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Abstract
Mainstream literature in international relations understands negotiations in terms of power politics and/or bargaining processes between rival national interests to account for states’ negotiating stands. Using definitions and questions initially defined by Thomas Risse, this study of processes at work in the biodiversity regime underlines instead their deliberative dimension and its contribution to positive negotiation outcomes. However, the article also challenges the dominant understanding of deliberation in global environmental politics that focuses on the participation of non-governmental organizations and other interest groups in the ‘public space’. Instead it identifies deliberative elements in the negotiation process proper, stressing in particular the importance of the relationships developed between governmental delegations through series of closed meetings of selected participants. This contribution uses for illustration the negotiations leading to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and to the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization.
Notes
1. 1. Regimes are identified as ‘sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations’ (Krasner Citation1983, p. 2). However, a more mundane understanding more or less equates a regime with a set of interrelated treaties in a domain of international relations such as climate change or global trade.
2. 2. In Risse’s article, the logic of ‘appropriateness’ also refers to the role of norms in framing the behavior of social actors on the international scene, as highlighted by other constructivists (Finnemore Citation1996, Finnemore and Sikkink Citation1998).
3. 3. For such an ambition see Brand et al. (Citation2008). However, their neo-Poulantzian framework emphasizes structural factors and does not fit with our actor-based theoretical approach. Moreover, this critical International Political Economy perspective is quite different from the traditional approach of regime overlaps in terms of institutional mechanisms and norms (Rosendal Citation2000). See also the debate in Falkner (Citation2007) (chapters on global corporate power and on the WTO).
4. 4. Contrary to what Dryzek and Stevenson suggest, the distinction between accredited NGOs with an observer status and total outsiders is rather immaterial and largely irrelevant for the problem of transmission. NGO members only get real access when they are included in the official delegation of a state (some feature more than 100 members). The real question is how observers influence deliberations in close meetings. It does not help much to claim that non-deliberative forms of transmission such as street demonstrations increase ‘the deliberativeness of the larger system’ (Dryzek and Stevenson Citation2011, p. 1871).
5. 5. For instance, Article 29.2 of the CBD states very vaguely that: ‘Amendments to this Convention shall be adopted at a meeting of the Conference of the Parties’.
6. 6. The study was carried out at a number of negotiation meetings of the CBD: the fourth and fifth working groups on ABS, the third and fourth meetings of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol as well as the eighth and ninth COPs of the CBD. In addition to the observation of the formal and some parallel sessions – including business and NGOs coordination meetings – our research material includes 56 semi-directive interviews with key actors in these debates. This was supplemented by archival research for the previous stages of the CBD negotiations.
7. 7. These natural genetic resources are used, in particular, as raw materials in the pharmaceutical industry, in cosmetics, and in agro-industries.
8. 8. Interview with a Columbian delegate, Paris, 6 July 2007.
9. 9. Biopiracy is the colloquial name given to the illegal or illegitimate use of the natural genetic resources and the traditional knowledge associated with them.
10. 10. The negotiations aim at reaching a consensus on the contents of the future treaty. The various contributions and amendments are first put in brackets, discussed, and then possibly modified, before being accepted or rejected.
11. 11. The person elected as president by the COP plenary assembly is then responsible for steering the debates and taking the necessary initiatives to organize them.
12. 12. By then, there were five coalitions of states negotiating: the Miami Group – the largest worldwide grain exporters, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, the United States and Uruguay – the most hostile group against the passing of a binding protocol; the European Union; the Like Minded Group; the majority of developing countries; and the Compromise Group – Japan, Mexico, Norway, Korea and Switzerland, later joined by New Zealand and Singapore.
13. 13. These were mainly the choice of the right terms and the domain of relevance of the agreement, the involvement of local stakeholders, intellectual property rights and capacity building.
14. 14. Interview with an NGO representative, Bonn, Germany, 9 January 2007.
15. 15. Especially the Declaration of Johannesburg on sustainable development and the Implementation Plan, paragraph 42 (0) as approved on 4 September.
16. 16. Bolivia, Brazil, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Equator, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa and Venezuela.
17. 17. The explicit reference to an additional CBD protocol was a strategic gain linking the future development of the ABS regime to the successful Cartagena Protocol, hence guaranteeing a binding agreement.
18. 18. Interview with a Columbian delegate, Paris, 9 July 2007.
19. 19. Interview with a representative from the European Commission, Paris, 5 March 2008.
20. 20. Interview with a Canadian delegate, Paris, 9 July 2007.
21. 21. A reference to the differently colored teddy bears that were used in Montreal to draw lots. These were bought at the very last minute in the subway.
22. 22. Interview with an environmental NGO representative, Bonn, Germany, 9 January 2007.
23. 23. Informal discussion with an environmental NGO representative, Bonn, Germany, 14 May 2008.
24. 24. Fieldwork notes, ABS contact group, Curitiba, Brazil, 28 March 2006.
25. 25. Our sample is a total of 14 meetings, including three expert groups, six working groups and five COPs.
26. 26. Such as the community of The Andes – Bolivia, Columbia, Equator, Peru, Venezuela – Costa Rica, Denmark, India, Nepal, Norway and the African Union – i.e. 53 African countries (Chouchena-Rojas et al. Citation2005, p. 9).
27. 27. On this notion, see Heritier and Lehmkuhl (Citation2008).
28. 28. Others, however, perceived this configuration as balanced, probably because in the absence of real rules the differences would be even bigger between the participation of different groups of delegations (Nobs Citation2002, p. 192, Nechay Citation2002, p. 212).
29. 29. This problem, however, is not specific to international negotiations. It raises the broader issue of democratic control in a technological society, where there is a constant flow of innovations that are beyond the understanding and control of the average citizen.
30. 30. The Earth Negotiations Bulletin often caught the delegates asleep in the corridors during their breaks. The Ethiopian negotiator for the biosafety protocol stated that the Miami Group had to change their representative during the first special meeting for the passing of the Cartagena Protocol and the European negotiator could not manage to keep his eyes open till the end of the process (Howard Citation2000).
31. 31. As noted by several authors, however, this attitude does not fundamentally call into question the effectiveness of the biosafety regime (Bled Citation2010). Broadly speaking, the implementation phase of environmental agreements often displays manifestations of logics of interests.
32. 32. An interview with a Swiss delegate, from the Federal Office for Agriculture, Curitiba, Brazil, 24 March 2006. The same representative stated that the possibilities for progress in the negotiations vary from one type of meeting to another. For instance, he stated that it is no use going to the COP with position papers to hand out. For working groups however, the situation is very different because only 80% of the texts have already been officially adopted at that stage.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Amandine Orsini
Amandine Orsini is a Professor of International Relations at the Facultés Universitaires Saint Louis, Bruxelles. Her research has focused on corporate lobbying in environmental negotiations, policy coherency and regime complexes. She has published in journals such as International Environmental Agreements (2009), Business & Society (2010), global Society (2011) and Environmental Politics (2012).
Daniel Compagnon
Daniel Compagnon is Professor of Political Science, at the Centre Émile Durkheim, Sciences Po Bordeaux, France. Recent publications include: ‘Africa’s Involvement in Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Holy Grail or Business as Usual?’ in Philipp Pattberg, Frank Biermann, Sander Chan and Aysem Mert (eds), Public–Private Partnerships For Sustainable Development Emergence, Influence and Legitimacy (Edward Elgar 2012, pp. 137–164); and with Sander Chan and Ayşem Mert ‘The Changing Role of the State’ in Frank Biermann and Philipp Pattberg (eds), Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered (MIT Press 2012, pp. 237–263).