Insscide Work Package 7: Environment: Monitoring As an Arena for Science Diplomacy

InsSciDE Work Package 7: Environment: Monitoring as an Arena for Science Diplomacy

Case Study Origins of environmental monitoring in Europe: NATO and the Cold War n°7.1 legacy

Author Simone Turchetti Consortium University of Manchester (UoM) Partner n°15 Author Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) affiliation

Abstract This InsSciDE case study deals with the organization of original research and environmental monitoring activities under the aegis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was responsible for sponsoring environmental research and actions through schemes designed by its Science Committee (from 1958) and the Challenges of Modern Society Committee (from 1969). Once implemented these schemes led to important collaborative exercises between NATO countries in terms of both environmental legislation (for instance on dumping, on oil-spills, on the management of poisonous chemicals) and monitoring initiatives on specific issues. Introduction The proposed study seeks to address the following two overlapping questions: - What impact did NATO’s scientific and environmental initiative have in the definition of current environmental monitoring knowledge, processes and systems? - How did NATO’s construction of a space for environmental diplomacy define the landscape of environmental activities in Europe and elsewhere? The historical reconstruction of NATO’s initiatives has two compelling elements which have also contemporary relevance. Firstly, it provides an opportunity to investigate the legacy of current forms of environmental monitoring, some of which were originally pioneered in the context of NATO programs. Secondly, it helps to consider the ancestry of contemporary multinational organizations devoted to global environmental governance since NATO was a key forerunner. In particular, it helps to investigate the origins and development of ‘environmental diplomacy’, i.e. science diplomacy processes and activities with an environmental focus. Actors Looking at NATO provides a unique opportunity to explore what Crawford, Shinn and Sörlin (1993) have referred to as a bureaucratic mode of international scientific collaboration, in which actors do not spontaneously elaborate and/or endorse specific schemes, but instead are appointed by government agencies and foreign office departments to represent a national viewpoint in the multilateral forum. The shaping of science and environmental diplomacy at NATO was responsibility of the members of the two aforementioned committees, that were, in turn, representatives of national delegations with expertise in either scientific or environmental affairs. Some of these actors underwent distinctive processes of hybridization in the course of their careers by blending their training in one or more scientific disciplines with advisory work in government, and diplomacy

activities on behalf of the foreign office agencies of their country. While most of the subjects involved in this study are scientists (mainly environmental scientists), others actually came from law. For instance, one prominent figure in NATO scientific/environmental affairs is Russell Train who was a lawyer by training.

Fields and disciplines, interfaces with technology For this study, it is my intention to focus on the application of geophysical methods and techniques to environmental problems. Thus the study encompasses the environmental uses of research in geophysics, oceanography, meteorology and atmospheric science. These fields received sponsorship in NATO’s early programs because of their implications for the setting up of NATO’s communication and detection networks. However, the background of knowledge put together in defense-oriented research was re-utilized in the configuration of later NATO initiatives in the environmental field.

Networks and communication NATO science and environmental diplomacy initiatives responded primarily to the deficit of dialogue in NATO’s mainstream diplomacy arena. They represented therefore a track II type of diplomacy. Because of that the emphasis in the NATO science/diplomacy nexus was on effective diplomacy rather than effective science. That said, over the years NATO’s investment helped to produce the infrastructures that eventually operationalized these activities and set the circumstances for making the environmental issues more relevant than the diplomacy aspects (intended as instrumental use for diplomacy gains).

Disciplinary/methodological approach The proposed study will be based on a transnational history approach, whose merits are discussed in Turchetti, Boudia and Herran, 2013. There are some previous works (for instance Turchetti, Adamson and Camprubí, 2014 and, more recently, Turchetti, 2018) displaying how this approach is operationalized; namely by comparing and contrasting archival document from different countries in order to understand how national viewpoints blended (or clashed) in the multilateral arena and what opinions prevailed in the definition of specific research initiatives. The chief merit of such a method is that it helps to trace the origins of the decision- making process and also helps to fill gaps in the documentation available in one national repository with what can be found in the others. The study helps to understand how science diplomacy works in a highly bureaucratized space where decisions on the direction of international collaboration depend on the stance emerging at national level. In turn, it presents an important underlying question about the determinants and motives of science diplomacy whose origin is deeply rooted in national interests and agendas. In terms of policy aspiration the NATO case helps to observe how in the running of specific programs over a number of years, the quest of support to specific initiatives because of a national interest can be superseded by an ambition to address supra-national (or even global) challenges thus empowering those who are directly involved in operationalizing the original schemes.

Essential bibliography E. Crawford, T. Shinn and S. Sörlin, “The Nationalization and Denationalization of the Sciences: An Introductory Essay,” in E. Crawford, T. Shinn and S. Sörlin (eds.), Denationalizing Science. The Context of International Scientific Practice (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), pp. 1-37. Simone Turchetti, Néstor Herran and Soraya Boudia, “Have we ever been 'transnational'? Towards a history of science across and beyond borders,” British Journal for the History of Science 45/3 (2012), pp. 319-36. Adamson, Matthew, Camprubí Lino, and Simone Turchetti, “From the Ground Up: Uranium Surveillance and Atomic Energy in Western Europe,” in Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts, The Surveillance Imperative, New York: Palgrave, 2014, pp. 23-44. Simone Turchetti, Greening the Alliance: The Diplomacy of NATO’s Science and Environmental Inititiatives (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018)

InsSciDE Work Package 7: Environment: Monitoring as an Arena for Science Diplomacy

Case Study Co-production of science and diplomacy in environmental monitoring: the case n°7.2 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

Author Sam Robinson Consortium University of Manchester (UoM) Partner n°15 Author Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) affiliation

Abstract The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides an InsSciDE case study analyzing how scientists and diplomats have forged important synergies that shape environmental monitoring exercises and practices. With discussions and negotiations spanning over a decade UNCLOS is considered one of the most important pieces of international law drafted in the 20th century. Although not entirely concerned with science diplomacy, science features prominently reflecting the rapid growth of new knowledge of the oceans during the late 20th century and emerging capabilities in marine science and technology for exploitation of the seas. The historical episodes that led to the creation of the UNCLOS are still relevant, as initial disputes (in particular those relating to the Arctic) are still being negotiated through scientific surveys and the regulation of environmental monitoring. Yet there is no scholarly account of this period. Using archival records, we aim to establish how the scientific aspects of the UNCLOS were negotiated, by, with, and for scientists for the global benefit of humankind.

Introduction

Thirteen years of discussions to prepare UNCLOS led to the UN Law of the Sea (III) – one of the most ambitious reconfigurations of international law undertaken by the United Nations. Although the UNCLOS is often observed as being primarily concerned with the delineation of boundaries between the national and international jurisdiction of ocean space, almost a third of the law's articles (100/320) relate in some capacity to marine pollution, science, and/or technology.

The negotiations began with a series of “uses of the seabed” discussions in 1967, prompted by Arvid Pardo, Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations. This lead to the creation of a Committee on Peaceful uses of the Sea-Bed and the Ocean Floor beyond the limits of National Jurisdiction that met between 1968-1973. Ultimately the committee’s discussions expanded into a series of conferences on the Law of the Sea conducted between 1973 and 1982. Here the role and control of science and technology drew serious consideration for the first time, with negotiations occurring in a context of rapid global expansion of the marine sciences and in the capabilities of ocean technologies to exploit resources of the deep sea. Oceanography had been a relatively small specialised field, but in the aftermath of the Second World War both the East and West funneled financial and material resources to the geosciences in general, producing rapid growth in the number of institutions, scientists, and research vessels studying the oceans. Simultaneously the powerful navies of the US and the USSR had conducted a submarine arms race with the

creation of the first true submarines powered by nuclear reactors, and latterly the deployment of nuclear- equipped missiles in submarines. Greater capabilities to exploit deep sea resources brought two wildly divergent groups into conflict. Technologists (including science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke) argued that unlimited ocean resources offered humankind’s salvation, while environmentalists pointed out that the science did not support such a claim. The end result of this tension between exploiters and conservationists was the development of ocean environmental monitoring systems whose global extent was made possible by the UNCLOS negotiations.

As UNCLOS moved into the ratification stage, Europe maintained a strong position in the global pursuit of ocean environmental monitoring. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) is based at UNESCO in Paris, European oceanographic institutes are world leading, and EU science has strengthened relations and modes of collaboration with the Global South. Discussion on science diplomacy in the global ocean continues to be shaped by Europe. The European Union currently contributes to the UNCLOS through a working party that seeks to merge and amalgamate national viewpoints. In this way, UNCLOS offers an example of how differing national approaches to science can be harmonised to find common agreement on how science and in particular technical exploitation of resources can be equitably controlled. Finally, the global monitoring systems deployed in the 1990s have two benefits for Europe: they provide early warning of climate change – considered one of the EU’s greatest security threats – and they contributed to curtailing militarisation of the ocean environment, with ocean science now predominantly conducted by scientists in civilian institutions and shared openly.

Actors

The UNCLOS was a strategic effort on the part of the United Nations to create a global law of the sea for the post-colonial age, involving numerous actors. Our study will concentrate exclusively on negotiations of the articles of the UNCLOS that concern science, focusing on the marine pollution, science, and technology discussions within sub-committee III and special conferences as sites for science diplomacy. We will also analyse those individuals and groups providing “expert” knowledge to these bodies with specific reference to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). The IOC was a UNESCO funded body founded in October 1961, an organisation designed to bring together ocean scientists to co-ordinate large scale international research.

The creation of the IOC was a reflection of the growth in the number of qualified oceanographers in the post- war period. Early in UNCLOS negotiations Lord Ritchie-Calder tried to quantify this growth: he claimed that in 1950 there were 750 oceanographers in 48 countries – or 2 qualified scientists for every million cubic miles of ocean space. It was estimated that by 1975 there would be 12,000 in 130 countries.1 This increase in the scientific workforce would determine how humans perceived, utilised, and interacted with the ocean environment. It meant a shift from national exploitation by a small group of powerful nations to a collaborative transnationalist approach to ocean science, which included the newly independent nations of the Global South.

On the political level, the UNCLOS involved various institutions. At international level were the UN conferences themselves and their national diplomatic missions. Additionally, each delegation reported back to foreign ministries who channelled opinion from the national navy, coastguard, and various lobbies such as fishing, oil companies, etc. The negotiations brought wider diplomatic tensions into the realm of science diplomacy. Early in the UNCLOS conferences, a new North-South conflict driven by Latin American nations and newly de- colonialised African and Asian states emerged, upstaging the East-West conflict that had shaped post-war international relations. These new actors faced environmental problems of their own, and despite geographical challenges – such as Africa having the most (13) landlocked states of any continent – sought

1 Lord Ritchie Calder, ‘Perspectives on the Sciences of the Sea’, Ocean Yearbook 1:1 (1978), 271-292.

access to potential benefits offered by the new science and technologies of the sea. The need to conduct marine science to strengthen the legitimacy and position of the developing nations saw the emergence of new oceanographic programs around the world.

Regarding scientific institutions, a similar multi-level multi-actor landscape existed. The UNCLOS was of interest to the IOC – historically seen as being closely related to government interests and those of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) founded in 1957 by the International Council of Scientific Unions. During the 1960s SCOR pioneered sizeable multi-national ocean research efforts such as the International Indian Ocean Expedition. However, by the 1970s it was the IOC who co-ordinated global ocean monitoring efforts. A major focus of our study will be the work of the IOC in framing debates around ocean science and technology and the emerging Law of the Sea from 1967-1982.

Fields and disciplines, interfaces with technology

The UNCLOS defines oceanography as all activity of ocean scientists and their ability to access controlled Exclusive Economic Zones of sea space. The UNCLOS was devised to democratise collaborations between wealthy first world nations and those in the developing world. This was done under the need to develop ocean technologies for the “Common Benefit of Mankind” as set out by Pardo who drove an agenda for scientific research of the marine ecosystem and careful ocean exploitation. The need to protect the ocean from technological development was in direct response to the positivist but naïve postulations from science fiction writers and technologists during the 1960s when the ocean appeared able to be exploited to any degree required by human society because its resources were so vast as to be limitless. Following several high profile pollution incidents, such as the Torrey Canyon in 1967, it was obvious that the ocean would not rebound quickly from careless actions by humans, and furthermore its resources and capacity were finite. Emerging, and prophesied, technology became central to debates at the UNCLOS, and trying to assess its potential future power frustrated diplomats and lawyers.

Networks and communication

Science Diplomacy in the marine and ocean sciences, for and by its practitioners, has primarily involved forming research blocs with other friendly nations, and/or gaining access to specific ocean sites falling under other national jurisdictions. Of note, ocean science research activities often take place in “international waters”, as well as at sites of heightened geopolitical tension, such as in sea straits or areas where mineral resources are assumed to lie. (See Camprubí & Robinson, 2016) Our case study will focus on revealing the interfaces between science and diplomats in the following sites: - Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO) – central consulting group between diplomats working at UNCLOS and ocean scientists. - UNCLOS conferences - Seabed negotiations and later commissions - Various fringe meetings to discuss particular aspects amongst specific groups of experts and actors.

Politics and policies

Informal coordination and collaboration between European states and scientists with regard to the issues and initiatives of the Law of the Sea and ocean science remains to be studied. Of note is the fact that most of the world’s maritime organisations – especially those co-ordinating international law and regulation – are today based in Europe. While they address regional geopolitical challenges they also set global agendas and policy, and drive worldwide environmental initiatives. The national, international, and transnational levels were constantly in fluid articulation in the development of the UNCLOS. This has been widely discussed in existing major histories of ocean science during the Cold War, such as Hamblin (2005) and Robinson (2018). But it can also be observed in wider discussions of the

geosciences in the Cold War, such as in the work of Hecht (2012), Oreskes & Krige (2014), and Turchetti & Roberts (2014). Our case study clarifies differences between science 'diplomacy' and 'cooperation' through four aspects. Firstly, UNCLOS rendered cooperation mandatory – that is, it made scientific cooperation inherently political, so as to even out national and regional inequalities in research capabilities. Secondly, the law anticipated future scientific and technological developments and capabilities, negotiating their application even before they properly emerged. Thirdly, the dialogue between naval, political, and scientific actors sought to negotiate rules and solutions rather than simply arrange for cooperation. Finally, UNCLOS brought forward no scientific research as part of its processes and development; the research was enabled later in part because of these negotiations.

Policy and political outcomes of the UNCLOS as science diplomacy include the emergence of global systems of ocean monitoring pioneered by IOC during the 1980s in line with the early work of the IPCC. Among these are the Global Climate Observing System (est. 1992) and Global Ocean Observing System (est. 1993), both products of scientific collaborations such as the World Ocean Circulation Experiment. Clearly, the notion that marine science and the deployment of marine technology should be globally co-operative for the “common benefit of humankind” has also shaped recent structures of oceanographic science diplomacy, leading to new marine science research being undertaken with increased government resources.

Disciplinary/methodological approach This research will be undertaken through a combination of archival research, oral history interviews, and a comprehensive literature review. It will be an interdisciplinary study that draws from the historical fields of diplomacy studies, history of science and technology, and global history – all of which focus upon questioning existing national narratives and institutional histories. It will expose the concurrent formation of international law and modes of science diplomacy. Archives for consultation: - United Nations Archives, New York, NY, USA - Dalhousie University Archives in Halifax, NS, Canada - Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, Senate House, London - Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, UNESCO, Paris

Essential bibliography Borgese, E.M., The Oceanic Circle: Governing the seas as a global resource (Tokyo: The United Nations University Press, 1998). Hamblin, J.D., Oceanographers and the Cold War: Disciples of Marine Science (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005). Hecht, G., Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). Miles, E.L, Global Ocean Politics: The Decision Process at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea 1973–1982 (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1998). Oreskes, N. and Krige, J. (eds.), Science and Technology in the Global Cold War (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015). Robinson, S.A, Ocean Science and the British Cold War State (London: Palgrave, 2018). Camprubí, L., Robinson, S.A. ‘A Gateway to Ocean Circulation: Surveillance and Sovereignty at Gibraltar,’ Historical Studies on Natural Sciences (2016) Turchetti, S., and Roberts, P. (eds.), The Surveillance Imperative: Geosciences during the Cold War and Beyond (London: Palgrave, 2014).

InsSciDE Work Package 7: Environment: Monitoring as an Arena for Science Diplomacy

Case Study The networks of Arctic Monitoring and Assessments and the objectives of the n°7.3 Arctic Council

Author Nina Wormbs Consortium KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Partner n°8

Abstract This InsSciDE case study focuses on formal scientific assessments of the Arctic environment which have become important features in both the public and the political understanding of the region. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) was put in place in the 1990s and eventually became a working group of the Arctic Council, which is made up of the eight Arctic states Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. These assessments have a scientific raison d’etre but the development of their popular and executive summaries is also an arena for political decision making and thus of essence in understanding science diplomacy in a European context.

Introduction The case explores how environmental monitoring carried out by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme functioned as an arena for international agreements. Furthermore, the case investigates how some of the popular and executive summaries were agreed upon, received in the Arctic Council and formed the basis of further action. A central question is to what extent scientists in fact conducted foreign policy already in designing the monitoring project and choosing which forms of environmental knowledge to collect. Science and technology are not neutral practices that give an unmediated image of the environment. On the contrary, science and technology create the environment from nature and those processes are laden with values and choices.

The Arctic with its 4 million human inhabitants has become a central arena and not just a periphery. Climate change is a major reason for this development as its effects are seen with greater amplitudes in the region. Moreover, Arctic climate change impacts including shrinking sea ice, warming oceans and changing currents will have global effects and are thus essential to study and monitor. At the same time the shrinking sea ice has led to speculations about the possibility of increased resource extraction in the region, ironically furthering the global warming that allows this extraction in the first place. The region is thus a nexus for climate change, negotiations and politics. To agree on issues concerning this region is a diplomatic task not just for the eight Arctic Council members but also for the six of them that belong to the European region.

Actors There are several layers of actor categories in this case, intervening at different levels according to the issue in question. Central individual actors in this case are scientists who negotiate, plan and carry out the actual monitoring and assessment. Often these projects involve large international conglomerates of people from many universities and institutes that work together for several years. Furthermore, the Arctic Council, the member states as well as the permanent participants and the observer states can be seen as actors on a specific level. The process of arriving at a statement is also an arena in which new actors can be formed.

Fields and disciplines, interfaces with technology The AMAP assessments by now stretch over several decades and cover many areas of environmental change and pollution. It is too early to say which sciences and which fields have been privileged and perhaps also proved to be arenas where diplomacy has been more or less successful. The arrival of the so called human dimension in the overall Arctic assessments is, however, late and notable.

Disciplinary/methodological approach This case draws on literature in history of science, technology and environment as well as science and technology studies. The co-production of science and society (Jasanoff 2004) is a core interest in STS and the boundary work separating the two also has a long history (Gieryn 1983). In this particular case, the role of the scientist as for example broker (Pielke 2007) will be of interest. The text of a few assessments will be analyzed as well as their production and reception. Interviews will be conducted with some of the persons involved in producing these texts and their reception.

Essential bibliography Annika E. Nilsson, A Changing Arctic Climate: Science and Policy in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (Linköping: Linköping University, Department of Water and Environmental Studies, 2007). R Mitchell, W C Clarke, D W Cash & N M Dickson (eds.), Global Environmental Assessments: Information and influence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006). Nina Wormbs, “The Assessed Arctic: How Monitoring Can Be Silently Normative”, in The New Arctic, ed. Birgitta Evengård, Joan Nymand Larsen & Øyvind Paasche (Cham: Springer International Publishing :, 2015), 131–51. Nina Wormbs & Sverker Sörlin, “Arctic Futures: Agency and Assessing Assessments”, in Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene, ed. Lill-Ann Körber, Scott MacKenzie & Anna Westerståhl Stenport (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 247–62.

InsSciDE Work Package 7: Environment: Monitoring as an Arena for Science Diplomacy

Case Study Environmental change communication as a diplomacy problem n°7.4 Author Miyase Christensen Consortium KTH Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Partner n°14

Abstract The point of departure for this InsSciDE case study is the following assertion: if diplomacy is the management of change in the international environment through engagement with foreign governments (Pamment, 2012), Arctic public diplomacy is the management of that changing environment through engagement with international publics. Diplomacy has both media and communication dimensions. Our study centers on the communication of Arctic change in the post WWII era. With increasing concerns about the impacts of climate change, the Arctic has achieved visibility in both mainstream and social media. The 2007 and 2012 sea ice minimum added new layers to scientific, political-economic and mediated debates. This study places the Arctic and the record sea ice minima into the broader context of communication about climate change and the role of the Arctic in that continuum. Accounting for communication and media related dimensions is essential for both understanding dynamics that underlie science diplomacy on the whole and for the construction of a holistic and meaningful science diplomacy for Europe.

Introduction Written reports about Arctic sea ice dynamics stretch back over 1000 years for areas around Iceland, roughly 500 years for the Barents and White Sea off northern Russia, and 200 years for west Greenland and Labrador (Krupnik et al., 2010). While most communication about changes in the Arctic historically did not reach a broad international non-scientific audience, this began to change when satellites detected a downward trend in Arctic sea ice extent particularly throughout the 1990s (cf. Christensen and Nilsson, 2017).

The trend sharpened during the 2000s, and was covered by the news media along with results from International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. News flows are central in international relations and foreign policy-making. The changing Arctic geography has generated increasing public and political attention to the region (e.g. Dodds and Nuttall 2015, Steinberg et al. 2015, Eklund and van der Watt 2017, Wegge and Keil 2018). Satellite monitoring and its mediation are also a major factor in the public understanding of Arctic space (Wormbs, 2013).

Politics and media are highly enmeshed and geographical specification of politics is commonplace in mediated accounts, with the Arctic being no exception. The salience of the Arctic in the Western public realm over the past decade and a half is underlined particularly by an increased attention to global climate change following the IPCC reports noting anthropogenic climate change, starting with the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment released in 2004 (Tjernhaugen and Bang 2005; Steinberg et al 2014) and further fueled by the sea-ice minima of 2007 and 2012 (Christensen, Nilsson and Wormbs 2013).

Earlier studies indicate that considerations and visibility of the Arctic in geopolitical and mediatized discourses are increasingly illustrative of scalar transcendence (Christensen, 2013) – that is, how local regions are discussed in relation to their global significance and how discussions of global change become informed by (in

some cases enmeshed with) local discourses and concerns in specific ways. Such discourses display dynamism. In the case of the Arctic and media coverage of the region, the main frames of discussions and journalistic stories of local-global issues alternate between themes such as security, cooperation and peace, conflict, and climate change, which are often linked to global concerns and future scenarios. While one theme can dominate during a given time period, another can peak at another.

With this in mind, the purpose of this study is to examine how the international news media (such as The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times), the regional media (such Barents Observer, and Arctic Now) and other press influential in stakeholder power geometries frame Arctic change and challenges. In particular, we will examine the handling of science communication. On the whole the communication of scientific facts is no simple matter (cf. Nisbet, 2009) and the Arctic provides an excellent illustration of the complexity of the dynamics in play.

Our case study will delve into how communication networks and mediation have historically provided links between the scientific, political and policy communities involved in the Arctic and how such mediation factors into science diplomacy. Both the historical trajectory and current trends need to be accounted for in order to reflect on the status of European science diplomacy today. The questions that guide our study are: how have the selected media outlets framed Arctic change (e.g. melting of the ice and the opening up of the ocean) over time? What are the roles of institutional and normative structures in the mediated communication of Arctic issues? What are the common conceptions of the Arctic and Arctic that these framings entail? Who has voice, who are the visible actors in mediated accounts and who are silent/silenced? What forms of tension are apparent?

Actors Political actors spatialize international politics and represent it as a ‘world’ characterized by particularities, or as Dalby puts it ‘the politics of the geographical specification of politics’ (1991 274). Such a geopolitical approach, or a “theory of context” (ibid) also lets us grasp shifts at scalar and institutional levels and the positioning of social actors in a historical context. As for the media, Pinkerton (2013: 440) considers the very institutions of journalism as key agents in international and national power geometries that “can challenge official geopolitical doctrines”.

The positioning of social actors in relation to each other has a particular resonance when it comes to the Arctic. Our study considers global and local-regional, corporate and independent news outlets, and those to whom their news stories give voice as actors to be accounted for in understanding how science diplomacy takes shape.

Fields and disciplines, interfaces with technology We take on board the disciplinary perspectives of media and communication studies, history, critical geopolitics and STS in an effort to approach and analyze the dynamics of mediation in science diplomacy in general, and in communicating Arctic change in particular. We examine popular communication and how speech acts travel whether nationally, regionally or globally. Space is understood in a constructivist way and media and communication channels are viewed as holding key roles.

Disciplinary/methodological approach In line with visions put forth by scholars of critical geopolitics over the past few decades, we argue that Arctic geopolitics increasingly brings in transnational and global imaginaries, also within cultural and mediated domains. This is particularly evident in how this remote part of the world is envisioned in popular communication. While realpolitik presides, mediatization on the whole and media accounts have a significant role in co-shaping the dynamics that define the region. Of interest here are both mass mediated communication via legacy media (e.g. newspapers, television, etc.) and social media that provide multiple

networks and interactions between social actors ranging from the scientific community to policy and political circles and regional peoples and communities. Our methodological tools include institutional analysis (regarding e.g. the National Snow and Ice Data Center NSIDC; major global and regional media outlets) and content (frame) analysis. We take frames as interpretive storylines that position an issue, the actors, and a portrayal of the essence of a given issue (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987) and what its solutions are or can be. We will also conduct in-depth qualitative interviews to obtain first-hand insights and information from institutional actors, journalists and other figures occupying key roles and/or enjoying media visibility.

Essential bibliography Christensen, M. (2013). Arctic Climate Change and the Media: The News Story That Was. In M. Christensen, A. E. Nilsson, & N. Wormbs (Eds.), Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change: When the Ice Breaks (pp. 26–52). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Christensen, M. and Nilsson, A. E. (2017) “Arctic Sea-Ice and Communication of Climate Change”, peer- reviewed journal article, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 15(4), 249-268. Dalby, S. (1991). Critical geopolitics: discourse, difference, and dissent. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 9(3), 261–283. http://doi.org/10.1068/d09026 Dodds, K., & Nuttall, M. (2015). The scramble for the poles: the geopolitics of the Arctic and Antarctic. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Eklund, N., & Watt, L.-M. van der. (2017). Refracting (geo)political choices in the Arctic. The Polar Journal, 7(1), 86–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/2154896X.2017.1337334 Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. (1987). The changing culture of affirmative action. In Research in political sociology. Krupnik, I., Aporta, C., Gearheard, S., Laidler, G. J., & Holm, L. K. (2010). SIKU: knowing our ice. Dordrecht: Springer. Nisbet, M. C. (2009). Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 51(2), 12–23. http://doi.org/10.3200/ENVT.51.2.12-23 Pamment, J. (2012). New public diplomacy in the 21st century: A comparative study of policy and practice. Routledge. Pinkerton, A. (2013). Journalists. The Ashgate research companion to critical geopolitics, 439-460. Steinberg, P., Tasch, J., & Gerhardt, H. (2015). Contesting the Arctic: rethinking politics in the Circumpolar North. London: I B Tauris & Co Ltd. Tjernhaugen, A., & Bang, G. (2005). ACIA og IPCC en sammenligning av mottakelsen i amerikansk offentlighet (No. 2005:4). Oslo: Cicero, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research. Retrieved from www.cicero.uio.no Wegge, N., & Keil, K. (2018). Between classical and critical geopolitics in a changing Arctic. Polar Geography, 41(2), 87–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2018.1455755 Wormbs, N. (2013). Eyes on the ice: Satellite remote sensing and the narratives of visualized data. In Media and the Politics of Arctic Climate Change (pp. 52-69). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

InsSciDE Work Package 7: Environment: Monitoring as an Arena for Science Diplomacy

Case Study n°7.5 Traditional knowledge and monitoring in climate negotiations

Author Jean Foyer Consortium Partner n°1 Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Additional author Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Amériques affiliation

Abstract Article 7.5 of the Paris Agreement, developed at COP21 in December 2015 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, says that adaptation policies should be “guided by the best available science and, as appropriate, traditional knowledge, knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems”.

This InsSciDE case study deals with the inclusion of traditional knowledge alongside science expertise in the climate regime and, more specifically, in the monitoring techniques. We propose first a genealogy of this inclusion of traditional knowledge in the climate regime as a co-production of different actors: different scientific communities, indigenous organizations and international institutions. We will then analyze a local experience of monitoring climate change in indigenous communities of Panama.

Introduction The proposed study seeks to address the following questions: How is traditional knowledge used as an alternative category to science in climate diplomacy? How, at local level, is traditional knowledge concretely used as a monitoring tool complementary to techno scientific methods? Can we, at a global as much as a local level, observe an actual dialogue of knowledge between traditional indigenous knowledge and scientific western knowledge? The inclusion of traditional knowledge in climate talk is tightly linked to the rise of the adaptation approach but also to the critique of the top down approach promoted by the United Nations system with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). This domination of complex and abstract models and global metrology data such as “global mean temperature” or “tonne of carbon” has been criticised for its tendency to erase differences in human experiences, understandings, epistemologies, values and meanings of climate change. Hence, some actors are calling for a repolitisation and reterritorialisation of the governance of climate change, which will demand better inclusion of traditional and local knowledge in the assessment of climate change.

We will look at how this discourse about using traditional knowledge to monitor climate change is concretely implemented on the ground at the local level. Our case study will analyse the Indigenous Peoples’ Bio Cultural Climate Change Assessment Initiative (IPCCA) that has emerged as an innovative response, bringing together indigenous knowledge and science in a process which links bio cultural realities with complex global climatic processes. The IPCCA is a global network including nine projects in North and South America, Asia, Africa and Europe, which promotes a methodology for local climate change monitoring based on participatory mapping and workshops for dialogue between scientists and indigenous people. It links indigenous communities and

scientists in order to monitor climate change in contexts submitted to climate change. We will follow the IPCCA initiative in Panama, in the indigenous region of Kuna Yala, where the IPCCA initiative has been implemented to carry out an assessment of the impacts of climate change with the goal of providing local adaptation options for coping with the phenomenon.

Actors The salience of traditional knowledge in the climate arena — and the fact that indigenous peoples now have their authorised representatives present in the international forum of discussion — was not always a given. It is the result of a complex and open political process. The emergence of traditional knowledge in the climate arena has depended crucially on the emergence of a strong “indigenous peoples” actor able to speak for all indigenous peoples, despite the heterogeneity of the realities covered by this expression. The main claim of indigenous peoples’ global movement has always been specific collective and territory rights, as defined and promoted in the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples since 2007. Their agenda is clearly political, involving: first, more rights for indigenous peoples, and second, recognition of traditional knowledge. In many ways, the claim for traditional knowledge is used as a diplomatic tool to advance their agenda about rights and territory.

Anthropologists and scientists from related disciplines have also played an important role as spokespersons for traditional knowledge in the climate change arena. They are key players, acting all around the stage, as an “epistemic community” that defends the value and legitimacy of traditional knowledge. The first step in the building this “epistemic community” occurred in the early 2000s, when a growing body of anthropological studies documented that climate change affects Arctic peoples. The globalisation of this epistemic community intensified in 2011 with a conference in Mexico co-organised by the IPCC, combined with a new institutional publication by UN University and UNESCO that presented a broad overview of “traditional knowledge and climate change”. More recently, a small cluster of scholars is producing a growing body of literature combining early studies of the Arctic with a new set of publications on traditional knowledge and tropical forests, and on monitoring, risk reduction or agricultural resilience.

Several Northern European states, Peru, Mexico and the Philippines have supported indigenous peoples with financial and political resources and by relaying their demands in climate negotiations. But discussion on the draft proposal of the Paris Agreement also showed that these states were looking, against the will of indigenous organisations, to impose a specific framing that disconnects knowledge from rights. The main driver of this kind of support may be the desire to benefit from the input of traditional knowledge in the global response to climate change, without paying the higher political cost of backing indigenous peoples’ rights. The mention of traditional knowledge in the operative section of the Paris Agreement bearing on adaptation reflects a form of compromise between a “rights first” versus a “knowledge first” approach.

Fields and disciplines, interfaces with technology

From a science and technology studies perspective combined with anthropology, we will look at how different scientific fields (meteorology, geography, ethnobotany, etc.) are made to interact with traditional knowledge in the monitoring of climate change. We will pay special attention to the appropriation of different techniques (mapping, GPS, drones, etc.) by indigenous people and the impact on their traditional knowledge and practices.

Networks and communication Indigenous environmental diplomacy about environmental knowledge responded primarily to the deficit of bottom-up approaches in the UNFCC mainstream diplomacy arena driven by Big (Global) Science. Incorporating local knowledge responds to the southern countries' demand for concrete adaptation tools but represents a challenge for European diplomacy. Supporting indigenous claims is a good way for European

countries to communicate on human rights and environmental politics. At the same time, however, it implies advancing on the recognition of specific rights to a certain category of citizens (namely the indigenous people) – which contradicts a certain ideal of universal rights.

Disciplinary/methodological approach Theoretically, we combine different lines of analysis with a strong constructivist perspective, inspired by STS and political anthropology. In line with the anthropology of international institutions (Müller 2013), anthropology of indigenous performance on the UN stage (Bellier 2013), and analyses of the use of knowledge and worldviews as political resources (Blaser 2009), traditional knowledge is analysed here as a category of global governance (Brosius 2006) with a strong political dimension (Dumoulin Kervran 2003). We combine this global focus with more directly ethnographic approaches at the local level. Methodologically, our analysis will be grounded on our experience of collaborative ethnography of transnational mega events, in a systematic review of academic and grey literature (from UN bodies and NGO reports), and in interviews with key actors who promote traditional knowledge. For the local case studies, interviews and participant observation will also be used.

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