2019 Earth Systems Governance Conference
November 18, 2019
Luke Kl
eekamp (Theater major, EPC Minor, senior) and CNAIR faculty fellow Kim Suiseeya attended the 2019 Earth Systems Governance Conference, "Urgent Transformations and Earth Systems Governance: Towards Sustainability and Justice" in Oaxaca, Mexico from Nov. 6-8, 2019. Luke presented a multiple-authored paper, "From Presence to Influence: Examining the Politics of Representation in Global Environmental Governance" as part of a "Rethinking Indigenous Peoples in Earth Systems Governance" panel. The paper examines the role that visual images play in shaping the politics of representation in global environmental governance. Luke along with ten other undergraduate students at Northwestern analyzed thousands of photographic images the Presence to Influence (www.presence2influence.org) team created during the 2016 World Conservation Congress. Our analysis revealed that the images that the IUCN and other conservation organizations select to decorate the spaces of the negotiations create a form of spatial politics that can both create and constrain opportunities for Indigenous representation. For example, visual imagery of different environments and communities can introduce new or reinforce existing agendas, agency, and engagement of different groups. Here spatial politics represent an avenue through which Indigenous Peoples engage and influence global environmental governance by shaping the issues that different groups perceive as relevant and also introducing new issues for consideration.