2018 Conference

Individual Paper Presentation

The literature on global environmental governance is rich with accounts of the growth of non-state actors in environmental treaty negotiations, especially related to climate change and biodiversity, yet the primary focus has been on the engagement of large, international NGOs in these processes. There is less attention directed to the extent to which and how indigenous actors, especially from the global South, engage in global environmental governance. Increasingly indigenous actors are carving out spaces to pursue recognition and representation in a variety of global environmental policy arenas, often navigating the discursive spaces between justice and human rights to pursue their interests. Using data collected at two global events through collaborative event ethnography—the 2010 Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and the 2014 World Parks Congress—this paper examines the strategies for representation indigenous actors deploy while navigating these complex governance events in their pursuit of justice. Specifically, I examine the politics of representation at these events and show how the growing tensions between international NGOs and indigenous representatives, as embodied in the human rights-justice debates, have led to creation of new spaces of engagement and opportunities to pursue representation and justice through recognition in global environmental governance.