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Research Note

Marine Biodiversity Negotiations
During COVID-19: A New Role
for Digital Diplomacy?

(cid:129)
Alice B. M. Vadrot, Arne Langlet, Ina Tessnow-von Wysocki,
Petro Tolochko, Emmanuelle Brogat,
and Silvia C. Ruiz-Rodríguez*

Abstract
Measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic have indeﬁnitely postponed in-person for-
mal international negotiations for a new legally binding instrument under the United Na-
tions Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine
biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). As a result, online ini-
tiatives have emerged to keep informal dialogue ongoing among both state and nonstate
actors. To continue our research on the BBNJ process, we adapted our methodology and
conducted a survey in May 2020 exploring the impact of COVID-19 on respondents’
BBNJ-related work and communication. This research note identiﬁes online initiatives
and communication channels set up to maintain negotiation momentum and examines
the challenges and opportunities of digital diplomacy for multilateral environmental
agreement making, as well as the study thereof. We discuss future avenues for global
environmental politics research and conclude that digital ethnographies provide an entry
point to study some of these dynamics but need to be adapted to the study of negotiation
settings and the speciﬁc context of multilateral environmental diplomacy.

The COVID-19 pandemic is dramatically affecting societies and economies
around the globe and may have far-reaching consequences for the social and po-
litical orders. The measures put in place to contain it have affected the daily rou-
tine, life–work balance, and research practice of each of us. Transportation was

* This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant 804599). The research presented is part of
the ERC project MARIPOLDATA (https://www.maripoldata.eu/), led by Alice Vadrot. The authors
give special thanks to Dr. Julien Rochette and John Hanus for their feedback on the survey and to
Dr. Thomas Loidl for his suggestions on the survey and the research note’s draft. We also thank our
distinguished partners who supported the survey dissemination. Finally, we are very grateful to all
participants who took the time to answer our survey questions in this challenging time.

Global Environmental Politics 21:3, August 2021, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00605
© 2021 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International (CC BY 4.0) license.

169

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170 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

shut down, national borders were closed, and long-planned intergovernmental
conferences were canceled. Among others, the fourth (and ﬁnal) session on an
international legally binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use
of marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ Treaty),
which our team had planned to study collectively by “being there” (O’Neill
and Haas 2019), was postponed.

Intergovernmental meetings where global environmental agreements such
as the BBNJ Treaty are negotiated have provided scholars of global environmental
politics (GEP) with the opportunity to study actors, power constellations, con-
ﬂicts, inﬂuence, and contestation in practice and “on-site” (e.g., Campbell et al.
2014; Death 2011; Dimitrov 2014; Hughes and Vadrot 2019; Vadrot 2020).
Campbell et al. (2014) demonstrated how to employ collaborative event ethnog-
raphy (CEE) to study these sites and sensitized us to the various ways in which
ethnography makes new forms of inﬂuence visible ( Witter et al. 2015)—
including how digital ethnographies “made it possible to identify and trace the
digital expansion and contraction of spaces for representation at COP21”
(Suiseeya and Zanotti 2019, 46).

While GEP scholarship had started to acknowledge the effects of digital
technologies on negotiation dynamics and diplomatic practice, no one was
prepared to study the disruptive effects of COVID-19 or to examine current
efforts by state and nonstate actors to continue intergovernmental negotiations
informally by establishing virtual spaces. How can we capture the nature of
these new spaces, develop suitable methodologies to study them, and attribute
meaning to the dynamics we observe?

This research note describes how we, as a team, adapted to new circumstances
and continued our empirical study of ongoing BBNJ negotiations through an
online survey and digital ethnography. It also provides an entry point into emerging
issues for GEP scholars interested in the study of negotiation sites and their new
digital dimension. Finally, it reﬂects on the ontology and epistemology of these
sites and the need to expand our work through digital ethnographies.

We ﬁrst brieﬂy introduce the BBNJ negotiations and describe how these
moved online. We then present our survey methods and sample before discussing
our ﬁndings, which indicate that state and nonstate actors hold widely
different views regarding online negotiations. Finally, we discuss these results
in relation to the future study of (digital) environmental agreement making.

How the BBNJ Negotiations Moved Online

More than a decade ago, governments started to consult on the need for a new
agreement on marine biodiversity in response to the lack of regulation on the
conservation, sustainable use, and equitable sharing of biological diversity in in-
ternational waters (De Santo et al. 2019). In 2017, the United Nations General
Assembly decided to convene four intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) to
negotiate a new legally binding instrument, the “BBNJ Treaty” (Tessnow-von

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Alice B. M. Vadrot et al. (cid:129) 171

Wysocki and Vadrot, 2020).1 Since 2018, three IGCs have been convened,
leading to a draft treaty that was to be adopted at IGC 4 in March 2020. Yet,
owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, IGC 4 had to be postponed.

Shortly after the ﬁrst national lockdowns started, an alliance of ocean-
related nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) supported by the governments
of Belgium, Costa Rica, and Monaco initiated the “High Seas Treaty Dialogues.”
These took place in April, June, and July 2020, continuing into autumn and
winter, through an online platform (Webex) where registered participants may
connect and interact simultaneously. The meetings share similar features to on-
site negotiations (such as “opening” or “closing the ﬂoor”) and the speaking
order (nonstate actors speak after states). Participants discuss BBNJ Treaty–
related issues for three hours under the guidance of a facilitator who gives the
ﬂoor to those who request it via the chat function. While this arrangement
indeed facilitates exchange among delegates, it is not deemed a formal negotia-
tion setting but, rather, a way to keep the momentum going.

To provide delegates with a more formalized framework, the president of the
BBNJ negotiations, Rena Lee, launched the “BBNJ intersessional work” in
September 2020 and moved away from the video-based format used for the
purpose of the “High Seas Treaty Dialogues.” Instead, the “BBNJ intersessional
work” uses MS teams, a Microsoft group chat software, allowing text proposals
by state and nonstate actors registered to IGC 4, following questions posted by
facilitators on the different package elements of the BBNJ Treaty. These questions
may be commented upon, participants may react to others’ comments by selecting
emoticons (heart, laugh, surprise, sadness, or anger), and discussion is open for ﬁve
days. At the current stage, it remains unclear whether this work can act as a basis for
the development of a new draft treaty. If it did, this would mean that statements
and activities taking place in online dialogue are ascribed an important meaning—
and de facto transform the practice of multilateral agreement making.

Adapting Methodology in Times of Crisis
We modiﬁed the CEE method to study the BBNJ case ( Vadrot 2020). We applied
the method during IGC 2 and IGC 3 and were preparing to attend IGC 4 (end of
March 2020) but were informed two weeks beforehand that the negotiations had
been indeﬁnitely postponed. In order not to lose sight of the BBNJ process and to
explore the potential effects of national lockdowns around the world on it, we
decided to develop an online survey and reach out to involved state and nonstate
actors. Our team pursued the following objectives: ﬁrst, to keep track of the pro-
cess; second, to anticipate how the lockdowns might affect treaty making; third,

1. The treaty will be an implementing agreement of the United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea (UNCLOS) and includes the following package items: marine genetic resources (MGRs),
including the sharing of beneﬁts; area-based management tools (ABMTs), including marine pro-
tected areas (MPAs); environmental impact assessments (EIAs); capacity building and the trans-
fer of marine technology (CB/TT); and crosscutting issues.

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172 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

to collect views on the opportunities and challenges arising from online tools;
and fourth, to start thinking about the conceptual and methodological implica-
tions of studying BBNJ negotiations further.

The Survey: Method and Sample

Owing to the unprecedented character of the national lockdowns around the
world, the limited amount of time to adapt to the new research conditions,
and the unpredictability of how and when diplomatic activity might resume,
the research team refrained from developing a questionnaire testing predeﬁned
hypotheses based on theoretical assumptions. Instead, we followed an explor-
ative logic to provide a new data source at a time when ethnography could
not take place. In this regard, the survey needs to be viewed as experimental; it
seeks to identify key issues relevant for practitioners and the study of agreement
making in pandemic times.

The online survey was conducted in the period May 4–26, 2020, shortly
after the ﬁrst European peak of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The objective was
to obtain a sufﬁciently representative sample of all BBNJ stakeholders, that is,
representatives of government, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), NGOs,
business/industry, research institutes and/or universities, and the United Nations
(UN). In total, 366 persons were contacted individually, including professional
acquaintances of the research team; authors studying and publishing on BBNJ
issues in peer-reviewed journals; participants of past conferences, including IGCs
and Conferences of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity; and persons
met on-site at past IGCs whose contact information was publicly available.

We used snowball sampling, whereby some individuals were identiﬁed as
important nodes. These individuals received a personal e-mail invitation to take
part in the survey through an URL and were asked to distribute the link to their
networks and peers. Moreover, the MARIPOLDATA project website publicized the
survey and provided an access link. Finally, the survey was disseminated through
mailing lists as well as on social media. In total, 709 persons accessed it. Given
that IGC 2 had counted 918 participants, this was a signiﬁcant share. Out of these
709 persons, 105 completed the survey—a response rate of 14.8 percent.

A large majority of respondents (73.3 percent) indicated that they actively
participated in BBNJ negotiations. Among them, 72.4 percent declared that they
had followed the negotiations since 2017 or earlier. Our sample of 105 respon-
dents not only includes a large number who are formally involved in BBNJ pro-
cesses, but it is also fairly balanced in terms of geography and profession: 27 are
state representatives (from 25 different countries); 13 represent an IGO; and
65 are from NGOs, business, and research. They originate from thirty-ﬁve differ-
ent countries, making the sample fairly representative.2

2. Full list of countries of state representatives: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium,
Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guinea, Ireland, Japan, Monaco,
New Zealand, Palau, Palestine, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, the United

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Alice B. M. Vadrot et al. (cid:129) 173

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Figure 1
COVID-19 Impact on Work

The questionnaire was designed around three topics: backgrounds of
participants and their involvement in the BBNJ process, effects of COVID-19
measures on their BBNJ-related work and communication with other actors,
and the perceived effects of COVID-19 on the BBNJ negotiations themselves
and the suitability of online arrangements. In total, the questionnaire consisted
of twenty-three (open and closed) questions, allowing for cross-sectoral com-
parisons while providing the necessary space for individual suggestions and
explanations. The survey used the form framework for online survey design
(Arslan et al. 2020).

Results: The Impact of COVID-19 on BBNJ Negotiations

Like many people around the globe, BBNJ actors experienced restrictions in their
working practices. Owing to the closure of schools and other caregiver services,
parents had to work remotely while home-schooling their children. When asked
how COVID-19 impacted their work, many respondents—state actors more than
nonstate actors—indicated a rather negative impact, as displayed in Figure 1, but
a signiﬁcant number of people experienced no impact at all.

Kingdom, and Vatican City (Holy See). Full list of countries of nonstate respondents: Albania,
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Fiji, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,
Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Samoa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom, and the United States of America.

174 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

Respondents were asked about the kinds of BBNJ-related activities they
pursued. State representatives reported that they were reviewing sections of the
latest draft, informing themselves by talking to researchers, or catching up on
scientiﬁc publications. Nonstate respondents declared that they produced videos
or podcasts, trying to strengthen public outreach on BBNJ issues. Both groups
highlighted that they were using the additional time to engage with the draft text
and participate in or organize BBNJ webinars.

Changing Communication Patterns and the Use of Online Tools

Despite the challenges that both state and nonstate actors were facing during the
ﬁrst phase of the national lockdowns, they continued communicating with other
actors—replacing face-to-face meetings with other communication tools. Figure 2
shows that while e-mail has remained the most frequently used tool, the use of
virtual meetings and social media has seen a signiﬁcant increase. Roughly half of
the respondents even reported that virtual meetings had become “an ofﬁcial
channel of communication.” Yet we noted one important difference between

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Figure 2
Changes in Communication Tools from the Perspective of State and Nonstate Actors

Alice B. M. Vadrot et al. (cid:129) 175

state and nonstate actors. While the latter almost completely replaced face-to-face
communication with virtual meetings, government respondents—at least at the
time when this survey was conducted—did not intensively use virtual meeting
tools; instead, they relied on phone calls and messenger apps—a fact that may
well have changed in the meantime.

These differences point to a more general trend, namely, that state actors—
compared with nonstate actors, most notably IGOs—are less willing and able to
quickly adapt to online tools and engage in new forms of digital diplomacy
(Bjola and Zaiotti 2020; Owen 2015).

One side effect of the different modes of adjustment during national lock-
downs is a change in communication patterns. We asked our sample respondents
to assess whether communication with other actors had increased, decreased, or
remained the same. Although the general intensity of communication with others
had not changed for most respondents, our data indicate signiﬁcant differences
between state and nonstate actors. While nonstate respondents reported an overall
decrease in communication with state representatives, communication among
state representatives remained the same. In other words, the lockdowns apparently
did not affect communication between governments but made it harder for non-
state actors to engage with government representatives. When asked if online com-
munication tools could replace personal meetings, 87 percent of respondents
indicated that they could “partly” replace personal meetings.

Thus respondents share the sense that online communication may help main-
tain dialogue with other actors—especially if there are no other means to do so—but
this cannot fully replace face-to-face meetings that, for instance, take place between
working group sessions or plenaries. There, various actors come together to infor-
mally deliberate about different treaty text options and speciﬁc compromises.

In other words, the opportunity to reach out to other actors within the frame-
work of an intergovernmental conference is perceived as a valuable practice of
multilateral diplomacy and a key aspect of moving treaty text forward. Scholars have
indeed noted that communication is a source of power in international politics
beneﬁting both state and nonstate actors; nonstate actors use physical negotiations
to meet state representatives and forward their agendas (Marlin-Bennett 2013),
while state actors also use them to negotiate behind closed doors.

As described, state and nonstate actors became enrolled in two initiatives to
keep the discussion going: the High Seas Treaty Dialogues and BBNJ interses-
sional work. Yet, at the time when this survey was conducted (May 4–26), the
dialogues had just been launched, and the intersessional work had not yet been
announced. Thus, while some of our respondents could draw on their experi-
ences with their ﬁrst online encounters with other delegates, the use of online
tools was far from being “normal” practice.

When asked if the postponement of IGC 4 would affect the overall BBNJ
Treaty, our respondents—including both state and nonstate actors—agreed that
it would have an impact, with many nonstate actors assuming that the outcome
would be substantially different (Figure 3).

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176 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

Figure 3
COVID-19 Impact on BBNJ Outcome

To explore the underlying reasons for this opinion, we asked our sample
respondents a set of questions regarding the feasibility of online negotiations
and the opportunities and challenges that these would entail.

Toward a Better BBNJ Treaty Through Intersessional Online Dialogue

Despite skepticism regarding the replacement of on-site negotiations with online
meetings, respondents stressed that the use of such meetings for intersessional
work might beneﬁt the overall BBNJ process. Governments were expected to
conclude the BBNJ Treaty at IGC 4, but the treaty text was far from ready, and
important points of divergence still needed to be discussed.

For these reasons, online meetings where delegates could discuss central,
unresolved BBNJ Treaty issues were perceived as important initiatives. Respon-
dents hoped that work on the text could facilitate regional and interregional dis-
cussions, within-coalition coordination, and interaction between various
stakeholders. This would lead to the identiﬁcation of points where consensus
might be achieved, allow state parties to propose amendments to the language,
and cluster priority proposals and provisions.

These survey responses indicate that online tools may be beneﬁcial because
they increase opportunities for exchanges of views on treaty text, thus allowing state
actors to dive deeper into certain issues and expanding scientiﬁc input. Yet respon-
dents also mentioned that some online tools were more suitable than others.
Website-based (rather than video conference–based) moderated discussions,

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Alice B. M. Vadrot et al. (cid:129) 177

as currently used by the UN Division for the Oceans and the Law of the Sea
(UNDOALOS) for the BBNJ intersessional work, were seen as valuable to work
on treaty text and develop bridge-building solutions. Respondents also stressed
the importance of informal video conference–based sessions to provide room
for negotiation, consultation, and small working groups in order to develop
joint proposals.

Participation and Inclusiveness

The use of MS teams and Webex to continue informal dialogue among state and
nonstate actors has several implications for participation in such dialogues and
the inclusiveness of such virtual sites. Our results suggest that the effects of online
tools on participation and inclusiveness appear to determine how actors perceive
the suitability of virtual arrangements to continue formal negotiations of any
sort online (Bernauer and Gampfer 2013). When asked whether online negoti-
ations made the BBNJ process more inclusive, state actors and nonstate actors
responded quite differently (see Figure 4). State respondents—who tended to
answer no—argued that the process was “already quite” or “highly” inclusive
(“Who is excluded at the moment? Observers or speciﬁc curious individuals?
That’s like saying the sports stadium should be bigger for more spectators” [state
respondent]).

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Figure 4
Inclusiveness of Online Negotiations

178 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

Nonstate respondents drew a different picture, pointing to the challenges
of physically attending IGCs. Some mentioned that attending online negotia-
tions may be cheaper and less time consuming: “more people will be able to
attend full time,” “it should allow more states to participate,” and “more
observers could follow the negotiations.” They also pointed to groups that might
beneﬁt, including delegations from developing countries, local and Indigenous
peoples, and marginalized communities with limited resources.

Yet nonstate respondents also pointed out that online arrangements might
lead to less inclusiveness because “smaller or less powerful voices will not be
heard, including member states and civil society representatives” (nonstate
respondent). Indeed, developing countries might not fulﬁll technical require-
ments to join the negotiations: “This would inevitably ‘leave people behind.’
Not all countries have the same access to technology. This would greatly hinder
equity amongst actors” (nonstate respondent). Or else, translation services might
not be available, thus excluding certain groups. Additionally, time zone differ-
ences were mentioned as a factor of exclusion, most notably regarding the par-
ticipation of actors from Oceania—a problem that occurred in the case of the
High Seas Treaty Dialogues taking place from 1 PM (Central European Time),
which is 2 AM Australian time.

Leadership and Legitimacy

Respondents also alluded to the key problems of leadership and legitimacy
regarding the practical conduct and outcome of online negotiations. One state
respondent mentioned that lack of “UN ofﬁcial pressure” could affect the partic-
ipation of government representatives in online events such as the High Seas
Treaty Dialogues and pointed to the need for a more formalized and UN-driven
process. In general, respondents ascribed UNDOALOS a signiﬁcant role, namely,
maintaining links with delegations and preparing for the resumption of
negotiations—a role that UNDOALOS has assumed since the launch of interses-
sional work. Multilateral negotiations inherently depend on a chair who orches-
trates the discussion among delegates, collects the statements made, and
translates the different preferences and proposed amendments into new negoti-
ation text (Kamau et al. 2018). How leadership in the online setting might look
is not yet clear and depends on the digital arrangement in question.

Furthermore, legitimacy of online negotiations is contested, especially as
regards the delivery of a new treaty draft for IGC 4: “Ambiguous interpretation
and denial of the process would be invoked after the negotiations,” even if these
had made signiﬁcant progress (state respondent). Thus the value of informal
talks seems, to some extent, to depend on the saliency of the topic. Respondents
argued that they could discuss practical, organizational, or technical issues more
easily online, whereas (potentially controversial) political discussions and
amendments to contested parts of the treaty text needed the physical presence

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of negotiators in the room and a chair to manage the process and build trust
(Blavoukos and Bourantonis 2011).

Impact of Temporal and Spatial Scales on Trust

The different temporal and spatial scales of online negotiation were mentioned
as a central issue by almost all sample respondents. In particular, time zone
differences were seen as problematic for video conference–based online tools
that try to mirror negotiation dynamics, such as Webex (used for the High Seas
Treaty Dialogues). Responses to our survey indicate that delegates meeting syn-
chronically online (e.g., video conferences) is perceived to disrupt the central
characteristic of negotiations on-site, where all actors share the same sense of
time and space, gradually developing a shared sense of negotiation dynamics.
Many respondents underlined the role of informal talks (“quiet chats”) over
coffee or in parallel to formal negotiations, which serve to build trust and
consensus.

State respondents particularly underscored that online negotiations would
have a tremendous effect on consensus building and trust. Without the oppor-
tunity to meet in-person, “you cannot interact the same way,” “inﬂuence,”
“develop understanding,” “overcome some barriers,” and “reach ﬁnal deals”
(state respondents). Thus state respondents identify “in-person negotiation,”
“bilateral discussions,” “informal exchanges,” or “informal interactions in
margins” as “vital” for progress. The public pressure that is exerted when nego-
tiators meet in the same room incites immediate responses and is a powerful
driving force toward compromise. In contrast, online interaction results in less
immediacy: it is just too “easy to hide when digital” meetings tend to progress
much more slowly, and to ignore attendees who do not speak up due to lack of
trust. Changing temporal and spatial scales tend to disrupt trust relations and
break with the “pecking order” formed in diplomatic settings (Pouliot 2011).

Discussion: The Future of Digital Diplomacy and the Study Thereof

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted both environmental diplomacy and
ﬁeld research using negotiation sites to study multilateral agreement making.
Instead of suspending ongoing BBNJ negotiations, the worldwide national
lockdowns have given rise to new forms of communicating and bargaining,
including different types of informal online interaction, such as the High Seas
Treaty Dialogues and the BBNJ intersessional work. Our research team tried to
keep track of BBNJ activities and explored emerging issues related to the use of
online tools by conducting a survey. While there seems to be agreement among
respondents that online activities cannot replace on-site decision-making, they do
constitute a new practice in multilateral agreement making. This new object of
study, however, requires expanding our research questions and methodologies

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180 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

far beyond a survey study and clarifying the ontology and epistemology of virtual
sites in global environmental agreement making.

Emerging Issues for GEP Research on Negotiation Sites
Our ﬁndings reveal that different types of actors perceive online dialogue and
its potential for future diplomatic practice in different ways. Nonstate actors
pointed to its ability to foster participation, especially of those who cannot afford
to attend events. In contrast, state actors argued that digital practice may disrupt
relations of trust and coalition building, which are deemed crucial. Thus they still
view physical negotiation sites as “more inclusive” because they provide “room”
for informal exchange—perceived as a central element of diplomatic practice—
and as “more legitimate” because there are currently no rules or procedures in
place for virtual multilateral decision-making.

The lack of tacit knowledge on the conduct of multilateralism online is a
phenomenon that goes beyond the BBNJ process and embraces the entire GEP
ﬁeld. Several meetings were postponed, including Conference of Parties (COP)
26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) and COP 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity. While the
COPs that many scholars use for data collection and as study sites could not
be replaced by virtual meetings, smaller settings, such as the BBNJ negotiations
and the UNFCCC Adaptation Committee, could advance their mandated work
plans in a virtual setting. Nevertheless, “without the in-person convening events
that have traditionally driven global environmental decision making, it is much
more difﬁcult to follow what’s going on in multilateral environmental agree-
ments” (Wagner and Allan 2020). Access may be restricted, and if access to those
sites is granted, a lack of methodological apparatus challenges data collection
and participant observation. However, GEP scholars may have to turn their
attention to several emerging issues, including the aforementioned diverging
perceptions between state and nonstate actors on the usefulness of digital sites.
Our results conﬁrm many well-studied phenomena in GEP that apply to
digital space, such as the centrality of nongovernmental actors (Betsill and Corell
2008), with the High Seas Alliance launching an online dialogue shortly after the
start of the national lockdowns; the important role of international bureaucracies
(Biermann and Siebenhüner 2009), with UNDOALOS and the president, Rena
Lee, setting up an online room to work on the draft treaty, hinting that results
might be used for a new treaty text; and issues of inclusiveness and representa-
tion, including legal and technical conditions to access online fora and be rep-
resented on virtual negotiation sites, concerning most notably civil society actors
and the Global South (Fisher and Green 2004).

At the same time, our study anticipates new issues, such as leadership and
the legitimacy of digital decision-making processes, the role of informal online
dialogues, and emerging forms of power and inﬂuence. What are the spatial and
temporal speciﬁcities of online tools, and how do they change interactions

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Alice B. M. Vadrot et al. (cid:129) 181

between actors, including coalition building and relations of trust? (Cyber)
security, for instance, may be put forward as a reason not to engage in such
processes. But what do those who participate gain, and why would most actors
invest in these online facilities, if little were at stake?

Toward a New Ontology and Epistemology for Digital Ethnographies of
Online Negotiations

Suiseeya and Zanotti (2019) describe how multilateral negotiation sites have
expanded into the virtual realm and are used by actors to inﬂuence formal pro-
cedures. Yet digital ethnographies capturing these emerging forms of inﬂuence—
through social media, for instance—were not designed for the purpose of
studying online intersessional dialogue during COVID-19 and cannot easily be
applied to situations where the virtual is the “new normal.” Thus we need to
expand the ontology and epistemology of online practice if we wish to study
online negotiations by means of digital ethnographies.

To do so, we ﬁrst need to acknowledge that ongoing diplomatic practice in
“digital space” is situated somewhere between continuity and change—it is not
detached from past and future treaty-making practice. Most participants in the
High Seas Treaty Dialogues and the BBNJ intersessional work gained access
because they were registered for IGC 4, and many had—as our sample suggests—
followed the BBNJ process since the ﬁrst IGC. When asked about the feasibility
of digital negotiations, they had the physical site at UN headquarters in mind,
including the rules and procedures for treaty text.

Thus there seems to be a shared appreciation among participants of what
“normal negotiation practice” is. This shared collective “background knowledge”
on the structural conditions for negotiating treaty text, the kind of practices that
are considered meaningful, the sense of where one actor stands in relation to
others, and the degree of success of strategies to inﬂuence the negotiation’s
outcome have developed over time and through repetition (Adler and Pouliot
2011). However, some BBNJ practitioners are already performing on virtual sites
and developing a collective sense of how to act meaningfully online. Learning a
shared practice is, at the same time, enacting it (Barnes 2000, 33).

These insights from practice theory show that online dialogues already
carry meaning because they are built on “old” practices, while enacting new ones.
It remains to be seen whether, and how, digital practices will transform the
ability of actors to shape treaty provisions and explore new avenues for interacting
with, and inﬂuencing, other actors. Online tools may shape how different actors,
including state and nonstate actors, dominant and marginalized groups, exercise
inﬂuence and in turn also force GEP scholars to rethink the methodologies avail-
able to study how digital practices represent or contest the social and political
order within emerging virtual spaces.

Digital ethnography is well placed to investigate some of these dynamics
(Boellstorff et al. 2012; Pink et al. 2016). Digital ethnography is a “way of doing

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182 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

ethnography that is part of and participates in a digital-material-sensory environ-
ment rather than simply ethnography about the digital” (Pink 2014, 420, empha-
sis original). GEP scholarship still needs to explore how to apply digital
ethnography to studying virtual negotiation sites, to ﬁnding ways to access them,
and to making sense of what we observe at these “virtual ﬁelds.” Approaches in-
spired by science and technology studies (STS), for instance, treat media technol-
ogies and the internet as sociomaterial complexes (Gillespie et al. 2014), forms
of “social shaping” (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985), and ﬁeld sites in their
respect (Hine 2017). This “offers a rationale for conducting ethnographic studies
as a means to ﬁnd out exactly what that technology becomes in each speciﬁc
context of use” (Hine 2017, 23). In digital contexts, deﬁning a ﬁeld’s spatial
and temporal dimensions “is equivalent to drawing its boundaries” (Tunçalp
and Lê 2014, 60); getting “access” to the ﬁeld is “being able to capture interac-
tions or behaviours of interest” (Beaulieu 2017, 34); and being in the ﬁeld is
reframed in terms of “experiential rather than physical displacement” (Hine
2000, 45). Digital ethnographers can study a ﬁeld that is purely online (a single
online site or several) or both online and ofﬂine, and observe real-time social
phenomena and/or recorded social phenomena (Tunçalp and Lê 2014, 65).
Finally, digital ethnographers must consider their participation level in the ﬁeld
and whether they disclose their identity and presence (Tunçalp and Lê 2014, 65),
for digital ethnographers can easily lurk in the background compared to tradi-
tional ethnographers (Hine 2000, 48).

Even when it is applied to the context of online negotiations, digital
ethnography should study both online and ofﬂine dynamics, most notably
because the rules and procedures guiding access, (inter)action, and the disclosure
of one’s identity mirror those of physical negotiation sites and the rules and
procedures of the UN adopted by nation-states. Online-room actors are also
registered at the physical IGC site, represent speciﬁc interests, and enter into
alliances with their habitual partners.

Yet different online arrangements introduce different dynamics, especially
in relation to the temporal and spatial dimensions. While immediacy is—at least
virtually—inherent to the High Seas Treaty Dialogues at the expense of inclusive-
ness, the BBNJ intersessional work disrupts immediate interaction among actors;
however, it does provide a forum where all participants have enough time and
space to contribute to text development. Methodological tools borrowed from
digital ethnography have the potential to elucidate important future research
questions in this regard. These include how actors use speciﬁc digital infrastruc-
tures to shape treaty text; how the virtual site increases or decreases the visibility
of certain actors; and how we estimate their signiﬁcance in shaping the negotia-
tion outcome, the strategies they employ, and the alliances they form. How and
with what effect do actors adapt their negotiation techniques and strategies to the
online setting, and what are implications for the performance and the study of
power, authority, and interest? Last but not least, what are the “material geogra-
phies” and watching “global audiences” of the virtual sites, and what does the

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Alice B. M. Vadrot et al. (cid:129) 183

online setting imply for the performance of protest and dissent “on-stage” that
scholars consider central elements and critical driving forces of global environ-
mental negotiations (Craggs and Mahony 2014; Death 2011, 7)? Many of these
questions may become relevant for GEP scholars in the future, including in the
context of the disruptive effects of COVID-19 on environmental diplomacy and
multilateral negotiations.

Alice B. M. Vadrot is an associate professor for international relations and the
environment in the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna.
She is the principal investigator of the European Research Council-funded pro-
ject MARIPOLDATA (https://www.maripoldata.eu/), which combines ethnogra-
phy, bibliometrics, and oral history to study the role of science and knowledge in
marine biodiversity negotiations. She has published in Global Environmental Pol-
itics, Environmental Science and Policy, Critical Policy Studies, Marine Policy, and
Frontiers in Marine Science. Her book The Politics of Knowledge and Global Biodiver-
sity (2014) examines the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Arne Langlet is a PhD student in the ERC project MARIPOLDATA. He completed
the joint master’s degree in international relations at Humboldt University
Berlin, Freie University Berlin, and the University Potsdam in 2019. His focus
lies on international and European environmental policy, the political econo-
my of environmental and climate policy, and the study of international insti-
tutions and regimes. Methodologically, he is interested in surveys, quantitative
methods, and the application of network and system analysis methods to in-
ternational politics.

Ina Tessnow-von Wysocki is a PhD student in the ERC project MARIPOLDATA,
where she studies science–policy interfaces for ocean protection within the
United Nations negotiations on the conservation and sustainable use of marine
biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction. With her academic
background in international relations and professional experience in climate
and foreign policy with the German development agency GIZ, and NGOs in
several countries, she specializes in international cooperation on environmental
issues. She has published on treaty design for a potential plastics treaty and on
the BBNJ negotiations in Environmental Science and Policy and Frontiers in Marine
Science.

Petro Tolochko is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Sci-
ence and the ERC project MARIPOLDATA. He is currently working on biblio-
metric analysis of the marine biodiversity scientiﬁc ﬁeld, where he applies
computational methods to understand the production of scientiﬁc knowledge
in the ﬁeld. He is interested in statistical modeling, text-as-data methodology,
and social network analysis. Together with Alice Vadrot, he has published

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184 (cid:129) Marine Biodiversity Negotiations During COVID-19

“The Usual Suspects? Distribution of Collaboration Capital in Marine Biodiver-
sity Research” in Marine Policy 124, 2021.

Emmanuelle Brogat is the research administrator of the ERC project MARIPOL-
DATA, providing administrative, ﬁnance, and legal services involved in the pro-
ject life cycle and supporting research and communication activities. She has
held different positions at the science interface, supported various international
projects and programs in research and academia, and completed a master’s in
European and international studies at the University Aix-Marseille. Her interests
focus on research management, research and innovation policies, and sustain-
able development research.

Silvia C. Ruiz-Rodríguez is a master’s student in the Department of Political Sci-
ence at the University of Vienna, with emphasis on international development
and state activity, analysis of policies, and governance. She is a student assistant
in the ERC Project MARIPOLDATA, where she focuses on diplomacy, digital
ethnography, and knowledge struggles in the current BBNJ negotiations. She ob-
tained a bachelor’s degree in law from the Metropolitan University in Caracas,
Venezuela, where she graduated with honors.

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