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Jennifer Bansard, Ph.D. Candidate
jennifer.bansard@gmail.com
Universität Potsdam
Country: Germany
About Me:
Jennifer Bansard is an independent consultant working on international environmental governance, especially climate change and marine biodiversity policy. She is a team leader and writer for the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin. As such, she reports on and analyzes various environmental negotiation processes, such as those the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Other consultancy activities include writing policy reports and providing capacity-building training for governments, foundations, media organizations and other stakeholders. In addition, Jennifer continues to pursue academic research. She has published peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in edited volumes on issues such as the role of city networks, science and other non-state actors in environmental governance as well as on research methods. Among others, her work has been published by Cambridge University Press, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change, and Information, Communication & Society. Her research was cited in the United Nations Environment Programme’s landmark Emissions Gap Reports and has been used for teaching purposes in various universities. Jennifer has an international academic education and holds Masters Degrees in Environment and Resource Management (VU Amsterdam, Netherlands), International Relations (Sciences Po Aix, France) and Applied Political Sciences (University of Freiburg, Germany). She gained professional experience at different governance levels in the field of environmental policy: at the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), the German Development Agency (GIZ), the United Nations Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUV).
Research Interests
Environmental Policy
Energy And Climate Policy
Public Policy
Urban Politics
Development
Networks And Politics
Publications:
Journal Articles:
This perspective identifies how recent advances contribute to re-evaluating and re-constructing global environmental negotiations as a research object by calling into question who constitutes an actor and what constitutes a site of agreement formation. Building on this scholarship, we offer the term agreement-making to facilitate further methodological and ethical reflection. The term agreement-making broadens the conceptualisation of the actors, sites and processes constitutive of global environmental agreements and brings to the fore how these are shaped by, reflect and have the potential to re-make or transform the intertwined global order of social, political and economic relations. Agreement-making situates research within these processes, and we suggest that enhancing the methodological diversity and practical utility is a potential avenue for challenging the reproduction of academic dominance. We highlight how COVID-19 requires further adapting research practices and offers an opportunity to question whether we need to be physically present to provide critical insight, analysis and support.
Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of sustainable development. Many therefore argue that actions by nonstate actors, such as businesses and investors, cities and regions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are crucial. These voices have resonated across the United Nations (UN) system, leading to growing recognition, promotion, and mobilization of such actions in ever greater numbers. This article investigates optimistic arguments about nonstate engagement, namely: (a) “the more the better”; (b) “everybody wins”; (c) “everyone does their part”; and (d) “more brings more.” However, these optimistic arguments may not be matched in practice due to governance risks. The current emphasis on quantifiable impacts may lead to the under‐appreciation of variegated social, economic, and environmental impacts. Claims that everybody stands to benefit may easily be contradicted by outcomes that are not in line with priorities and needs in developing countries. Despite the seeming depoliticization of the role of nonstate actors in implementation, actions may still lead to politically contentious outcomes. Finally, nonstate climate and sustainability actions may not be self‐reinforcing but may heavily depend on supporting mechanisms. The article concludes with governance risk‐reduction strategies that can be combined to maximize nonstate potential in sustainable and climate‐resilient transformations.
Recent years have seen a considerable broadening of the ambitions in urban sustainability policy-making. With its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)11 Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, the 2030 Agenda stresses the critical role of cities in achieving sustainable development. In the context of SDG 17 on partnerships, emphasis is also placed on the role of researchers and other scientific actors as change agents in the sustainability transformation. Against this backdrop, this article sheds light on different pathways through which science can contribute to urban sustainability. In particular, we discern four forms of science-policy-society interactions as key vectors: 1. sharing knowledge and providing scientific input to urban sustainability policy-making; 2. implementing transformative research projects; 3. contributing to local capacity building; and 4. self-governing towards sustainability. The pathways of influence are illustrated with empirical examples, and their interlinkages and limitations are discussed. We contend that there are numerous opportunities for actors from the field of sustainability science to engage with political and societal actors to enhance sustainable development at the local level.
Analysis of social media using digital methods is a flourishing approach. However, the relatively easy availability of data collected via platform application programming interfaces has arguably led to the predominance of single-platform research of social media. Such research has also privileged the role of text in social media analysis, as a form of data that is more readily gathered and searchable than images. In this paper, we challenge both of these prevailing forms of social media research by outlining a methodology for visual cross-platform analysis (VCPA), defined as the study of still and moving images across two or more social media platforms. Our argument contains three steps. First, we argue that cross-platform analysis addresses a gap in research methods in that it acknowledges the interplay between a social phenomenon under investigation and the medium within which it is being researched, thus illuminating the different affordances and cultures of web platforms. Second, we build on the literature on multimodal communication and platform vernacular to provide a rationale for incorporating the visual into cross-platform analysis. Third, we reflect on an experimental cross-platform analysis of images within social media posts (n = 471,033) used to communicate climate change to advance different modes of macro- and meso-levels of analysis that are natively visual: image-text networks, image plots and composite images. We conclude by assessing the research pathways opened up by VCPA, delineating potential contributions to empirical research and theory and the potential impact on practitioners of social media communication.
Despite the proliferation and promise of subnational climate initiatives, the institutional architecture of transnational municipal networks (TMNs) is not well understood. With a view to close this research gap, the article empirically assesses the assumption that TMNs are a viable substitute for ambitious international action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It addresses the aggregate phenomenon in terms of geographical distribution, central players, mitigation ambition and monitoring provisions. Examining thirteen networks, it finds that membership in TMNs is skewed toward Europe and North America while countries from the Global South are underrepresented; that only a minority of networks commit to quantified emission reductions and that these are not more ambitious than Parties to the UNFCCC; and finally that the monitoring provisions are fairly limited. In sum, the article shows that transnational municipal networks are not (yet) the representative, ambitious and transparent player they are thought to be.
Book Chapters:
Without doubt, scientific knowledge is of utmost importance for understanding and addressing sustainability challenges. And yet, views differ on the ways in which scientific knowledge and societal decision-making on sustainability can and should relate to each other. In this chapter, we unpack these perspectives, turning to debates surrounding the March for Science, Negative Emission Technologies, and the notion of Planetary Boundaries. We show that the perspective of a linear relation between science and society and of a clear separation between knowledge production and value considerations does not stand the test of reality. Scientific concepts can effectively “lock-in” certain worldviews, for example about acceptable risks, which then come to shape societal decision-making. Acknowledging the normative dimensions of scientific concepts calls for ensuring that a diversity of perspectives feed into the production of authoritative knowledge claims. Yet, despite the decades-old recognition of structural imbalances in science, those most vulnerable to sustainability challenges remain marginalized. Science still carries the voice of those privileged by past developmental pathways rather than reflecting our world’s heterogeneous society. In order for science to make a truly transformative contribution to sustainability, persistent inequalities in science need to be addressed.
This chapter unpacks the complex relationship between knowledge and agency in environmental governance by assessing the scholarship produced by members of the Earth System Governance (ESG) project over the past ten years. Findings include: -ESG–Agency scholars focus on the question of how knowledge can be a source of authority for a diverse set of state and non-state actors, allowing them to influence environmental decision-making. -Key themes in the literature on agency in earth system governance over the past decade include the knowledge-based agency of scientists and local or indigenous actors, learning, and the link between knowledge and power. -ESG–Agency scholarship contributes to larger debates in the social sciences concerning the growing importance of participatory processes of knowledge co-production, moving beyond the conventional primacy of scientific expertise in environmental governance and elevating the role of non-scientific knowledge holders.