Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration in Regional Seas Environmental Cooperation

Abstract

The formulation of environmental policies that are applicable beyond individual nation-states are complex endeavours as, for example, the negotiations on Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean have shown. The priorities of the different state actors engaged often differ. Particularly in environmental politics, moreover, also non-state actors are increasingly involved and contribute, for example, to agenda-setting in regional governance settings such as the Antarctic Treaty System. This panel aims to investigate how multi-stakeholder and multi-sector collaboration contributes to regional sea environmental cooperation. On the one hand, this panel examines how the perspectives of different public and private actors correspond or conflict in different collaborations and how this affects regional seas arrangements. On the other hand, it scrutinizes how depending on the actor constellations and their global embeddedness the evolution of their perspectives and outcome on policy-making processes differ. Which functions do these multi-sector and stakeholder collaboration perform in regional sea environmental cooperation? On what legislation and concepts (e.g. co-use, public private partnership) is their collaboration based and how have these evolved? In this regard, this panel is particularly interested in the roles and significance ascribed to private sector actors as these are generally considered important partners to implement the SDGs. Does their growing inclusion hinder or support the formulation of sustainable environmental policies in regional seas arrangements? In what cases can their inclusion be perceived as a success and why? Against this backdrop and under consideration of different concepts on the governance of multi-stakeholder collaborations (e.g. public-private partnerships, orchestration) and on the multi-use of regional seas, this panel seeks to identify different practices that concern the inclusion of private sector actors in the governance of regional seas. The proposed panel is interested in innovative, theoretically led and empirically rich comparative contributions that explore multi-actor collaborations or conflicts in different regional seas arrangements, the setting of thematic priorities and the general success ascribed to such partnerships. Overall, this panel seeks to discuss how multi-sector and stakeholder collaborations can be advanced in the context of regional seas arrangements and beyond (e.g. in regard to the quality of outcomes and the duration of negotiation processes). In the context of regional seas environmental cooperation, papers are particularly welcomed that discuss - exemplary multi-sector or stakeholder collaborations (e.g. different institutional arrangements and actor constellations), - different concepts on the governance of multi-use or multi-stakeholder collaborations in relation to regional sea environmental cooperation, - interactions and conflict among different multi-sector or stakeholder collaborations and their embeddedness at the regional and global levels.