Investigate the negotiations of a new legally-binding treaty under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea aiming at the protection of marine biodiversity (WP1).
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
MARIPOLDATA aims to overcome gaps in how marine biodiversity data and monitoring within international politics is understood, studied and practiced. The project will significantly advance our knowledge of how marine biodiversity science is represented, developed and used in international negotiation settings and national monitoring programmes.
This will allow empirically grounded conclusions on how science-policy interrelations materialise and transform the governance of the global commons. The overall objective of the project is to develop and apply a new multiscale and interdisciplinary methodological approach for grounding the analysis of science-policy interrelations in empirical research.
The application of this approach to the newly emerging field of marine biodiversity politics will transform our understanding of the role of data in governing the oceans by producing fine-grained analyses of global and national monitoring policies and practices. The MARIPOLDATA project has four specific objectives, which are linked to four interrelated work packages and a specific set of research questions:
Map and analyse the distribution of marine biodiversity science and expertise around the globe and assess the opportunities for developing and using global and national monitoring infrastructures (WP2)
Examine the role of scientific data in international negotiations and processes for identifying and protecting ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs) in the framework of the CBD) (WP3).
Analyse and compare selected regional and national biodiversity monitoring policies and practices with regards to the political and technological strategies employed to access, regulate, manage and use marine biodiversity data. (WP4).
METHODOLOGY
The MARIPOLDATA project develops and applies a methodology that allows data collection at different field sites, policy levels and spatial scales. A set of qualitative and quantitative methods will be applied to empirically investigate how scientific concepts, criteria and indicators travel between different scales, as well as between sites of policy-making, assessment and monitoring. This will reveal the actual impacts and outputs of “big science” networks and activities on international negotiations and national monitoring infrastructures. By combining international and national scales, the research team will investigate how the positioning of governments related to science and technology within two international negotiation settings is linked to the actual policies and practices of national monitoring and data infrastructures (including investments, science policy, training programmes and big data management and analysis).
This will produce an unpresented understanding of the role of science and technology in governing and sharing benefits from marine biodiversity. The projects charts representations of marine science and data from the international level to the national levels, using moments of contestation to identify the different interests in marine biodiversity data and analyse the different expectations associated with its use. An important aspect of this is how these moments of contestation relate to the numbers, concepts and scientific criteria used at the national level – namely, the actual knowledge and data infrastructures developed and used in the pursuit of monitoring marine biodiversity.
Data will be collected and analysed across different policy-levels and spatial scales by combining 1) ethnographic studies at intergovernmental negotiation sites with 2) a comparative analysis of national biodiversity monitoring policies and practices and 3) bibliometric and social network analyses and oral history interviews for mapping marine biodiversity science.
WORK PACKAGES
WP 1
Work Package 1 investigates the negotiations on a new international legally binding instrument under the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). The project team participates in the negotiation sessions of the Intergovernmental Conference at the UN Headquarters in New York and conduct ethnographic research. Particular attention will be placed on the role and representation of marine biodiversity science and data in the negotiations and how different governments use and contest scientific knowledge throughout the negotiating process.
WP 2
WP 3
WP 4
