Looking back on a successful workshop Uglobe project

On 27-28 June, the UGlobe project The sustainable and equitable management of the marine environment beyond national jurisdiction organized a workshop entitled “Institutional Design at the crossroads of Law, Governance and Fairness”. The workshop focused on the institutional architecture of the upcoming international agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) from a multidisciplinary perspective. It gathered experts in the fields of international law, governance and philosophy, as well as negotiators currently involved in the development of the new agreement at a United Nations Conference. The workshop addressed topics such as the mandate of institutional structures and their interaction, benefit and burden sharing, stakeholder participation, and the balance between an equity perspective and geopolitical interest-based considerations.

“This event was a great opportunity to look at the BBNJ Agreement from different perspectives and to deepen our understanding of some of its components through the expertise of others”, says Alex Oude Elferink, the director of NILOS. “It set the stage for developing interdisciplinary research on the future agreement.”

Alex Oude Elferink, Otto Spijkers and Catherine Blanchard, are part of the UGlobe project, along with Rak Kim (Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development of Utrecht University), Jos Philips and Yara Al Salman (Ethics Institute of Utrecht University).