Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MARIPOLDATA (The Politics of Marine Biodiversity Data: Global and National Policies and Practices of Monitoring the Oceans) Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2021-10-31 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project Since 2018, governments negotiate 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). Marine biodiversity science and data play a central role for the protection of the marine environment: Firstly, in supporting intergovernmental efforts to identify, protect and monitor marine biodiversity. Secondly, in informing governments interested in particular aspects of marine biodiversity, including its economic use and its contribution to biosecurity. Thirdly, in reducing global inequalities between the Global North and the Global South in exploring and exploiting marine resources. Yet, how science and policy interrelate in the specific field of marine biodiversity politics is poorly understood, challenging the uptake of knowledge by policy-makers to protect marine species and ecosystems in the High Seas. In examining how marine biodiversity science and data are represented and used by state and nonstate actors during the negotiations and by combing these observations with a systematic study of the marine biodiversity field across regions, this project creates a novel understanding of the materiality of science-policy interrelations and identifies new forms of power in global environmental politics as well as develops the methodologies to do so.This is crucial because the capacities to develop and use science and data infrastructures are unequally distributed among countries and global initiatives for scientific collaboration and data sharing are significantly challenged by conflicting perceptions of who benefits from marine biodiversity research. Despite broad recognition of these challenges within natural science communities, the political aspects of marine biodiversity data remain understudied. Academic debates tend to neglect the role of international politics in legitimising and authorising scientific concepts, data sources and criteria and how this influences national monitoring priorities and practices of ocean protection. The central objective of MARIPOLDATA is to overcome these shortcomings by developing and applying a new multiscale methodology for grounding the analysis of science-policy interrelations in empirical research. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far The MARIPOLDATA team investigates the negotiations of the new BBNJ instrument by “being there” when treaty text is negotiated. We have been conducting collaborative event ethnography in the New York Headquarters and systematically observed 1) how state and nonstate actors use and contest scientific knowledge and data, 3) what influence scientist have on the negotiations and, 3) how scientific concepts shape the treaty and become part of the new agreement. We developped a matrix to systematically collect data, which includes more 30.000 observations. Our data enabled, for instance, to show that negotiations have been afflicted by polarisation between two principles: The ‘Freedom of the High Seas’ (FOS) and the ‘Common Heritage of Humankind’ (CHP). Instead of discussing the CHP from a purely legal perspective, we examined how it has become a practice of contestation: it is used as a tool and negotiation technique to challenge deeply rooted inequalities in the current world order. Due to COVID-19, the last negotiation round was postponed to 2022. To continue our research, we adapted our methodology and conducted a survey in May 2020. We identified online initiatives and communication channels set up to maintain negotiation momentum and examined the challenges and opportunities of digital diplomacy for multilateral environmental agreement making, as well as the study thereof. We also discussed future avenues for global environmental politics research and explored the application of digital ethnographies to study online or hybrid formats used in multilateral environmental diplomacy.In order to situate the science and knowledge that matters during the negotiations (physical and online) we mapped the field of marine biodiversity research based on bibliometric data and analysed the effects of scientific collaboration, especially between the Global North and the Global South. Our data revealed that the US and Europe’s usual suspects allocate a significant proportion of collaboration capital from all regions. In turn, regional research networks in Asia, South America, and Africa are severely underdeveloped. Instead of mapping the field based on quantitative data only, we complemented our maps with oral history interviews with 20 key marine biodiversity scientists from different regions and scientific disciplines. These 6-hour interviews that are still work in progress allow us to dive deeper into the development of the marine biodiversity field and how it has been shaped by legal, political and economic orders, new technological developments, national research priorities, and industrial interest in the exploration and exploitation of marine resources. In order to capture how these factors and dynamics, influence the day-to-day practices of marine biodiversity research and monitoring we have selected three cases: Brazil, the US and the European Union. We will compare these cases by drawing on the data collected at the different sites and levels of our empirical research: the BBNJ negotiations, the scientific field of marine biodiversity, the oral histories of key scientists and the practices of studying and monitoring marine biodiversity. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) The MARIPOLDATA project studies an ongoing process and an emerging policy field based on an interdisciplinary and multiscale approach, which promises advances of the state of the art in different areas. The knowledge we produce is relevant for future generations interested in how the field emerged and how it was shaped by state and non-state actors, most notably by science. Methodologically, we have moved beyond the state of the art by developing a unique approach to collect and analyse data in international negotiations settings, including through digital ethnography. Negotiation settings are extraordinarily complex, but our approach enables us to cope with complexity and to combine quantitative and qualitative data analysis for studying the role of science and data throughout the negotiation process. By proposing a multi-scale approach that considers developments within scientific fields and monitoring practices outside of the negotiation room we break new ground and demonstrate the importance to study the role of science in negotiations in relation to the scientific field itself. Our scientific maps demonstrate the unequal distribute of marine biodiversity research between the Global North and South and we have developed the concept of “Collaboration Capital” to capture the effects of scientific collaboration on research networks in different world regions. We expect to significantly advance the understanding of science-policy interrelations in the field of marine biodiversity politics across regions and scales once data collection is terminated and once we have had the chance to see a final treaty and to observe marine biodiversity monitoring practices on the ground. twitter-bbnj-2.jpg alice-vadrot-auf-feldforschung-auf-der-un-biodiversity-conference-im-november-2018-photo-credits-iisd-enb-franz-dejon-convertimage-min.jpg arne-langlet-und-alice-vadrot-im-un-verhandlungssaal-bbnj2-newyork-april-2019-photo-credits-iisdenb-francis-dejon-convertimage-min.jpg project-presentation-erc-maripoldata.jpg kick-off-maripoldata-vadrot-alice-presenting-may-2019-min.jpg ina-tessnow-von-wysocki-und-alice-vadrot-bei-den-bbnj2-verhandlungen-in-den-un-newyork-august-2019-photo-credits-iisd-enb-francis-dejon-convertimage-min.jpg
