Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
A sylvan superpower? Russian forests in international climate
negotiations
Elana Wilson Rowe
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 2 May 2012
Received in revised form 7 May 2013
Available online 3 June 2013
Keywords:
Boreal forests
Civic epistemology
International climate negotiations
Expert knowledge
Russia
a b s t r a c t
Under the Kyoto Protocol, North American and European countries could include their own boreal forests
as a positive factor in national carbon emission accounting. The question of how such forests should
count in any international climate regime remains a highly technical and contentious one. This article
examines how representatives to international-level climate negotiations navigate the policy field that
has grown up around the notion of ‘climate service’ forests – a policy field marked by both norms of
expert behaviour and clearly articulated national political aims. As a case study window onto this complex hybrid terrain, this article focuses on how Russian claims about the country’s extensive boreal forests are presented to and received by international counterparts in UN climate negotiations. In order to
think systematically about how particular claims are vetted and gain acceptance, the article employs several indicators associated with the idea of ‘civic epistemology’ from Science and Technology Studies (STS).
The civic epistemology framework was developed to analyse national expectations about what constitutes a legitimate knowledge-based claim in a public policy process and the conclusion reflects on the
usefulness of this framework for analysis of international politics. This article draws upon primary and
secondary sources and qualitative interviews with actors involved in international climate negotiations.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The world’s forests have gained a new value over the past decade as climate science and politics have progressed. On a global
scale, carbon storage in forests is 54% of the total carbon pool in
terrestrial ecosystems (UNEP, 2011: 4). In other words, boreal
and tropical forests play an important role in carbon sequestration.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, North American and European countries
could include their own boreal forests as a positive factor in national carbon emission accounting.1
The question of forests and how they should count in any international climate regime remains a politically contentious and
highly technical one, which is addressed primarily in the ‘Land
Use, Land Use Change and Forestry’ (LULUCF) negotiations under
E-mail address: ew@nupi.no
The question of whether and how efforts to protect tropical forests in developing
countries should count towards Annex I (‘developed’) countries’ carbon reduction
commitments is hotly contested in international climate negotiations. The tropical
forests of the world are primarily addressed through an active diplomatic efforts to
improve management under the conceptual banner of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), which also
includes forest stock improvement via conservation and sustainable management.
These initiatives are based on financial incentives and voluntary participation, as
‘developing’ countries are treated differently in the UNFCCC context and do not have
quantitative emissions reductions commitments like Annex I countries.
1
0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.05.003
the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty. The political stakes and consequences are high in LULUCF, yet the negotiations are renowned
in climate circles for the advanced level of technical expertise required to understand and participate in them. This article examines how representatives to international-level climate
negotiations navigate the policy process that has grown up around
the notion of ‘climate service’ forests – a process, I argue, marked
by the intermingling of norms of expert behaviour and clearly
articulated national political aims.
As a case study window onto this complex hybrid terrain, the
article focuses on how Russian claims about the country’s extensive boreal forests are presented to and received by international
counterparts in UN climate negotiations. Russia’s boreal forest –
the taiga – is the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world
and the Russian political elite are increasingly aware of the relevance of Russian forests to both increasing Russia’s status in global
climate politics and in securing a carbon cushion for more business-as-usual economic growth. Vladimir Putin, making a comment in advance of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference,
argued that Russian forests are the ‘lungs of the world’ and asserted that the ‘ability of Russia’s forest to absorb carbon dioxide
be taken into account’ (quoted in Korunskaya, 2009). The Russian
negotiation team has assiduously followed up this mandate, insisting that the predetermined limits established in 2004 on the extent
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
to which boreal forests in Annex I (‘developed’) countries like Russia can count in offsetting greenhouse gas reductions commitments be removed.
Studies of Russian multilateralism in a variety of international
fora have indicated that Russian representatives tend to bring to
the multilateral table a slightly different set of expectations or
practices from their European or North American counterparts.2
Taking an example of a player that may be an awkward fit yet of central importance to the politics of forests in international climate
negotiations is useful for illuminating the boundaries of and expectations within this emerging policy field. In other words, by learning
what other LULUCF negotiators and observers believe Russia is doing
‘wrong’ (and ‘right’ for that matter), the standards of appropriate
behaviour for navigating between expert and explicitly political concerns relevant for all actors in the LULUCF field become clearer. In order to think systematically through the case study material, I employ
a concept called ‘civic epistemology’ from Science and Technology
Studies (STS), which has been developed to illustrate the varied ways
in which modern cultures assess the robustness and relevance of expert claims deployed in public policy debates (Jasanoff, 2005).
Given that this civic epistemology concept was developed to
organize and describe (especially) national expectations about
what constitutes a legitimate knowledge-based claim, some conceptual work is required for applying this framework to the international level and the article turns first to this task. I then examine
the emergence of forests as a specific strand of climate negotiations, arguing that LULUCF is now a distinct policy field in which
we can reasonably expect to see the development of some shared
expectations about the forwarding and vetting of claims. The overall role of Russia in climate negotiations is subsequently discussed
in order to provide background about Russia’s reputation in these
negotiations and to illustrate some of the key political considerations that are part of Russian negotiators’ agenda in LULUCF negotiations. Finally, Russian claims about their forests are described
and indicators from the civic epistemology framework are used
to illustrate how expert norms and political agendas interact in
forming a set of contested, incomplete, and yet tentatively shared
practices for considering and legitimizing (or rejecting) the claims
forwarded in negotiations.
This article draws upon primary and secondary sources and
qualitative interviews and seeks to make a scholarly contribution
in two ways. From an area studies perspective, the article is the
first scholarly work addressing Russia’s ‘forest politics’ in international climate negotiations. Secondly, through its application of
the ‘civic epistemology’ framework to an international setting,
the analysis makes a contribution to the conceptual toolbox available to geographically minded scholars seeking to understanding
how the politics of knowledge vary at different scales.
2. A civic epistemology of an international policy field?
In thinking about how science and politics interact in international relations, we often draw the distinction between them too
sharply. This tidy science–politics division builds upon a widespread popular perception – the idea of scientists playing a political role by making fact-based recommendations to power and their
2
See Pouliot (2010) on the NATO-Russia Council, Wilson Rowe (2009a) on the
Arctic Council, Wilson Rowe and Torjesen (2009), Wilhelmsen and Wilson Rowe
(2011) for case study illustrations. To name a few examples noted by these sources:
Russian diplomats often bring to multilateral settings a stronger delineation between
high and low politics and prefer to address low politics in broader plenum and high
political issues via bilateral relations or in small groups of ‘great powers.’ Russian
diplomats also remain much more sceptical to the role of new norms that challenge
state sovereignty or autonomy, like responsibility to protect, than their European
colleagues.
217
input either being picked up (or ignored) by strategically selective
politicians.
Sociologists of science have long pointed to ways in which all
science is shaped by politics and to the constructed and negotiated
nature of scientific knowledge (see, for example Barnes et al. 1996;
Collins and Pinch, 1998; Shapin and Schaffer, 1985). In this vein, a
great deal of useful research has also been carried out on the upstream knowledge politics of climate change, in particular within
the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (for example,
Demeritt, 2001; Beck, 2012). Scholarly work in IR has also shown
how experts can play a role in policymaking beyond that of providers of factual input into international policy processes (Haas, 1992;
Adler, 2005).3 An even newer strand of IR/geography research suggests that the influence of experts comes from their ability to set
the very boundaries of policy fields in global governance – they
delineate what kind of policy problem exists and outline what kinds
of knowledge are relevant to solving it, thus exercising power in setting the basic parameters for policy debate (see Demeritt, 2001;
Fourcade, 2006; Neumann and Sending, 2010; Sending, 2012).
Despite this wealth of existing research, the highly technical
realm of international climate negotiations merits further scholarly
attention as an interesting location where both ‘science’ and an explicit ‘politics’ of economic and status concerns are taking place
simultaneously. In LULUCF, for example, many of the negotiators
are highly educated experts who are also responsible for following
and promoting particular national mandates. Analyzing what is
going on in this policy field thus requires a departure from a strict
scholarly adherence to either studying the emergence of ideas and
norms (a particular focus of constructivism) or tracing the power
games of dominance and submission between state actors (usually
a more realist approach). One way of getting around this division is
to take a cue from Neumann and Sending (2010: 7) who argue,
after Foucault, that we should instead focus on the development
and techniques of the ‘conduct of conduct’. This allows us to understand the influence of socialization, norms and ideas without losing
sight of the importance of power relations in global politics.
In seeking to unpack the emerging practices of this hybrid field
and understand the rules of conduct for participants navigating
both explicit and implicit political commitments and expert norms,
I employ a concept – civic epistemology – borrowed from STS. The
civic epistemology framework lends itself to this study as it directs
our attention to how scientific knowledge is deployed ‘downstream’ in social and political settings, and why (or why not) it
gains traction in particular contexts. This line of work builds upon
the contributions of early sociologists of science – who worked primarily to draw attention to the social aspects of knowledge production – by examining how knowledge claims ‘play out’ within
a given society (Jasanoff, 2006: 275).
In sum, a civic epistemology can be understood as the ‘institutionalized practices by which members of a given society test and
deploy knowledge claims as a basis for making collective
choices. . .articulated through practice rather than formal rules’
(Jasanoff, 2005: 255). In her cross-national study of attitudes towards biotechnology, Sheila Jasanoff (2005) develops the idea of
a ‘civic epistemology’ as a way of gaining conceptual clarity around
3
An epistemic community is understood as a group of experts working in a
particular arena and claiming to possess policy-relevant knowledge in that field. Haas
(1992) ascribed the influence of such epistemic communities to the willingness and
ability of experts to engage and enrol governments around the world in binding
protocols that address problems that transcend state borders, such as climate change
or transboundary pollutants. The idea of epistemic communities sparked a great deal
of research, but has also attracted considerable criticism. The concept is said to pay
insufficient attention to the politics of scientific production, overstate the impact of
science in politics, and exaggerate the commitment of internationally involved
experts to specific policy outcomes (see Jasanoff and Wynne, 1998, p. 51; Sending,
2012).
218
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
the varying ways in which biotechnology was vetted in Germany,
the USA and the UK. She argues that there are enduring differences,
even amongst culturally similar Western states, in the use of science and technology for public policymaking. Her assertion is that
norms of debate, modes of trust, the roles of and expectations
about experts and expertise continue to vary across national borders.4 For example, Jasanoff finds that in the US the preferred way
of demonstrating reliability/objectivity of knowledge in public policy
debates is the deployment of a language of numbers. By contrast, in
the UK, the opinion of prestigious persons of distinction in discerning the truth remains important and, in Germany, committees representing ‘microcosms of the potentially interested segments of
society’ have an important role in approving scientific or technical
knowledge claims for public policy use (Jasanoff, 2005: 264–267).
These processes are not solely (or even necessarily) assessments of
the veracity of the claims, but rather discussions about what kind
of knowledge claims should matter and how they should matter in
a given policy arena (for example, when weighed against moral
arguments or more explicitly political/economic concerns).
While there has been quite a bit of work done about expectations for use of expert knowledge in policymaking at the national
level (Jasanoff, 2005; Hajer, 1995; Lahsen, 2009; Wilson Rowe,
2009b), less has been done when it comes to thinking systematically about the emergence of such practices at the international level. Miller (2005: 46), however, forwards a definition of ‘civic
epistemology’ that lends itself to analysis of international settings,
suggesting that we consider a civic epistemology to be the ‘sociocultural repertoire in any political world that make up its arrangements for producing, validating and using knowledge’.
In that case, what do we mean by political world at the international level? How much interaction or common interest is needed
to produce shared expectations or approaches in global politics?
Work in international relations on the idea of ‘fields’ is useful in
thinking about how to identify a possible ‘political’ world at the
international level. The notion of a policy ‘field’ draws upon Bourdieu’s work, which defines a field as delineating a particular realm
of interaction with internal rules about appropriate behaviour.
Sending (2012: 15) argues that fields in international relations
can be understood as ‘organized around concepts of governance
on which actors hold different conceptions. What unites them is
a ‘‘thin’’ interest in what is at stake in the field.’ This is to say that
experts may not share the same ‘identity’ or ‘discourse’, but rather
come together over a shared interest in addressing old or new policy problems. This shared interest does not mean that common
goals exist or that expert work takes place in a flat network structure in which relations of domination are absent. Agents in a field
occupy unequal positions and control over relevant economic, social, and symbolic resources are usually unevenly distributed,
causing various ‘player[s] to play the game more or less successfully’ (Pouliot, 2010: 34). Consequently, in looking for fields that
function as a ‘political world’ in which a civic epistemology could
emerge at the international level, we need to look for agreement
about what is at stake and a shared sense that this problem should
be governed – not necessarily agreement about how to govern it.
After a brief introduction to methods used in this research, I
turn to the politics surrounding boreal forests in international climate negotiations and then argue that this issue has resulted in a
discrete policy field – an expert knowledge-laden political world
where practices for navigating both expert claims and political
claims are being negotiated.
4
The six indicators Jasanoff explores are as follows: styles of public knowledgemaking, public accountability (basis for trust), demonstration (practices), objectivity
(registers), expertise (foundations), and visibility of expert bodies (Jasanoff, 2005:
259).
Table 1
Anonymized overview of interviews (numbered as cited in text).
Interview #
Position
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
NGO-Russia
NGO-international
NGO-international (2 persons participating in interview)
NGO-Norway (3 persons participating in interview)
Governmental representative-Norway
NGO-Russia
Climate negotiator representing Belarus
NGO-international
Climate negotiator representing Russia
NGO-Russia
NGO-international
NGO-international
NGO-Russia
NGO-international
Former climate change negotiator
3. Methods
Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with
18 actors involved in climate negotiations and with Russian representatives in climate negotiations and their international counterparts in 2011 (see Table 1). This dual set of interviews ensures that
both claim making and its reception were covered. This approach
draws inspiration from Pouliot’s (2010) work on diplomatic
practices in the NATO-Russia council. One’s own practices are
notoriously difficult to reflect upon as they operate at a tacit
knowledge level. To get around this, Pouliot suggests that interviewees be asked to ‘retell the practices of others’. His case study
demonstrates how tacit and codified knowledge is rendered more
accessible and explicit when interviewees are called upon to describe and analyze others’ practices (rather than their own). In this
way, the researcher becomes a ‘kind of participant observer of
everyday interactions’, refracted through the eyes of field participants (2010: 69).
Interview data were then analyzed and coded using indicators
from the civic epistemology framework. Six indicators (see footnote 4) were included as potential coding options, however, as is
discussed below, only three indicators could be linked substantially to the interview records. The semi-structured interviews
were conducted in Oslo with resident and visiting climate actors
(negotiators, NGOs) and at UNFCCC negotiations in Bonn, Germany,
as well as two phone interviews. Interviews were conducted in
English and Russian with the author taking notes during the conversation and preparing a detailed write-up immediately thereafter. Two of the interviews were group interviews, with 2–3
interviewees taking part in one conversation. Quotations from
the interviews are anonymized.
A primary source analysis was also carried out using the Earth
Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), which is a published summary of
UNFCCC negotiations. All reports from 2000 to 2010 were analyzed, with Russian interventions and any immediate responses
identified. This analysis serves to round out the presentation of
Russia’s climate policy below and to provide a counterweight to
the personal reflections on the negotiations gathered from interviews. The reliability of ENB coverage of climate negotiations
was an issue I took up with interviewees, who were unanimous
in their support of the publication as a good source of information
about the negotiations.
4. Carbon sticks or biodiversity preserve? Forests in climate
negotiations
Understandings of forests and the politics that surround them
have been contested and variable throughout the course of climate
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
negotiations (Keohane and Victor, 2011; Lovbrand, 2009), even as
the science pointing to forests’ important role in carbon sequestration has become more certain (Lahsen, 2009). In this section, we
will examine how a policy field around forests has emerged in
international climate negotiations, in order to shed light on the
‘political world’ within which knowledge claims about Russian forests are forwarded.
Carbon sink enhancement, that is improving the ability of forests and other land use sectors to absorb carbon, was included in
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and developed in detail in the Marrakesh
Accords (2001), as a way for Annex I (developed) countries to meet
the requirements for emissions reduction.5 The idea of ‘sinks’ was
formally included in points 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol, including forest, cropland, grazing land and revegetation as relevant land
use change categories. An important UNFCCC principle here is that
credits can only be given if human activity (e.g. new management
practices) results in a positive change in sink size. However, Costa
Rica and Papua New Guinea have worked to introduce standing forests into the REDD+ negotiations around tropical forests by arguing
that the maintenance of forests is the prevention of deforestation,
thereby challenging this norm, at least as it relates to developing
countries.6 Overall, assigning a ‘carbon sequestration value’, thereby
saving Annex I countries the costs of other emission reductions measures, shares something in common with other schemes to preserve
or improve nature through commodification.7
These negotiations around forests draw experience from international negotiations around forestry more generally, where the
emphasis has been on changing management of tropical rather
than temperate and boreal forests. This is in part because corporate
interests in developed countries have worked to keep the focus
away from North American and European forests (Dimitrov,
2003, 2005). One NGO interviewee put it this way, ‘boreal forests
are underrepresented in the UNFCCC. There is a lot of hype about
[tropical forests], but they are not making the necessary headway
on boreal forests. This is because it is a question of making change
‘‘out there’’ rather than difficult changes at home. . .you are paying
others to do the climate work.’8 Another factor drawing attention to
tropical forests ahead of boreal forests, according to this interviewee,
was that ‘tropical forests are under so much pressure and there is a
huge link to biodiversity per square mile.’
Boreal forests in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol have been accounted for under the so-called LULUCF (Land
Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) sector.9 LULUCF includes cropland management, grassland management, revegetation and, most
importantly for the case in our study and also the most prominently
discussed at LULUCF negotiations, boreal forest management. Annex
I countries are required to report on changes in forest area (through
afforestation/reforestation or deforestation), while it remains optional for them to report on changes in carbon stock within a forest
area (forest management). The voluntary nature of reporting on forest management has generated some suspicion in how other countries and NGOs view the LULUCF sector as a whole. In essence, as
one interviewee put it, ‘Of course, countries only report on changes
in the sector if it will be in their favor’, meaning that changes that
would not count as an emissions reduction credit would simply
5
For more detail on the evolution of the LULUCF framework, see Schlamadinger
et al. (2007) and Lovbrand (2009).
6
Interview 7.
7
See McCarthy and Prudham (2003) for a discussion of neoliberalism and nature
management.
8
Interview 2. This interviewee argued that the greater attention paid to tropical
forests also had a scientific explanation. In boreal forests, the carbon is stored
primarily in soils and to prevent release of carbon you have to avoid soil degradation,
not just deforestation, and consequently have to address the root causes of climate
change. Tropical carbon, by contrast, is stored in the trees themselves.
9
Pronounced Loo-Loo-Sea-Eff.
219
not be reported.10 About half of Annex I countries report on forests,
which is a higher percentage than reporting for other land use sectors. One interviewee argued that this is because ‘commercial logging and related monitoring have gone on for a long time, so
states have an overview. It is also easy to calculate change in forests
from numbers they already have on logged wood.’11
LULUCF accounting has become integral to how Annex I countries anticipate meeting their emissions reduction targets and what
this system will look like post-Kyoto is a topic of intense political
debate. For example, in the April 2011 meetings in Bangkok, several Annex I countries argued that they would have to revise their
targets if the LULUCF accounting rules were changed (Putt and Graham, 2011). Overall, NGOs and developing countries are quite critical of the LULUCF process. One NGO interviewee argued that ‘this
billion tons loophole [LULUCF] has been kept open due to the interests of the forestry industry.’12 Another NGO representative expressed frustration with LULUCF: ‘Everyone is getting sick of
loopholes and false accounting. . .Russia definitely gets named as
part of the problem.’13 Key criticisms coming from NGOs and nonAnnex I countries include that current procedures allow Annex I
countries to only report on changes in land use when these changes
will result in a credit (a position that Russia supports, see Charap,
2010), include as a credit natural forest sequestration that has no
link to human intervention, use a system of calculation that allows
for ‘virtual’ rather than real reductions in deforestation,14 and ignore
the distinction between complex natural forests and tree plantations
(Putt and Graham, 2011: 7).
Especially the last point about natural forests vs. tree plantations is a concern for NGOs, as many of them are also or primarily
concerned with biodiversity. The current definition (from the Marrakesh Accords) does not distinguish between types of forests,
which can allow for the conversion of natural forests to tree plantations without that having a detrimental effect on a country’s LULUCF reporting. This has resulted in a debate that is essentially a
battle over how forests should be defined. As one NGO interviewee
put it:
Forests are much more than carbon sinks, forests are biodiversity. . .the current guidelines allow for clear cutting which is
normal practice in boreal forests and ok as long as you replant.
Logging interests in northern states see forest biodiversity as a
luxury and they replace old growth forests with monoculture
forests. In LULUCF forests don’t matter, it is just about trees
and carbons. Negotiators talk about ‘‘stands’’ in a terminology
that is completely loggerhead [sic]. LULUCF is a collection of
trees for them, not forests.15
Another NGO representative referred to a joke circulated by
Greenpeace about how a LULUCF negotiator had been describing
eagerly to someone outside of the negotiations what he worked
on in negotiations, describing ‘carbon sticks’ as having long brown
stems and green leaves and continuing on until his partner in conversation exclaimed, ‘Oh, you mean trees!’16
10
Interview 7.
Interview 12.
12
Interview 12.
13
Interview 14.
14
The key issue here is whether to use a historical base period or forward-looking
baselines/projected reference levels for calculating change in land use management.
Currently the system is based on projections, which allows a state to predict how
much deforestation (or other change in land use) is expected. Then, say, if a country
harvests less wood than anticipated, that difference between projection and reality
can be reported as a credit towards their targets. The proponents of the historical
baseline argue that a different accounting system is necessary as receiving a credit for
avoiding the projected increase in logging would, in fact, mean being credited for
planning to increase logging.
15
Interview 8.
16
Interview 11.
11
220
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
While LULUCF questions were certainly of interest to negotiators and NGO representatives of a broad climate politics stripe, it
was clear from interviews that the number-heavy, technical LULUCF negotiations were seen as a world apart. One interviewee
put it this way, ‘LULUCF is a mystery for outsiders and the core
group of people involved are not good at letting outsiders in.’17 Another interviewee argued that the technical nature of the negotiations ‘exclude a lot of people who have an interest in how forest
politics should be shaped.’18 A direct report from the 2009 negotiations cited climate negotiators grumbling over the technical LULCF
debates and arguing that the LULUCF negotiations were ‘a different
breed. . .with their own language’ (ENB, 2009a). One longtime negotiator put it this way:
A lot of technical experts come together to negotiate the rules
and they love the details. For example, a lot of time has been
spent on the question of harvested wood products, but this
actually amounts to very small amounts of carbon, 1–2% of
emissions. Why bother? It is complicated and it becomes
increasingly difficult for developing countries to do it accurately. Maybe there is this focus on the technical issues because
the really big problems are so hard to deal with.’19
That LULUCF is seen as ‘world apart’ in which it can be difficult
for outsiders to gain access and understanding suggests that this
strand of climate negotiations can be understood as a policy field.
This corresponds with the argument made by Miller and Edwards (2001:12) that we should be alert to the formation of ‘new
communities. . .around new scientific conceptions of the environment’. Consequently, it is unsurprising that we would see a policy
field emerge around forests reconceived as ‘carbon sticks’, even if
that representation of forests remains an object of disagreement.
I suggest that a distinct ‘political world’ has developed around LULUCF negotiations. While there is not always agreement about how
boreal forests should be governed in the climate regime it is now
taken for granted that they should be governed in any international
climate agreement. The emergence of this particular political
world around forests makes it interesting and relevant to learn
more about how participants in the field delineate appropriate
behaviour/interventions and consider claims that are made.
In order to understand what such a civic epistemology of this
particular field might look like, the reception and success or failure
of Russian claims about their extensive boreal forests are examined
below. First, however, we take a closer look at Russia’s attitudes towards and reputation as an actor in international climate negotiations to provide context for the country’s forest-related claims and
to better understand the political agenda and diplomatic practices
that Russian negotiators bring with them to the negotiating table.
5. Russia in climate negotiations
Russia’s participation in international climate negotiations has
been mixed and its reputation has varied accordingly. Russia
played a positive role in Kyoto ratification, being the signatory
country that brought the Protocol into force in 2004. Due to
post-Soviet industrial decline, Russia was able to carry out this ratification without concern for immediate economic costs or domestic policy change. It was speculated that linked political benefits
(such as an expedited WTO accession and a positive image internationally) and the specific economic benefits of the Protocol, namely
the prospects of Joint Implementation (JI) projects and carbon
17
Interview 15. Interviews 1, 9, and 8 also pointed to the exclusive and technical
nature of LULUCF negotiations.
18
Interview 8.
19
Interview 11.
emission trading, were key incentives for ratification (Korppoo
et al., 2006; ZumBrunnen, 2009; Henry and Sundstrom, 2007).20
Russia today, after its bright moment in the sun saving the Kyoto Protocol, has become a somewhat more marginal participant in
international climate negotiations as large developing countries
like India, China and South Africa as well as a more active United
States have usurped much of the spotlight. Nonetheless, as one
NGO observer put it, ‘Russia will always be at the negotiating table.
Climate is now like security issues, it is a big question and Russia
will be there.’21 A longtime negotiator and leader within UNFCCC
processes commented that while Russia’s positions were basically
in line with many other Annex I countries, the Russian negotiating
team pushed issues further than other countries would have done.
He put it this way:
Russia and many other countries think we can’t cope with climate change without involving major economies. So, all Annex
I countries are fed up with the Protocol, but speak about it differently. This may have cultural roots. Russia is a bit like an elephant in negotiations, quite brash and outspoken. They played
hardball tactics in Kyoto, saying we either get things our way
or we go home and they became the real winners. They are willing to take things further than many other European countries
in negotiations.22
Russian negotiators’ tough negotiating tactics have crystallized
in particular around two issues: the universality (or lack thereof) of
the climate regime and boreal forests.
The dual thrust of Russia’s climate politics was clearly presented by a Russian negotiator, who stated in an interview: ‘Our
delegation’s work is shaped by the Russian Federation’s assertions
from Cancun that Russia will not participate in a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol under any circumstances.
Russia is looking for a new agreement that has broad participation
and a full accounting for forestry.’23 The issue of universality of the
climate regime is important to Russia, particularly when it comes to
the question of binding emissions reduction commitments for the
emerging economies of India, China and South Africa.24 That the
question of forest sinks has been a top priority for Russia all along
is obvious from the Earth News Bulletin (ENB) reports analyzed
(2000–2010). Before ratifying the Kyoto Protocol in 2004, Russia
made a number of interventions related to LULUCF quotas, especially
in pushing against the idea of any predetermined limit as to how
much these should count. Russia argued also consistently for simplified reporting procedures for LULUCF and worried about the process
becoming too technical. By 2004, at meetings that were particularly
fraught with excitement as it was hoped that the results would lead
20
Joint Implementation is a flexibility mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol that
allows Russian private and public actors to receive international financing for
emissions reduction projects in Russia. However, the languid pace at which the
implementation of JI projects and steps towards carbon trading has been pursued
indicates that these economic incentives may not have been so decisive. One
interviewee (#10) argued that ‘usage of JI was not the goal, no one had an intention to
sell or use the credits. Climate change for Russia is not an economic issue, but one of
political image.’ He argued that Russian officials had received explicit instructions
from the top leadership to use JI in only a very limited and controlled fashion due to
concerns about Russia’s image abroad if the money were to disappear in corrupt
businesses deals. This coincides with Sundstrom and Henry’s argument that (2007)
the political benefits and the positive effect on Russia’s international image were
likely as important, or perhaps more important, in precipitating Russia’s ratification.
21
Interview 4.
22
Interview 15.
23
Interview 9.
24
One key example of a more proactive position taken by the Russian negotiating
team is the so-called ‘Russian Proposal’ of 2007, which sought to ensure that
developing (non-Annex I) countries also committed in some way to emissions
reductions in a post-2012 (post-Kyoto) arrangement. Russia’s efforts in this sphere
have been generally supported by Annex I (developed countries), with the G77/China,
India and Saudi Arabia stridently against the proposal (ENB, 2007).
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
to Russian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (ENB, 2004), Russia regularly supported Canada, EU and Australian positions relating to LULUCF and was also actively made a number of interventions. Forests
remained at the forefront in plenary negotiations 2008–2010 and the
Russian negotiating team made interventions calling for both an
inclusive agreement and a strengthened role for forests – underlining that Russia’s emission pledge was contingent on favorable outcomes in LULUCF negotiations (ENB, 2009a, 2010).
All this raises a question of central to understanding what Russian negotiators bring to the LULUCF process: Why is Russia so
insistent about the acknowledgement of its carbon sinks when
the country lies well under the emission cap assigned to it by the
Kyoto Protocol and has largely failed to use other ‘money-making’
opportunities under the climate regime,25 for example via Joint
Implementation projects? There may be several explanations for
this. Perhaps Russia wants to ensure that its climate commitments
will not hinder any future economic growth and thus seeks a carbon
cushion through forest accounting. Alternatively, symbolic capital
may be at stake with Russia seeking to increase its international
importance in this issue by highlighting its role as a ‘sylvan superpower’ with globally significant natural resources. The country has
more than one-fifth of the world’s forest and accounts for over 60%
of the world’s boreal forests (Lesniewska et al., 2008: 5). Russian
decision-makers are likely aware of the positive attention and influence garnered by Brazil in international climate negotiations as an
‘environmental superpower’ due to its vast Amazon rainforests
(Sotero and Armijo, 2007). This may resonate with a more general
desire to revive Russia’s ‘great power’ status in international
relations.
Another potential explanation is that the Russian leadership
notes the money flowing into REDD+ efforts and wonders if there
could be further economic benefit for Russia. Kononenko (2010)
cites a UNDP report that estimates that the economic value of services rendered by Russia’s natural ecosystems to the mitigation of
climate change could be 50–150 billion USD annually. The potential value of Russia’s vast and arguably undermanaged26 forests
in a commodified form as part of a global climate regime enjoys a
high level of interest among Russian environmental NGOs. One
interview representing an NGO close to the authorities argued that
he was ‘very interested in the idea of ecosystem services for both
external and internal markets’ and wanted the Russian leadership
to forward this notion at the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio summer
2012. He continued, ‘forests are a symbol of Russia. . .and boreal forests will be the next big thing. REDD is just the beginning of the
story. The idea of ecosystem services is a win–win situation and
something that would contribute to a good image for Russia’.27 In
sum, Russian representatives in LULUCF negotiations come to the table with a clear political mandate and have likely registered the signals given about the broader political, economic and symbolic
significance being assigned to Russia’s forests by domestic actors.
interviewee put it, ‘actually punches it weight.’28 Tellingly, Russia
continues to engage in LULUCF negotiations despite rejecting a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol on the belief that
work in negotiation groups could serve to form the basis of a new
agreement.29
How have these claims about the significance of Russian forests
been forwarded and received in international negotiations? What
can the success or failure of particular Russian interventions tell
us about the ‘civic epistemology’ of the LULUCF policy field? To
reiterate, civic epistemology serves to draw our attention to the
established frameworks for validating and using knowledge-based
claims in a public policy field (Miller, 2001). As argued above, this
framework – as it was designed to follow how knowledge claims
fare in broader public debates – lends itself to systematizing the
‘conduct of conduct’ in a policy field where expert practices and
political concerns both have an acknowledged place. My study of
the LULUCF international policy field speaks to three civic epistemology indicators that help elucidate the contours of accepted
practices in the field: (1) establishing basis for trust (how do we
discern credibility of statements?), (2) foundations of expertise
(what makes an expert?) and (3) practices and registers relating
to objectivity (what is the balance between scientifically valid,
numerical inputs and other inputs like social and political concerns
in the outcome? How are outcomes negotiated?). The two points
relating to trust and experts are covered first, followed by a discussion of objectivity in LULUCF negotiations.
6.1. Establishing trust and expert credibility in LULUCF negotiations
Relationships of trust and establishment of expert credibility
matter greatly in the acceptance of knowledge claims (Jasanoff,
2005: 261; Kusch, 2002; Latour, 1987) and several interviewees
pointed to trust as a key issue in considering Russia’s claims. A Norwegian climate NGO representative noted that Russia’s interventions
in negotiations are often seen as ‘politically motivated. . .they don’t
look at both sides of the issue. . .Other countries have a hard time
interpreting Russia’s double game, not sure what to take at face value
and this may influence how their claims about forests are received.
Are they making impossible requirements about forests as part of
a double game?’30 A Russian NGO representative noted that ‘Russian
proposals are received with some suspicion because they are concerned about what lies behind them.’31 Below, I explore some characteristics that relate to these questions of trust and credibility – why
would Russia’s proposals be met with suspicion?
That Russia so actively engages in LULUCF negotiations in comparison to other aspects of climate negotiations is one factor that
may tarnish Russian representatives’ credibility. This is primarily
because self-interest, rather than concern for the trajectory of the
negotiations as a whole, seems very prominent to non-Russian
field participants. One interviewee noted:
Russia really only cares about forests and that overall the team
does not punch their weight in international negotiations like
you would expect given the country’s geopolitical importance.
This may be because they are not too worried about climate
change impacts. They focus on national interests and have a
poorly developed sense of global interests.32
6. Russian claims and the civic epistemology of the LULUCF field
Forests and the LULUCF negotiations are clearly an important
part of Russia’s interventions in international negotiations – these
are the one aspect of climate negotiations where Russia, as one
25
Interview 10.
The management of Russia’s forests has changed drastically over the past years,
with a new forestry code introduced in 2006 that decentralized forest management to
the provinces and delegated forest exploitation to private companies on long-term
leases, rather than the state (Lesniewska et al., 2008: 5). The capacity of Russia’s
environmental oversight body for forests, Rosleskhoz, to monitor these companies is a
point of concern in this 2008 report and one highlighted by several interviewees from
the Russian NGO sector.
27
Interview 6. Also mentioned by Russian NGO representatives interviewed
(interviews 1 and 13).
26
221
A Russian negotiator also indicated that they view Russia’s
interests as irreducible to one or another coalition within climate
negotiations and certainly not in keeping with any ‘globalized’
28
29
30
31
32
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
7.
9.
5. Also noted by interviewee 2.
3.
7.
222
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
sense of interest: ‘There is no such party that is enough like Russia
that we share interests across issues. Only Russia is against the
idea of an artificial cap on forestry accounting, all others are ready
for compromise.’
Russia’s dogged pursuit of particular ends in LULUCF negotiations and its overwhelming focus on forestry, rather than other aspects of land use also included under the same carbon sinks
umbrella, seem likewise to have been detrimental to building trust.
The focused pursuit of one objective within these negotiations was
at odds with an expectation that work be more holistic, collegiate
and oriented towards moving the field together as a whole. A Russian negotiator defended Russia’s focus on forestry from a logic of
practicality: ‘we don’t have data for other kinds of land use and
uncertainty is really high. Why put a lot of money into establishing
an overview? Russia is too big for that kind of (peat) accounting.’33
Nonetheless, a newer Russian negotiator reaped praise from the
usually critical NGO camp. One interviewee commended the Russian negotiator for supporting NGOs’ efforts to ensure that LULUCF
negotiations distinguish between natural forests and tree plantations (although the point is not of central relevance to Russia’s
aims in LULUCF). She applauded the willingness of this representative to put political concerns aside in the spirit of expert integrity:
I think this person did this because as an academic and a scientist he/she was offended by the inadequacy of the arrangement
and was the only negotiator willing to get the issue of differentiation between natural forests and tree plantations on the
books. As it stands now, you can cut down a natural forest
and plant a tree plantation and get credit.34
Another interviewee commented on Russia’s LULUCF expert
representative as well, noting: ‘They really do participate there,
in large part because of the involvement of a [new Russian negotiator] who is more open and reliable, delivering promised data and
reports. We didn’t trust the Russians at first but now they have become more reliable.’35 Here we see how collegiate, expertise-based
interventions reaped praise.
In an interview with a Russian LULUCF negotiator, emphasis was
placed on both the political mandate received from Moscow and ‘our
work’ in LULUCF as a collective, which had more to do with discussing the scientific merits of various approaches than the sole pursuit
of national interest.36 Another Russian interviewee argued that Russia
was also seeking to influence LULUCF guidelines not only to achieve
the outcome of more international significance of Russia’s forests,
but also from scientific motivations. He argued that Russia wants to
influence LULUCF reporting guidelines to match as closely existing
practices and data sets available in Russia as it ‘hurts a scientist’s heart
not to be able to provide the right kind of data to a report’.37
In sum, Russia overall was perceived of as somewhat untrustworthy for several reasons: an over-focus on the politics of forests as opposed to other climate issues, a generally combative negotiating
technique in parallel negotiations, and an unwillingness to compromise, especially on the issue of predetermined caps to LULUCF credits (more on this below). One could argue that all of these criticisms
unite around the idea that Russia favors national interests over global collegiality and scientific rationality. By contrast, the positive
comments directed to the new Russian negotiator had to do with
an ability to deliver data and to engage in the broader spectrum of
LULUCF issues, not just those relating to Russia’s interests. The distrust generated by Russia’s unabashed focus on national interests
suggests that actors within this policy field place high value on a
33
34
35
36
37
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
Interview
9.
12.
15.
9.
10.
more cooperative, seemingly disinterested and unbiased expert approach, despite the obvious political and economic stakes that surround climate politics in general and LULUCF negotiations in
particular. In other words, the mark of an expert in LULUCF negotiations is a person with the relevant scholarly background who can
participate in the technical, science-based and fairly clannish LULUCF
language and process on a broad spectrum of issues, not just on issues relating to a particular national political mandate.
6.2. Objectivity in negotiations?
A key component in vetting knowledge to be applied to policy is
establishing and adhering to shared values that ensure that knowledge is ‘untainted by bias and independent of the claimant’s subjective preferences’ (Jasanoff, 2005: 264), understood here as
establishing ‘objectivity’. In many ways, activities in LULUCF are
a kind of scientific-political hybrid with some aspects that are closer to the formal negotiations that take place in plenary sessions,
but also (as seen above) with an emphasis on expert collegiality
and problem solving that has more in common with scientific
assessment processes, like the IPCC. This hybrid form results in a
tension apparent in how LULUCF field participants navigate between expectations about expert objectivity within the policy field
itself and pressing commitments to politically grounded mandates
from ‘home.’ Again, the Russian case and their commitment to ‘an
adequate accounting of Russia’s forests with no artificial cap on
how much forests can count’ is instructive in thinking about practices of objectivity in this policy field.38 How do field participants
balance between arguments based on scientifically reasoned and often numerically grounded arguments and negotiated outcomes
shaped by political or economic interests?
The key challenge in LULUCF negotiations and Russia’s response
to it are illustrative in this regard. As of today, carbon credits from
changes in forestry management (in keeping with Article 3.4 of the
Kyoto Protocol) cannot exceed country-specific predetermined
limits set in Montreal in 2005 (UNFCCC, 2005). These caps were
originally established because a full accounting of the forestry sink
would have been politically unacceptable to developing countries,
who argued that full accounting would water out the climate
change mitigation process and allow developed countries to shirk
the responsibility generated by their high historic emissions. An
important point for the Russian negotiating team has been arguing
against, in the words of one interviewee, ‘any artificial cap. Thirtythree megatons [the predetermined limit on carbon accounting of
Russian forests under the Kyoto Protocol] is only one-third of our
sink capacity. We want to fully account this sink.’39
At the same time, this same interviewee demonstrated the extent to which the negotiating team had absorbed some of the
key political norms of the UNFCCC process. The interviewee underlined that they were not arguing for all of Russia’s forests to be
counted as a sink, just full accounting of the sink that has resulted
from improved or changed management processes.
Historically in the negotiating process, Russia wanted to have
full accounting with a reference level from zero [credit for ALL
of Russia’s forests], which was too different from the position
of others. My complex task was to explain to the Heads that
counting from zero would not be an anthropogenic change –
forests grow anyway. But it was difficult for them to lose this
big part of Russian forests, although they eventually agreed. . .I
didn’t want other parties to think Russia was getting credit
for nothing.40
38
39
40
Interview 9.
Interview 9.
Interview 9.
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
Nonetheless, when it comes to the issue of the predetermined caps
on LULUCF sink accounting, a tension between a language of
scientific expert rationality and the political compromises and
issues that form the framework and background of these negotiations becomes apparent.
In pursuing a full accounting of Russia’s carbon sink capacity,
the Russian team resorts to a language of pure scientific rationality.
One Russian commentator argued that in this way the Russian
negotiating team was torn between two approaches: ‘on the one
hand, any artificial quantitative cap is unscientific. On the other
hand, it is necessary to find the middle ground’ (Kokorin, 2011:
311). In other words, an objectively identified and scientifically
documented sink should be credited as such if the overall commitment in the field is to scientifically determined outcomes, rather
than resorting to ‘bureaucratic numbers’.41 On the other hand, the
widespread skepticism to LULUCF as a loophole in the climate regime and the necessity that decisions be consensus-based create
the expectation that all parties compromise in light of political circumstances. That Russia is the only country that has failed to accept
the necessity of predetermined caps suggests that the overarching
commitment in this policy field is to an objectivity – here meaning
the achievement of an outcome or understanding that is seen by
those involved as independent from subjective preferences – that
is consulted and negotiated, rather than based in a language of science and numbers alone.
7. Conclusion
This article has sought to make scholarly contributions in three
ways. Firstly, there are few academic works addressing Russia’s ‘forest politics’ in international climate negotiations and the case study
makes a contribution in this regard. Furthermore, as Russia is an actor of importance in LULUCF, this country’s claims and the reception
of those claims has been a useful window for shedding light on the
politics of knowledge around boreal forests in international climate
negotiations. Finally, the case study also demonstrates that the application of a civic epistemology framework is a promising tool for analyzing the politics of knowledge in international policy fields in
which the key actors may be at once both experts and representatives of national political agendas.
LULUCF is clearly a contested field, involving a number of technical disagreements as well as broader conceptual issues (e.g. forests as
a collection of ‘carbon sticks’ vs. ‘biodiversity preserves’ or LULUCF as
a legitimate credit or a ‘loophole’). Nonetheless, I have argued that
LULUCF should be understood as an international policy field. This
argument has built upon Miller’s (2005) assertion about the importance of acknowledging and analyzing knowledge politics in ‘political worlds’ at the international level. To flesh out the definition of
what such a political world is and how we can recognize one analytically, I employed insights from IR relating to field theory. This allowed me to argue that an international policy field need not be
marked by agreement about how to govern, but rather agreement
objects of governance (Sending, 2012). In other words, while there
is not always agreement about how boreal forests should be included
in the climate regime, it is now taken for granted that they should be
governed in any international climate agreement.
Given that the LULUCF negotiations arguably produced an international policy field robust enough to generate some kind of
shared understandings, civic epistemology indicators – initially
developed to unpack how science is deployed in national-level
public policy debates (Jasanoff, 2005) – were employed. Rather
than insisting on an analytical distinction between the negotiation
of expert norms and the pursuit of political aims more generally,
41
Interview 10.
223
the civic epistemology analytical framework allows us to consider
them alongside one another, acknowledging how they interact to
form the appropriate ‘conduct of conduct’ in a given policy field
(Neumann and Sending, 2010:7). This is especially important as
international climate negotiations are a location where a politics
of expertise and an explicit pursuit of national economic and political concerns are taking place simultaneously.
The case study of Russian claims in LULUCF negotiations revealed several aspects of the broader civic epistemology of the LULUCF policy field. The case studied showed that LULUCF
negotiators are well aware of the intersection of expert norms
and national politics in their policy field. It also became apparent
that navigating these crosscurrents successfully is of great importance to actors’ credibility and influence in negotiations. In sum,
there is a tension in the field between science-based arguments
and expert discourse as an important basis for LULUCF actors’ credibility and moments in which the fundamentally negotiated nature
of the outcomes must be acknowledged. Nonetheless, while field
participants prefer the process and discourse of scientific collegiality, there is widespread acceptance of outcomes shaped by political
circumstance rather than science alone. For example, the necessity
of predetermined limits on LULUCF credits (due to pressure from
developing countries and NGOs who view LULUCF as a big loophole
in the climate regime) was acknowledged by all Annex I countries
involved, except Russia.
On this issue of predetermined limits on LULUCF credits, the
Russian negotiators stood out because, rather than acknowledging
the necessity of compromise on the issue of predetermined limits,
they alone opted for a language of science-based rationality and
called for a full accounting of Russian forests. This is a good reminder that fields may produce homogeneity around some issues, but
that heterogeneity of approaches is likely to persist (Sending,
2012). It also reminds us that any ‘civic epistemology’ will likely
have inner contradictions. It is not a watertight logical construct,
but rather a repertoire of informal practices and expectations organized around particular objects of governance.
The article’s focus on Russia also served to illustrate the explicitly political concerns that can be brought to the generally technical, collegiate, expert-based negotiations within LULUCF. The
article has argued that Russia, a former superpower whose reduced
role still sits rather uncomfortably on its shoulders, is likely interested in new sources of status that can give it political clout and
ability to set the agenda in climate negotiations as well as in other
fields of foreign policy. The country has more than one-fifth of the
world’s forests, and over 60% of the world’s boreal forests (Lesniewska et al., 2008: 5). These forests are a political resource for
highlighting the centrality of Russia and the necessity for the rest
of the world to take Russia (and its forests) into account. As one
experienced European climate negotiator put it, ‘When it was the
Soviet Union in environmental or climate negotiations, we listened
closely parsing every word. In the 1990s, when the Russian delegation spoke you would use the opportunity to go to the loo. Now we
are listening again.’42 Russia’s emphasis on being a ‘sylvan superpower’ may have already gone some way in re-shaping a relation
of authority that was not to their liking and this is a further reminder
of the importance of keeping both the politics of expertise and the
politics of status and national interest in mind when analyzing
claim-making in international climate negotiations.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the interviewees for their time and insights. Many thanks to Bård Lahn, Knut Nustad, Ole Jacob Sending,
42
Interview 15.
224
E. Wilson Rowe / Geoforum 48 (2013) 216–224
Julie Wilhelmsen, three anonymous peer reviewers and Geoforum
editor Dr. Gavin Bridge for useful comments on the manuscript.
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