The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

The first twenty years of international negotiation on climate change took an approach that was guaranteed to fail: attempting to solve an immensely complex issue through a single, legally binding agreement. The history of diplomacy in trade and security shows that success requires a different approach: breaking a problem up into manageable parts, and growing agreement gradually, strengthening it as parties’ interests increasingly converge.

The Paris Agreement on climate change has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph, but it commits its signatories only to a process, not to anything of substance. It represents a gamble: that if enough governments say they will act, they will believe each other and have the confidence to move forward – and that businesses and investors will believe them too. Six years later, the gamble appears to be succeeding, but despite this, progress is nowhere near fast enough. Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up.

This chapter shows how a hierarchical organization and a dominant faction were crucial prerequisites for the strategy of instrumentalism. The union’s hierarchical structure enabled it to mobilize teachers in elections and a dominant faction enabled negotiations with political parties from across the ideological spectrum. The last section analyzes the political backlash against instrumentalism in 2013, which resulted in leadership turnover and policy changes that weakened the union overall. Despite this backlash, however, the union’s internal organization remained largely intact and union leaders continue to be ideologically flexible, in line with the main argument in this book.

Mass gatherings and special events are commonplace in the U.S. and require the coordinated efforts of a multitude of people, including EMS, to make for a successful event. As the medical director of the EMS, it is important to understand not only the medical problems that could occur at these events but also a basic knowledge of the business behind their planning. Constant interaction with event promoters and sponsors can help the director get a feel of the safety concerns and how funding of the event will occur. These interactions can help directors determine the size, recurrence, and risks of the event providing them with the necessary information of how much manpower will be needed and the costs of the services to be provided and will give them the power to have successful negotiations with a well thought out event plan.

Creating options is an exciting and fun part of making decisions. It’s what changes “I have to do this” (reluctantly solving a problem) to “I get to do this” (enthusiastically creating an opportunity). People often excuse their decisions by saying, “I didn’t have a choice – it’s just something I had to do.” But that’s rarely true. Decision options are almost always available.

If one young person is about to make a decision, helping them construct options is relatively straightforward. Once they are clear about which values might be affected, they can generate different options likely to satisfy these qualities.

The introduction explores why there is so much scholarly interest in global environmental negotiations and how the conceptualization and study of these has changed over time. It unpacks how to study global environmental negotiations and related sites as agreement-making defined as the multiple actors, sites, and processes through which environmental agreements are made, and the new sets and arrangements of actors, sites, and processes that are created by any specific agreement, which have the potential to reinforce or reorient the global political order. This approach is offered as a way to organize, spatialize, situate, and connect diverse forms of scholarship into, around, and related to negotiation sites and their products. The introduction provides an overview of the book chapters, which provide the methodological building blocks for conducting this research. As such, the book is relevant for many other nonenvironmental issue areas where collective action is at the core, such as global health, nuclear nonproliferation, security, and trade.

Agreement-making has always been, and continues to be, shaped by gradual change and unforeseen situations on site, to which both participants and researchers must adapt. This chapter provides guidance on how to cope with the unexpected, discusses specific situations that may occur on site, and shows how to make use of digital and hybrid sites in methodological and conceptual terms. First, it presents a set of typical unforeseen situations that may arise at any point during the research process, especially during fieldwork, and identifies strategies for adapting to these kinds of unanticipated events. Second, it illustrates how the methodology of an entire research project can be modified by using the example of how the ERC research project MARIPOLDATA responded to the indefinite postponement of BBNJ IGCs in 2020. Third, it points to the advantages and disadvantages of digital ethnography, and, fourth, discusses the future role of digital and hybrid meetings for the study of global environmental agreement-making.

The UK’s desire to prove its international relevance after Brexit, together with the COVID pandemic, produced a unique opportunity: a two-year Presidency of the UN climate talks for the country that has long been the most active in climate change diplomacy. A chance to test a new approach – after thirty years of slow progress, better late than never.

The first twenty years of international negotiation on climate change took an approach that was guaranteed to fail: attempting to solve an immensely complex issue through a single, legally binding agreement. The history of diplomacy in trade and security shows that success requires a different approach: breaking a problem up into manageable parts, and growing agreement gradually, strengthening it as parties’ interests increasingly converge.

The Paris Agreement on climate change has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph, but it commits its signatories only to a process, not to anything of substance. It represents a gamble: that if enough governments say they will act, they will believe each other and have the confidence to move forward – and that businesses and investors will believe them too. Six years later, the gamble appears to be succeeding, but despite this, progress is nowhere near fast enough. Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up.

Chapter 4 looks at the restitution of liberalism as a potential model for political change during the Arab Spring and then its inability to shape outcomes in Egypt and Syria due to structural, organizational, and international reasons. The chapter refutes the narrative that the Arab Spring was the result of a leaderless movement of an alienated youth and loose associations of activists. It asserts that this overall analysis ignores the years of liberal activism against the extant patterns of domination and authority in the region, and the fact that protestors rallied behind a set of ideas that were consistently different from the ones rallied behind in the 1950s–1960s.What is missed in most studies is the deep and consistent transformation and reformulation of the object of discontent. Millions confronted their States despite the threat of violence, and in so doing they showed that liberal notions were vibrantly hiding in plain sight.

This chapter turns to a critical juncture where the details of the convergence of the underlying normative responses were debated and shaped, namely the negotiations of the first reparations mandates in international criminal justice. The chapter delves into the arenas where these norms were negotiated: the ICC Rome Statute negotiations, and the ECCC’s Internal Rules-making. By examining the main debates during the negotiations of these foundational laws, the chapter identifies the negotiation practices that were chosen to mediate between competing objectives and visions of international justice. Inquiring into the compromises that emerged from these negotiations sheds light on the long-lasting effects of these compromises on the subsequent operation of the reparations regimes at both courts.

The book closes with an account of the sudden death of one of the Legae brothers and his fiancée, their funeral, and the conflicts that subsequently arose within and between each of their families. Using the trajectory of this tragic event to reflect on and bring together the major themes explored across the book, the final section draws conclusions about the role of conflict and crisis in kinship and self-making, and their implications for understanding the effects of HIV and AIDS and the interventions made in response.

This opening chapter examines whether international law is relevant to the Arab-Israel conflict. The conclusion reached is that although the dispute is political ideological and territorial; nevertheless, international law has played an important role, and will continue to do so. All parties desire that their positions be seen to be legally legitimate, such legitimacy is a political asset as regards both the other party and vis-à-vis third parties. The international language of international relations is, largely, the language of international law; this is particularly true as regards the United Nations and international organisations. Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in an intensive campaign to persuade world public opinion of the legitimacy of their respective cases. Legal precedents, although not binding, play a highly useful role in assisting the parties to reach agreement. The same is true for dispute settlement mechanisms of international law. Finally, the object of negotiations is to reach agreement. The principle that international agreements are binding is a principle of international law and lawyers, based on international law, will examine their validity and context.

Government lawyers should ensure that public officials act lawfully and in the public interest. Where the lawyers fail to fulfil this gatekeeper role, they can enable state engagement in illegality, authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. This chapter draws on sixteen interviews with current and former state lawyers in our case study sites. It situates their narratives within literature on government lawyers in democracies, legal ethics, authoritarian bureaucracy, and organisational culture to explore when they adhere to professional legal ethical standards, where they act outside those standards to resist wrongdoing, or become complicit. Factors explored include the significance of lawyers’ political and personal identities, beliefs, and relationships; the organisational structures in which they work; and their perceptions of what constitutes credible, ethical, and professional practice. We find that government lawyers in impaired rule of law settings have capacity to hold the line on ethics and legality, and at times are willing to use their discretion to resist policies that they view as illegal or contrary to the public interest.