Global environmental governance is characterized by a specific dual spatiality: On the one hand, geographic territories, landscapes, biomass, and the ecosystem services upon which modern development is based are defined by physical boundaries and features. For long, these spaces have been regarded as static containers, the immotile scenery for action. On the other hand, the social spaces that govern these 'naturalities', that is the livelihoods and lifeworlds of local people(s) but also regional and international negotiations, are defined through political institutions, social dynamics, asymmetries and normative imprints. These shape the space through action. But capabilities and spheres of influence are unequally distributed. This paper, based on finalized PhD research, employs a space sociological perspective to trace the relationality and tension between proximity and distance of socio-ecological spaces to answer the question how non-hegemonic states and nonstate actors build and extert their agency-capacities in international negotiations on forests and genetic resources.
