Side-Events and Their Influence in Multilateral Environmental Negotiations

Biodiversity loss, climate change, plastic pollution, and their associated risks to the environment and human lives, have become ever more pressing issues to tackle. In an attempt to respond to these transboundary issues at the global level, countries have negotiated international environmental agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In studying these negotiations, researchers have primarily focused on formal discussions occurring during negotiations, such as plenary sessions or contact group meetings, to uncover the processes and dynamics that lead up to new decisions and agreements. This research only covers part of the negotiation processes, and others in the scientific community have therefore been calling for a broader understanding of negotiations, including more informal interactions. This brings our attention to the numerous side-events, which are part of the informal interactions, attended by state and non-state actors alike during negotiation sessions. These side-events, whose numbers have increased over the years, can take various forms, among others exhibitions, panel discussions, roundtables, and protests. Examining these side-events will allow us to better understand their influence on treaty-making and beyond, and their potential benefits. To do so, this paper builds on a case study of the ongoing negotiations of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to tackle plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. Contrary to climate or biodiversity negotiations, plastic negotiations have, so far, received less attention, and their pre-treaty stage offers a particularly interesting perspective, which few have engaged in. Through this case study, the authors aim to uncover what happens during side-events, to identify functions these informal interactions fulfil, as well as to gauge their influence on narratives and courses of action (during negotiations, and beyond) of a diverse set of state and non-state actors. To this end, the research draws on empirical data collected through event ethnography at the last three sessions of the INC negotiations, held in Nairobi, Kenya (November 2023), Ottawa, Canada (April 2024), and Busan, Republic of Korea (November-December 2024). The ethnographic dataset consists of fieldnotes (participant observation), daily reports, photos, sketches, and informal interviews. All written data is coded and analysed with the use of Atlas 25.0.0. To deepen our grasp of the influence of side-events on stakeholders, ethnographic information is supplemented with semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders. Overall, this paper aims at enhancing our understanding of side-events and their influence on state and non-state actors taking part in international environmental negotiations. Preliminary findings indicate that side-events serve multiple functions, such as sharing knowledge and aligning stakeholders’ perspectives, which may significantly influence negotiation outcomes and stakeholder actions beyond the negotiations.