Studying Global Environmental Meetings

L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

Introduction

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

•
Lisa M. Campbell, Catherine Corson, Noella J. Gray,
Kenneth I. MacDonald, and J. Peter Brosius*

The papers in this issue of Global Environmental Politics result from a research in-
novation we call collaborative event ethnography (CEE),1 applied at the 2010
Tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Convention on Biological Di-
versity (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 na-
ture of meetings as ªeld sites and the challenges they pose for ethnographic re-
searchers.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

* This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation (awards 1027194 and
1027201). We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and
suggestions. Collaborative event ethnography relies on collaboration in coordinating ªeldwork,
collecting and analyzing data, and thinking through meaning. This article reºects the efforts of
the larger team working on site in Nagoya. The CBD COP10 CEE team is J. Peter Brosius, Lisa M.
Campbell, Noella J. Gray, Kenneth I. MacDonald, Maggie Bourque, Catherine Corson, Juan Luis
Dammert B., Eial Dujovny, Shannon M. Hagerman, Sarah Hitchner, Shannon Greenberg,
Rebecca Gruby, Edward M. Maclin, Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya, Deborah Scott, Daniel Suarez,
and Rebecca Witter.

1. Brosius and Campbell 2010.
2. Erickson and Stull 1998; Gusterson 1997; Low et al. 2005; Mosse 2004.

Global Environmental Politics 14:3, August 2014, doi:10.1162/GLEP_e_00236
© 2014 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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2 •

Studying Global Environmental Meetings

dynamic role of individuals, groups, and objects, situated in networks, in shap-
ing the ideological orientation of global biodiversity conservation; 2) to docu-
ment 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 under-
stand how ideas about conservation travel and with what consequences. We
shared theoretical interests in the politics of knowledge (or “translation”), poli-
tics of scale, and politics of performance, and we used these to guide our study
at COP10. Overall, our aim was to improve understanding of new spatial and
institutional relations of conservation, drawing on theoretically informed and
empirically substantiated ethnographic research. In this issue, we familiarize
readers with CEE and the insights it provides into the politics of global
biodiversity conservation at the CBD, and into global environmental gover-
nance more generally.

Global environmental governance (GEG) scholarship has its roots in po-
litical science, particularly the subªelds of international environmental politics,
comparative politics, and political economy. Much contemporary thinking
about GEG—regarding regimes, science, nonstate actors, advocacy networks,
global relations of production and consumption—stems from these ªelds.3
However, scholars in ªelds such as geography and anthropology, long interested
in environmental policy and practice in particular places, have increasingly di-
rected their attention “up” and “out,”4 recognizing that lines demarcating local
places, processes, and outcomes, if they ever existed, are increasingly blurred.
Scholars now seek to link the politics of conservation in localized ªeld sites “to
the politics of decision-making that shape the ideological and practical orienta-
tion of institutions for global environment governance.”5 It was our interest in
making such links that led us to experiment with CEE, and the underlying the-
ory and methods reºect those common to our disciplines. Although we relate
our work to GEG as discussed in political science, we do so to facilitate an effec-
tive dialogue across disciplines rather than to displace any particular under-
standings developed in disciplines other than our own. Just as our work has
been enhanced by reading beyond our own disciplines, we hope the same will
be true for scholars in other ªelds.

In this introduction, we describe our interests in global environmental
meetings as sites where the politics of global biodiversity conservation can be
observed and as points of entry or windows into broader GEG networks. We
also specify the types of politics we attend to when observing such meetings.
its COP, challenges that meetings pose for
We then describe the CBD,

3. O’Neill et al. 2013.
4. Marcus 1995; Nader 1972.
5. Brosius and Campbell 2010, 247.

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L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

• 3

ethnographic researchers, how CEE responds to these challenges generally, and
what we did at COP10 speciªcally. Following a summary of the contributed arti-
cles, we conclude by reºecting on the evolution of CEE over time.

Studying Meetings to Understand Conservation

Global environmental governance is deªned by uncertainty and complexity,
multi-scalar linkages across ecologies and policies, horizontal linkages across is-
sue areas, and rapidly evolving problems and institutional initiatives.6 It is con-
stituted by networks of actors and objects across time and space. Actors include
governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, and civil
society, working at and among local, national, regional, and international lev-
els, often defying easy categorization as one kind of actor (working at one level)
or another. Governance is comprised of “formal and informal bundles of rules,
roles, and relationships”7 that, distributed as they are within networks, can be
difªcult to “see.” Global environmental meetings are one node in these net-
works, networks constituting ªelds of governance that, we argue, can be studied
ethnographically (Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald, this issue).

Although some GEG scholars are skeptical about the importance of global
meetings,8 particularly in terms of tangible outcomes, others have recognized
their more indirect impacts. Bernstein, for example, traces how, beginning with
the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, the subsequent decadal
UN meetings solidiªed liberal environmentalism as the dominant global para-
digm.9 Haas discusses more generally how conferences facilitate shifts in envi-
ronmental policy and practice, by setting agendas, popularizing issues, gen-
erating new information, providing alerts, galvanizing administrative reform,
adopting new norms, and including new actors.10 Whether direct or indirect,
outcomes have been a focus in the literature. However, we are equally interested
in the processes through which outcomes are achieved and the insights these
provide into how GEG is accomplished. As discussed in Corson et al. (this is-
sue), ethnography is well suited to studying policy-making practices and associ-
ated social relations.

Global environmental meetings are moments when diverse actors, nor-
mally dispersed in time and space, come together to produce—through deci-
sions, interpersonal relationships, information exchange, etc.—environmental
governance. Meetings become spectacles, orchestrated to enact political strate-
gies in front of an audience, 11 and reafªrm the legitimacy of global

6. O’Neill et al. 2013.
7. Slaughter et al. 1998.
8. Barnett and Finemore 1999; Dimitrov 2005; Fomerand 1996.
9. Bernstein 2001.
10. Haas 2002.
11. Death 2011; Hajer 2005; Little 1995; MacDonald 2010; Suarez and Corson 2013.

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4 •

Studying Global Environmental Meetings

environmental agreements and organizations.12 Even though formal decisions
are taken by governments, the high-proªle, quasi-public nature of meetings
makes them places that nonstate actors—nongovernmental and civil society or-
ganizations but also businesses—direct their efforts to inºuence, reinforce, or
contest such decisions. Thus, meetings are an “active political space.”13 In this
space, researchers can observe the processes that produce (or fail to produce)
outcomes, as well as the particular politics (e.g., of knowledge, scale, or perfor-
mance, see below) employed in such processes.

Global environmental meetings occur at discrete moments and have their
own outcomes and processes that warrant attention. They are also nodes in a
broader network of global conservation governance and connected via actors
that move through and across space and time via references to past decisions,
other conventions, or future meetings. Indeed, our choice to study CBD COP10
was informed by our ªrst CEE of the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN)
Fourth World Conservation Congress (WCC, 2008), where IUCN members ne-
gotiated resolution texts with reference to past and future CBD COP decisions.
Our study of COP10, in turn, led us to attend the UN Conference on Sustain-
able Development (Rio(cid:2)20, 2012). Although the articles in this special issue fo-
cus mostly on COP10, the collection is part of an overall project to make con-
nections among different sites of conservation governance.

Theorizing Conservation Governance

Having described global environmental meetings as active political spaces, we
turn to what we mean by politics. We see contests over what conservation is,
who is responsible for it, and how it should be implemented as enacted through
three kinds of politics: the politics of knowledge (translation), scale, and perfor-
mance. Scholars in science and technology studies (STS), geography, anthropol-
ogy, and political science have used these politics to better understand environ-
mental governance. Their combination is powerful for understanding the
politics of conservation policy-making at global environmental meetings, as we
highlight below using previously published research resulting from our CEEs at
the WCC, COP10, and Rio(cid:2)20.

The politics of knowledge is concerned with the role of scientiªc exper-
tise and other ways of knowing in resolving controversy and forming public pol-
icy.14 Scientiªc knowledge embodies political relationships in myriad ways
while contributing to their reconªguration, a process known as coproduction.15
Complex socio-ecological phenomena like biodiversity loss can sustain a num-
ber of competing explanations, each with different implications for policy ac-
tion. For example, is the “problem” of protected areas one of not enough

12. Harper 1998; Lewis 2003; MacDonald and Corson 2012.
13. MacDonald and Corson 2012, 167.
14. Jasanoff 1992, 1996; Miller 2001, 2007.
15. Jasanoff 2004.

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L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

• 5

coverage or of ineffective management? Deciding among competing explana-
tions involves contesting both legitimacy and credibility of supporting argu-
ments, with implications for further policy-making, management, and resource
allocation.

These types of epistemic contests reºect what STS scholars name the poli-
tics of translation. In STS, translation is the key process in assembling actor
networks—including those that constitute global conservation governance—
through which scientiªc and other knowledge claims are translated into mecha-
nisms of governance.16 Translation requires work by key actors interested in
biodiversity to produce and circulate relevant knowledge and to mobilize sup-
port for particular understandings of issues, associated actors, and necessary ac-
tions. Bringing that knowledge to a meeting like COP10 and engaging with al-
ternative knowledge requires that actors strategize their associations in various
ways: they persuade, negotiate, contest, and defend. Tracing that engagement
ethnographically allows us to document not just the “outcomes” of translation,
but also the associations and assumptions that inform conservation policy.

The politics of knowledge has been particularly relevant in biodiversity
conservation, a ªeld long dominated by Western science, scientists, and organi-
zations.17 The relevance has only increased as the scope of biodiversity conserva-
tion been “scaled up” over the last four decades. As the importance of “global”
institutions like the CBD is reinforced, so are particular types of knowledge;
technologies of visualization (e.g., remote sensing) make global resources (e.g.,
ecoregions, networks of protected areas) legible.18 They can simultaneously ren-
der the local invisible, a problem reºected in scientiªc framings of protected ar-
eas at COP10.19 For conservation, the politics of translation merge in tandem
with the politics of scale.

In studying global conservation institutions, we acknowledge the politics
of delineating scales. The literature on the social construction of scale rejects any
claims to scale as ontologically given, focusing instead on how scales are repre-
sented and with what effects.20 This leads us to ask how different actors use scale
and scalar framings to pursue particular agendas. How are “global,” “local,” and
“national” scales produced through these meetings? What are the implications
for how conservation problems are deªned and governance conceptualized? In-
stead of assuming scale as a given, we “empirically follow the work of localizing
and globalizing.”21 For example, Gruby and Campbell trace the means by which
Paciªc Small Island Developing States (SIDS) enacted a Paciªc region at COP10,
through coordinated verbal and visual messaging that elided differences among
islands, appointing point persons to speak for the region, and acting as a

16. Latour 2005.
17. McCormick 1989.
18. Brosius and Russell 2003; MacDonald 2013; Scott 1998.
19. Corson et al. forthcoming.
20. Marston 2010.
21. Latour 1996, 240.

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6 •

Studying Global Environmental Meetings

regional delegation. SIDS did so to better inºuence negotiations, but also to
claim their place in and attract funding associated with global marine conserva-
tion.22

We adopt a network metaphor for scale, resonant with both our under-
standing of GEG and of actor networks. A network approach allows a different
way of thinking about scale and scaled relationships—in which particular
places and actors may be seen as global and local, regional and national, rather
than being only one or the other.23 While drawing on the “ºattened topogra-
phy” of actor network theory,24 we acknowledge its failure to attend to differ-
ences among actors in networks, particularly in terms of power. Thus, our atten-
tion to scalar politics complements the analysis of the politics of knowledge.
Scalar politics illustrate “the importance of investigating power relations in scale
construction through the interactions of the politics of scale with the politics of
science.”25 At the WCC, Gray found that an increasing tendency among ocean
advocates to deªne conservation problems as global in scope shifted concern
away from local resource users and their knowledge of particular marine sys-
tems, towards science-based assessments of global oceans.26 Such processes of
scaling and rescaling are ultimately struggles for control over ideas, processes,
and resources. Scalar strategies are repeatedly invoked and performed across a
variety of venues within meetings, leading us to the politics of performance.

Work in policy studies has begun to highlight the dramaturgical aspects
of governance practices and the importance of empirical and analytic attention
to the politics of performance in the negotiation of governance institutions.27
This is guided by a growing awareness that “sustainable persuasion is often en-
acted”28 and that performance or enactment is always contextualized. A drama-
turgical perspective directs us to analyze how meeting sites are managed and
roles performed, in ways that are not only constitutive of the subject identity of
participants, but shape the legitimation of knowledge. What is said, how it can
be said, what it is possible to say, and what can be said with effect are all inºu-
enced by setting. That setting is in part dictated by the rules and norms of a par-
ticular institution, relating, for example, to who can address formal proceed-
ings, how nonparty delegates are recognized, and how past decisions and texts
are brought to bear on a particular debate.

But meetings are also spectacles, stages on which different actors perform
their policy preferences in front of an audience. Messages delivered at opening
ceremonies, visual displays and their prominence, the scheduling and location
of side events: much of this is orchestrated. Attention to performance highlights

22. Gruby and Campbell 2013.
23. Herod and Wright 2002.
24. Latour 2005.
25. Neumann 2009, 403.
26. Gray 2010.
27. Death 2011; Hajer 2005; Szerszynski et al. 2003.
28. Hajer 2005, 344.

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L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

• 7

how contextualized interaction produces social realties like understandings of
particular problems and the power relations brought into being in addressing
those problems.29 It also emphasizes that the setting and staging of meetings are
key to understanding their dynamics and outcomes. For example, staging was
important to the “business and biodiversity” theme at the WCC, in terms of
channeling like-minded actors together, promoting a shared understanding
of conservation problems and solutions, and minimizing dissent. This was ac-
complished by, among other things, directing participants to follow the busi-
ness and biodiversity “journey” and to self-identify by donning identiªcation
badges.30 Recognizing the CBD COP as a political space points to the impor-
tance of understanding meetings as social devices subject to orchestration
through which institutional and organizational ends can be achieved, legiti-
mized, and contested.

With this understanding of the politics of translation, scale, and perfor-
mance, and of how they interact, we turn now to focus on our work on the CBD
and its Tenth COP.

The Convention on Biological Diversity

The CBD COP is a critical node in the global biodiversity governance network. A
product of the 1992 UN Earth Summit, the CBD was established to promote the
conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, as well as the “fair and
equitable sharing” of genetic resources. With 194 parties, the CBD is one of the
major international conventions on the environment and the most comprehen-
sive on biodiversity. Its biennial meeting of the COP convenes all parties that
have ratiªed the treaty to review progress, identify priorities, establish work
plans, adopt protocols, and provide direction to the Global Environment
Facility (the CBD’s funding mechanism). COP decisions shape conservation in
member states via National Biodiversity Action Plans and Strategies, bio-
diversity targets, and various programs of work. The COP is important for what
it produces (e.g., the Aichi Biodiversity Targets), the opportunity it provides to
observe related processes, and as an entry point into the global biodiversity gov-
ernance network.

COP10 took place from October 18–29, 2010, hosted by the prefecture of
Aichi, Nagoya, Japan. Participants represented parties, NGOs, indigenous and
local communities (ILCs), businesses, and other groups (Table 1). Their relative
numbers reºect the CBD COP’s inclusive approach to nonstate actors:31 of
the 7,418 registered COP10 participants, only 2,251 were party delegates
(Table 1).32

The formal COP10 proceedings comprised the plenary; two main working

29. Hillgartner 2001.
30. MacDonald 2010.
31. Bäckstrand 2006.
32. Calculated using list of registered participants dated 10/28/2010.

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8 •

Studying Global Environmental Meetings

Table 1
Registered participants at CBD COP10

Group

Parties
NGO
Education/University
Local Authority
Business
Observers
UN
IGO
Parliamentarian
ILC
Non-Parties
Other

TOTAL

Attendees

2,251
1,937
806
728
486
401
241
235
175
132
22
4

7,418

groups in which delegations stated (and later negotiated) their positions on var-
ious decisions; thematic contact groups in which a subset of interested delegates
negotiated decision text for presentation back to working groups; and “friends
of the chair” (and even smaller “friends of the friends”) groups in which a sub-
set of interested delegates negotiated decision text for presentation back to con-
tact groups. The structure of the meetings ranged widely. Formally scheduled
plenary and working group meetings were attended by hundreds of delegates in
pre-designated rooms. Others were “scheduled as needed” contact group meet-
ings that were attended by 20–150 delegates, met once or multiple times for one
to twelve hours at a time, and sometimes relocated from one meeting the next.
Other groups of four to ªve delegates convened “of the moment, back of the
room” meetings, which often met during breaks in a contact group. With the ex-
ception of high-level, closed-door meetings (related to Access and Benªts
Sharing (ABS) and the ªnancial mechanism), COP sessions were open for ob-
servation by nonparty delegates, including members of our research team.

In addition to the formal COP10 proceedings, approximately 320 side
events were organized by NGOs, governments, research groups, intergovern-
mental organizations, and others to highlight results of research and initiatives,
sometimes with speciªc lobbying objectives. These were held during late morn-
ing, afternoon, and evening breaks in the formal proceedings, with approxi-
mately twenty events scheduled simultaneously. They attracted both party and
other delegates. Although scheduled in advance, side events changed frequently,
and new events were added daily. Tables ªlled with literature, pamphlets, and

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L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

• 9

Figure 1
Promotional Displays at COP10 (photos by CEE team members).

small promotional gifts, along with poster stands and other creative displays,
ªlled lobbies and lined corridors (Figure 1). Social gatherings also occurred in
the evenings at the convention center and offsite locations.

Both inside and outside the ofªcial spaces, various actors sought to
inºuence understandings of conservation and how it should be accomplished.
For ethnographers interested in process as much as outcome, all of these activi-
ties warrant attention. However, traditional ethnography has relied on immer-
sion in particular places with particular people, over extended periods of time,
in order to gather data that allows for “thick description”33 and theoretically in-
formed interpretation (Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald, this issue). Meet-
ings like COP10 thus pose challenges for the immersion of individual ethno-
graphic researchers, given the time-constrained and multi-sited characteristics of
events. CEE is our response to these challenges.

Collaborative Event Ethnography

CEE evolves as we apply lessons learned. Thus, we begin our description of our
work at COP10 with a summary of our approach to the WCC.

During our ªrst CEE at the WCC, our goal was to increase our understand-
ing of the event by using a team of researchers to overcome the limits of working
alone. Although we collaborated to consider the common theme of conserva-
tion and development tradeoffs,34 we did so while pursuing individual research
interests. We anticipated the primary beneªts of collaboration would be event
coverage, but we found other beneªts more compelling. As we exchanged obser-
vations, we developed a broader appreciation for the event and how conserva-
tion was being represented within it. We began to theorize our observations in

33. Geertz 1973.
34. Brosius and Campbell 2010.

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Studying Global Environmental Meetings

terms of the three types of politics we later adopted to frame our work at CBD
COP10. However, without a mechanism to support collaboration after the
WCC, and in the traditions of our sole author disciplines, our individual inter-
ests dominated analysis and writing, although some collaborative articles were
produced.35 We shared a general sense of having failed to fully capture the
power of CEE in our outputs. Thus, looking to COP10, our focus shifted from
the practical beneªts of collaboration (e.g., “more eyes”), to the ways that col-
laboration generates new insights (e.g., “more ideas”).

The practical and intellectual beneªts of collaborating are tightly coupled,
and the latter can only be realized through a supporting structure. Looking to
COP10 we wanted to be more purposeful in collaboration, but we also antici-
pated the difªculties of sustaining meaningful collaboration in a group of sev-
enteen researchers. Our supporting structure included three key features. First,
we explicitly adopted a shared understanding of politics (i.e., of translation,
scale, and performance) as our theoretical framework. As noted above, these
emerged from our work at the WCC, when several authors reºected on scalar
and knowledge politics independently in their articles, and where our discus-
sions of the politics of performance dominated our daily meetings. Second, we
developed a matrix covering topics selected from the COP agenda (e.g., ABS,
biodiversity and climate change, biofuels and biodiversity, etc.) and governance
themes (science, markets, and participation) that reºected both our interests
and ªndings at the WCC. For COP10, each researcher joined three topical and
one thematic subgroup, such that each topical subgroup had members from dif-
ferent thematic groups and vice versa. This resulted in eleven subgroups, eight
topical and three thematic, that directed our onsite work and made the
practicalities of collaborating in a large group more manageable. The ªnal fea-
ture to support collaboration was a weeklong writing retreat, held approxi-
mately seven months after COP10.

The work of the CEE team and subgroups began well in advance of
COP10, when we began to track intersessional activities and events, and to re-
search past decisions related to our topics. Although a COP is a temporal event
hosted in a particular place, the meeting extends beyond such boundaries. At
COP10, some agenda items had been debated for years; an ABS agreement, for
instance, has been in development since 2002, with nine related working group
or technical meetings held since COP9 in 2008. Marine biodiversity has been
on the agenda since 1995. More generally, the CBD’s Subsidiary Body on Sci-
entiªc, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) and other ad hoc com-
mittees, like the Working Group on the Review of Implementation of the Con-
vention (WGRI), meet to advance the interests of the CBD. Thus, for most
topics, there is an institutional history that can be traced in past decision and in-
formational texts.

Once the full

team was assembled, we used Internet conferencing

35. E.g., Maclin and Dammert Bello 2010; Paulson et al. 2012.

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L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

• 11

(webinars) to 1) introduce and populate the matrix; 2) explore and reªne com-
mon questions; 3) review CBD history; 4) discuss preliminary research on
intersessional meetings and past decisions; 5) develop data-gathering protocols;
and 6) discuss logistics at COP10. Many webinars were linked to a formal sylla-
bus that included assigned readings. As our CEE team was comprised of mem-
bers at various stages of their academic careers, we had explicit (if underdevel-
oped) mentoring goals, and these preparations allowed us to get to know one
another prior to our work at COP10. They also allowed us to discuss and ulti-
mately embrace our shared understanding of politics, the “scaffolding” neces-
sary to support successful ethnographic observation and analysis. They sup-
ported our research into past decisions, which allowed us to think about COP10
in relation to the CBD and, with the insight of WCC CEE alumni, to the gover-
nance network more generally. Finally, preparations allowed more seasoned re-
searchers—those with in-depth understanding of various topics, organizations,
actors, and other meetings—to share their insights.

At COP10, we met daily to discuss emerging ªndings, review data-
gathering protocols, and plan our schedule. We dispersed throughout the meet-
ing to cover events of interest, a logistical challenge heightened by the fact that
each researcher belonged to multiple groups and by constant changes to the
schedule. At events, researchers audio-recorded sessions (or took detailed notes
when recording was prohibited) and took photographs of presenters, setting,
and presentation slides. Written ªeld notes were also taken at formal and infor-
mal events, recording general observations and emphasizing those relevant to
our thematic and theoretical interests. For example, we noted the ways that sci-
ence (and scientists) and are invoked in debates (science theme); how particular
actor groups navigate access to decision makers (participation theme); and
where private sector actors are promoted or challenged as critical to conserva-
tion (markets theme). Similarly, we recorded (1) the ways “expertise” is
bounded and contested (politics of translation); (2) the scales at which people,
organizations, knowledge, environmental problems and solutions, are con-
structed, by whom, and with what effects (politics of scale); and (3) the work of
creating a set, delimiting access, and communicating the normative behavior
appropriate to that set (politics of performance). These observations were in-
formed by participant observation guides that identiªed the types of people,
metaphors, information, images, conºicts, and actions we might look for in re-
lation to our thematic and theoretical interests. Ethnography relies on the open-
ness of researchers to what they see, and in developing observation guides we
ran the danger of narrowing our vision. Nevertheless, we found guidelines use-
ful to researchers, particularly less experienced ones, faced with the complexity
of COP10; some guides were developed during the ªrst days of the COP
in response to researcher requests. Daily meetings allowed us to reconsider
our guides, and ensure that important, unexpected observations could be
incorporated.

During our work at the WCC, we invested heavily in arranging and

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conducting interviews with over one hundred participants. Although these were
valuable, interview coordination consumed much time; once in progress, inter-
views were often curtailed or rushed due to the continual activities of interview-
ees. In contrast, participant observation proved the critical research method for
us as a group. Key insights such as the institutional orchestration of session dis-
cussions, the appearance of coalitions of actors, and the performative aspects of
decision processes were all revealed most strikingly through our participation in
side events, workshops, and negotiations over proposed motions.36

Given this experience, and because ofªcial proceedings ªlled much of the
time available, at COP10 we prioritized participant observation. Although we
did conduct interviews at COP10, we focused on a small number of key individ-
uals who had long and broad-ranging experience with the CBD.

After COP10, we shared our notes, audio ªles, and photos to facilitate col-
laborative data analysis and writing. These are perhaps the most challenging
stages of collaboration, as we continue to bring together our insights and trans-
form what we refer to as our “dispersed consciousness” into a more collective
one.37 This transformation arises through our continual interaction. As we chal-
lenge each other’s observations and interpretations, we renegotiate our own un-
derstandings. Perhaps the clearest example of this occurred while nine authors
wrote a protected areas article. During initial discussions, group members who
were also following the markets theme presented an analysis that highlighted
the inºuence of market logic and private sector interests on emerging under-
standings of protected areas. However, others following the participation theme
provided an alternative view in which some indigenous groups sought to assert
their rights through protected areas and where market logic was absent. Thus, a
story that began as one of neoliberal governance (and dominance) became one
that highlighted multiple interpretations of protected areas and explored the
potential consequences of protected areas as “everyone’s solution.”38 Practically,
our weeklong writing retreat was critical to supporting collaboration; the debate
about the protected areas article took place in person, over the course of several
days. Not only did subgroups have the time and space to work together, but the
powerful group dynamic and personal relationships among the team were re-
vived and strengthened. Collaboration is, in the end, voluntary, and many of
the incentives for sustaining it are personal as much as professional.

The Contributed Articles

With the exception of the companion to this introduction by Corson, Camp-
bell, and MacDonald, the articles in this issue of GEP focus on CBD COP10, an-
alyzing its products, processes that produced them, and what such processes tell

36. Brosius and Campbell 2010.
37. Corson et al. forthcoming.
38. Corson et al. forthcoming.

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• 13

us about the politics of biodiversity conservation. Some of the articles link the
CBD work to other CEE projects and to the larger governance network. Here, we
offer brief summaries of the contributed articles and situate them within the
overall project.

In this introduction, our treatment of ethnography has been limited, as-
serting the relevance of ethnography to, and reviewing the practical challenges
of, studying global environmental meetings. Corson et al. further detail what
ethnography can reveal about global environmental meetings, and place our
methodological adaptation in a broader context of ethnography generally and
as it has been used to study policy-making processes. In doing so, the authors
trace how our continual reºection on our use of ethnography, and what ethnog-
raphy directed us to pay attention to at global environmental meetings, ulti-
mately led to our thinking about meetings as “ªeld conªguring events” in
global environmental governance. More so than the other authors in the issue,
Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald incorporate our CEE work at all three
events—WCC, CBD COP10, and Rio(cid:2)20—to make their argument.

The article by Campbell, Hagerman, and Gray draws on STS to reveal the
Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2020—a major outcome and one of the most
high-proªle agenda items of COP10—as coproduced, hybrid objects. Based on
long hours spent in a crowded room where the related contact group met,
Campbell, Hagerman, and Gray use delegate arguments, chair interventions,
observer reactions, and the mood and setting of the room to reveal the ways in
which the targets are embedded in and reºective of the processes that produced
them. Supplementing their observations of the contact group with those made
elsewhere at COP10, the authors illustrate how the targets reºect and reinforce
politics internal and external to the CBD. As part of the overall CEE project, the
article draws most directly on the politics of translation and illustrates links be-
tween formal and informal policy-making processes. It also explicitly connects
our work at the COP to the larger project on networks of GEG.

Gray, Gruby, and Campbell use the concepts of boundary object and scalar
narrative to contextualize the widespread enthusiasm at COP10 for increasing
coverage of marine protected areas (MPAs). Boundary objects are “both plastic
enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties em-
ploying them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.”39
As such, they allow for consensus and cooperation among actors with varying
interests. Using their observations during the marine contract group and at side
events devoted to the high seas and to Paciªc SIDS, the authors propose that
MPAs are a boundary object by illustrating how different scalar narratives of
global and local conservation lead to the promotion of MPAs, but that under-
standings of MPAs vary widely. They conclude by reºecting on the implications
of this for the MPA “consensus,” and how the CBD accommodates this. As part
of the overall CEE project, Gray et al. illustrate the interaction of the politics of

39. Star and Griesemer 1989, 387.

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14 •

Studying Global Environmental Meetings

translation and scale in policy-making, and highlight the diversity of actors en-
gaging in similar policy-making debates. The article is one of several products of
the “marine team,” one of two topical groups that have been active at all three
CEEs.40

Scott, Hitchner, Maclin, and Dammert B. track debates about biofuels at
COP10, and argue that the complex and context speciªc nature of biofuels
stalled efforts to translate biofuels into a governable object. Using negotiations
from the biofuels contact group and related side events, the authors trace at-
tempts by actors to ªx the identity of biofuels, by rendering political issues
“technical,” relying on formal text to stabilize contested identities, and restrict-
ing the sources of knowledge. Rather than a boundary object, Scott et al. see
biofuels as a “ªre object,”41 enacted differently in different sets of relations and
contexts, with ramiªcations for biofuel governance via the CBD. As part of the
overall project, Scott et al.’s attention to the role of past texts in disciplining and
directing debate illustrates the way “the meeting” overºows its boundaries. The
article also draws on Scott’s later research at the CBD Secretariat, and illustrates
how graduate student CEE team members linked their work at the CBD COP10
to their dissertation projects.

In the only sole-authored article, Kimberly R. Marion Suiseeya presents an
analysis of negotiations over the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Beneªts
Sharing (ABS) in relation to how, where, and by whom ideas of justice for Indig-
enous and Local Communities (ILCs) were articulated. Using a content analysis
of data collected during ABS negotiations, she unveils a justice discourse that
was limited in nature, scope, and participant engagement, despite the relatively
inclusive nature of the CBD and the centrality of justice concerns to its mandate.
She attributes her ªndings in part to the existence of a justice meta-norm, as evi-
denced through the emergence of shared meanings and prescriptive status of
justice instruments. Within the broader project, the article serves to highlight
the linkages between formal and informal negotiations and the role of past texts
in disciplining and directing debate. The article also demonstrates that coverage
is sometimes critical. To make an argument about the limited nature of the jus-
tice debate, i.e., to argue convincingly about absence, Marion Suiseeya analyzed
notes, photos, and handouts associated with 57 events (of varying lengths, and
a minimum of 2 hours each), many of which were attended by other team
members. Although in the next section we discuss the pitfalls of emphasizing
coverage in CEE, in this case CEE did provide “more eyes” that proved crucial.

Finally, two brief commentaries by Rosaleen Duffy and Bram Büscher re-
ºect on the contributed articles and the overall project. The pieces are comple-
mentary, with Büscher focusing on CEE as a method, both its strengths and lim-
itations, and Duffy situating CEE within studies of global environmental
governance more generally.

40. Campbell et al. 2013; Gray 2010; Gruby and Campbell 2013.
41. Law and Singleton 2005.

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• 15

Global Environmental Meetings and Global Environmental
Governance: CEE Moving Forward

CEE continues to evolve, in theory and practice. For example, practically, al-
though the matrix we employed at COP10 supported collaboration, we were
too ambitious. With researchers belonging to three or four subgroups, our work
at COP10 was frenetic, with little time to process notes or reºect while on site.
The multiple commitments of team members meant that not all subgroups es-
tablished momentum and some ultimately dissolved. Several of our team mem-
bers had strong instincts to maximize coverage, without enough reºection on
why we would do so. This approach has two risks: First, we succumb to an illu-
sion that we can cover everything, but even with a team of seventeen people cov-
ering select topics this is impossible. There were high-level negotiations that
nonstate delegates could not access, but also the sheer quantity of events and
the changing schedule meant that we missed some open-access events. Second,
once we prioritize and emphasize coverage, we are open to questions about
“what we missed,” questions that assume complete coverage enhances the ob-
jectivity and “truth” of our analysis. Ethnography accepts that observers are not
neutral, that observation is always contextualized. Theoretical rather than ran-
dom or comprehensive sampling is the norm. Thus, in prioritizing coverage for
coverage’s sake, we undermine our own arguments about what ethnography can
contribute to the study of these meetings. If mere coverage is the concern, then
the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, readily accessible for post-conference textual
analysis, might sufªce as a source of data.

Theoretically, our understanding of what we are studying—meetings
versus networks versus ªeld-conªguring events (Corson, Campbell, and Mac-
Donald, this issue)—is also shifting. If our ªrst CEE was focused on the meet-
ing itself, each successive CEE helps us to better situate meetings in wider pro-
cesses reºective and constitutive of the new spatial and institutional relations of
global conservation governance. Given these shifting interests, collaborative
event ethnography is in some ways a misleading title for our efforts. Or, rather, it
refers to the methodology and methods that direct our work at individual meet-
ings, while the overall research project extends beyond any one event, in several
ways.

First, as described above, we recognize that any one meeting is embedded
in an institutional history of past meetings, decisions, working groups, etc. We
work to contextualize what we see at a meeting like COP10 within that history.
Second, we are following “people, things, metaphors, and conºicts”42 from one
meeting site to another. In moving from the WCC, to CBD COP10, to Rio(cid:2)20,
we analyzed how key actors, both traditional and new to conservation, aligned
around market-based logic, and how others resisted it.43 Similarly, we traced the

42. Marcus 1995.
43. Corson et al. forthcoming; Corson and MacDonald 2012; Corson et al. 2013; Hagerman et al.

2012; MacDonald and Corson 2012; Suarez and Corson 2013.

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16 •

Studying Global Environmental Meetings

evolution of the marine agenda.44 Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald explore
both of these examples further. Third, our work as a team extends beyond CEEs,
to other international meetings relevant to researchers’ individual interests. In
addition to participating in all three CEEs, collaborator Noella Gray has at-
tended four international meetings focused on marine conservation. Collabora-
tor Deborah Scott attended CBD SBSTTA 18 and worked with the CBD Secretar-
iat to develop their position on synthetic biology. Team members share relevant
information gained through these individual projects. Thus, the life of the team
extends beyond any single iteration of CEE, and we have a growing network of
CEE-trained researchers who continue to collaborate, even as the group working
on successive meeting changes. Fourth, our understanding of what happens at
meetings is informed by our more traditional ªeldwork. Our research team
comprises social scientists who have been studying conservation in speciªc
places (e.g., Belize, Costa Rica, Madagascar, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Caribbean,
France, the Arctic, Micronesia, Laos), as debated in speciªc organizations
(IUCN, WWF, TNC, CI, USAID, various national government agencies), and as
tied to speciªc mechanisms (protected areas, hunting, ecotourism, endangered
species listing, forest management). These research experiences allow us to
better understand and contextualize what we see and hear at meetings like
COP10, and participating in the CEE informs our individual research. Although
CEE is a means to “study up,”45 CEE is not ultimately about studying meetings
(up) instead of the local (down), but studying both.46

Overall, studying meetings involves more than attending sessions and an-
alyzing the discursive content and intent of those sessions. It requires context-
ualizing that content within an analytic frame that better explains the constitu-
tion of the meeting as a political phenomenon designed in relation to the
ideological and material intent of its conveners. We argue that by adopting a
shared theoretical framework, attending multiple global environmental meet-
ings, paying attention to institutional history as reºected in previous decision
texts, and drawing on our understanding of conservation in practice in more tra-
ditional ªeld sites, we are developing an ethnographic understanding of and fa-
miliarity with meetings and meeting culture. This kind of understanding not
only helps us contextualize what happens at meetings, but practically assists
with things like access to “invitation only” events and interviews with key infor-
mants. These, in turn, enrich our ethnographic experiences of and insights into
the meeting. We suggest that our familiarity with the policy negotiations at stake
(their histories, the various interests groups involved, etc.) rivals that of more
traditional ethnographers who understand land tenure or household division
of labor in particular places. Furthermore, because our work occurs before and
after any particular event and remains connected to conservation practices in

44. Campbell et al. 2013; Gray 2010; Gruby and Campbell 2013.
45. Gusterson 1997; Nader 1972.
46. Robbins 2002.

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L.M. Campbell, C. Corson, N.J. Gray, K.I. MacDonald, and J.P. Brosius

• 17

particular places, we are able to appropriately contextualize any conclusions we
make about the signiªcance of a particular meeting. And this ability increases
with each successive CEE, or return to our traditional ªelds sites, both of which
extend our vision of the conservation governance network.

CEE is not without its challenges. Some of these are profound. Our team
struggles at times to reconcile different epistemological commitments that
inºuence our understandings of theory and data and the relations between the
two. Some challenges are systemic: although we are deeply committed to and
convinced of the utility of our collaborative endeavor, many of us feel con-
strained by our disciplines’ and departmental expectations about sole author-
ship and ownership of ideas. Some are discouraging: we have acknowledged a
troubling gender imbalance in our work and, in addition, participants fulªll
their obligations to the team with varying levels of completeness. Some chal-
lenges are mundane: data storage and sharing across a large group of researchers
at different institutions is challenging, and coordinating logistics can be tedious.
All these challenges are interconnected. We acknowledge the challenges both to
avoid promoting a naïve understanding of what collaboration entails and to
contextualize the work presented here. All of the contributed articles reºect the
results of a new endeavor that, although at times fraught, has proven deeply re-
warding to most participants.

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Bernstein, Stephen F. 2001. The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism. New York, NY:

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Brosius, J. Peter, and Lisa Campbell. 2010. Collaborative Event Ethnography: Conserva-
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