aim to trigger a debate on the significance of those negotiation sites from the perspective of both, the practitioners that engage in agreement making processes as well as scholars of Global Environmental Politics and Earth System Governance studying them.

More information about the event here

Fishing and the BBNJ Agreement

Date: 19 August 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Virtual Meeting

The MARIPOLDATA Team welcome expert Dr. Guillermo Ortuño Crespo, to present his paper on “High-seas fish biodiversity is slipping through the governance net” and engage in the discussion afterwards.

Fisheries affect marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction and a fragmented and incomplete ocean governance framework is currently charged with ensuring sustainable fisheries in the High Seas.

With the BBNJ agreement’s objective to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity in ABNJ, the connection between the BBNJ agreement and fishing practices in the High Seas has to be considered.

How is fishing affecting marine biodiversity in ABNJ?

What is the role of existing regional and sectoral organizations currently responsible for sustainable fisheries?

And what does it mean for marine biodiversity in ABNJ if fish was excluded from the BBNJ agreement?

Summary of the exchanges here.

Rights of Nature and the relevance of traditional knowledge in the BBNJ negotiations

Date: 22 July 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Virtual Meeting

This week´s reading group focused on two articles:

• a paper considering how a Rights of Nature perspective might inform the BBNJ agreement

• a paper discussing the integration of the traditional knowledge of indigenous Peoples and local communities into the BBNJ instrument

Clement Yow Mulalap from the Permanent Mission of the Federated States of Micronesia to the United Nations in New York City presented one of his recent co-wrritten article Traditional Knowledge and the BBNJ instrument.

Summary of the exchanges here.

How to protect marine biodiversity? Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the High Seas

Date: 17 June 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Virtual Meeting

After discussing the complexity of ocean governance last session, we turned more specifically to ocean protection in form of MPAs. The discussion was based on two readings :

• a paper on ecological connectivity of our oceans and resulting implications for MPA design

• a policy-relevant short forum article, which calls for mobile marine protected areas to be discussed in the upcoming BBNJ negotiations

This was an opportunity to reflect on current marine conservation and gather ideas for future ocean protection.

Summary of the exchanges here.

Photo by vivek kumar on Unsplash

The complexity of global ocean governance: Actors, instruments and international agreements

Date: 6 May 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Virtual Meeting

The team chose 2 readings which served as a basis for discussion.

The first one was an an introductory reading to the complexity of ocean governance, especially for persons who might not be so familiar with the topic.

The second text was an academic article on maritime political ecology: How can we study the relations of these various actors regulating our oceans, what are implications for them and for the protection of marine ecosystems?

In the reading group we connected  this perspective to BBNJ issues and discussed the text in the light of the ongoing negotiations for the new BBNJ instrument.

Photo by Andras Kovacs on Unsplash

Topic: Politics of the international negotiations on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction

The team chose 2 readings which gave an insight into the ongoing negotiations and provided a basis for discussions.

Date: 8 April 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.00

Venue: Virtual Meeting

The first one was a viewpoint piece and described conflict lines and outcomes of the latest conference of these negotiations.

The second article was a short piece, offering insights into debates on how the new instrument might affect the conduct of marine scientific research.

Are you new to the topic of this UN agreement and are wondering what it is about?

The United Nations are currently negotiating a new agreement for regulations of marine biodiversity in areas outside of national jurisdiction. This new legally binding agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) includes topics on conservation (through marine protected areas and other area-based management tools, as well as environmental impact assessments) and seeks to find a mechanism to share access and benefits from marine genetic resources among the different states, as well as to guarantee capacity building and marine technology transfer to developing countries, where financial and technical means are missing for marine scientific research in the depths of our oceans.

The Shifting Context of Sustainability: Growth and the World Ocean Regime

Discussant: Dr. Monika Berg (Orebrö University)

Date: 11 March 2020

Time: 18.00 – 19.30

Venue: Conference Room – Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna

In the framework of the MARIPOLDATA seminar series and the IPW Lectures (Department of Political Science, Vienna University) we welcomed  Peter Jacques from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, USA.

Please contact us via email if you would like to access the recorded talk of Peter Jacques : maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at

The World Ocean Regime is not an official treaty agreed to by states in some formal process, but it probably governs the marine world. This talk discussed how this regime was discovered and the nature of the economistic values and norms that are the main feature. This includes how the idea of sustainability has changed over time in discourses about the ocean to become more growth-oriented in a way that is not actually sustainable.

Peter Jacques is a Professor of Political Science and affiliate faculty of UCF’s National Center for Integrated Coastal Research. He has extensive experience in the field of environmental politics and sustainability. Prof. Jacques is the President of the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences for the term June 2018- June 2020. His research interests include Global Environmental Change, Sustainability Science, Indigenous Sustainability Issues, Ocean Conservation, Climate Change and Political Ecology/Green Political Theory.

Monika Berg is a senior lecturer in sociology and has a doctoral degree in political science. She is part of the Environmental Sociology Section at Örebro University. Monika is a guest researcher at the department of Political Science of the University of Vienna and in MARIPOLDATA in March 2020.

How Evaluation shapes Ocean Science – A Multi-Scale Ethnography of Fluid Knowledge

Date: 23 January 2020

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Wächtergasse 1, Top 5, 504, 1010 Vienna

In the framework of its seminar series, the MARIPOLDATA team had the pleasure to welcome in Vienna Sarah de Rijcke from the University of Leiden and director of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CTWS) in the Netherlands.

In 2018, Professor de Rijcke received an ERC Starting Grant for the project ‘FluidKnowledge – How evaluation shapes ocean science’. The ERC project will run from January 2019 until December 2023. On the occasion of the MARIPOLDATA seminar serie, she spoke about the progress of the FluidKnowledge project.

The FluidKnowledge project investigates the past, present and future of evaluating ocean science. Ocean science, like many fields, is under great pressure to be both scientifically excellent, and relevant to industry, and relevant to the future of the planet. How do steering efforts toward interdisciplinary engagement and societal relevance relate to other norms and criteria of scientific quality (e.g. excellence, global competitiveness) in actual practice? The team examines the intricate epistemic consequences that evaluation might have on concrete practices of knowledge creation by combining longitudinal quantitative analysis with rich ethnographic studies in different national contexts. They will also develop concepts to theoretically grasp the constitutive potential of research evaluation, based on such multilevel approaches.

Sarah de Rijcke is professor of Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies and director of CWTS, where she leads the Science and Evaluation Studies research group. Her current research program examines interactions between research governance and practices of knowledge production. Sarah is a member of the editorial board of Science, Technology, and Human Values (ST&HV), Science and Technology Studies, and Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. Professional memberships include the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Dutch National research school for Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC).

More information about the ERC project FluidKnowledge here.

Please confirm your participation via e-mail to maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at

Biodiversity collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea

Date: 12 December 2019

Time: 16.30 – 18.00

Venue: Wächtergasse 1, Top 5, 504, 1010 Vienna

In the framework of the MARIPOLDATA seminar series, Paolo G. Albano, researcher at the Department of Paleontology at the University of Vienna gave a talk about the biodiversity collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

The Levantine basin in the easternmost Mediterranean Sea is well known for hosting hundreds of non-indigenous species introduced after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. A still insufficiently recognized but equally dramatic phenomenon is the disappearance of native species. We have quantified this decline using intense sampling on the Israeli shelf targeting mollusks, and using death assemblages, the accumulation of empty shells in the sediments, to reconstruct the baseline.
On soft substrates, our sampling intercepted only 24% of the historically recorded species. On rocky substrates, our preliminary results show even fewer native species in respect to the baseline (ca 5-7%).
The talk will then discuss the potential explanations of this massive biodiversity loss pointing at the locally rapid climate warming as the most likely culprit.

Paolo G. Albano is a senior post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Paleontology of the University of Vienna and principal investigator of a project to explore the rapid changes occurring in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. His research focuses on the patterns and processes of biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems, with a special focus on the Mediterranean Sea.

Please confirm your participation via e-mail to maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at

Whose Climate for What Politics? Attempts of a Political Ecology and Economy Analysis on Contemporary Brazilian Environmental Politics

Date: 12 September 2019

Time: 17.00 – 18.30

Venue: Wächtergasse 1, Top 5, 504, 1010 Vienna

In the framework of the first edition of its seminar series, the MARIPOLDATA team was very glad to welcome in Vienna Marcela Vecchione Gonçalves from the Federal University of Pará.

Fires, violence and intense political debates have been heating the political climate in Brazil lately. From within the Ministries and Presidential cabinets, reaching out to the rainforest animated by heated declarations amid the Parliament as well as within the broad political and civil society, environmental and climate politics, alongside with land and indigenous politics, have never been as much in the spotlight as it is currently the case in the country. It is well known fires and changes in tone and directions in policies related to rainforest protection and conservation contribute dramatically to global warming and loss in biodiversity. Nevertheless, what lacks reflection, particularly internationally, is how these changes also affect local and regional lives – including those at the Pan Amazon region, not just in Brazil, sparking violence through empowering a few who concentrate and use land disrespecting environmental, agrarian and labour legislation. Frequently, such violence is as much political as it is the disregard for other ways of living and for the rights to land accessed through a safe and collective natural environment; principles democratically coined by the 1988 Brazilian Constitution. In this sense, debates and global negotiations around the “Amazon issue” and its globality cannot afford to be also a debate about which environmental and climate politics we are talking, for whom and in which basis it is being carried on through international negotiations based on principles of an equitable and sustainable development. In what terms, the Brazilian case can prompt us in research, as well as in action, to relate resource politics to global political ecology? In other words, how do internal political change and its relation to land and resource politics in terms of positioning in global politics can help us reflecting on the connections between ecology and democracy? Human Rights and Rights to Development? Global Political Economy and Global Political Ecology? Violence, Autonomy and Resistance? At the same time, how an interconnected analysis can also provide us with elements to think on the nature of politics and the politcs of nature at the present history by bringing on its centrality to the possiblities of a radical democracy. We believe such points are essential to analyze the crisis in Brazil and why the crises in Brazil is turning into a diplomatic crises on the environment.

Marcela Vecchione Gonçalves is the head of the Graduate Studies Program on Sustainable Development at the Humid Tropics, hosted by the Centre of Advanced Amazonian Studies at the Federal University of Pará, Eastern Amazon, Brazil. She holds a PhD in International Relations and have been researching and teaching on Amazonian Political Ecology, Indigenous Peoples as well as Global Development in the last 12 years. Marcela is also a member and contributor of a number of Brazilian land and environmental movements.

Please confirm your participation via e-mail to maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at

Conducting research at global environmental negotiations

Date: September 10 – 11, 2019

Venue: University of Vienna

This workshop will bring together scholars experienced in global environmental negotiations and contributing to the development and application of conceptual and methodological innovations. The aim is to further develop these innovations and produce a guide for those new to the study of environmental meetings. To achieve this, the workshop will integrate the needs and perspectives of postgraduate scholars so that together we can explore how a new generation of research can be catalysed, the aim of which is to transform how we collectively study global environmental agreement making.

This workshop responds to the need for greater practical methodological guidance and is part of a series of events that are designed to facilitate in-depth discussion between experienced, early career and postgraduate researchers in order to develop appropriate research tools and frameworks.

The workshop builds on work by Hughes and Vadrot as published in a recent special section in Global Environmental Politics on Methodological Innovation in the Study of Global Environmental Agreement Making, edited by Hannah Hughes, Kimberly Marion Suiseeya and Alice Vadrot.

The workshop also draws on and informs research conducted in the ERC Project MARIPOLDATA directed by Alice Vadrot.

More information about the programme HERE.

Date: 25 June, 2019

Time: 13.00 – 17.00

Venue: Cambridge Judge Business School

Dr Alice Vadrot, principal investigator of the ERC funded research project MARIPOLDATA (which investigates the politics of marine biodiversity data), and the Centre for Science and Policy hosted a workshop on the role of oral histories in understanding science-policy interrelations.

Context

In order to protect marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) governments are currently negotiating a new legally binding treaty under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Marine biodiversity science plays a central role in supporting intergovernmental efforts to identify, protect and monitor marine biodiversity. This field will also inform governments on particular aspects of marine biodiversity, including its economic use and contribution to biosecurity. It will also shape the practicalities of certain policy options and the potential effects on ocean science conducted in ABNJ.

Mapping the overall field of marine biodiversity science, the leading scientific experts, how they are connected and how they are involved in international negotiations, is a necessary research step for understanding science-policy interrelations more broadly and why they matter in current intergovernmental negotiations for protecting marine biodiversity. Given that biodiversity science represents a heterogeneous bundle of research activities, interests and methodologies, individual scientists provide an important entry point for assessing and analysing how marine biodiversity has emerged as a key issue within ocean politics.

see more…

When: Tuesday, 21 May 2019, 17:45-21:30 CET
Where: Mezzanin7, Liechtensteinstraße 12/2/7, 1090 Vienna

The MARIPOLDATA Kick-off meeting took place on May 21, 2019 in Vienna.

After input from Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hajo Boomgaarden, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Prainsack, Dr. Julien Rochette and Julie Rigaud, Ass.-Prof. Dr. Alice Vadrot and her team presented MARIPOLDATA and opened the floor for questions and debate. The event was open to the interested public.

Programme

Please confirm your participation via e-mail to maripoldata.erc@univie.ac.at