Browsing by Author "J. Peter Brosius"

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Collaborative Event Ethnography: Conservation and Development Trade-offs at the Fourth World Conservation Congress
    (Conservation and Society, 2010) J. Peter Brosius; Lisa M. Campbell
    Ideas about conservation have shifted dramatically over the last century. From an early focus on state-run parks and protected areas, to the role of local communities and markets in conservation, to engaging the private sector, what conservation is and how we go about doing it continues to evolve (Adams & Hulme 2001; Brosius 2006). While there have been many shifts, in this study we are interested in the recent emphasis on ‘the global’ as the scale at which conservation policies and practices are conceptualised, articulated, and (ideally) implemented (Taylor & Buttel 1992). This shift, or scalingup, is evident in a number of trends: the emergence of ‘big’ international NGOs as key actors in conservation (Chapin 2004); increased emphasis on conservation practice at large, transboundary scales (ecoregions, seascapes) dictated ostensibly by ecology (Brosius & Russell 2003); the continued proliferation of protected areas, the dominant symbol (and measure) of western-influenced nature conservation (Zimmerer 2006); and, of particular interest in our research, the increased use of international meetings and agreements to establish the goals, targets, and means of achieving conservation. This collection of nine papers is a result of research conducted at one such meeting—the Fourth World Conservation Congress (WCC) hosted by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in Barcelona, October 5–14, 2008. The IUCN is the world’s ‘largest global environmental network’, whose stated mission is to ‘influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable’ (http://www.iucn.org/about/). IUCN was originally formed in 1948 as the International Union for the Preservation of Nature, and is a hybrid of government and private interest groups (McCormick 1989). Today, with more than 1,000 member organisations in 140 countries (including 200+ government and 800+ non-government organisations), as well as almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in six commissions (http://www.iucn.org/about/), IUCN continues to exert a major influence in the global conservation domain. While often compared to the ‘big three’ non-government international conservation organisations (Conservation International, WWF, The Nature Conservancy), it is fundamentally different and more akin to a multilateral UN agency, though with private sector members as well.1 Until recently, the IUCN did very little implementation of conservation, casting itself as a scientific authority to inform and track conservation rather than implement it. Its most well-known products are the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM and its system of categorising protected areas, often used to compare national commitments to conservation (http://www.iucn.org/about/ union/commissions/wcpa/wcpa_overview/). Through such initiatives, IUCN has been an important player in determining not only what conservation should be, but also how it should be measured.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Moments of influence in global environmental governance
    (Environmental Politics, 2015) Rebecca Witter; Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya; Rebecca L. Gruby; Sarah Hitchner; Edward M. Maclin; Maggie Bourque and J. Peter Brosius; J. Peter Brosius
    International environmental negotiations such as the 10th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP10) are statedominated, and their outcomes are highly publicized. Less transparent is the role of non-state delegates who effect changes during negotiation processes through myriad strategies and relations. This article focuses on the influence of indigenous peoples and local community (IPLC) delegates in official COP10 negotiations using collaborative event ethnography to identify and evaluate ‘moments of influence’ that have gone largely unnoticed in the literature on global environmental politics. Findings indicate that IPLC delegates influenced negotiations by enrolling, shaming, and reinforcing state actors. Such relational maneuvers and interventions may appear inconsequential, but their implications are potentially far-reaching. Recognizing moments of influence improves understandings of non-state influence, relational power, and the multiple ways diverse actors reach across networks to overcome the power asymmetries that continue to characterize global environmental governance.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Studying Global Environmental Meetings to Understand Global Environmental Governance: Collaborative Event Ethnography at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity
    (Global Environmental Politics, 2014) Lisa M. Campbell; Catherine Corson; Noella J. Gray; Kenneth I. MacDonald; J. Peter Brosius
    The papers in this issue of Global Environmental Politics result from a research innovation we call collaborative event ethnography (CEE),1 applied at the 2010 Tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to study the politics of global biodiversity conservation. CEE combines and modiªes rapid ethnographic assessment, team ethnography, and institutional or organizational ethnography to account for the untraditional nature of meetings as ªeld sites and the challenges they pose for ethnographic researchers. 2 At COP10, seventeen researchers—professors, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students from geography, anthropology, and interdisciplinary studies—worked together towards three broad objectives: 1) to analyze the dynamic role of individuals, groups, and objects, situated in networks, in shaping the ideological orientation of global biodiversity conservation; 2) to document the social, political, and institutional mechanisms and processes used to legitimate and contest ideas about what biodiversity conservation is; 3) to relate team members’ individual research experiences in diverse locales around the world to the agendas established in venues like COP10 in order to better understand how ideas about conservation travel and with what consequences.