France and Costa Rica were the two host countries of the latest United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) held in Nice in June 2025. As social scientists researching Costa Rican ocean-related topics, we were particularly interested in observing a number of scenes of this diplomatic stage to follow and understand the international positionings and narratives of Costa Rican actors. This seminar is part of a webinar series that displays and discusses the ethnographic approach and insights of a wider collective of scholars present together at UNOC3. In this session, our objective is to share some of our specific results on the diplomatic narratives around Costa Rican oceans. We will reflect on what we identify as a particularly ‘offshore’ framing in the problems, solutions and promises relating to Costa Rica set forward at UNOC3. By starting to unpack this diplomatic stance, we wish to open a conversation on how the practices that we observed relate to Costa Rica’s ‘green exceptionalism,’ its unique discursive-political construction which over the past decades has positioned it as a leading environmental state in international arenas.
Alexa Obando Campos and Nadège Legroux, both human geographers in the Marine Governance Group at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) in Oldenburg, will share some ethnographic observations and analyses from their work at UNOC3. Professor Alonso Ramírez Cover, political scientist at the University of Costa Rica, will discuss these results through the lens of the analytical framework of ‘green exceptionalism.’
The seminar will take place on
Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Hour: 14.00-15:00 CET Hybrid format
Place: Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (main seminar room), Oldenburg (Germany) and online
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