The_Environment_and_International_Relations-Kate O_Neill.pdf

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“An extraordinarily important book presenting, in one place, a comprehensive review of the key themes and controversies governing the environment and international relations … must reading for students, scholars, practitioners, and anyone who cares about the future of our planet.” Ben Cashore Professor, Environmental Governance and Political Science, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University “The Environment and International Relations provides a clear, intellectually coherent introduction to one of the key issues of our times. This will be a very useful text for undergraduate students and those who want to understand the political complexities of environmental challenges.” Lorraine Elliott Senior Fellow in International Relations, Australian National University “How can we grasp the unprecedented challenges posed by environmental issues to the world as we know it? Kate O’Neill steers us with a firm hand through such questions, providing a series of robust analytical frameworks that bring clarity to a subject-matter so complex it can sometimes seem intractable. This is a precious guide for students, policy-makers, and anyone interested in either the environment or international relations.” Charlotte Epstein Department of Government and International Relations, The University of Sydney “O’Neill provides a thorough and easily accessible tour d’horizon of global environmental politics. She provides theoretical, historical and critical insights into how well the international community is coping with problems of global and transboundary environmental threats, and the prospects for a broader shift to a more sustainable future. If readers don’t come away far better informed and concerned about global environmental threats they simply weren’t paying attention.” Peter M. Haas Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts

“Comprehensive, authoritative and accessible, with this book Kate O’Neill deftly manages to guide the reader, whether new to the area or not, through the dense maze of literature on the environment and International Relations. It deserves to be widely read.” Professor Peter Newell Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University and School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia “An accessible and up-to-date introduction, designed to invite further reading and research. Readers will be indebted to Kate O’Neill for the way in which she has read and summarised such a wide range of literature. In my view there is nothing available that gives such comprehensive coverage.” John Vogler School of Politics, International Relations & Philosophy, Keele University

The Environment and International Relations

This exciting new textbook is an invaluable guide for students of global environmental politics from both political science and environmental studies perspectives. It introduces students to the ways in which the theories and tools of International Relations can be used to analyze and address global environmental problems. Kate O’Neill shows that potential environmental crisis makes global collective action a necessity. She develops an historical and analytical framework for understanding global environmental issues, and identifies the main actors and their roles, allowing students to grasp the core theories and facts about global environmental governance. Consideration is given to how governments, international bodies, scientists, activists and corporations currently address global environmental problems (including climate change, biodiversity loss, ozone depletion, and trade in hazardous wastes), and to how these actors might work more effectively together. This book provides a new and innovative theoretical approach to this area, as well as integrating insights from different disciplines, thereby enabling students to engage with the issues, to equip themselves with the knowledge they need, and to apply their own critical insights. Features: Builds an innovative theoretical framework, enabling students to apply the tools of International Relations to environmental issues. Equips students to consider how international bodies could work more effectively together. Features end-of-chapter review questions, allowing students to check their understanding. Suggestions for further reading provide guidance on further exploration of topics. Kate O’Neill is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Waste Trading among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (2000), which won the 2002 Lynton Caldwell Prize for the Best Book in Environmental Politics, and is an Associate Editor of the journal Global Environmental Politics.

Themes in International Relations

This new series of textbooks aims to provide students with authoritative surveys of central topics in the study of International Relations. Intended for upper level undergraduates and graduates, the books will be concise, accessible, and comprehensive. Each volume will examine the main theoretical and empirical aspects of the subject concerned, and its relation to wider debates in International Relations, and will also include chapter-by-chapter guides to further reading and discussion questions.

The Environment and International Relations Kate O’Neill University of California at Berkeley

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521842167 © Kate O’Neill 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13

978-0-511-47923-6

eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-84216-7

hardback

ISBN-13

978-0-521-60312-6

paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements List of commonly used abbreviations 1

Introduction: The environment and international relations

page ix xi xii

1

2

International environmental problems

24

3

Actors in international environmental politics

48

4

State-led global environmental governance: International cooperation and regime formation

71

The impacts and effectiveness of environmental treaty regimes

104

6

Global economic governance and the environment

135

7

Non-state global environmental governance

167

8

Conclusions: The environment and international relations in the twenty-first century

197

References Index

212 242

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vii

Preface

Studying the global politics of the environment is a complex, sometimes challenging, but always illuminating, task. Those who study this area approach it from many different directions: political science, economics, sociology, law, and ecology, to name but a few. For my own part, I first heard about climate change from my high school biology teacher in the mid-1980s; shortly thereafter, we all found out about the ozone layer as all the hairsprays, deodorants and other aerosol products containing ozonedestroying chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs) vanished from store shelves. As an undergraduate studying economics I learned about “externalities,” “public goods,” and other ways that unregulated capitalism leads, in the absence of intervention, to environmental damage – including damage that travels across national borders. I carried these interests on to graduate school and PhD work in political science, without really expecting to be able to study them in the context of an advanced degree in international relations theory. This all changed following the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro. The Earth Summit, as it is often called, brought into focus a whole network of international treaties and agreements set up to manage international environmental problems – and proved to be a watershed moment for an emerging academic field of international environmental politics, particularly the study of international cooperation among nation states for global environmental protection. These days, as a professor in an interdisciplinary environmental studies department, and an active participant in the academic field of global environmental politics, I encounter perspectives outside the political science field that explain the deeply pervasive nature of global environmental change and advocate a range of political solutions above and beyond international diplomacy. Today’s students were born into a world with serious and widespread environmental challenges, with literally thousands of international agreements, organizations, partnerships, networks, and initiatives attempting to meet these challenges. They also know that many global environmental trends are in the wrong direction, and serious structural and institutional ix

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Preface

changes are likely to be needed in order to address them. There are no optimal solutions to global environmental degradation, and many will be grappling with these problems for decades to come. All who work in the field of international environmental politics face a constant tension between the normative aspects of our work – we do, after all, want to save the world and the world’s environment for future generations – and the analytical: the need to understand and explain real-world political dynamics, which often fall short of anyone’s ideal. This book is informed by the idea that in order to move forward we must understand the shape and dynamics of the governance systems we have now, and it is inspired by the efforts of my students to marry hope to political realities.

Acknowledgements

Attempting to distill a vast and ever changing body of literature into a single volume is no easy task. Many people helped me along this journey. I’d like to thank John Haslam, Carrie Cheek, Jodie Barnes, and Hywel Evans from Cambridge University Press for their patience, encouragement, and enthusiasm, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their comments. For reading drafts, helping out with ideas, and general support, thanks to Jörg Balsiger, Elizabeth Havice, Alastair Iles, Sikina Jinnah, Kristen McDonald, Mark Philbrick, Emily Polsby, and Stacy VanDeveer. The online GEP-Ed community is a never-failing source of discussion, literature, and debate, so many thanks to them. My students on my undergraduate and graduate courses were also subjected to early drafts, and have helped transform my thinking about the politics of the global environment over the ten years I’ve been teaching at UC Berkeley. Finally, this book is dedicated to my husband, Peter, for his boundless enthusiasm and support for this project, and his never-ending quest to shorten my sentences.

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Commonly used abbreviations

BINGO CBD CCD CFCs CITES COP CSA CSD CTE ENB FAO FDI FSC GATS GATT GDP GEF GEP GMO G77 IBRD IEP IGO IMF IPCC IPE ISO IUCN LRTAP MEA xii

Business International Non-Governmental Organization Convention on Biological Diversity Convention to Combat Desertification Chlorofluorocarbons Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species Conference of the Parties Canadian Standards Association Commission on Sustainable Development Committee on Trade and the Environment Earth Negotiations Bulletin UN Food and Agriculture Organization Foreign Direct Investment Forest Stewardship Council General Agreement on Trade in Services General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gross Domestic Product Global Environment Facility Global Environmental Politics Genetically Modified Organism Group of 77 Developing Countries International Bank for Reconstruction and Development International Environmental Politics Inter-Governmental Organization International Monetary Fund Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change International Political Economy International Organization for Standards International Union for the Conservation of Nature, now the World Conservation Union Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Multilateral Environmental Agreement

Commonly used abbreviations

MNC NAFTA NGO NIEO NOAA NSMD NTB OECD PEFC

POPs SAP SBSTTA SFI SIR SPS SRI STS TRIPS TWG UN UNCED UNCHE UNCTAD UNDP UNEP UNESCO UNFCCC WBSCD WCD WEO WHO WSSD WTO WWF

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Multinational Corporation North American Free Trade Agreement Non-Governmental Organization New International Economic Order National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Non-State, Market-Driven (Governance) Non-Tariff Barrier Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes, formerly the Pan-European Forest Certification Scheme Persistent Organic Pollutants Structural Adjustment Program Subsidiary Body for Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice Sustainable Forests Initiative System for Implementation Review Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards Socially Responsible Investment Science and Technology Studies Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Technical Working Group United Nations UN Conference on Environment and Development UN Conference on Humans and the Environment UN Conference on Trade and Development UN Development Programme UN Environment Programme UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization UN Framework Convention on Climate Change World Business Council for Sustainable Development World Commission on Dams World Environment Organization World Health Organization World Summit on Sustainable Development World Trade Organization Worldwide Fund for Nature, formerly World Wildlife Fund

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The question of when, if, and how well national governments cooperate to address shared environmental problems, from climate change to biodiversity loss to international trade in hazardous wastes, to name but a few, is central to the relationship between international relations theory and the environment. For many years now, the tools of political science, and specifically of the discipline of international relations, have been applied to the complex set of questions around global environmental change and global environmental governance. At the same time, insights from this body of work have informed and shaped our broader understanding of the workings of international politics, and the emphases and directions of specific theoretical approaches within the academic discipline. However, if there is one thing that the global politics of the environment have taught us, it is that traditional political science and international relations approaches have limits when applied to problems of such political, scientific, and social complexity as those associated with global environmental change. A whole spectrum of perspectives, approaches, and tools from many different disciplines help explain the nature of the global environmental crisis and offer possible solutions. Some of these perspectives have their origin in the world of practice and policymaking, others in other social science disciplines. Many of these perspectives lie well outside the traditional disciplinary parameters of international relations theory, but are becoming more central to debates within the field of international – or global – environmental politics.1 This book, therefore, analyzes the politics of global environmental governance – its shape, its history, its performance,

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The definitive distinction between “international” and “global” environmental politics (IEP and GEP) has yet to be drawn. In general, the term “IEP” tends to be used when the work or approaches under investigation derive most directly from international relations theory; “GEP” is a broader, and potentially more interdisciplinary term, allowing for broader sets of theoretical and methodological approaches. While they can be used interchangeably, “GEP” is becoming the more common term as the field itself evolves.

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and its possible future – through a broad theoretical lens, in the process identifying a field of study that itself is starting to shape the way we understand international politics as a whole. Outline and themes Three questions guide political science inquiry into the global environment. First, what are the political causes of global environmental change? Can they be related to collective action problems, as states have little incentive to control the shift of pollution or resource depletion across national borders (and sometimes a positive incentive to allow it)? Or are they shaped more by the structures of a global – and globalizing – capitalist economy, which prioritizes economic growth and free market capitalism over environmental sustainability? Second, what factors account for the rise of global environmental concern, and the ways in which critical actors perceive environmental problems? Why has such concern fluctuated over the years? How do we handle scientific and political uncertainties about global environmental change? Last but not least, what constitutes global environmental governance, and what explains the shape, emergence, and effectiveness of such governance institutions and arrangements? It is this third question, informed by perspectives on the first two, which this book seeks to address. In many ways, international relations theory helps to illuminate the answers to these questions. With its focus on the roles of power and national interests, of international institutions and rules, and of norms and ideas in international cooperation, it provides powerful leverage in explaining why and how we see the global environmental governance institutions we do, and why some are more successful than others. In other respects, international relations theory (at least in conventional terms) is not enough. For example, the state-centric focus of much international relations theory has traditionally omitted the roles and activities of non-state actors – of environmental movements, corporations, even scientists – in influencing existing, and even creating their own, governance institutions. This focus is now clearly changing. More fundamentally, some scholars question the viability and worth of existing global environmental governance architectures, and argue for dismantling and rebuilding the ways the global community manages environmental problems. Others argue that we have been too blinkered in how we identify and categorize institutions and practices of global environmental governance, and urge attention be paid to politics across scales and issue areas that have not been traditionally part of the global policy agenda. In short, studies of international environmental politics


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and governance are dynamic and evolving, creating an exciting field of study that is applied to some of the most urgent environmental, economic, and social challenges of our time. Understanding these dynamics offers critical insights into the opportunities for, and barriers to meeting, these challenges. This book, therefore, traces the evolutionary arc of global environmental governance since it first emerged as a coherent system in the early 1970s up to the more contested and disillusioned years of the early twenty-first century, focusing both on the evolution of governance institutions and on how the study of global governance has changed. It addresses how international relations theory has been analyzed and assessed, and has itself been challenged by the emergence of global environmental politics as a serious arena of scholarship within – and outside – the discipline. In particular, this book identifies and assesses different modes and sites of global environmental governance: state, or government-led environmental cooperation and the creation of multilateral environmental agreements; the emergence of a multitude of “non-state” governance initiatives, such as eco-certification schemes; and how global economic governance, from trade to development aid, has become a critical site of environmental governance. This chapter introduces the various scholarly approaches within the broad field of international environmental politics. Chapters 2 and 3 introduce global environmental issues, or problems, and actors in international environmental politics respectively. Chapters 4 through 7 focus on the different sites and modes of global governance and its intersection with the environment. Chapters 4 and 5 address international environmental cooperation, or diplomacy: the negotiation, implementation, and impacts of multilateral environmental agreements. Chapter 6 turns to global economic governance – particularly of trade, finance, and aid – and how it increasingly engages with environmental issues. Chapter 7 describes “non-state” global environmental governance: governance institutions and arrangements set up not by nation states, but by non-state actors. Chapter 8 – the concluding chapter – addresses debates over where global environmental governance is going, and how it can be best designed (or designed at all) to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and beyond. Global environmental governance: A narrative arc and critical debates Defined most simply, global environmental governance consists of efforts by the international community to manage and solve shared

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environmental problems.2 In an article published in 1970 in the influential policy journal Foreign Affairs, George Kennan – one of the architects of the post-World War Two world order – wrote about his own vision of global environmental governance, then in its nascent stages (Kennan 1970). Recognizing that “the entire ecology of the planet is not arranged in national compartments; and whoever interferes seriously with it anywhere is doing something that is almost invariably of serious concern to the international community at large,” he argued that the existing patchwork of national and international agencies were not up to the task of coordinating and managing the world’s environment. He continues: One can conceive, then, by an act of the imagination, of a small group of advanced nations, consisting of roughly the ten leading industrial nations of the world, including communist and non-communist ones alike … constituting themselves something in the nature of a club for the preservation of natural environment, and resolving, then, in that capacity, to bring into being an entity – let us call it initially an International Environment Agency … This entity, while naturally requiring the initiative of governments for its inception and their continued interest for its support, would have to be one in which the substantive decisions would be taken not on the basis of compromise among governmental representatives, but on the basis of collaboration among scholars, scientists, experts … true international servants, bound by no national or political mandate, by nothing, in fact, other than dedication to the work at hand.

Kennan was writing with full knowledge of, and indeed in order to advise, the upcoming United Nations sponsored Conference on Humans and the Environment (UNCHE), to be held in Stockholm in 1972. At that point in time, the UN was looking to expand its role into managing global environmental problems. By bringing together government representatives from 114 countries, it hoped to lay the groundwork for an architecture of global environmental governance that would serve the planet for decades to come. Kennan’s vision represents a highly technocratic form of global environmental governance: governance through impartial expertise rather than through the politics of conflict and compromise. The system of global environmental governance that emerged post-Stockholm, however, was far more political, and decentralized. Since 1972, global environmental governance has consisted primarily of the negotiation and implementation by nation states of international (multilateral) environmental treaties and agreements on an issue-by-issue basis, often coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), established at Stockholm. 2

For a discussion of the concept “global governance,” its theoretical antecedents and applicability to contemporary world politics, see Dingwerth and Pattberg 2006.


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In other words, the dominant driving force of global environmental governance since 1972 has been not technocracy, but international diplomacy. More than 140 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) have been created since 1920, over half of these since 1973 (Haas 2001a, p. 316). If one also counts treaty amendments, protocols, and other changes to existing agreements, this number could be far higher: “three or more governments have agreed on legally binding environmental commitments over 700 times” (Mitchell 2003, pp. 434–5). Highlights include binding agreements over ozone layer depletion, the protection of biological diversity, the trade in hazardous wastes, and the trade in endangered species. The most high-profile, and contentious, negotiating process has been over climate change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Its fluctuating progress is demonstrative of many of the challenges of international environmental cooperation. For example, although it entered into force in 2005, it has suffered from the active withdrawal of the US, and criticism from the environmental community for being too weak to seriously address greenhouse gas emissions. These multilateral environmental agreements, or regimes, together comprise the dominant mode of contemporary global environmental governance. Yet today the dominance of both the practice and the study of international environmental cooperation is challenged by two different narratives. The first is one of failure. James Gustave Speth, former director of the World Resources Institute, and Dean of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, offers a representative view: [The] rates of environmental degradation that stirred the international community [a quarter century ago] continue essentially unabated today. The disturbing trends persist, and the problems have become deeper and truly urgent. The steps that governments took over the past two decades represent the first attempt at global environmental governance. It is an experiment that has largely failed (Speth 2004, pp. 1–2).

This perspective draws on the perceived weaknesses of existing treaty arrangements (Susskind 1994), the intractability of disputes between Northern (rich) and Southern (poorer) countries (Agarwal et al. 1999), the “summit fatigue” that has resulted from the proliferation of international meetings around MEAs (VanDeveer 2003), and the extent to which global economic governance regimes “trump” their environmental equivalents (Conca 2000). The diplomatic process set in train at Stockholm in 1972 has essentially stalled (Conca 2005a), and new tools and institutions are needed to address these ever more critical problems at the global level.

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A second narrative argues that we have too narrow a view of what counts as global environmental governance, and that we need to look beyond the standard international relations repertoire of inter-state cooperation and diplomacy (Conca 2005a, 2006; Wapner 2003). By examining nontraditional actors – environmental activists, community groups, international organizations and even multinational corporations, other modes of governance, such as forest certification schemes, transnational advocacy networks, and actions across scales – from local to global – we see a picture of global governance that is far more multi-faceted, contentious, and potentially more democratic than the dominant model of international environmental diplomacy. This perspective challenges the position of nation states as the primary agents of global governance – and ultimately argues that a more democratic, or participatory, vision of global governance may help us reach a more environmentally sustainable world. By broadening our field of vision, as students, scholars, or practitioners, we can attain a more complete understanding of the various forces driving – or pushing against – effective global environmental governance. Following the insights from this second debate, this book focuses on three existing modes and sites of global environmental governance: international environmental cooperation (state-led global environmental governance; Chapters 4 and 5), non-state global environmental governance (including eco-certification schemes, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and even socially responsible investment initiatives; Chapter 7), and global economic governance (Chapter 6). “Sites” of governance are not literal locations, but rather arenas of governance within the broader structure of global governance in which actors interact and make decisions. “Modes” of governance are ways of crafting and implementing environmental regulations and initiatives – whether it be through the negotiation of treaties or the development of private-sector led voluntary certification systems. We have already outlined the basic shape of “state-led” governance. The term “non-state governance” refers to a range of governance activities created, implemented and managed by non-state actors: civil society actors, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private sector actors – corporations and business associations – who may or may not work in partnership. In Chapter 7, we examine forest certification schemes as a leading example of non-state governance, as well as other examples. Given the general disillusionment with the effectiveness of international environmental diplomacy, many activists, analysts, and members of the private sector are embracing these schemes as a way to bypass the cumbersome process of international cooperation. Scholarly


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interest in these non-state regulatory regimes revolves around the ways in which they are building authority and legitimacy, even while bypassing national governments – traditionally the sole holders of these governance properties (Cashore et al. 2004), and their ultimate effectiveness, especially given their voluntary nature (Espach 2006). Decisions and rules about trade, foreign investment and global capital movements, and development, particularly in an era of rapid globalization, have serious impacts on the state of the global environment. So, increasingly, forums such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank have had to take on issues of environmental and social impacts of their decisions, and how to respond when their rules conflict with global rules and norms about environmental protection. I have chosen in this book to focus on arenas of global environmental governance that are characterized by a relatively high degree of institutionalization, and which operate from the global level. The concluding chapter touches on less visibly institutionalized modes of global environmental governance that are emerging onto the international scene. In the meantime, we begin this journey by sketching the scholarly perspectives and debates, both within and outside international relations theory, that guide our understanding of these developments. Scholarly perspectives on international environmental politics The emergence of the environment as an area of study within international relations scholarship mirrored real world political developments. Many early works in the field appeared in the early 1970s, but during the 1990s, the field began to come into its own. Books, journals, university courses, list-serves, and conferences – all the hallmarks of a successful academic discipline – now provide forums for ongoing debates within the field. In some ways, the field began as a subset of international relations theory, whereby the politics of the global environment provided a useful set of cases for developing and testing hypotheses about the nature and durability of international cooperation. Now, however, the field has grown in scope to embrace many different social science perspectives and methodologies. The following sections of this chapter discuss the relationship between international relations theory, social science theory, and the global environment, addressing the following themes: How the basic tools of, and perspectives within, international relations theory help us understand the dynamics of global environmental change and governance.

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How the study of global environmental governance – and particularly

the study of international environmental cooperation – has contributed to the study of international relations. How the study of global environmental problems and politics have generated new perspectives on global environmental governance that draw on a full range of social science traditions. International relations and environmental politics

Theory provides a way of thinking about and analyzing the world in systematic ways. It helps us describe, explain, and predict real world events. The broad field of international relations, with its focus on interactions among nation states, has generated many theoretical approaches, concepts, and tools for understanding international environmental politics. Most essentially, international relations theory is concerned with the dynamics of international conflict and cooperation among nation states. In the aftermath of World War Two, many scholars in the field focused on the dynamics of the Cold War between the East (the Soviet Union) and the West (the United States and Western Europe). This period also saw a growing interest in international political economy (IPE) – the economic interactions among nation states, including trade and financial relations, issues of debt and dependency, the role of international organizations and international law in managing both the global economy and collective security – and, ultimately, the global environment.3 Works explicitly on international politics and transboundary environmental problems began to appear in the 1970s (e.g. Pirages 1978; M’Gonigle and Zacher 1979). Over the 1980s and 1990s the field itself consolidated around two trends. First, the 1970s and 1980s were active decades on the international political scene. The 1972 Stockholm Conference ushered in a flurry of diplomatic activity coordinated by the new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Treaties – on trade in endangered species, on ozone-depleting substances, on hazardous waste trading, ocean dumping, biodiversity, climate change, and so on – were being mooted, signed, and often ratified by nation states, providing a new and fertile field of study for political scientists. Second, many international relations theorists had shifted towards closer study of international cooperation – the intentional coordination of policies and adjustment of behaviors among nation states to address collective 3

For some more general discussions of the evolution of international relations theory, see Rowlands 2001, Gilpin 2001, Karns and Mingst 2004, Burchill et al. 1996, and Baylis and Smith 1997. On theories of international cooperation, see O’Neill et al. 2004.


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problems – as a durable and influential phenomenon (e.g. Keohane 1984; Krasner 1983). These scholars questioned a dominant assumption of the discipline: that cooperation among rival states was purely transitory and reflective only of state interests. Interest surged in conditions facilitating the formation of international governance regimes, their functions, durability, impact, and how they managed to overcome collective action problems associated with cooperation under anarchy. In turn, emerging structures of global environmental governance provided a rich set of cases for the study of international cooperation. To quote an early and influential statement of the global environmental problematique from an international relations perspective: Can a fragmented and often highly conflictual political system made up of over 170 sovereign states and numerous other actors achieve the high (and historically unprecedented) levels of cooperation and policy coordination needed to manage environmental problems on a global scale? (Hurrell and Kingsbury 1992, p. 1).

Three traditions within the mainstream of the field – realism (or neorealism), liberal institutionalism, and cognitivism, based respectively on power, institutions, and ideas – provide insights into problems and politics of international environmental cooperation. They share, in many ways, perceptions of the international context, or system, and the identity of key actors, but differ extensively in the emphasis they give to different explanatory variables. The key common factor they share is that the international political system is anarchic, and that the primary actors within this system are sovereign nation states. By “anarchy,” international relations theorists mean the absence of a sovereign world government: nation states answer to no higher authority than themselves. They do not mean that the system is chaotic, nor do they have a strong connection to classical political theories of anarchy, or “self-governing” communities. Within this system, states – or countries – are considered sovereign territories: governments rule over their citizens, territory, and resource base, and except under limited circumstances, interference from other states is considered an act of war.4 Realist and neorealist theorists of international politics hew most closely to these basic assumptions (Waltz 1979; Keohane 1986; Powell 1991). For these theorists, international anarchy is unmitigated: states have little or no incentive to work together to solve joint problems, and their attitudes towards each other have been conditioned by a history of international conflict, not one of international cooperation. They are motivated primarily by rivalry and the pursuit of relative power, most particularly 4

For more on the concepts of anarchy and sovereignty, see Milner 1991; Krasner 1988; Spruyt 2002.

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power in military or economic terms. In fact, it is this pursuit of relative gains, vis-à-vis other states, that drives interactions between them. This makes lasting cooperation – other than the formation of strategic military alliances – extremely unlikely, except when cooperation is driven and maintained by one single, powerful state, or hegemony, for as long as it is willing and able to do so. For example, the US in the post-World War Two years took on this role, setting up and maintaining the global free trade regime (e.g. Kindleberger 1973; Snidal 1985). For realists, state actors – being the ones that hold the reins of military and economic power – are the only actors who matter. Other types of international actor – international organizations, NGOs, etc. – are purely peripheral. Liberal theorists – or, in their latter-day variant, neoliberal institutionalists – see a slightly different sort of world, one that is more amenable to cooperation (Baldwin 1993; Keohane 1984; Krasner 1983; Keohane and Nye 2001). They posit that states are, in fact, far more interdependent than most realists, or neorealists, recognize. In a world where countries depend on one another for mutual peace and prosperity, there is a strong incentive to work together to achieve joint, or absolute, gains for the international community. Strong variants on liberal theories in international relations do, in fact, see a very important role for international law in creating an international community of nation states and other actors, rather than a world occupied by autonomous and rivalrous states (Bull 1977). For theorists in the neoliberal institutionalist tradition, anarchy is a problem in that the absence of a sovereign authority makes it easy – and desirable – for states to cheat on mutual agreements. Thus, a single state can free-ride on an international agreement, and receive the benefits from it without paying any costs of adjustment. Under this scenario, no state cooperates, hoping instead to free-ride on the actions of others. Therefore, neoliberal institutionalists look for ways to mitigate these problems. They see international cooperation succeeding when states can work together to realize joint gains, and when institutions are set up that can monitor compliance, increase transparency, reduce the transactions costs of cooperation, and prevent most, if not all, cheating. They assign nonstate actors, such as the United Nations, or non-governmental organizations important roles in fostering such transparency, and making durable cooperative agreements much more likely. The third approach, “cognitivism” (sometimes called constructivism), introduces ideational and normative elements into the equation.5 Both 5

Cogntitivist approaches are often divided into “weak” and “strong” variants. Weak cognitivism, or constructivism, fits more into the “explanatory” school of theory than its relative,


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realist and neoliberal institutionalist traditions tend to assume that states are out to maximize their individual utility (be that in relative or absolute terms), and that their preferences, or interests, are fixed in advance, or determined by internal factors, such as powerful interest groups (as we shall see, themselves an important force in shaping international environmental politics). Cognitivism, instead, examines how states respond to, and how international cooperation is shaped by, the introduction of new information or ideas, or by international norms – shared conceptions of appropriate behavior (Nadelman 1990; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Goldstein and Keohane 1993; Klotz 2002). These approaches tend to assign a far more influential role in international politics to non-state actors than do realists or even institutionalists, arguing they are more than supporting players. Instead non-state actors are frequently the shapers and carriers of these new ideas or norms. At one level, new ideas or norms may change the way states calculate costs and benefits of different courses of action. But, at another, these ideas and norms can work to change states’ own perceptions of their interests or roles in the international system. Slavery is an example frequently used in the literature. At the start of the nineteenth century, slavery was widely accepted as a legitimate practice by many nations. However, over the course of that century, political ideas about democracy and the intrinsic equality of human beings began to gain influence, promulgated by the Abolitionist movement, which had important roots in Great Britain, but soon spread to become one of the world’s first transnational social movements (Keck and Sikkink 1998). The moral pressure exerted by these activists, and some influential and wealthy allies, gradually led to the abolition of the institution of slavery in the industrializing world (although not without the cost of a devastating Civil War in the USA). These days, any state that legally permits slavery within its borders is considered a pariah, violating what has become an important international norm. Each of these three mainstream traditions in international relations theory contributes to our understanding of international environmental cooperation in different ways. Many argue that realism and later traditions of neorealism, with their focus on the “high politics” of international peace and security, and their general skepticism about cooperation, have little to contribute to understanding the politics of the global environment. There certainly is no “hegemonic” state willing to create and maintain “strong” cognitivism, which takes a strongly critical approach to international politics. While weak cognitivism “focuses on the role of causal beliefs in regime formation and change,” strong cognitivism focuses on how the same variables – knowledge, norms, and beliefs – may transform actors’ conceptions of themselves, their roles in the international systems, and their relationship with other actors (Hasenclever et al. 2000, pp. 10–11).

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environmental cooperation. Yet, many argue that this dismissal underestimates the importance of power politics in international environmental cooperation (e.g. Rowlands 2001). Certainly, military power in the strictest sense is a poor predictor of cooperative outcomes in the environmental arena. But, by adopting different perceptions of power, including control over natural resources or more intangible variables such as leadership and leverage, we can begin to understand particular patterns of bargaining and cooperative outcomes in IEP. Such outcomes include, for example, the influence of southern countries in environmental negotiations and why, when leadership is exercised by particular (often small) countries, we see stronger agreements than might otherwise have been put in place. The neoliberal institutionalist perspective has been the most influential in the field of IEP, and many IEP theorists have emerged from, and speak to, this tradition. Global environmental degradation, more than many international problems, highlights the interdependence of nation states. Yet, international coordination needs to be strong and organized to realize mutual gains: why should one state voluntarily move to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions if others will not? To that end, international cooperation is not only desirable, but necessary to overcome collective action problems, and mitigate the negative effects of interdependence. International institutions, reinforced by environmental activist groups, play a critical role in raising international concern, reducing the transactions costs of cooperation, and monitoring and enforcing resultant agreements (Haas, Keohane, and Levy 1993). Therefore, neoliberal institutionalist approaches make powerful contributions to understanding why states cooperate over environmental problems and why we see the sorts of cooperative agreements we do. Finally, cognitivist theories, focusing on the importance of ideas and norms, have also influenced our understanding of international environmental cooperation. For example, one influential approach developed by Peter Haas examines how transnational “epistemic communities” of scientists have been able to influence cooperative outcomes by transmitting shared ideas of causes and responses to problems to government representatives (Haas 1990b). Examination of international environmental norms, and their influence on state preferences and on the course of global environmental governance, is as yet in relative infancy (though see Ringius 2001; Bernstein 2002; Epstein 2006). Yet, evidence is growing that shared norms of sustainable development, for example, are influencing global governance in most environmental issue areas, and that these norms are shaping environmental policies and approaches at national and local levels as well.


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The contributions of the environment to international relations theory International environmental problems and politics have significantly informed and reshaped contemporary international relations theory. First and foremost, international environmental negotiations constitute a rich set of cases for developing and testing hypotheses about the formation, durability, and impacts of international cooperation. In practice, international cooperation consists of the negotiation by nation states – with or without coordination by an international body such as the UN – of international governance regimes, the basic building blocks of global environmental governance. The term “regime” covers the rules, organizations, and basic norms and principles involved in the global governance of an individual issue area.6 Therefore a regime will include, inter alia, treaties negotiated by states, the organizations set up to govern those treaties, and the decision-making processes that govern future negotiations within the issue area. It also includes less formal, more prescriptive norms – shared understandings of “acceptable” behavior or ultimate goals – which, while they may not be written down on paper, often exert significant influence on the behavior of regime members. Theories of regime formation examine the factors that contribute to successful or unsuccessful negotiating outcomes, including the interests and preferences, and relative bargaining leverage of state representatives, characteristics of individual issues, and the role of domestic and transnational “non-state” actors – such as environmental activist groups or business interest groups – in influencing the eventual outcome (see Chapter 4). The incorporation of environmental case studies into theories of regime formation brought a wealth of additional insights into why we get the international agreements that we do (Young 1989, 1991; Mitchell 1994; Susskind 1994). Environmental issues are frequently characterized by complexity, uncertainties, and long time horizons. Even allocating responsibility for causing environmental degradation is frequently difficult. While some scholarly work examines how issue area characteristics affect bargaining (Miles et al. 2002), other scholars focus on the configuration and roles of domestic interest groups in influencing national bargaining positions (Schreurs and Economy 1997; DeSombre 2000; Raustiala 1997), and their direct engagement with policymaking at the international bargaining table (Betsill and Corell 2001; Pulver 2002). Compared with other international issue areas, environmental negotiations have been far more open to non-state actor participation. 6

For overviews, see Krasner 1983; Downie 2005; Hasenclever et al. 1997.

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A second area in which the environment has made a critical contribution to understandings of international cooperation is through expanding the field of inquiry to the effectiveness and implementation of international regimes (Zürn 1998; see Chapter 5). This area of international cooperation – why and how international cooperation actually works – had been relatively under-studied in international relations theory, in part because dominant assumptions within areas of the discipline still focused on the puzzle of what made states get together and cooperate in the first place. IEP has made great strides in defining effectiveness, developing methods for studying effectiveness, and building case studies that indicate when, how, why, and to what extent international environmental regimes influence the behavior of states and other actors, and actual environmental outcomes (Bernauer 1995; Young 1997; Downs 2000; Haas et al. 1993). In part, this work is driven by theoretical questions, and in part by normative concerns held by many in the field about whether or not the regime-building approach actually works. Much of this work focuses on behavioral impacts of environmental regimes (e.g. Weiss and Jacobson 1998). In other words, do states actually comply with the terms of an international environmental agreement? As more data emerges on environmental changes and outcomes, scholars are focusing more on goal attainment and problem-solving: are the goals of international agreements being met, and are those goals appropriate for solving the problem (Miles et al. 2002; Mitchell 2001)? Third, and building on the theme that international regimes and other forms of cooperation are in fact durable, and long-lasting, features on the international political scene, recent work in IEP has begun looking at questions of regime change, linkage, and density (Young 1996; see Chapter 5). How do international environmental regimes change over time? Do they grow stronger or weaker as new amendments or protocols are negotiated? To what extent do international regimes overlap or even conflict with each other? What conflicts or synergies should be minimized or exploited? What happens when more than one international regime has jurisdiction within a single issue area? Some work in this area examines linkages between different environmental regimes – for example, the extent to which loss of biodiversity is influenced by climate change rules (Rosendal 2001). Other work examines linkages and conflicts between environmental regimes and regimes in other areas of global governance. For example, some scholars have turned their attention to whether or not the rules associated with the World Trade Organization (WTO) may conflict with environmental regimes, particularly those – such as the Basel Convention on hazardous waste trading – which actually ban or severely restrict certain types of trade (O’Neill and Burns 2005; see Chapter 6).


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Other research themes cut across these different phases of environmental cooperation. An important research theme in IEP analyzes the dimensions, relative power dynamics, and outcomes of disputes – or differences – between countries of the wealthy North and the poorer nations of the South (Najam 2004; see Chapters 3 and 4). Southern countries have found a powerful voice in international environmental negotiations, and have utilized sources of bargaining leverage that do not exist to the same extent in other negotiating forums. These include powerful alliances and a critical role in protecting existing natural resources or preventing future pollution. Much of the world’s natural resources, including critical sites of biodiversity, are located in southern countries – and given possible trajectories of population growth and industrialization, their participation is critical to the success of most international environmental agreements. Southern countries have also been able to make powerful normative claims against the North, which has historically been responsible for most global pollution and resource consumption. They have been instrumental in turning international attention away from purely environmentalist goals towards adopting sustainable development – development that does not discriminate against future generations – as the main underlying norm of international environmental negotiations. They have also been successful in including measures for environmental aid and technology transfer in most international environmental agreements. Thus, work in this area examines North–South differences at the bargaining table (Najam 2004; Susskind 1994), differential obligations under environmental treaties, and the politics of international environmental aid and building national capacity to address global environmental problems (VanDeveer and Sagar 2005). Another major strand of work within the field examines the roles and influence of “non-state” actors in IEP (O’Neill et al. 2004; see Chapters 3, 4, and 7). Much of this work challenges the assumption that nation states are the only actors of note on the international political scene. While states certainly retain sole voting and implementation powers under international law, non-state actors – actors not part of any government – have found an active voice in the negotiation and implementation of “traditional” global environmental governance regimes, and, as we shall see, are beginning to construct governance regimes of their own. From nongovernmental organizations and activist groups, such as Greenpeace or the Third World Network, to multinational corporations, such as Royal Dutch Shell or Chevron-Texaco, and international organizations such as the United Nations or the World Bank, the field of international environmental politics has proven fertile ground for examining a wide range of questions. To what extent are non-state actors actually supplanting state

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actors in performing key global governance roles, from shaping through to the implementation of policy programs? How has the rise of transnational activist and business networks changed the ways in which international politics is conducted – or even understood? How do we understand the influence of non-state actors on global environmental governance, the channels through which they exert such influence, and the relative influence of non-state actors, across issue areas and across actor types? Scientific, technical, and other forms of knowledge fundamentally shape our understanding of, and responses to, environmental problems (see Chapters 3 and 4). IEP has taken a lead role within international relations theory in examining the role of knowledge, ideas, and experts (often scientific) in international politics. Scientific understandings of the causes, impacts, and the range of solutions for global environmental problems – particularly those not easily seen in the short term – have been critical in galvanizing political concern and shaping particular policy outcomes. Yet, the need for scientific knowledge and expert opinion is by no means unique to the environmental arena. Other international policy regimes – from the global economy to arms control, and even human rights, have been built on input from different expert communities, including economists and legal experts as well as scientists. Writers in this field have explored questions of who these “experts” and expert communities are, and how they affect the international policy process (Haas 1990), how scientific or technical knowledge is taken up (or not) into the international policy process, the emergence of international scientific advisory panels and other organizations (Kandlikar and Sagar 1999), and the implications of the “politicization” of science for scientific and political communities. Recently, international policy makers have also turned to “local” (indigenous, traditional) knowledge, and local knowledge holders for input into policy decisions (Martello 2001). Both the biodiversity and desertification conventions have incorporated mechanisms for the participation of local – especially indigenous – communities, who may hold specialized, placebased knowledge that will aid in developing appropriate and effective management tools for these critical resources. A final research agenda within the IEP field addresses connections between environment degradation and war, conflict, and violence between or within states. As the environmental impacts of war, from destruction of agricultural lands and vital ecosystems to the use of weaponry (chemical, biological, radioactive) with long-term environmental consequences, have become more severe, a body of scholarship has arisen that studies these impacts and responses (Weinstein 2005; Brown 2004). With implications for international relations theory on the causes of war and conflict, another group of scholars examines the conditions under which environmental


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degradation may lead to violent conflict between and within nations (Homer-Dixon 1991, 1994). Others, from a political ecology perspective, seek to untangle the relationship between conflict, communities, and the state and/or global capital (multinational corporations, international financial institutions) in situations where access to and ownership of resources – water, forests, land – is a contentious issue (Peluso and Watts 2001; Conca 2006). By extension, some analysts make the case for an expanded definition of security, to include a sustainable environment, global and local (Sachs 2003; Cavanagh and Mander 2002; Dodds and Pippard 2005). Critical theory in international environmental politics: Political economy, globalization, and political ecology The field of international environmental politics cannot be defined by international relations theory alone. Theoretical approaches from other social science disciplines and fields, from sociology to science and technology studies to political ecology, challenge key assumptions of mainstream understandings of global environmental governance. They offer a broader range of explanations of causes and impacts of global environmental change and the politics of the global environment. Many of the theoretical approaches within international relations theory that we have already looked at are often referred to as “problem-solving” or “explanatory” theories: they take the shape of the world or the basic structures of world politics as given, and explain outcomes or make policy prescriptions within that framework. By contrast, the approaches examined here are often referred to as “critical,” or “normative”. Critical theories challenge the notion that existing world orders are immutable, and ask instead how they came into existence, and how they may be changing. Normative theories posit a particular point of view: they seek to show how the world ought to be.7 Critical theories have a strong tradition in environmental studies (Wapner 2008). Political economy (alternatively, neo-Marxist, historical materialist, or, more recently, neo-Gramscian) theorists challenge both the centrality of the nation state and the underlying principle of anarchy in understanding and explaining international politics (Cox 1986; Wallerstein 1974; Linklater 1996; Levy and Newell 2002). Instead, they see international politics shaped by the forces of global capital, which have generated a hierarchical international system. While some states form the wealthy 7

For an excellent overview of these different approaches, see Burchill and Linklater 1996, particularly the introduction, and chapters by Linklater and Paterson.

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core, others (often formerly colonized states) are relegated to the far poorer periphery. In this approach, state interests are subservient to those of global capital (and, by extension, global capitalists, including transnational corporations). To that end, international cooperation, and other forms of global environmental governance, serve mainly the interests of the wealthy capitalist nations, and the corporate interests they depend on, a constellation of power and interests, creating a particular form of “global hegemony” (Linklater 1996, p. 133, citing Cox 1993). Against the global hegemony, social and political movements (e.g. environmental or labor activists) form opposing “counter-hegemonic” forces (ibid.; see also Wirpsa 2004). Some globalization theorists take this analysis a step further, radically decentering the role of states in international politics.8 One variant focuses on the rise of global civil society – “politics above and below the state” – as a critical, democratizing development in international politics (Wapner 1996, 2000; Khagram et al. 2002). Another centers its analysis more squarely on the agents of global capitalism, or neoliberal globalization, including international financial institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. In this framework, these have in effect supplanted sovereign nation states as the central actors in international politics, through controlling critical financial and knowledge resources, with profound implications for the global environment (Goldman 2001; Cavanagh and Mander 2002). Finally, other approaches draw inspiration from green political theory and theories of global political ecology (Paterson 1996, 2001). Green political theorists, like many globalization theorists and historical materialists, challenge the existing structures of the international system, but, in this case, posit alternatives based more on ethics of sustainability, justice, and ecosystem harmony (e.g. Eckersley 1992; Low and Gleason 1998). Global political ecologists put issues of global justice and inequality first and foremost (e.g. Shiva 1993, and other essays in Sachs 1993). This work draws our attention to underlying problems of over-consumption, particularly in the wealthy North, and growing global inequalities between rich and poor as a major, but unaddressed, driver of global environmental degradation. These perspectives challenge the mainstream international relations understanding of global environmental governance in several specific ways. For example, while mainstream international relations theorists tend to classify global environmental problems specifically as those that 8

For overviews of globalization theory, see Held et al. 1999; Cavanagh and Mander 2002; Clapp and Dauvergne 2005.


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cross international borders or affect the global commons, globalization theorists do not make the same distinction between domestic and global environmental problems. Rather, they are concerned with environmental problems that are driven by forces of globalization and global capital, at whatever level they occur. These two broad approaches also differ in their framing of the political causes of global environmental degradation, whether as a collective action problem resulting from an anarchic international system, or as a set of problems arising from a deeply embedded system of global capitalism. This debate in turn leads to differences over the sorts of solutions that best address global environmental degradation, and the most effective sites of global environmental governance. Should we continue to rely on inter-state diplomacy, or should we instead address the actions of international economic institutions or multinational corporations directly? Should action be located primarily at the global level, or should it reach down to include local communities and actors? Within the mainstream of international relations, the global environment is framed as a set of collective action problems. In the absence of an international sovereign authority, states have little incentive to curb behavior that affects the environment of other states or the global commons. Thus framed, the central problem for policymakers is to create cooperative mechanisms that will overcome the incentive to cheat or free-ride on collective agreements, create enough incentive for states to participate in international negotiations, and protect the principle of state sovereignty over their own natural resources, while at the same time making at least some environmental progress. By contrast, many critical theorists posit alternative framings of the causes of global environmental problems. Environmental problems are also strongly rooted in the emergence since the 1950s of a system of global capitalism (and until the late 1980s, its mirror opposite, global socialism) that is both deeply politically embedded, and inimical to social and environmental concerns (Paterson 2001a, 2006; Vogler 2005). Leading states (national governments) are deeply implicated in the development and maintenance of this system, and, to at least some degree, have shifted control over the economic processes that most significantly affect the global environment to the agents of global capital. Therefore, solutions that merely involve cooperation between nation states are unlikely to be more than superficial (akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic). Not surprisingly, this analysis yields a different set of solutions to the problem of global environmental governance. These include the radical decentralization of global environmental governance (building initiatives from the ground up), harnessing the transformative potential of transnational activism and global civil society, and the construction of private

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governance regimes: alliances between civil society and global capital aimed at exploiting the potential for a free-market system to take advantage of technological and other opportunities to be more environmental. Sometimes these solutions propose active contestation of the status quo, sometimes working with existing players, but most involve bypassing the state, and other governmental actors. Are international relations and global political economy/ecology perspectives mutually exclusive? They certainly start from very different views of the world. One centers on nation states and their interactions, structured by the anarchic nature and conflictual history of the international system, the other on the broad structures of global capitalism, the set of power relations they foster, and the actors they empower. Both do, however, focus our attention on global institutions – be they environmental, political, or economic – and on the dynamics of underlying power relations among different international constituencies, and focusing on one to the exclusion of the other runs the risk of missing important aspects of global environmental politics. Next steps In the early years of the twenty-first century, both the theory and practice of global environmental governance entered a state of flux. Many have expressed disappointment with the failure of mainstream global environmental governance – international environmental diplomacy – to meet the hopes and expectations of the early 1970s. Even supporters of multilateral environmental agreements and international environmental law began to look for ways to create linkages and new institutional arrangements to strengthen existing global environmental governance, up to and including a new World Environment Organization. Others began looking beyond the convention halls and meeting rooms, to potentially new, perhaps more participatory modes of governance. The emergence of a transnational protest movement in the late 1990s, which focused its attention first of all on the international financial institutions, but soon extended its tactics to the climate change negotiations in The Hague, put issues of social legitimacy, accountability, and participation front and center in discussions of global governance (O’Neill 2004; Fisher and Green 2004). This movement has found voice in both the parallel conferences of NGOs and civil society groups around world environmental summits, and at the World Social Forum, an annual meeting of social groups from around the world, loosely formed counter to the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of the wealthy at Davos, Switzerland (Smith 2004).


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Some of the same civil society actors who engaged in protests against the World Trade Organization or the World Bank began also to target large, highly visible multinational corporations, not simply to express outrage or to expose environmental or labor standard violations, but to work with them, to take advantage of their desire to be seen as good environmental citizens. This process of cooperation has led to the creation of various voluntary, non-state governance schemes (such as forest or chemicals certification) that have received a lot of recent attention. Further, attention is focused on local sites of activity and resistance around global environmental issues. From communities facing down multinational mining or oil companies to Inuit and Pacific Island peoples threatening to sue governments who do not address climate change issues, to cities around the world implementing programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that global and local environmental politics are becoming increasingly connected. An important discourse that links global environmental discourse to basic human rights has emerged that challenges the more technocratic notion that sustainable development is best achieved through technological innovation and economic efficiency. Finally, in many countries, industry, activists, and governments are turning to technological solutions to global environmental problems. Debates in the USA over the utility of biofuels – fuel produced from corn, sugar, and other plant material – as a possible substitute for fossil fuels, or over the rise of hybrid automobile technology, revolve around how to halt or slow down global environmental change, while minimizing the impact on individual lifestyles or economic growth. By extension, parts of the US environmental movement focus far more on behavioral changes individuals should make to reduce their own ecological footprints – from recycling to energy-efficient light bulbs, to purchasing carbon offsets to ameliorate the impact of personal air travel. The very prominent attention these debates have received from the mainstream media suggests that a more technocratic, behavioralist approach to global governance and environmental problems is still alive and strong, despite a high degree of skepticism from the political science community (Maniates 2002). In the light of the above arguments, what utility does a focus on international environmental diplomacy and regimes continue to have, and what can international relations theory say about these new developments? Will existing modes of global environmental governance continue to co-exist, and what other forms might emerge to compete? Following Khagram (2006), this book recognizes that we are currently in an era where global governance is hybridized: there is no one way in which global environmental governance occurs. It is also hard to predict when, how, or if the international system will settle again into a

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primary mode of global governance. However, and following Vogler (2005) I argue that the network of international regimes and organizations established by national governments have an essential role to play in global environmental governance. Not in the sense that they are the predominant route to effectively address problems of global environmental degradation, but that they provide a normative, legal, and organizational framework that has the potential to ground and unify all the different components of global environmental governance in the twenty-first century. In this story, international relations theory plays a central role in helping us understand how, and how well, efforts to address global environmental degradation are working. But it must itself listen to the various voices – scholarly and otherwise – who urge a broad, multi-sited, and multi-level approach to understanding the realities of global environmental governance in the twenty-first century. Discussion questions

What do you consider the main global environmental problems, and

what are their causes? Particularly, what are the political and socioeconomic factors that have contributed to them? What do the various theoretical perspectives outlined in this chapter tell us about why effective global environmental governance is such a challenge? Why is the term “global governance” different from “international cooperation”? What are the main groups of actors in global environmental politics identified in this chapter? What roles do they play?

suggestions for further reading9 Betsill, Michele M., Kathryn Hochstetler, and Dimitris Stevis, eds. International Environmental Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006: an overview from multiple perspectives of the evolution of and new trends in international environmental politics. Conca, Ken. “Environmental Governance after Johannesburg: From Stalled Legalization to Environmental Human Rights?” Journal of International Law & International Relations 1.1–2 (2005), pp. 121–38: an article that traces out a particular narrative arc of international environmental politics, emphasizing a shift towards contentious politics.

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These reading suggestions are only a sample of the available literature on the environment and international relations. You are encouraged to look up any of the citations mentioned in all chapters that interest you, and follow up on the ideas and examples cited.


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Haas, Peter M., Robert O. Keohane, and Marc A. Levy, eds. Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993: an early and influential study of effective institution building for the environment; relies on detailed and authoritative empirical case studies. Paterson, Matthew. Understanding Global Environmental Politics: Domination, Accumulation, Resistance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001: a critical theory approach to global environmental politics that focuses on global power structures, and draws on green political theory. Rowlands, Ian H. “Classical Theories of International Relations.” International Relations and Global Climate Change. Eds. Urs Luterbacher and Detlef F. Sprinz. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001: a highly accessible introduction to the primary theoretical perspectives in mainstream international relations theory and their application to climate change. For a more advanced approach, see Hasenclever, Andreas, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger. Theories of International Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Simmons, P. J., and Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, eds. Managing Global Issues: Lessons Learned. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001: an excellent introduction to global governance that covers a variety of issues, from the global environment to security, trade, human rights, and others. Speth, James Gustave. Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004: a leading, and very readable, critique from a highly regarded practitioner-academic of the way that global environmental governance has been managed to date. Young, Oran R. International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994: another early classic, from one of the most prolific authors in the field. The book covers the emergence of global environmental problems, and efforts to solve them, including an early and influential discussion of effectiveness.

In addition, a number of major journals focus on global environmental politics and governance, and cover recent empirical developments and theoretical debates. Especially recommended are: Global Environmental Politics International Environmental Agreements Environment Environmental Politics Journal of Environment and Development RECIEL (Review of European Community and International Environmental Law) Global Governance

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As with many other issues – managing the global economy, human rights, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and controlling terrorism and the proliferation and global spread of weapons of mass destruction – the global environment represents a series of problems that are so complex and widespread that unilateral measures – measures undertaken by countries acting on their own initiative – are not enough to forestall them. This is an interdependent world: even if a country the size of the USA or Brazil managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by a significant amount, without other countries doing likewise, we cannot prevent the total impacts of climate change. Global problems are not new. But, over recent decades, they have increased in scale, scope, visibility, and complexity. The international community itself has changed too. Membership of the United Nations has grown by 370 percent since 1945; NGOs, corporations, and expert groups are seeking a voice in international affairs; economic globalization has increased the complexity of global management; and new technology – notably the internet – has vastly increased the speed and quantity of information traveling the globe (Simmons and Oudraat 2001). This chapter does not set out to provide an assessment of the state of the global environment in the early years of the twenty-first century and the directions in which it is headed. Rather, it seeks to show how environmental change became a matter of global concern and political action; how to think about how different environmental issues might be framed, categorized, and compared; and how one might go about finding out about global environmental trends. The first part of the chapter charts the globalization of environmental concern and action, focusing on awareness of the expanding scope and scale of environmental problems from the Industrial Revolution onwards, and the role of the environmental movement and the UN in transforming new knowledge and concern into political action at the international level. The second part examines different types and examples of international environmental issues, how one might track them, and how they are changing over time, focusing specifically on 24


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how environmental problems are framed at the global level. The third part shifts the analysis to looking at global problems with strong environmental dimensions – such as population growth, consumption, and nuclear power – that are not addressed as environmental issues or by environmental agencies and organizations at the international level. Finally, we examine how environmental problems such as climate change are linked to other areas of global politics, such as development, health, and security, and what this might mean for global environmental politics and governance. The globalization of environmental concern and political action: Towards a framework for global environmental governance Scale, scope, ideas, and imagination Arguably, the environment truly emerged onto the international political agenda at the 1972 UN-run Stockholm conference. In fact, bilateral and multilateral cooperation over the environment can be traced further back in time (Bernauer 1997, p. 158). In 1616, Austria and Turkey concluded an agreement regulating navigation rights on the Danube, and in 1815, the Congress of Vienna established the right of free navigation of international rivers. In 1900 another treaty established controls over transport of corrosive and poisonous substances on the Rhine river (ibid.). However, it was only in the latter decades of the twentieth century that environmental problems came to be recognized as more than local or even regional. This realization mobilized first concern, and then action on the part of the international community. Environmental historians demonstrate clear links between industrialization, globalization, and environmental degradation, all processes that increased exponentially during the twentieth century.1 Dominant models of industrial development (both capitalist and state socialist) paid little attention to rates of resource extraction or to the externalities imposed by pollution and other activities. Environmental problems over this time frame expanded in scale, spreading over ever larger territorial regions, and scope, extending to new (or hitherto unrecognized) problem areas. The twentieth century saw a vast increase in the scale of many environmental problems. Local problems became regional or transnational, as some firms exported hazardous wastes for disposal abroad, or winds carried sulfur dioxide from the tall smokestacks of England, to fall as acid rain

1

See, for example, McNeill 2000; Ponting 1991; Stone 1993.

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in northern Europe, killing local forests. As human population and industrial and agricultural production increased, transboundary rivers and virgin forests became focal points for conflict over water scarcity and resource access. As developing countries industrialized, they began to experience many of the same problems as their industrialized counterparts. The same time period also saw greater realization, especially on the part of the scientific community, of the changing scope of global environmental problems. Theories of human induced climate change date back to the late nineteenth century, and the work of scientists such as Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (whose most significant works on climate change were published between 1896 and 1908). With the advent of new sensory and modeling technologies in the twentieth century, scientists increased their capacity to measure and predict the extent of human impact on the atmosphere, whether through the burning of fossil fuels, the emission of ozone-depleting substances, or long-range air pollution (Edwards 2001). Ozone layer depletion and climate change are invisible to the naked eye, but their impacts are very real, and in a sense, represent the “tragedy of the commons” writ large (Hardin 1968). Economic globalization, too, has accelerated and transformed processes of environmental degradation. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, globalization took on the form of colonization. European countries used raw materials extracted from their colonies in Asia and Africa to drive their ever-expanding economies. After World War Two, as many of these colonies emerged into independence, globalization changed shape. A new economic order, based on economic growth and free movement of goods and capital, came into existence. While accelerating global economic growth, it also accelerated resource depletion and pollution generation. The environmental impact of transportation of goods around the world is also significant, increasing pollution en route, and also transporting invasive organisms to new ecosystems. These are deeply pervasive externalities of globalization, and very difficult to address. The emergence of the environment as a global political issue cannot, however, be explained merely as a function of scientific and technological insights into the causes, scale, and scope of global environmental degradation. Ideas and images are important too. In the late 1960s, the global environment began to capture the imagination of environmentalists, especially in the North. Photographs of the earth taken from space, a tiny globe characterized not by the artificial demarcation of national borders, but by glimpses of blue and green hidden by clouds, galvanized a growing movement to address environmental problems beyond the confines of the nation state (Boulding 1966; Jasanoff 2001, 2004). Earth


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Day 1970, the Save the Whales campaign, and education campaigns about threatened species and areas of biological diversity such as the Amazon rainforest got many activists “thinking globally.” At around the same time, prominent scholars published work that highlighted the threats of population growth and economic development to the continued sustainability of life on earth.2 Other areas of global politics around this time – the threat of global destruction through nuclear war, for example – provided other reasons for thinking in terms of global risks, and global, rather than national, solutions. In other words, at the same time as humanity was realizing some of the benefits of technological progress, we also began to realize that some of these technologies carried serious risks on a scale that could threaten the planet (Beck 1992). The UN, the Stockholm Conference, and the turn to sustainable development The UN’s role as political entrepreneur, catalyzing inter-state concern and action around the global environment in this early period of global environmental governance, cannot be understated. The UN, by sponsoring critical international and interdisciplinary research on the atmosphere and biosphere, played a key role in generating research about the changing state of the global environment, its causes and likely impacts. In the late 1960s and early 1970s it set up the main architecture of global governance which underpins international environmental politics today, and which provides the empirical foundation for much scholarly work on the politics of the global environment. In addition to sponsoring multiple multilateral environmental agreements, it has organized and convened three global summits – the UNCHE (Stockholm, 1972), the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002. Such “megaconferences” raise international awareness, set important environmental norms, principles, and goals, and establish procedural frameworks in order to meet these goals (Seyfang 2003; Haas 2002).3 The Stockholm Conference marked the start of the modern era of global environmental cooperation. Attended by representatives from 114 countries, it set up environmental goals and priorities for the international community, and a coordinated legal and political framework through 2 3

These include: Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (1968), Donella H. Meadows, Limits of Growth (1972), E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (1973). For discussion of UN mega-conferences, see Friedman et al. 2005, Chapter 1.

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which to meet them (Sohn 1973; Haas 2002). First, in terms of global environmental goals and priorities, Stockholm helped place the environment squarely on the international political agenda, and made it part of the UN’s official agenda. States agreed on a Declaration of Twenty-six (non-binding) Guiding Principles, and an Action Plan, which set forth 109 recommendations for more specific international action (Sands and Peel 2005, p. 47).4 Second, the countries meeting at Stockholm set up procedures through which to meet collective environmental goals, integrating the existing body of international environmental laws and treaties. In addition to establishing the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP; see Chapter 3), the Stockholm Declaration called for multilateral cooperation, based on sound scientific knowledge, coordinated by international organizations, and governed by international law. Thus, the governance system established at Stockholm essentially ratified existing practices of international environmental diplomacy. It accorded the highest priority to the negotiation by states of multilateral treaties, on an issue-by-issue basis. Utilizing established channels of global governance would maximize participation by states, and grant the process greater legitimacy in the eyes of national governments, protecting and elevating as it did the principle of national sovereignty. Stockholm also marked the beginning of a debate over the relationship between environmental protection and economic development. Initially, lead negotiators had approached the problem of global environmental protection in purely environmental terms (hence the title of the meeting). However, southern countries – beginning at this point in time to discover their collective voice in international politics (Najam 2004) – injected a different note into this incipient debate, later to find full voice at the 1992 Rio conference: that environmental goals needed to be balanced with development goals, and that global environmental protection could not be achieved at the expense of inhibiting the ability of poorer nations (or future generations) to meet development goals. These concerns were reflected in the Stockholm Declaration in calls for respecting the needs of developing countries, and for technical and financial assistance institutions, and later in the agendas and outcomes of the 1992 Rio Summit, and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. The concept of sustainable development provides a normative framework for all forms of global environmental politics (and, increasingly, global economic and development politics too), linking causes of environmentalism,

4

The Stockholm Declaration is available at www.unep.org.


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economic development, and human health and well-being. From the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (also known as the Brundtland Report), through Agenda 21, published at the Rio Summit, to the Millennium Development Goals set by the UN in 2000, it has been used by activists, policymakers, philanthropists, and the corporate sector to signal their intentions. Its great strength, and its great weakness, as a rhetorical framework, or “meta-norm,” is that, like many sweeping ideas, it is vague enough to be open to multiple interpretations (Bernstein 2000). On the one hand, it focuses attention on incorporating notions of equity into environmental protection, and intergenerational sustainability into concepts of development. On the other, it justifies a turn towards using the tools of economic development – free trade, private sector initiatives, and other economic incentives – for environmental protection, a process which many see as related more to “sustained” development than true protection of natural resources (Sachs 1999, especially Chapter 5). It is also not particularly helpful in understanding the micro-level politics around identifying and acting on individual environmental problems, the process to which we now turn. Global environmental problems At the most basic level, an environmental problem becomes “international,” or global, in a political sense when it crosses national borders or affects the global commons – the atmosphere, the ocean, or other global resources not subject to sovereign rule. In fact, a good case can be made that all environmental problems are international: if they don’t literally spill over national borders, then they are likely to occur in many, if not all, countries. This section examines the global environmental problems that have been the subject of international treaty-making activities, and how the process of framing environmental problems can make them more (or less) amenable to international cooperation. It introduces a frequently used typology of global environmental issues: global commons, transboundary, and local-cumulative problems. This is not the only possible categorization of global environmental issues.5 However, it is useful in analyzing what global environmental problems have in common, and the complexities of dealing with certain kinds of problems in multilateral settings. Some perspectives in the scientific literature urge us to think of the entire planet as a single ecosystem, or biosphere, or as a set of interlocking

5

For alternative typologies and critiques, see Young 1994; Turner et al. 1990.

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ecosystems.6 If the balance in one ecosystem is disrupted, this is likely to have knock-on effects on others. The problem with an all-encompassing definition of global environmental change is that it does not generate politically feasible policy options. States still jealously guard their sovereign rights over managing their own environment quality and natural resources, and typically an environmental problem is defined as suitable for international intervention only if it meets certain criteria. Issue-specific definitions of environmental problems tend to divide them into “Brown” (pollution-related) and “Green” (related to natural resource management and conservation), or across media: water, air, and land. UNEP’s Global Environmental Outlook series (UNEP 2007), for example, separates environmental data and trends into four categories: atmosphere (climate, ozone layer depletion, and air pollution, both transboundary and local), land (forests, desertification, land use change, soils), water (inland, coastal and marine ecosystems), and biodiversity. While such classifications provide sound frameworks for analyzing the state of the global environment, and identifying courses of action and particular problems, they do not provide guidance as to whether such action should be taken at national, local, or international levels. Instead, given the complexities of international diplomacy and state sovereignty, international actors have focused on problems that are explicitly global or transboundary, or worked to isolate the transboundary or global aspects of particular problems. The UN and other organizations concerned with environmental problems have approached global environmental governance by breaking down the broader issue of global environmental change or degradation into individual issue areas, often starting with the ones that seem most amenable to international cooperation. In some cases – such as climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, or trade in endangered species – the rationale for international action has been clear (even if turning it into acceptable policy has been less easy). Other cases have proved more complex. Take the international trade in hazardous wastes. A plausible case can be made that an underlying cause of the waste trade is that global generation of hazardous wastes has continued to rise, while construction of waste disposal facilities in many countries has become very difficult. However, politically, it is very complicated to get nation states to agree collectively to reduce or minimize waste generation. Therefore, the UN decided to tackle the most 6

For a discussion and critique of the concepts of global environmental change and limits to growth, see Buttel et al. 1990. Concepts like bioregionalism also face some of these issues (McGinnis 1999), as does the Gaia Hypotheses, associated with James Lovelock (e.g. Lovelock 2000).


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visible international aspect of the hazardous waste problem: practices of waste dumping from wealthy northern countries to poorer communities in southern countries. This process is known as “problem” or “issue” framing. Framing the global environment Formally, the act of framing may be defined as “conscious and strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective action” (David Snow, cited in McAdam et al. 1996, p. 6). Framing processes help draw the boundaries of a given problem, outlining its causes, and, most importantly, what can and needs to be done to solve it (and who should do it). They focus and mobilize action and concern. In the context of international environmental politics, framing frequently means demonstrating that the problem is best dealt with at the international level. Thus, global environmental problems can often be framed in a variety of ways, to different strategic purposes. In this section, we discuss problem framing as a way to justify international action, noting that problems that can be framed as global or transboundary have usually led to more successful international action than others. In later sections of this chapter we look at different sorts of framing – for example, framing complex problems such as climate change in ways that make them accessible to policy makers and the general public, or highlighting linkages between issue areas that could help galvanize political action. Therefore, the categories discussed below should not be seen as immutable; rather, they provide frameworks to enable us to think about, categorize, and compare problems in politically salient ways. Further, a word of warning: just because two problems are both “global commons” issues, for example, does not mean they are amenable to identical types of political action. Climate change, for example, has proven a much more politically complex problem than ozone layer depletion to solve, for reasons that will be discussed in Chapter 4. (a)

Global commons issues

The first set of global environmental problems consists of those that affect the atmosphere, the climate, the high seas, and Antarctica. Climate change, depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, and over-fishing in the high seas are classic examples of global commons problems. Following Garrett Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” metaphor (Hardin 1968), these resources are vulnerable to over-exploitation or over-pollution

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precisely because they belong to no one: to no state, no individual, and no corporation. In the absence of some form of rationing, allocation of property rights or use quotas, individuals (or, in this case, individual states) will continue to exploit the commons for their own benefit, up to the point where the resource or ecosystem collapses. Any country can emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or harvest fish from the high seas, without itself tipping the balance of the system’s sustainability. However, once we examine the collective impact over time of all states treating the atmosphere or the oceans as their own private sink or source, we can see that these seemingly limited resources are, in fact, vulnerable. One of the complicating factors in addressing global commons problems is that there are many perpetrators and many victims, and it is very difficult to allocate responsibility among them. At the same time, the structure of international law around the “commons” (namely the fact that they are not the property of any one sovereign state) has meant that problems of ocean dumping, climate change, or ozone layer depletion are particularly amenable to intervention from the international level – i.e. through multilateral cooperation. (b)

Transboundary environmental problems

Transboundary environmental problems are those that cross, or spill, from one country to another. Economists refer to these problems as transboundary externalities, a textbook example of a market failure. Externalities occur when the social costs of production exceed private costs to a firm, as when a steel mill pollutes a river, affecting fisheries and other activities downstream. In the absence of regulatory or legal measures, the polluting firm has no incentive to address this problem. Classic examples of transboundary environmental externalities include long-range transboundary air pollution (such as acid rain), river pollution, and the global trade in hazardous wastes or in endangered species.7 The transfer of pollution from one country to another may be unintentional (pollutants blown by prevailing wind patterns across national borders) or intentional (shipping wastes from one country to another). These sorts of problems are sometimes considered simpler than global commons problems, if only because they can involve a smaller, and identifiable, number of victims and perpetrators. In some cases – for example over shared rivers – they can be addressed through bilateral or regional agreements, in other cases, by multilateral agreements. For example, 7

For a discussion of how the concept of externalities translates to the international level, see Helm and Pearce 1990.


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global efforts to address long range transboundary air pollution are governed by a broad framework convention that provides controls on all such pollutants, regardless of their point of origin or ultimate destination. (c)

Local-cumulative problems

So-called “local-cumulative” issues have sometimes been a little harder to define explicitly as “international” environmental issues, and have, therefore, been less often addressed by formal treaty arrangements (Conca 2006). While the effects of local-cumulative environmental problems tend to be felt most immediately within national borders, their ultimate impact is cumulative, or global, often affecting global processes, such as the climate in a significant way. They are, also, often exacerbated or transformed by processes of globalization. An example of a “local-cumulative” issue that has been addressed at the global level is biodiversity loss. While most areas of natural biodiversity are located within national boundaries (and therefore subject primarily to national rules and legislation), this issue became “international” for a number of reasons. First, the conservation biology community was able to make a pressing scientific case for the global impacts of species and ecosystems loss. Second, others made the case that biodiversity preservation had great cultural value to much of the world’s population – regardless of whether or not they would ever see the Amazon, or a panda in its natural habitat – as well as great (potential and actual) economic value (as in, for example, the hypothetical cure for cancer residing in a patch of threatened rainforest). While this framing of biodiversity succeeded in getting the issue on to the international agenda, it did not, however, make it through the negotiation process, as it was heavily contested by southern countries who viewed biodiversity more as a sovereign resource issue. Other “local-cumulative” issues, such as deforestation or watershed management, have proven far less amenable to standard treaty-making approaches, for the primary reason that states are unwilling to cede their sovereign rights over managing and developing these resources. (d)

Commons, transboundary, and local-cumulative issues and environmental diplomacy

Box 2.1 outlines the definitions and main impacts of the international environmental problems associated with major international negotiating processes and treaties. While most negotiations have a successful outcome, in that a treaty or agreement (or series of treaties, as is the case

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Box 2.1 Definitions of major international environmental problems and associated international agreements Climate Change Increased atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases – including carbon dioxide and methane, as a result of human activity, notably the burning of fossil fuels; expected to lead to a rise in overall global temperatures, with regional variations. Impacts: sea-level rise and coastal zone flooding (as polar ice-caps melt), widespread ecosystems and land use change, possible violent weather patterns, human health impacts UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992); Kyoto Protocol (1997) Stratospheric Ozone Depletion Reduction in the stratospheric ozone layer caused by the emission of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and other chemicals with a wide variety of uses, into the atmosphere, leading to increased infiltration of ultra-violet rays to ground level. Impacts: ecological degradation and increased incidence of skin cancer, cataracts, and other problems among humans. Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985); Montreal Protocol (1987) and subsequent protocols Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution Air pollution – notably emissions of sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen – that originates in one country, but is carried, often long distances, into another. Impacts: particularly a problem when it falls as acid rain, causing forest damage, damage to buildings, and water pollution. Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP, signed 1979, in force 1983); subsequent protocols on sulfur (1985), nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (1991) Biodiversity Loss and Conservation The loss not only of animal and plant species, but also of genetic diversity and ecosystems, caused by human activity, including economic exploitation and land use change. Impacts: intrinsic value of lost or threatened species, plus wider impacts on ecosystems; economic impacts due to loss of valuable resources Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) and Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, 1973), Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971), World Heritage Convention (1972), Convention on Migratory Species (1979)

International environmental problems Deforestation and Unsustainable Use of Forest Resources The clearing or destruction and degradation of global forest cover Impacts: on ecosystem health and biodiversity, and on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, livelihoods of forest dwellers Negotiations towards an international forest conventions failed, but informal coordination through the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (1995–7), Intergovernmental Forum on Forests (1997–2000), and UN Forum on Forests (2000 on) Desertification Land degradation through drought, climate change, over-use, caused by complex mix of human actions and environmental change. Impacts: loss of livelihood (especially in already marginal rural communities), famine UN Convention to Combat Desertification (1994) Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Manufacture, use, circulation, and disposal of chemicals that are highly toxic and do not break down easily in the environment, bioaccumulating in human and animal tissue, often traveling long distances. Impacts: on human and animal health (e.g. cancer, reproductive systems), ecosystems Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2001; in force 2004) Rotterdam Convention on the prior informed consent procedure for certain hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade (1998; in force 2004) Hazardous Waste Trading The transfer, for disposal or recycling, of wastes that are toxic, flammable, corrosive, explosive, or otherwise hazardous from one country to another, particularly from Northern to Southern countries. Impacts: severe, localized impacts on recipient communities, ecosystems (including several deaths) Basel Convention on the Transfrontier Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (1989; in force 1992). Rivers and Lakes More than 200 river or lake basins are shared by more than one country, areas that include 40% of the world’s population. Transboundary water flows are subject to diversion, overuse, and other flow disruptions Impacts: flow disruptions and river pollution often disproportionately affect downstream states, but also disrupt regional navigation, agriculture, and so on. Cooperative agreements are usually regional or bilateral: there are more than 2000 agreements dealing at least partially with transboundary water issues, dating from 1616.

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The Environment and International Relations Whaling Over-exploitation of whale stocks worldwide Impact: many species on the brink of collapse by the mid 20th century. International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (IWC; 1946), initially set up to regulate, not ban, whaling, 1985 moratorium banned all whaling except for scientific research purposes and other exceptions Marine Environment and Resource Degradation Problems include managing fish stocks, controlling ocean dumping and oil pollution at sea Impacts: fish stock collapse, loss of marine biodiversity, coastal and ocean pollution UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982); UN Agreement on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (1995), MARPOL (1973). Sources: Levy 1993; Bernauer 1997, pp. 157–8; Humphreys 2003; Watson et al. 1998, Appendix 2 (“A Synopsis of Eight Major Global Environmental Issues”); websites of UNEP and individual treaties (www.unep.org).

with biological diversity) has been successfully signed and implemented, this is not the case across the board. The most notable example of an international issue area where treaty negotiations have failed is in combating deforestation. Of the eleven issue areas listed, climate change, ozone depletion, whaling, and the marine environment fit relatively neatly into the “global commons” category. Long-range air pollution, hazardous waste trading, and rivers have been dealt with successfully as transboundary issues, while deforestation and desertification are more clearly in the “localcumulative” category. On the other hand, both biodiversity and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been treated as “mixed” issues. In the biodiversity arena, several of the early agreements deal specifically with transboundary conservation issues: the wildlife trade and migratory species. Negotiations over the Convention on Biological Diversity initially sought to define biodiversity as a global commons issue. This turned out to be controversial, as many countries objected to their own resources being defined as “global commons,” and feared the international interventions that might bring. The final wording in the Convention thus stated that biodiversity is part of the “common heritage” of humanity. The POPs related treaties address both the trade and transport (i.e. the deliberate and accidental movement of POPs around the world), and the local cumulative (i.e. problems of generation, use, and disposal) aspects of the problem.


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Global environmental problems: Changes over time The state of the global environment constantly changes: some environmental problems worsen, while others improve over time. Rates of change in environmental quality may also slow down or speed up. Our ability to track trends in the state of individual issues has improved dramatically over the past decades. At the same time, new aspects of existing problems continue to emerge or be recognized – and some entirely new problems are starting to become salient on the international political agenda. This section charts some of these trends, and some of the ways to find out about them. (a)

Global environmental trends

There are many ways of tracking how the global environment is changing. There are many publicly available sources, often updated annually, which provide data and indicators across major environmental problems, across countries, and over time. The growing use and availability of satellite images and mapping and data techniques, including methods such as geographic imaging system (GIS) modeling and mapping, has made the state of the global environment far more visible – and more accessible to the layperson – than ever before. Box 2.2 lists well-regarded online sources of such data from UN agencies and non-governmental organizations, but it is by no means exhaustive. Many government agencies – such as the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), or similar government scientific organizations in other countries – also make this information available to the public.8 In addition, treaty websites associated with most international environmental agreements publish data reported to them by signatory governments. Journalistic writing, books, and documentaries are another rich source for detailed images and impressions of global environmental change, often with a very human focus (although also with the intent to persuade audiences). Former US Vice President Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, was widely released in Summer 2006, and many compelling accounts of climate change and other global environmental issues are widely available in bookstores and libraries.9 The internet too is a valuable source of news and information – news services such as The Daily Grist and Planet Ark provide daily updates on environmental stories around the world, and the websites of many leading newspapers and 8 9

See www.noaa.gov. See, for example, Wohlforth 2004; Hertsgaard 1999; Flannery 2006; Kolbert 2006.

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Box 2.2 The state of the global environment: sources of information, trends, and data United Nations Environment Program Global Environment Outlook Yearbook: an annual survey of the changing global environment, at www.unep.org/geo/yearbook Vital Graphics: in collaboration with GRID-Arendal, a compilation of user-friendly data and graphics on various international environmental issues, at www.vitalgraphics.net/. UN Food and Agriculture Organization Data on forests, world agriculture, fisheries, sustainable development, at www.fao.org/. World Resources Institute An independent, not-for-profit think tank, based in Washington DC. Publishes World Resources, a biennial publication, covering the state of the global environment and global environmental governance. Maintains online database of relevant information, at www.wri.org/. World Watch Institute An independent, not-for-profit think tank, based in Washington DC. Publishes State of the World and Vital Signs, both annual or biennial publications; at www.worldwatch.org/.

organizations have environmental sections where stories are archived across different media forms.10 Most global environmental trends, when measured in absolute terms, are more negative than positive. However, some areas of positive change, including the reduction of air pollution in many large cities (especially in the developed world) and the successful preservation of some threatened areas and species, rank on the positive side. Of course, measuring changes in environment quality (as we shall see in Chapter 5) has to take into account an often hard-to-measure counterfactual: could things have been worse in the absence of action, assuming action was taken? To that end, “scenario analysis” has become an important tool for scientists and policymakers, extending into the future – what might happen under certain conditions – and back into the past – what would have happened had certain actions not been taken or conditions prevailed (Pulver and VanDeveer 2007).11 10 11

See www.grist.org and www.planetark.org. For those interested in how fiction can help us imagine alternative scenarios, I recommend John Brunner’s 1970 novel The Sheep Look Up, a richly imagined alternative world without any environmental or health and safety regulations, and well-known science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson’s (Red Mars, Forty Signs of Rain) essay on the use of imagination in combating climate change, “Imagining Abrupt Climate Change: Terraforming Earth.”


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Another issue that has come to the forefront in studying global environmental trends is that of data use and interpretation. In 2001, a Danish scientist, Bjorn Lomborg, published The Skeptical Environmentalist (Lomborg 2001), in which he argued that the state of the global environment was not nearly as bad as some believed. A firestorm of criticism over his selection and use of available data followed (Kysar 2003; Schneider et al. 2002; Pielke 2004). He is not the only figure in the environmental movement whose use and/or presentation of data has come under fire: before the problem of climate change coalesced in the public mind as a real and imminent problem, its proponents had to work hard, first, to present very complex global data in ways that made political sense, and second, to defend themselves against the climate skeptics. Again, effective framing, as defined above, played a critical role here. (b)

New dimensions, new problems

Another dimension along which global environmental problems change or evolve is qualitative. Over time, we may learn to recognize impacts – actual or likely – of which we were not aware (or which were not considered politically salient) at the time the problem was identified. Also, because human activity and technology do not stand still, the actual characteristics and components of a given problem area may expand over time. Finally, entirely new global environmental problems – i.e. ones that do not fit into existing problem definitions – may also emerge. These dimensions of change often pose problems for policymaking, especially in cases where the existing policy process is not flexible enough to respond quickly to emerging information, or to incorporate new aspects of existing problems. For example, recent climate science has focused particularly on the possibility of “surprises,” or “tipping points,” as the earth’s climate changes. In other words, rather than looking at a gradual temperature rise over decades, we could in fact be looking at large and sudden changes in the earth’s climate (Speth 2004, p. 60; Weart 2003). A commonly cited example of this sort of tipping point is the possibility that changing ocean temperatures could disrupt the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that warms the North Atlantic and the coastal states of western Europe. If that were to happen, it is predicted that Great Britain would take on the climate – and the winters – of the Russian Steppes, rather than more optimistic scenarios of vineyards and olive groves thriving across England’s southern counties (McCarthy 2006). Taking these possibilities into account injects an additional urgency to climate policies. It also suggests that countries and international organizations need to plan for

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impacts – to start figuring out how to adapt to a changing climate, in addition to preventing or slowing climate change. Already, island nations in the southern Pacific are taking legal steps to ensure that their populations and cultures can be transplanted in the very likely event that their homelands will be submerged by rising oceans (Germanwatch 2004). In the area of hazardous waste trade and management, the big issue that has emerged in recent decades is the disposal of electronic wastes, or e-wastes. These include the computers, cellphones, MP3 players, and other electronic devices that have become so commonplace in everyday life. In addition to their ubiquity (and built-in obsolescence) these devices also contain many toxic components – from lead to plastics that give off dioxins when burnt – making their safe disposal a considerable challenge. Both the difficulties of safe disposal of e-wastes and the sheer volume of old devices currently being discarded were relatively unanticipated by authorities, as was a thriving “trade” in e-wastes that has emerged. Countries in Asia and Africa have become major destinations for e-wastes, where they are often broken down under highly unsafe conditions (Iles 2004). For a number of reasons, e-wastes do not easily fit the definitions of hazardous wastes currently regulated by the Basel Convention on hazardous waste trading: in particular, computers and so on are often shipped not as wastes, or even as goods to be recycled, but as “charity,” donations to Africa or Asia to help “close the digital divide” (Puckett et al. 2005). Strong political interests in maintaining this loophole, and the sheer number of sources, including southern as well as northern countries, also make the trade difficult to regulate under the Basel Convention. Finally, some predict that whole new global environmental issue areas are going to come to the fore in years to come. Some are worried that many industrial and agricultural practices are adding nitrogen to the atmosphere at a potentially dangerous level. Coming mainly from fertilizers and from fossil-fuel burning, excess nitrogen can lead to algal blooms, toxic smog, and other serious problems, and is circulated throughout the earth’s atmosphere (Speth 2004, pp. 71–3). Yet, this problem has not yet emerged on global policy agendas. Why some global problems are not on the international environmental policy agenda The above sections discuss global environmental problems that are already on, or are proposed for, the international environmental policy agenda. We have seen that often the definition, or framing, of these problems is a political process. Another angle that sheds light on the problems of the global environment, and how they are defined and acted upon, is


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to examine the issues that clearly have both global and environmental implications but which have not, as yet, entered the traditional international environmental policy process. Examples include supplies of, and access to, fresh water for household, agricultural, and industrial use, the environmental impacts of industrialized agriculture, mining, and oil exploration by multinational corporations, invasive species prevention, and nuclear issues (transport, storage, and disposal of nuclear waste, and nuclear accident prevention). They also include what many see as major drivers of global environmental change: population and consumption. In some of these cases, the issue is dealt with in other global policy arenas. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has the greatest global jurisdiction over nuclear issues – both weapons and power generation – as a means of reducing the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. The irony of the nuclear case is that one of the most frequently cited examples of transboundary environmental interdependence is the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, when a nuclear power plant in what is now Ukraine broke down, sending waves of radiation right across Europe. Yet, dealing with issues of nuclear safety is usually seen as the responsibility of individual countries, and a prerogative often jealously guarded by states, particularly states with nuclear weapons. Access to, and provision of, drinking water (and other forms of freshwater) has largely been the domain of the international aid and development agencies – including the UN Development Program (UNDP) and the World Bank. As issues of environment and development are becoming more and more entwined, however, so are water access issues becoming more part of the global environmental agenda. International goals for access to safe drinking water was a major result of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. In many respects, the theoretical lens of globalization studies has made problems such as water and energy provision and resource extraction visible as global environmental issues, as opposed to being problems that are shared by a lot of countries but fall largely within the jurisdiction of national or local authorities. On the one hand, certain features of neoliberal globalization have exacerbated and connected previously unconnected environmental problems.12 On the other, the emergence of transnational activist networks – another result of globalization – has created linkages and common strategies between activists around the world combating similar problems. The activist community has also played a central role in linking environmental issues to broader questions 12

Conca 2006; Cavanagh and Mander 2002. Among the features both highlight is a trend towards privatization of natural resources, such as water.

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of human rights and global justice. Often, both factors have been at play in the same issue areas. Take, for example, indigenous or community resistance to oil exploration or mining activities by multinational corporations, or the construction of large dams. In the latter case, activists have pointed to the role of international finance – particularly from the World Bank, but also (and increasingly) from the private sector – in supporting dam construction projects from Costa Rica to India to Laos (Conca 2006; Khagram 2004). In the former, activists from parts of the world have been able to tap into networks of partners in other countries, and also into a growing body of international law that addresses the rights of indigenous communities, often marginalized in their own countries (Wirpsa 2004). These sorts of issues do not easily lend themselves to the traditional model of treaty-based global environmental governance: either national interests are too strong and too much in conflict, or economic interests are able to fight environmental regulations. Sometimes, activists decide to fight in the global human rights arena, rather than the environmental. Also, these issues are often too heterogeneous in their form and impacts across, and even within, different countries to be neatly packaged as a manageable global issue. This does not mean that forms of “global governance” are entirely absent from these arenas: these are exactly the sorts of issues that the scholars who are seeking to broaden our perspective on what constitutes global environmental governance address. Finally, few international agreements or negotiations tackle head-on what many see as two fundamental environmental issues of the twentyfirst century: over-population and over-consumption. These are both, for slightly different reasons, very difficult, even explosive, issues for politicians to address (Crane 1993; Princen et al. 2002). Certainly, there are many international, often non-governmental, programs and agencies which address issues of birth rates, birth control, and women’s health and education, but several fundamental obstacles – including religious and other values – stand in the way of setting any sort of international goal or standard regarding population. Issues of consumption – particularly in the global North – have long been seen as the “third rail” of global environmental politics.13 Telling people that they need to sacrifice for the good of a somewhat nebulous global community, or future generations, tends not to get politicians re-elected. Further, there are splits within the community advocating changing consumption practices, between those who focus on structural causes of consumption – ranging from social alienation 13

The “third rail” is the live rail in many urban subway transit systems that supplies power to the trains. Most such systems carry prominent warnings to the public not to touch this rail under any circumstances, for fear of electrocution.


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to the growth of a vast global advertising industry – and those who focus on reducing individual ecological footprints through substitution (e.g. hybrid cars), or encouraging recycling. Issue linkage: Environmental change and human security A question that often comes up in the study and practice of global environmental governance is how to deal with complexities and inter-linkages between global environmental change and other areas of global concern, such as economic growth and development, security and conflict, and health. The environment is clearly not an issue or set of problems that exists in isolation from other areas of international politics and human activity. Global environmental problems themselves often intersect. Climate change, for example, is expected to become a leading cause of biodiversity loss, desertification, and other changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Chapter 5 will discuss how individual areas of environmental governance are linked, or how regime actors are forging such linkages. Chapter 6 will address how linkages have been made between global economic growth and development on the one hand, and environmental change on the other. This section uses the case of the linkages between environmental change and human security to illustrate how environmental concerns are intertwined with other global governance agendas. Global environmental degradation and/or change has some very serious implications for human security in all its dimensions (Khagram and Ali 2006). Making such linkages transparent and widely understood increases understanding of the importance of global environmental quality and sustainability. It also serves to raise concern about the environment, and to engage constituencies and interests – from the military to the human rights community – who might not otherwise pay much attention to the global environment. Human security is a multi-faceted concept. Traditional notions of security – particularly in international relations theory – focus on conflict and war, either within or between countries. In 1994, the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report (UNDP 1994) introduced a broader conception of human security, based on “freedoms from want” and “freedoms from fear,” which encompassed the following dimensions of security: economic (basic income and employment), food, health (access to healthcare, freedom from infectious disease), environmental, personal (physical safety), community (including cultural rights), and political (basic civil rights). This notion of human security has subsequently become part of international development and human rights

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initiatives, in much the same way that sustainable development came to underlie global environmental debates: at once easy to agree with and hard to operationalize in practice and in theory (Paris 2001). Nonetheless, global environmental change has the potential to have serious impacts on human food security, economic security, and health security. Conflicts engendered by resource scarcity in turn have the potential to undermine the social and political fabric of many communities and nation states. The role of environmental degradation in causing armed conflict has long been a subfield of international environmental politics, and, arguably, in far older theories of the causes of war and revolution, not to mention accounts of the rise and fall of civilizations (Homer-Dixon 1991; Levy 1995; Deudney 1990; Gleick 1993; Diamond 2005).14 Drought, water scarcity, land degradation – all may contribute to competition for scarce resources that may escalate into armed conflict.15 Conversely, resource wealth can also have negative effects on social stability. Many countries rich in natural resources, such as oil and minerals, and potentially water and forests, fall prey to what is termed the “resource curse,” or the “paradox of plenty,” a syndrome of political and economic problems related to uneven distribution of gains, political corruption, and dependence on a single resource (Karl 1997; Ross 2006; Weinthal and Luong 2006). The violence that has characterized parts of Nigeria, particularly the oil-rich Niger Delta, is one example of how resource abundance can lead to violence (Watts 2001). Finally, cooperating over scarce resources or other environmental problems can help ease cross-national tensions in other areas (Lowi 1993). The exact causal mechanisms between environmental change and war or conflict, and how they play out in particular local or transnational contexts, have been a subject of some debate.16 After all, these are very broad, often slow-moving changes, and not all states and societies suffering environmental change descend into armed conflict. However, issues of climate change and water scarcity have served to focus the attention 14

15

16

The Environmental Change and Security Project (ECSP) at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC is an invaluable source of research, events, and up-to-date analyses of environment-security linkages. See www.wilsoncenter.org/ecsp. Theories of war and revolution often have a resources scarcity/relative deprivation component – see, for example, Gurr 1985. For cases studies of links between environmental change, resource scarcity, and conflict, see the website of the Project on Environment, Population and Security at www.library. utoronto.ca/pcs/eps.htm, and Kahl 1998 (on Kenya) and Selby 2003 (on water in the Middle East). To illustrate, see the exchange between Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts in The ECSP Report, Volume 9 (2003) at www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/ pubs/exchange.pdf.


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of think tanks, higher-level politicians, and even the military worldwide. In the United States, a 2007 report from a military board convened by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA 2007), following on the heels of earlier reports from the Pentagon (released in 2004) and the Central Intelligence Agency (released in 2000), called climate change a “threat multiplier.” Climate change, of course, means much more than periodic droughts and bad harvests. Entire belts of arable land are likely to shift as climate patterns change permanently. Water sources, already strained, could dry up as the mountain glaciers that feed them themselves vanish. In human terms, this could mean famine, competition over remaining resources, and migration, either within countries or across national borders. Settling environmental refugees is already a problem facing the international community, as inhabitants of Pacific Island states already threatened by rising sea levels are looking for alternative places to live without necessarily sacrificing their cultural identity (Germanwatch 2004). In turn, climate change may affect global public health as diseases move with climate changes: malaria, for instance, is already appearing in parts of the world where it has not before, or had long been eradicated. Climate change is not the only environmental problem linked to changing disease patterns: over-population, ozone layer depletion, and urban pollution all carry health risks, from infectious diseases to skin cancer to childhood asthma (McMichael 2001; see also McCally 2002). Nor is climate change the only threat to food security: some point to the spread of genetically modified seed and other proprietary biotechnologies as a threat to farmers’ livelihoods, and the food security of the populations dependent upon them (Shiva 2004). The cumulative impact of making visible the links between environmental change and human security has been to galvanize very diverse international constituencies around problems of environmental change. Issues of food and water security have helped forge closer links between environment and human rights activist communities (Sachs 2003). The “hard” security threats, particularly around climate change, have engaged security communities, including national policy makers and the United Nations Security Council, as well as international development organizations (Penny 2007). This “mainstreaming” of environmental problems, and environmental concern, whereby the environment becomes an integral part of many national and international decisionmaking processes, not only a set of issues to be dealt with on their own, is likely to contribute to collective global environmental governance, and, as we shall see in Chapter 6, has already begun to reshape the global economic agenda.

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Next steps This chapter has demonstrated how the global environment is comprised of multiple complex and dynamic issues and problems. It has also emphasized the way that global environmental issues are framed is by no means immutable, and can have important consequences for how they are governed, at local, national, and global levels. From the United Nations to national governments to activists and scientists, many different sorts of actors are engaged in processes of environmental problem identification, assessment, and framing for the purposes of global governance. It is to these actors – their roles, activities, and interactions – that we turn to in Chapter 3. Discussion questions

How would you identify and evaluate different sources of information

(especially those on the internet) about the state of the global environment or specific environmental problems? What distinguishes a reliable information source from one that is not? This chapter distinguishes between global commons, transboundary and local-cumulative environmental problems. Taking complex problems such as climate change or biodiversity protection as examples, when is such a distinction helpful, and when does it oversimplify? What different prescriptions for action emerge from this typology? Population growth and consumption both help drive many environmental problems, yet they are very difficult problems to deal with at the international level. Why is this? What would you suggest as appropriate ways for the global community to address population and consumption problems?

suggestions for further reading Dessler, Andrew E., and Edward A. Parson. The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006: an excellent introduction to the problem of climate change, covering both policy and scientific angles. Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Press, 2005: a best-selling (and prize-winning) sweeping account of the rise and fall of civilizations, based on utilization and availability of natural resources. Helm, Dieter, and David Pearce. “Economic Policy Towards the Environment.” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 7.4 (1990), pp. 1–16: a highly accessible introduction to externalities and public goods at local and transboundary levels, from a microeconomic theory perspective.


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Jasanoff, Sheila. “Image and Imagination: The Formation of Global Environmental Consciousness.” Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance. Eds. Clark A. Miller and Paul N. Edwards. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001: discusses how the image of the earth from space and the “spaceship earth” metaphor have been framed and used in political and cultural discourse. Princen, Thomas, Michael F. Maniates, and Ken Conca, eds. Confronting Consumption. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2002: this collection of essays explores the dynamics of consumption and the global environment, discussing why consumption is the “third rail” of international environmental politics. Sachs, Wolfgang. Planet Dialectics: Explorations in Environment and Development. London: Zed Books, 1999: essays from a leading development theorist that dissect and critique the notion of sustainable development and its uses. Takacs, David. The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996: a collection of interviews and discussions with leading conservation biologists and others that examines how “biodiversity” emerged as a framing concept. United Nations Environment Programme. GEO 4: Environment for Development. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme, 2007, available at www. unep.org/geo/yearbook: one of the most authoritative sources of data and analysis on the state of the global environment and future trends. The website gives free access to all available editions.

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This chapter introduces the large and complex cast of characters active in international environmental politics and governance. We examine five main types of actor: nation states, international organizations, the global environmental movement, the corporate sector, and expert groups. The latter four groups are often referred to collectively as “non-state actors,” but they differ significantly from each other. We look at who each of these groups is, how they engage in global environmental governance, and some of the critical questions around their participation in and influence on the politics of the global environment. We also briefly examine two categories of actor largely absent from the study of global environmental governance: the broader public, and specific individuals. One finding that has emerged from work in international environmental politics is that the roles these groups of actors play in global environmental governance are not fixed, but change over time and across issue areas, partly as a result of changing governance structures and opportunities to participate but also because of entrepreneurialism on the part of the actors themselves. In the case of international environmental cooperation, states take on the lead part, with non-state actors in supporting roles. For non-state modes of governance, their roles are reversed. Across the modes and sites of global environmental governance we examine in this book, there is also strong variation in how groups of actors interact with each other. For example, civil society actors, including environmental groups, have been far more confrontational in dealing with international economic institutions than in their engagement in international environmental cooperation, employing tactics from repertoires of contentious politics. In turn, these observations raise questions of influence and agency. Does wider participation in global environmental governance signal greater influence on the part of “non-traditional” actors, or is it still the case that states and their representatives wield the most power in governance decisions? Within actor groups, are some more influential than others? For example, are certain types of expertise, and therefore experts, more privileged than others in international environmental politics? Are northern 48


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NGOs more influential than southern NGOs, and how can such power differentials be overcome? As we proceed in later chapters to discuss different forms of global environmental governance, we shall return to these questions. Nation states, and the North–South divide States as actors in international environmental politics First and foremost in any typology of actors in global politics are nation states: countries, or, more accurately, their governments, are the only actors with decision-making authority in the international system.1 Only official state representatives, for example, are authorized to vote on, sign, and enforce international treaties. Only governments, through their sovereign authority, are empowered to make environmental regulations enforceable on their own populations. States can also draw on an impressive array of resources, from military and economic power to political and social legitimacy to meet their goals. What states’ goals and interests are and where they come from are the topics of some debate. In mainstream international relations theory, one leading perspective posits that states engage in international cooperation only when they see a chance of relative gains for themselves over others in the international system. This point of view – associated with the realist perspectives discussed in Chapter 1 – contrasts with the institutionalist perspective – that states are interested in absolute gains for the entire international community, regardless of how their relative position changes. Some argue that these goals, or preferences, are fixed, or predetermined, and that states cooperate only to attain those goals. Others argue that these goals and interests are not predetermined, and can, in fact, be changed through engagement in international politics, particularly through cooperation: states become socialized through interaction with others, and come to share common norms and goals. Either way, national interests – the goals states pursue in international bargaining – play a critical role in determining the course and outcomes of international environmental politics. Later on, we shall see that such concepts as national will and capacity are very important in determining levels of compliance with, and effectiveness of, multilateral environmental agreements. Despite the importance of concepts of national interest, preferences, and capacity in determining how and why states act, nation states are not 1

For an excellent introduction to the role of, and debates about, the state in international politics, see Hobson 2000.

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unitary actors. Governments are made up of multiple agencies, and decision-makers are subject to multiple pressures, which all help sway international outcomes. Many agencies or ministries may play a role in global environmental negotiations. At the 1997 Kyoto Protocol negotiations, the USA was represented by members of the State Department, the Department of Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency – as well as members of the executive branch, notably Vice President Al Gore. These agencies had significantly different positions on how negotiations should proceed. Decision-makers, too, especially in democracies, are subject to pressure from various domestic interest groups. Environmental groups, industry groups, and others all have interests in the outcomes of international environmental policy, which often conflict. They can use multiple channels of access to the political process, with varying levels of success, either to influence decision-makers directly or indirectly, via shaping public opinion. In Chapter 4, we examine some of the ways in which these domestic political factors help shape international policy outcomes. Many different sorts of states inhabit the international system. As the most powerful state in the international system, the USA’s participation in international environmental negotiations is often considered critical, yet in the 1990s and 2000s, it became more of a laggard state, reluctant to participate in international environmental diplomacy. The “lead” states in IEP are frequently unexpected: the Scandinavian nations, for instance, have often taken strong positions on the global environment, encouraging others to join negotiations, and often taking unilateral measures above and beyond their basic commitments (Porter et al. 2000, pp. 35–44). The European Union too is a major supporter of global environmental governance, although there is still considerable variation in environmental performance across its member states (Zito 2005; Vogler 1999). The international system has also seen two waves of “new” states joining the international community since World War Two, first as the European nations dismantled their colonial empires after the war, and second, following the end of the Cold War, when states part of or closely allied with the Soviet Union gained their independence. The larger number of states participating in multilateral institutions has increased the complexity of negotiations, but has also meant wider participation across the international community. It has also meant that the global South has been able to take on a bigger role in global environmental politics. North–South politics and the global environment In most instances, it would be a wild oversimplification to divide the world into two camps: the wealthy “haves” of the North (or “First World”),


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including North America, Europe, and other industrialized nations, and the poorer “have-nots” of the global South (or “Third World”), consisting of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These countries only emerged into independence and economic development in the second half of the twentieth century, and have suffered from their peripheral role in the global economy. The “North–South” distinction obscures, for instance, the vast economic and sociopolitical differences between, and within, countries in either bloc, and practically erases from the political map the countries of what used to be called the “Second World” – those countries which spent decades in the orbit of the Soviet Union. Nor does the North–South dichotomy capture two groups of countries who have come to the forefront in development studies in recent decades: the “newly industrializing economies” (NIEs) of South-East and East Asia, and the “Fourth World” of highly indebted poorer countries (HIPCs), many in Africa, so torn by war, disease, and economic misfortune that they appear to be moving backwards, not forwards.2 However, in the context of international environmental negotiations, the distinction has considerable utility, for the primary reason that the “southern” countries have explicitly argued to be recognized as a voting bloc, which articulates specific interests, positions, and ideas. These states have, in a sense, adopted a collective identity, despite the very real differences between them (Najam 2004, 2005b; Williams 2005a). Thus, the “southern” label effectively encompasses countries as diverse as China, India, Brazil, Chad, and Somalia, at least for the purpose of international environmental negotiations. The South as a group in international environmental politics has its roots in the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, a coalition of countries led by India and Indonesia who wished to take a neutral stance in the ongoing Cold War, and in the movement for a New International Economic Order (NIEO), which sought to break the South of its economic dependency on the North (Najam 2004). The organizational form of NIEO movement is the Group of 77 (G77, now consisting of over 130 member states), which began as an alliance within the UN’s General Assembly, and has taken on an organizational identity of its own, including articulating and representing southern interests at international environmental negotiations. Starting at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, southern governments have led in linking environmental protection and economic development 2

There are many alternate terms for “North–South” – developed and less developed, for example. One theorist has put forward the terms “minority” and “majority” worlds – rich and poor respectively – to capture this divide in a more vivid way (Doyle 2005).

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under the rubric of sustainable development and stressing the environmental degradation caused by poverty. They have also successfully challenged the environmental priorities and problem frames set out by the international community, arguing that they have focused on problems of greater concern to the North (climate change, ozone depletion) while underplaying the environmental problems of most concern to people in poorer nations, including desertification and fresh water availability. These debates have influenced the choice of issues over which to negotiate in recent decades, as well as broader institutional debates, for example over the sorts of projects to be funded by the Global Environment Facility, the main agency responsible for funding international environmental commitments.3 In some ways, and particularly given the skepticism with which many southern leaders faced the Stockholm Conference (Najam 2005b), the environmental arena seems a surprising one for the South to have chosen to take so influential a stand. However, there are good reasons for this. First, unlike key arenas of global economic governance – international trade and finance – environmental negotiations operate under a more open, “one-member, one vote” process, rather than through closed-door meetings of major regime donors. Second, in addition to finding a collective negotiating voice, the southern countries have critical sources of power and leverage in environmental issues. Given that over half the world’s population already lives in the developing world, and that it is in the South that the bulk of the world’s industrial and population growth will occur in the twenty-first century, their participation at this stage was recognized as critical to future global sustainability. In specific issue areas, too, the South has been able to exert material leverage (e.g. biodiversity) or moral leadership (e.g. the hazardous waste trade). The decline of the state? A final relevant debate concerns the continued role of the state as the most powerful actor on the international scene (Spruyt 2002; Evans 1997). Some argue that pressures of globalization have limited the ability of 3

One powerful example of how southern activists were able to challenge problem-framing occurred when the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an Indian NGO, issued a stinging rebuttal of an influential report by the USA-based World Resources Institute (WRI) on national greenhouse gas emissions, a rebuttal that received a lot of attention in international forums (Agarwal and Narain 1991). Among other arguments, the CSE noted that the WRI report had, when it allocated relatively high emissions figures to India and other southern countries, failed to distinguish between the “survival” emissions of poorer countries (e.g. methane from rice fields) and the “luxury” emissions of richer countries, such as high automobile ownership, in allocating responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions.


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individual governments to form and shape their own policies, especially economic policies.4 Others argue that the “center of gravity” in international politics is shifting to powerful non-state actors, including global civil society, corporate actors or international economic institutions (O’Neill et al. 2004). The implications for international environmental politics, if this shift is occurring, are that global environmental governance could increasingly come from the non-state arena, including the private sector, civil society, and “sub-state” political actors, such as local governments – unless governments push back to maintain their sovereign rights over global governance. While this “pushing back” happens in other arenas of global governance (trade and national security, for example), it is less evident (but by no means absent) in the environmental arena. Another possibility – taken up in Chapter 6 – is that the state and the arena of inter-state politics are the wrong target for environmental activism, and that we should be targeting forces of global capitalism instead. On the other hand, there remain many functions that only states can provide in the international system: forces of law and order, a legitimacy grounded in years of political practice, financial aid and policy tools that make them essential to effective global governance, even in partnership with other actors. That not all these functions are directed towards a greener world is more a matter of reforming, or repositioning, the state, rather than an impossible goal.5 International organizations International governmental organizations (IGOs) are set up by states to manage international problems, provide a forum for collective decisionmaking, and bear responsibility for managing and implementing global policies, including the allocation of international financial loans and aid. They are called governmental organizations because they were established by and represent the collective interests of the governments who founded them, and who make up their membership. The 2006 Yearbook of International Organizations identifies around 242 conventional IGOs, including universal and regional organizations, a number that has remained stable since the early 1980s.6 The current 4 5 6

Debates over way globalization has changed the role and form of the state have generated a large literature. See, for example, Robinson 2001; Sassen 1999. For a more sophisticated (and elaborate) version of this argument, see Barry and Eckersley 2005, particularly essays by Eckersley, Vogler, and Conca. See also Karns and Mingst 2004. According to the Yearbook, “conventional” IGOs are those whose operations and membership cover at least three countries, which have formal operating and financial structures, and which have been active in the past four years.

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system of IGOs dates back to the years immediately following World War Two. The UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were all established in the late 1940s, with the goals of maintaining international peace and stability, encouraging reconstruction and economic growth following the devastation of the war, and helping numerous former colonized nations navigate their way into independence. The World Trade Organization (WTO), set up as the organizational embodiment of the GATT and related trade agreements, was established in 1995. Regional economic organizations include the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN, which also has an important security component). The EU is something of a unique entity in international politics: while sometimes it acts as a sovereign state (for example, in signing treaties), in other ways, it is still an organization consisting of individually sovereign members, although with more powers than most (Vogler 1999). IGOs tread the border between categories of “state” and “non-state” actors. While they are supposed to represent the collective will of their member states, they have also been able, on many occasions, to adopt their own agendas and activities, and certainly have been very influential in setting international policy agendas. These activities have raised important questions about their autonomy and influence independent of their member states, which, at least for some organizations, appears to be relatively high (Barnett and Finnemore 1999, 2004). In terms of actual material resources (budget, staff, office space), IGOs tend to be small (Blackhurst 1998). They gain legitimacy (and wield influence) through their mission, through influence “on the ground” in different countries, and the standing granted to them by member states. In recent years, IGOs have sought to expand the basis for their legitimacy, in part responding to global pressures for more accountability, and in part to assert themselves above and beyond conflicts among their member states. Two sets of IGOs are particularly important for global environmental governance: the United Nations and associated agencies, and international economic institutions, such as the WTO, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The United Nations system The UN and its associated agencies play the largest direct role in global environmental governance. It has sponsored three global summits on environment and development, and is most active in setting the global environmental policy agenda, and providing a forum for international


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environmental negotiations. The UN Charter was signed in San Francisco in October 1945 by fifty nations; today the UN has 192 member states.7 Its primary mandate is to promote international peace and security. To fulfill this mission, it has been active in peacekeeping, conflict prevention and arms control, international human rights protection, social and economic development, human health – and global environmental protection. The main governing body of the UN, the Security Council, is made up of five permanent members (the USA, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France), each of whom has the ability to veto any proposal brought before the council, and ten members elected by the General Assembly. Proposals to reform the Security Council include changing or expanding the roster of permanent members. Each member state has a seat, and a vote, in the General Assembly, the UN’s deliberative body, which provides a forum to discuss – and potentially resolve – pressing international issues and crises. To fulfill its mission, the UN manages a dense network of specialized agencies, programs, funds, and other bodies. Its main organs include the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretariat (office of the Secretary General), the Economic and Social Council, and the International Court of Justice. The World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), the IMF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) count as “specialized agencies” of the UN: autonomous bodies linked to the UN through special agreements. The programs most directly involved in international environmental politics – UNEP, UNDP (UN Development Program), and the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) – are directly under the UN’s umbrella, with organization, employees, and budget managed by the UN Secretariat and the General Assembly. UNEP is based in Nairobi, Kenya, with offices also in Geneva. Its primary function is to oversee the development of international environmental agreements and initiatives, to provide a forum for negotiations, to gather information and promote research on environmental problems, and to serve as the central body monitoring, and overseeing funding for, states’ international environmental commitments: an “anchor institution” for the global environment (Ivanova 2005).8 UNEP’s beginnings, at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, were inauspicious: there was not a lot of support for an international environment agency among developed countries, and developing countries were suspicious of what it might entail. UNEP owes its existence, to a large part, 7 8

For an overview of the UN and its activities, see www.un.org/Overview/uninbrief/ index.html. On UNEP, see Ivanova, 232, 2007; Andresen 2002; Von Moltke 1996.

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to the entrepreneurial leadership of Maurice Strong, the Secretary General of the Stockholm conference, and to the political contingencies prevailing at the time (Ivanova 2007). Its eventual institutional form, as a UN “program,” rather than a specialized agency, with limited resources and autonomy, has made it a target for reform, particularly by those who favor a stronger, more centralized form of global environmental governance. UNEP oversees the bodies responsible for the day to day running of international environmental governance regimes, housing the various treaty secretariats and other bodies who do this work. There is growing evidence that members of convention secretariats are starting to take on a larger, and more autonomous, role in guiding the development of their issue areas, and in managing linkages and overlaps that have inevitably emerged in the complex and piecemeal system of global environmental governance that currently dominates international environmental politics (Jinnah 2008). Together with UNDP and the World Bank, UNEP also helps manage the primary global institution designed to fund projects directly related to global environmental problems, the Global Environment Facility (GEF). IGOs for the global economy International economic organizations, such as the World Bank, the WTO, and, to a lesser extent, the International Monetary Fund, are also important actors in global environmental politics. Although they are less directly involved in global governance issues, their policies, according to their critics, have helped exacerbate global environmental problems, while others have pointed out the role they play in forging sustainable solutions to problems associated with economic growth. The World Bank’s chief mission, following the immediate process of post-World War Two economic reconstruction in Europe, is to provide aid and loans to developing countries. It has come under fire from environmental and human rights activists because it has been the chief funding agency for numerous projects – dams, roads, etc. – that have been implemented without regard for their environmental or social costs (Fox and Brown 1998). Since protests led to its withdrawal from such controversial projects as the Narmada Dam project in India in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it has invested time and energy in “greening” its approach to international development, including establishing an environmental unit and implementing environmental impact assessment procedures (Sheehan 2000; Hunter 2001). While these efforts have met with some acclaim, others claim that they represent mere “window dressing” – or that they


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represent a particularly technocratic approach to green governance that reinforces, rather than changes, the dominant international status quo. The World Trade Organization too has been a primary target of protests by environmental, human rights, and labor activists. It was set up in 1995, in order to administer the increasingly unwieldy global trading rules contained in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, first signed in 1948). The main purpose of the GATT was to liberalize international trade, through reducing tariffs and other barriers to the free movement of goods and services worldwide, with the goal of encouraging global economic growth, and, through prosperity and interdependence, global peace and stability. The WTO has a membership of over 140 states, and operates formally on a one member, one vote principle. All member states are committed to a fairly strict and far-reaching set of rules aimed at further trade liberalization. Of all IGOs, the WTO’s relationship to the global environment has engendered the most debate. Some argue that GDP growth through trade has led to over-use of natural resources, while others argue that it is only through economic growth and prosperity that we can afford to protect the environment (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, Chapter 5). Others point to ways in which trade liberalization has struck down or stunted domestic environmental regulations, and could strike down multilateral environmental agreements (O’Neill and Burns 2005). We return to these debates in Chapter 6. NGOs, activist groups, and the global environmental movement Environmental activist groups play a critical role in highlighting global environmental problems, and in influencing – directly or indirectly – the course of global environmental governance. Many types of groups, representing many different interests, are active on the global political scene – from large, professionalized NGOs to small local groups networking with each other via the internet (O’Neill and VanDeveer 2005). These groups differ extensively in ideology, strategy, organizational form, and targets (not all of them would even define themselves as “environmental”), but share critical concerns over the state of the global environment and/or the role and rights of human communities within the environment, and over the need for different voices to be heard in global governance processes. Environmental, human rights, indigenous rights, and other sorts of activist groups are commonly referred to as civil society actors. The term civil society has a long history in the study of social movements and their relationship with the state (Ehrenberg 1999; Wapner 2000). Most simply, civil society consists of voluntary associations and movements – religious,

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activist, and other collective groups that individuals choose to join: “the bonds and allegiances that arise through sustained, voluntary, noncommercial interaction” (Wapner 2000, p. 266). These relationships exist independently of the state, or government (or ruling party). Civil society can be an important counterbalance to overweening state power. Civil society actors may also be able to channel societal demands to the state more effectively than individual or mass actions. Environmentalism as a form of social movement has a long history around the world (Guha 2000).9 Groups have engaged in political struggles and protests, lobbying, and other strategies to save wilderness, rainforests, and whales, to close polluting factories, or prevent dam construction across the globe and throughout the twentieth century and beyond. Sometimes these groups have formed around a single issue, and then faded away. At other times, they have built effective networks and organizations, and continued to campaign. It is not surprising that many different groups are playing an active role at the global level, seeking to influence the course and progress of international environmental negotiations. The nature and extent of this influence is one of the key areas of debate around the role of civil society groups in international environmental politics (Betsill and Corell 2001, 2007). Another is the extent to which environmental groups can claim or maintain legitimacy, especially as they grow and professionalize away from their grass roots. Questions of representation and legitimacy come from both inside and outside social movements: in 2000, following the anti-WTO protests in Seattle of the previous year, an article in the influential periodical The Economist asked just who elected NGOs to take the positions that they do.10 Global environmental activism has manifested itself in several ways. First, many groups – Greenpeace, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Climate Action Network, the Third World Network, and others – have focused their attention on explicitly global problems. Greenpeace, for instance, has been instrumental in drawing international political attention to problems such as whaling or the international waste trade, using striking protest actions, garnering maximum media attention. Some organizations focus on providing data on the extent of global environmental degradation – the Washington DC-based World Resources Institute produces regular reports that cover all aspects of humanity’s impact on the environment. 9

10

Social movements are comprised of groups of societal actors seeking to change key aspects of policy or governance. For a basic outline of social movement theory, see McAdam et al. 1996. “Angry and Effective,” The Economist, September 23, 2000.


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Second, environmental groups have been a very active presence at international negotiations and at global summits (Friedman et al. 2005; Princen and Finger 1994). From colorful protests – dressing as penguins, scaling tall buildings to launch banners – to very active work lobbying state representatives in the negotiating hall, and publicizing the progress of negotiations, to “parallel summits” held at the same time and place as major UN summits, these groups have been hard to ignore. In some cases, they have even provided draft treaties and language to be used in treaties: the first draft of the Convention on Biological Diversity was crafted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a network of conservation groups. Yet, their influence on negotiation outcomes remains indirect, and the subject of debate among social scientists (Betsill and Corell 2007): NGOs do not have formal representation or voting power at international conventions. Less in dispute is the increasingly significant role that NGOs and other groups are playing in the implementation and monitoring of international environmental agreements. Given that monitoring and enforcement mechanisms in most of these agreements is relatively weak, NGOs have taken on important “whistle-blowing” roles when states fall behind on their commitments (McCormick 1999). They have also become key recipients, or focal points, of international environmental aid, particularly in developing countries. Third, the emergence of transnational advocacy networks and, potentially, a global civil society has been one of the most significant developments in the study of activism and social movements over the past decade.11 One of the central questions addressed by this literature is the extent to which transnational or global environmental movements are helping processes of democratizing global governance, through increasing participation by and representation of societal interests at international meetings and forums, or by generating alternative governance systems and practices. Transnational advocacy networks are “sets of actors linked across country boundaries, bound together by shared values, dense exchange of information and services, and common discourses” (Khagram et al. 2002, p. 7). These may be coalitions of groups loosely allied across national borders for particular purposes, or tighter networks or movements who coordinate strategies and can mobilize in several different jurisdictions at once (Khagram et al. 2002, pp. 7–10). Connections between these groups may be horizontal (groups ally themselves on a relatively equal basis) or vertical (linked by a chain of command). The term “global civil society” is used in a 11

See, for example, Khagram et al. 2002; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Scholte 2004; Wapner 1996; Fox and Brown 1998; Smith et al. 1997.

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variety of ways. At one level, it is an umbrella term that covers the different groups engaged in shaping – and potentially democratizing – global governance processes (Friedman et al. 2005). At another, the term connotes a more fundamental shift, which connects more closely with approaches that suggest that the territorial nation state is in decline as the primary mode of organization of the international system. In this vein, Paul Wapner defines global civil society as the emergence of “[a] domain of associational life that exists above the individual and below the state yet across state boundaries through which people experience the virtues of sociality and represent themselves in a social context” (Wapner 2000, p. 267). Transnational networks of environmental activists engage in a number of different sorts of activity. Many of the groups engaged in the international environmental negotiations process fall into this category: the Climate Action Network, an umbrella organization made up of climate related NGOs, represents the collective position of its membership at international climate negotiations. Similar “peak associations” are engaged in POPs, hazardous waste trade, and other international environmental negotiating processes. Local activist groups are able to use transnational alliances to target, publicize, and change the behavior of recalcitrant governments, IGOs, and multinational corporations, particularly in cases where domestic channels of access are not available.12 For example, many of the communities most affected by large-scale projects funded by the World Bank (such as dam construction) have little recourse at the domestic level, given that these projects are usually initiated and supported by their own governments. In such cases, an alliance with a similar group in a different country – particularly in a country with a large share of votes in the World Bank Group – makes for good strategy, as these groups can then pressure their own governments to change World Bank actions (Fox and Brown 1998). Such coalitions have played an instrumental role in making the World Bank start taking the environmental and social impacts of its funding decisions into account. At the same time, questions of interactions and relationships within advocacy coalitions – especially those with membership from both northern and southern groups – raises questions of power dynamics, accountability, and learning (ibid.): do northern groups dominate southern partners? Do they learn from each other? Do internal dynamics undermine or enhance their attainment of immediate or longer-term goals? 12

This has sometimes been referred to as the “boomerang” model (Keck and Sikkink 1998): groups living under a repressive regime are able to work with groups in other countries, who are able to lobby their governments to put pressure on the repressive government to change their practices. This model is most closely linked with global human rights activism, and the activities of groups such as Amnesty International.


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One of the strategic decisions that transnational movements or networks must make is the extent to which they engage in confrontation compared with cooperation with their targets, including states, IGOs, and the corporate sector. Protest actions have always been a key part of the social movement repertoire. The global protest movement that arose in the 1990s around meetings of the main international financial institutions has received a lot of attention in terms of its capacity to mobilize a broad activist coalition around issues of global justice (O’Neill 2004). The protests around the 1999 Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle drew around 30,000 protestors, a number that surprised organizers, who had not expected such breadth and depth of opposition to WTO activities. While it is often hard to draw a direct line between protests and policy change, the performative – and sometimes violent – actions of the protestors helped focus international attention on equity and justice issues around globalization – and helped many activists forge new transnational alliances. These actions have also been instrumental in raising awareness of the connections between environmental degradation and the international human rights agenda, and connecting local concerns with the often abstract global governance agenda (Conca 2005; O’Neill and VanDeveer 2005). Many of these groups now come together on a regular basis at the World Social Forum, an annual meeting of the “alternative globalization movement,” with the goal of providing a forum to discuss ideas, strategies, and alternatives for the movement (Teivainen 2002; Smith 2004). Many NGOs are also following more cooperative strategies, especially with respect to the corporate sector; some NGOs in fact engage in both cooperative and confrontational strategies. Certainly, large, visible multinational corporations, such as Nike and Royal Dutch Shell, have made good focal points for protests and publicity. Still, the next step for many groups has been to find ways to work with corporations to build connections and find ways for corporations to develop more sustainable practices and policies, without necessarily sacrificing profits. We examine this question further as we turn to the role of the corporate sector in international environmental politics. Corporations and the private sector Private economic actors – firms, corporations, and business lobbying groups – are perhaps the most controversial group of non-state actors in international environmental politics. Critics argue that corporations, wielding undue political influence with little or no public accountability, are primarily responsible for today’s environmental crises. Many

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Table 3.1 Global environmental issues and associated industries Issue

Primary Industry

Secondary (User) Industries

Climate Change

Fossil fuels extraction/refining Transportation sector, (e.g. Shell, Chevron-Texaco) electric utilities, other energy-intensive industries Hazardous Waste Trade Waste Disposal Industry Scrap Numerous manufacturers Metal, Recycling Biodiversity/Biosafety Agricultural biotechnology Farming Pharmaceuticals Ozone Depletion Chemical manufacturers Refrigeration, electronics, aerosols Persistent Organic Pollutants Chemical manufacturers Farming Deforestation Timber industry Furniture, Hardware, Office supplies Ocean Pollution Oil industry, Shipping (cruise Multiple industries relying ships and tankers) on fuel, trade

corporations are currently working hard to prove the opposite: that, instead, through adopting management standards and production practices, in fact they can be “engines of environmentalism.” As with the NGO sector, the private sector is made up of many different types of actors, with varying interests, capacities, and activities. Of particular concern to environmental activists are multinational corporations (MNCs), that is, “any business corporation in which ownership, management, production and marketing extend over several national jurisdictions” (Gilpin 1975, p. 8), and firms in the manufacturing and raw materials extraction sectors. However, firms of all sizes and types of production may have an impact on the state and politics of the global environment. Table 3.1 gives examples of primary and secondary industries associated with particular international environmental issues. Individual corporations rarely like to engage directly in the political process. Thus, representative organizations such as trade associations and industry NGOs provide a vehicle for collective political action by corporate actors. The broadest industry association engaged in IEP is the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), formed in 1991 just prior to UNCED (the Rio Conference). With over 170 members across multiple industrial sectors, it advocates involvement of the business sector in sustainability issues (Schmidheiny 1992). The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which also represents many different sectors, is also a key industry player at international negotiations. Involvement by the business sector in international environmental negotiations, directly (attending negotiations) or indirectly (lobbying


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governments) is a relatively recent phenomenon. As is true at the domestic level, the corporate sector operates from a mixture of motives, and firms may often favor international regulations, for obtaining market advantage, a level playing field with global competitors, reducing uncertainty, or even out of a genuine concern for the environment. First, this involvement reflects the corporate sector’s desire for uniform international standards (DeSombre 2000). Famously, the major US manufacturer of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Dupont, faced with strict domestic restrictions on CFC generation, changed its position in 1986 to favor international regulation of ozone depleting substances, thus leveling the international playing field for its products, and, given its leading position in developing substitutes for CFCs, strengthening its position against smaller competitors (Parson 2003, p. 127). Second, for several key environmental issues, such as climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity protection, most political activity has been initiated and debated at the international level. Many industries now feel they ignore international environmental negotiations at their peril, and some feel that they may positively benefit from them. The global oil industry, for example, has actively attended and participated in climate negotiations to the extent that they can (Pulver 2002). Some oil companies – notably the European-based corporations – have taken positions in favor of greenhouse gas limitations, while many others remain opposed. Finally, and especially with widespread disillusionment over the outcomes of global environmental diplomacy, more and more attention is being paid these days to the role that industry plays in developing its own governance regimes, or governance regimes in partnership with civil society actors. These private, or “hybrid,” governance regimes, often built around voluntary eco-labeling or certification processes, are particularly prevalent in the forestry and chemicals sectors, but are also present in other sectors, including the fishing industry and other key commodities, such as coffee. Firms participating in these schemes agree to certify that their products are produced according to predetermined environmental and/or labor standards. While some see these schemes as critical to the future of environmental regulations, others are more skeptical, pointing out that they are voluntary, and can often lack transparency or legitimacy. We will return to these discussions in Chapter 7. Scientists, expert groups, and knowledge holders Our final group of actors consists of scientists and other experts, whose knowledge and expertise has played a critical role in international environmental politics. One of the best known examples of a scientific organization

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active in global environmental governance is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. The IPCC is a transnational organization of 3,000 scientists, whose role is to gather, assess, and communicate scientific findings about the causes and impacts of global climate change. The nature of its role in a hotly contested international political issue has served both to push towards overall (but not complete) consensus that climate change is occurring and is driven by human activity, and to pull its members, often unwillingly, into political battles they had not sought. Given that many of the environmental issues dealt with at the international level are complex, and fraught with uncertainties, “good science” has frequently been called upon as the justification for particular paths of political action (Jasanoff 1997). What constitutes “good science,” or appropriate knowledge in the context of global environmental politics, has become something of a contested issue. It is increasingly apparent that the boundaries between science and politics, and between “expert” and “lay” knowledge, are becoming increasingly blurred. From the 1960s through the 1980s, members of the natural science community began to study what has come to be termed the human dimensions of global environmental change. This initiative was led by researchers in the atmospheric sciences, who began to focus on the collective impact of human activity on the global environment as a system, or set of closely interlocking systems (Miller and Edwards 2001). This new, interdisciplinary science of the human dimensions of global environmental change was driven in part by the emergence of international collaborative research programs, including UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Program (1971–84), the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), established by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) in 1969, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).13 The first International Geophysical Year, 1957–8, sponsored by the ICSU is widely thought to have initiated serious international research on climate change. These various initiatives brought together scientists across national borders, and across different disciplines (although not, at first, the social sciences), to examine the causes and impacts of global environmental change. Given the critical role that scientific expertise and other forms of knowledge have played in framing global environmental issues and driving particular solutions, scholars from political science and science and

13

For histories of international scientific collaboration around the global environment, see Price 1990; Takacs 1996; Edwards 2001.


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technology studies focus on who these experts are, who counts as an expert, how they organize collectively, and how they relate to the political side of policymaking. We will discuss some of the points of view on how scientific knowledge is taken up into the policy process in Chapter 4. In brief, however, early models of science–policy interaction posit complete separation of science and politics: scientific knowledge, generated in a neutral political context, informs policy debates, but is not shaped by them. At the other extreme, some make an argument that all science is political: scientific goals, results, funding, and communications are all shaped by politics. More recent and more nuanced models posit that in fact the interaction between science, or scientists, and policy, or policymakers, is neither wholly political nor wholly scientific, and varies over time, across issue areas, and according to who exactly is involved – the co-production model (Tzankova 2006; Jasanoff 1997). For individual scientists too often the decision to engage in the political process can pose personal and professional dilemmas. While some individuals and organizations have managed to bridge the worlds of advocacy science and “pure” science – Professor Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, for example – it is, for many, a difficult and potentially treacherous path to negotiate. If one posits that the role of science in international policymaking is to provide authoritative justification for particular courses of action, then the dominant group of scientific experts consists of those who hold particular accreditations, usually academic, in their field or discipline of expertise (“people with PhDs”). Such scientists work in many different places: they may work in research universities and laboratories, for government agencies, corporations, think tanks, IGOs or NGOs. The pool of expertise for understanding and addressing international environmental problems is large, ranging from the atmospheric sciences to disciplines such as terrestrial or marine ecology, conservation biology, and more. One of the more compelling approaches developed to study the collective impact of experts, and consensual expert opinion, on the international policy process is Peter Haas’s epistemic communities model (Haas 1990, 1992). This model identifies transnational groups of scientific experts who are in a position to work with each other and to influence governments attempting to negotiate environmental agreements. Other places to look for scientific involvement in the international policy process include formal panels and working groups associated with international environmental agreements, such as the IPCC or the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity, or other assessment processes. For example, the

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Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (2005) involved more than 1,300 authors from 95 countries.14 Even restricting discussions about experts in international environmental politics to the pool of “people with PhDs” has generated some critical reflection. Two issues in particular have generated debate. First, with the possible exception of economics, the natural sciences have tended to dominate the social sciences and humanities in terms of giving expert opinion on the causes and consequences of global environmental degradation. Second, official scientific panels and advisory groups associated with international negotiating processes have tended to be dominated by scientists trained and/or working in the global North (Kandlikar and Sagar 1999; Karlsson 2002). More broadly, the whole concept of “expert” has become more contested in recent years, with the incorporation of local knowledge perspectives into several international negotiating processes, and the expansion of the category of “science” into a broader one of “knowledge” (Jasanoff 2005, p. 374). For example, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification both contain processes for direct participation by indigenous groups and other local knowledge holders. “Citizen experts,” “lay experts,” “traditional” or “indigenous” “knowledge holders” – many of the actors within these categories are becoming sources of legitimate authority, holding as they do particular specialized knowledge, even if they have not passed through a traditional accreditation process. On the one hand, this recategorization of expertise and who “counts” as an expert brings a wider range of knowledge to the international policy process, and direct participation by a broader range of actors. On the other hand, some have expressed concern that this opens up the “expert” category too much, and could lead to too much emphasis – and too unqualified an acceptance – of local or lay expertise in international environmental politics.15 The broader public – and individual leaders The global public – or, more broadly, global public opinion – is largely absent from the stage of global environmental governance, unless one grants it a role as the audience. In part this is because of the distancing of processes of global governance from popular participation: with the exception of the parliament of the European Union, there are no popular 14 15

See www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx. For a critique of the turn to the local in international development politics, see Mohan and Stokke 2000.


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elections. Decisions about how global governance is managed and who manages it are the prerogative of global policy elites. A frequent critique of international environmental cooperation is that it appears to have very little impact on people’s everyday lives. Taking the argument one step further, many claim that we need a fundamental change in peoples’ values and behaviors to achieve a more sustainable world – but identifying what those values are, and how that transition might be achieved, is a very difficult task (Leiserowitz et al. 2006). There is, in fact, a substantial literature that examines public attitudes towards, and understanding of, various aspects of global environmental and sustainable development (Leiserowitz et al. 2006; Dunlap 1998; Krosnick et al. 2006; Zharan et al. 2006). Many studies focus specifically on climate change, and many analyze have data that was gathered in a number of countries.16 In their survey of existing polls, Leiserowitz et al. (2006) find growing public support for a cluster of values and behaviors around sustainable development, even placing environmental protection above economic prosperity in some cases. It is, however, unclear how growing concern translates into political action: few respondents in one such poll had actually taken political action around the environment, though many agreed that they had changed or planned to change their individual behaviors (ibid., pp. 421–2). It is possible that these attitudes reflect a deeper normative shift, which, in combination with other actions, could lead to a transition towards a more sustainable global economy. It could also still be the case that a major global economic recession could reverse peoples’ thinking. A constructivist theorist would argue for the former, while a realist would argue the latter. Either way, direct connections between global environmental governance actions and institutions and global public opinion are weak (and a problem that may eventually need to be addressed for global governance to be truly effective and legitimate). That does not mean that public opinion within different countries does not sway its representatives’ actions: the 2007 election campaign in Australia hinged in part on the pledge of the then opposition leader, subsequently Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, a popular move with the Australian electorate. Also, many NGOs and civil society organizations place great emphasis on popular support (through membership in some cases, or through changing public opinion, often through the media) and claims to represent the underrepresented in 16

Organizations that carry out such international – though not fully global – opinion polls include the Gallup organization, the Pew Global Attitudes Project and Eurobarometer (Dunlap 1998; Leiserowitz et al. 2006).

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global politics. Specific communities too have become part of the global environmental narrative: the Inuit population, or the people of Tuvalu, for instance, or indigenous/tribal communities resisting dam construction or resource extraction. Some global governance processes – for example, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Forest Stewardship Council – are reaching out to specific communities – indigenous knowledge holders in the former case, and forest-dwelling communities in the latter. Turning to how particular individuals – especially charismatic leaders – shape the course of global environmental governance, my students always notice that these individuals, while evidently important in forging particular developments, tend to get short shrift in the theoretical literature. Where would we be in our thinking about chemicals if not for Rachel Carson, or about climate change if not for Al Gore and Stephen Schneider? Would our global institutions look the same in the absence of Sir Maurice Strong, Mustafa Tolba, or Gro Harlem Brundtland? The answer would probably be that things would indeed be different without the particular framing, communications, or negotiating abilities of these individuals and many others at specific times and in specific places. Yet, social science theory, in its quest for generalizations and widely applicable theories has a hard time dealing with the “random variables” of individual psychology, skill, and leadership.17 Detailed histories or narrative case studies of global environmental governance are more likely to pay greater attention to specific individuals and their roles, and the definitive history of global environmental governance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has yet to be written. Scholars in this field tend to heed lessons learned in the discipline of history: that “great men” are more often the product of broader social, political, and economic forces than the drivers of them. Still, the reasons why some individuals entered into environmental activism and politics, how they reached the positions they did (and, in many cases, the price that they paid), and the impact they have had on global environmental governance and institutions provide instructive reading, and important insights into the twists and turns of global politics. Next steps There are many different types of actor engaged in international environmental politics. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, many are involved 17

With the exception of a school in international relations theory on psychology – for example, in decision-making by particular leaders. For an overview, see Goldgeier and Tetlock 2001.


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in global environmental governance: in creating governance institutions, shaping their development, and assisting (or not) in their implementation. In the following two chapters, we will be examining the roles of states, IGOs, and non-state actors in international environmental diplomacy: the formation and implementation of international environmental agreements and regimes. Chapter 6 extends this analysis to the critical institutions of the global economic order: the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Finally, Chapter 7 examines how global environmental governance institutions are emerging “beyond the state,” in the form of certification schemes and other private sector–civil society initiatives. It is clear that, however settled theoretical notions of actor roles in international politics might appear to be, out in the world they are changing, particularly as non-state actors have gained more of a voice, and more agency, in world politics, and as governance institutions have opened up to participation from a wider range of actors. At the same time, this shift towards inclusiveness has opened processes of global environmental governance to wider contestation and scrutiny. Later chapters will examine how to assess the role and influence of different sorts of actors in international environmental politics, and the role that interactions across and within actor groups have helped to shape the course of global environmental governance into the twenty-first century. Discussion questions

A government’s position in international environmental negotiations is

often affected by domestic political factors. Using examples from the country you live in or know best, what sorts of domestic political factors (and groups) shape a country’s foreign environmental policy? How do they gain access to the policy process? Why do southern countries tend to have different positions from their northern counterparts over global environmental politics? When is this “North–South” distinction useful, and when is it an oversimplification? Who counts as an “expert” with respect to the causes and impacts of climate change? Why? What factors would you look for to establish expert credibility? Choosing a couple of large environmental NGOs, find their websites and examine their goals, activities, membership, and sources of financing. What factors do you think contribute to their success or lack of success? How do they compare? Repeat the exercise, this time with well-known IGOs.

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suggestions for further reading Díez, Jordi, and O. P. Dwivedi, eds. Global Environmental Challenges: Perspectives from the South. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2007: this volume examines southern perspectives on the global environment; its strength are the case studies on environmental politics in eleven southern countries. Guha, Ramachandra. Environmentalism: A Global History. New York: Longman, 2000: a truly global perspective on the emergence of environmentalism in different parts of the world. Karliner, Joshua. The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997: a strong and well-argued critique of the role of corporations in causing environmental harm and obstructing environmental regulation. Karns, Margaret P., and Karen A. Mingst. International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance. Boulder CO: Lynne Reinner, 2004: a highly accessible text on intergovernmental organizations and their role. Leiserowitz, Anthony A., Robert W. Kates, and Thomas M. Parris. “Sustainability Values, Attitudes, and Behaviors: A Review of Multinational and Global Trends.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31 (2006), pp. 413–44: one of the best overviews to date on public opinion, values, and sustainable development. Martello, Marybeth Long. “Local Knowledge: Global Change Science and the Arctic Citizen.” Science and Public Policy 31.2 (2001), pp. 107–15: covers both how particular communities – here, Arctic communities – are especially vulnerable to global environmental harm, and how “local knowledge” is playing an increasingly important role in global policy deliberations. Spruyt, Hendrik. “The Origins, Development and Possible Decline of the Modern State.” Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002), pp. 127–49: covers why the modern territorial state emerged as the central actor in the international system, and why it is currently under threat. Wapner, Paul. Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics. Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1996: this book focuses on the emergence of global civil society and “politics above and below the state”; includes a case study of Greenpeace International.

4

State-led global environmental governance: International cooperation and regime formation

By far the most important way that the international community has sought to govern the global environment is through cooperation among nation states and the creation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), or regimes. There are currently more than 140 MEAs in existence, most of which have come into being since 1972. Studying international environmental cooperation provides insights into exactly how states succeed or fail to work together to address complex transboundary and global problems. International environmental negotiations have been fraught with difficulties, and conflicts of national interests, values, and priorities. These clashes have often led to compromises that have disappointed many. These negotiations are also often remarkable for examples of political entrepreneurship, creative compromises, and last-minute solutions. They have attracted attention and participation from a wide range of actors, not only states and their representatives, but also scientists, activists, and business leaders. International relations theories of bargaining and “cooperation under anarchy” have provided important insights into the complex factors that shape negotiation outcomes and regime formation. At the same time, the study of international environmental cooperation has brought to the fore important dimensions of these processes that had hitherto been less visible in this field of study, but have gained in importance across most, if not all, types of global governance regime in recent years. In later sections of this chapter, we examine the growing influence of the South in global governance, the role of scientific and technological expertise, and increasing demands for participation by non-state actors, notably civil society and corporate sector actors. In Chapter 5, we turn to the study of the impacts and effectiveness of international environmental cooperation. Multilateral environmental agreements and international regimes Bargaining among nation states towards the creation of binding agreements and international law has long been the preferred means of resolving 71

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international differences of opinion and achieving mutual goals. As we saw in Chapter 1, the environment emerged onto the international policy agenda in the early 1970s as a collective action problem: nation states need to cooperate in order to avoid or minimize the transboundary and global impacts of pollution and resource depletion. Despite early proposals to create a world environment organization that would operate outside the exigencies of “international politics as usual” (e.g. Kennan 1970), the UN and its members chose (or perhaps had no other choice than) to adopt a governance framework based on cooperation. Building on existing international environmental laws and treaties, the model of issue-by-issue negotiation of multilateral environmental agreements by nation states continues to dominate global environmental governance. Table 4.1 provides examples of some of the major global environmental agreements, their goals, governing organizations, associated legal instruments, their dates of adoption and enactment, and number of national signatories. State-led global environmental governance involves more than just signing a treaty and meeting individual obligations. It also involves developing and maintaining new rules, organizations, norms, and decision-making procedures around issue areas. We call this constellation of activities, actors, rules, and norms “international regimes.” Classically, regimes are defined as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decisionmaking procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations” (Krasner 1983, p. 2). They can also be understood as “rules of the game agreed upon by actors in the international arena (usually nation states) and delimiting, for these actors, the range of legitimate or admissible behavior in a specified context of activity” (Rittberger 1995, p. xii). International regimes are common across all areas of international politics, including international trade in goods and services, the control of nuclear proliferation, human rights protection, and the environment. Most of the regimes examined in this chapter center around a single treaty process – the climate regime, for example, is anchored by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the desertification regime by the 1994 UN Convention to Combat Desertification; hence the term treaty regime used throughout. It is not unusual, however, to talk about a regime that encompasses a number of different agreements: the biodiversity regime, for example, is often defined as including the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, the 1972 World Heritage Convention, the 1979 Convention on Migratory Species, the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, and others. A prominent exception is the forests regime: there is no global treaty governing the use of the world’s forests, despite efforts to create one. However, the existence of a number of

Purpose

Agreement for the Implementation of UNCLOS related to the Conservation and Management of Straddling and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks

UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS)

To establish a comprehensive legal order to promote peaceful use of the oceans and seas; equitable and efficient utilization of their resources; conservation of their living resources

To provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry To ensure that the international trade in Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species wild plant and animal species does not threaten their survival (CITES) International Convention for To prevent and minimize pollution from the Prevention of Pollution ships, both accidental and that from from Ships (MARPOL) routine operations Protocol Related to MARPOL To strengthen regulations specific to oil tanker operations

International Whaling Convention (IWC)

Agreement and major associated legal instruments

Table 4.1 Major multilateral environmental agreements

1995

2001 (30 days after 30th ratification or accession)

1983 (15 states with combined merchant fleet of at least 50% of gross tonnage of world shipping. Agreement and Protocol ratified together.) 1994 (12 months after 60th United Nations ratification or accession)

1978

1982

146

International Maritime Organization

1983 (see Protocol)

1973

67

155

146

172

UNEP


1973

78

International Whaling Commission

1946 (none)

Entry into force (ratification # of Parties requirements) Agency in charge (2008)

1946

Date adopted

Purpose

Vienna Convention on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer Montreal Protocol

To protect human health and the environment from the effects of stratospheric ozone To reduce and eventually eliminate emissions of man-made ozone depleting substances To ensure environmentally sound Basel Convention on the management of hazardous wastes by Control and Transboundary minimizing their generation, reducing Movements of Hazardous their transboundary movement, and Wastes and Their Disposal disposing of these wastes as close to their point of generation as possible To ban the trade in hazardous wastes for Basel Ban Amendment disposal and recycling from OECD to (Decision III/1, COP 3) non-OECD countries UN Framework Convention on To stabilize greenhouse gas Climate Change (UNFCCC) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level preventing dangerous human-caused interference with the climate system Kyoto Protocol To supplement the UNFCCC by establishing legally binding constraints on greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging economic and other incentives to reduce emissions

Agreement and major associated legal instruments

Table 4.1 (cont.)

2005 (90 days after at least 55 parties, including Annex 1 parties accounting for 55% of 1990 global carbon dioxide emissions)

1997

1992

Not in force (75% of the parties accepting the amendment must ratify) 1994 (90 days after 50th ratification or accession)

1995

1989

1987

UN Climate Secretariat

United Nations

UNEP

176

192

63

170

191

191

1988 (90 days after 20th ratification or accession) 1989 (January 1, 1989, if 11 parties had ratified the protocol) 1992 (90 days after 20th ratification or accession)

1985 UNEP

Entry into force (ratification # of Parties requirements) Agency in charge (2008)

Date adopted

Sources: World Resources Institute 2003, Table 7.2; Treaty websites

To conserve biodiversity and promote its sustainable use, and to encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the use of genetic resources Cartagena Biosafety Protocol To promote biosafety by establishing practical rules and procedures for the safe transfer, handling, and use of genetically modified organisms, especially as they move across national borders UN Convention to Combat To combat desertification in order to Desertification (UNCCD) mitigate the effects of drought and ensure the long-term productivity of dry lands Stockholm Convention on To protect human health and the Persistent Organic Pollutants environment from POPs, by eliminating (POPs) or reducing their release into the environment

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

191

UNEP

United Nations



1994

2001

150

143


190

2000

UNEP


1992

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more informal governance institutions, such as the UN Intergovernmental Forum on Forests, along with numerous non-state governance initiatives leads some to suggest that there is a global forests regime, although it looks quite different from mainstream treaty regimes (Gulbrandsen 2004).1 International regimes perform many different functions. From an institutionalist perspective, the rules and practices embodied in an international regime reduce the transactions costs associated with international cooperation: they create a forum in which states can reach consensus on common ground, and deal with each other in a multilateral setting over time.2 Reaching agreement over shared goals and the means through which to achieve them enables states to achieve mutual gains over time, which would be impossible to attain in the absence of cooperation. Regimes, and the rules and practices embedded in them, also function to increase transparency (and thus reduce the chance of cheating, or free-riding, on the part of states). For example, most international environmental regimes contain mechanisms for national reporting and assessment, although they typically do not contain formal sanction mechanisms for violators. From a more constructivist perspective, the process of regime creation and strengthening over time helps create and spread shared norms of acceptable behavior among states, consensus over the significance and definition of a given problem, and knowledge about a given problem and its solutions (Conca 2006; Walsh 2004).3 In turn, the practice of participating in regimes may come to change state preferences and identities themselves: the act of cooperation over time works to “socialize” states to a more cooperative international system. In the environmental context, the hope is that states come to accept international norms of environmental protection and sustainable development, as well as collective action. Often, an early act of many newly democratized (but often still unstable) governments is to sign on to environmental agreements, thus signaling their intent to be a “good global citizen.” Finally (and from a more realist perspective) it is important not to ignore the potential of regimes as forums to exercise power.4 Intra-regime struggles over key guiding principles and decision-making procedures have real impacts not only in terms of defining and solving problems, but also in reaffirming or shifting the existing balance of power among 1 2 3

4

For an opposing perspective, see Dimitrov 2005. See Hasenclever et al. 1997; Rittberger 1995; Krasner 1983; Baldwin 1993; Keohane 1984. See Hasenclever et al. 1997; Puchala and Hopkins 1983; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Ringius 2001; VanDeveer 1997; Finnemore 1996; Goldstein and Keohane 1993; Cortell and Davis 2000. See Krasner 1991; Jervis 1999.

State-led global environmental governance

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key players. These arguments are particularly cogent from a southern perspective. For example, the definition of biological diversity as sovereign property, as opposed to the “common heritage of humanity,” in the Convention on Biological Diversity gave southern countries important leverage in maintaining control over and the right to benefit from their own resources. Components of environmental treaty regimes Under international law, treaties are written documents that set out rights and obligations that are legally binding on signatory states, which must implement and enforce such law within their own jurisdictions (Birnie 1992, p. 53; see Table 4.1).5 Copies of most international environmental treaties are available online, either through the treaty’s own website, or through sites that collect and post instruments of international law.6 Many environmental treaties share a common structure, although they differ extensively in terms of the institutions and procedures they set up, and the extent of obligations they place on states. As with all laws, the exact language of the agreement can make a huge difference to how it is interpreted and implemented. First, the introduction, or preamble, states the general problem that the treaty addresses, and articulates how parties to the treaty have chosen to frame that problem. These statements do not obligate states to particular courses of action, but can provide a normative framework for future actions. Often, they can be called upon to justify or condemn the behavior of particular states or other international actors. The main body of the treaty text consists of individual articles that articulate the obligations that will be binding on signatory states, such as reporting requirements, emissions reduction targets, or technology transfer mechanisms, and set out directions for future evolution of the treaty regime. These obligations are binding on signatory states, although, under principles of differentiated responsibility, different groups of states may be subject to different obligations. Thus, they make up what is called hard international law, or the rules of international regimes (Birnie 1992). By comparison, non-binding measures and principles (contained in, for example, the Forest Principles which came out of the 1992 Rio Summit in place of a forests convention) are known as “soft law.” Scholars of 5 6

For a list of definitions of key terminology used in the treaty-building process, see www. untreaty.un.org/English/guide.pdf (United Nations Treaty Reference Guide). The UN maintains a database of all international treaties deposited with the Secretary General’s Office, available at www.untreaty.un.org/. The International Environmental Agreements Database, developed by Professor Ronald Mitchell, can be found at www. iea.uoregon.edu.

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international law argue that such principles are important in that they can lead to a gradual convergence in state behavior towards conforming to these guiding principles, and may even, over time, “harden” to become customary international law (Birnie 1992). The main body of the treaty also contains what may, on the face of it, look like the dull procedural details, but often these are critical. They set out which institutions are going to manage the treaty, how many parties need to ratify or join the treaty for it to enter into force, how treaty violations will be identified and punished, and how disputes are to be settled. Often, an environmental treaty contains annexes, or appendices. These may define which states have particular obligations, or some of the scientific underpinning of the treaty. The capacity, formality, and level of organization of regime administration varies from regime to regime (Vogler 2000, pp. 34–6).7 Organizational components of a treaty regime include conferences of the parties, secretariats, subsidiary bodies, such as technical or expert committees and funding mechanisms (Hunter et al. 2002, p. 233). Conferences of the Parties (COPs) bring the signatory states to a given treaty together every one to five years. COPs make the major policy decisions related to the regime, for example over amendments, and other future developments. Treaty secretariats, often based in Geneva, but also further afield, supervise the implementation of the agreement and ongoing negotiation processes, gathering, analyzing, and distributing information, maintaining convention records, and supporting the COPs.8 When necessary, they coordinate with other international regimes, and manage any financial mechanism associated with the regime. Many treaties also set up subsidiary bodies, whose function is to provide advice on specific scientific and technical issues arising under the treaty. The process of regime construction: Negotiation, more negotiation, and strengthening International environmental cooperation is an ongoing process, and regime construction does not end with a signed agreement. In theory, there are three main phases of regime development, although reality does not always match this linear model. First, agenda setting involves defining and framing a global environmental issue, and establishing its basic 7

8

While some regimes (for example, the Law of the Sea Convention) have a high level of organization associated with them, others (for example, the Antarctic Convention) rely on periodic meetings of the parties for regime administration. On the role of treaty secretariats in promoting environmental cooperation, see Sandford 1994; Bauer 2006; Jinnah 2008.


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parameters and the rationale for international action (as discussed in Chapter 2). Second, states and their representatives meet to negotiate a treaty or other legal agreement. Third, parties enter a phase of regime strengthening: implementing the existing agreement, and strengthening or modifying its initial obligations. To date, no environmental treaty regime, once established, has ever been terminated. There are several ways to follow this process as it unfolds over time. One of the most influential sources for those who study international environmental agreements is the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, produced by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.9 They provide daily briefings as well as summary documents for each meeting they cover: a good way to learn about the nuances and ins and outs of difficult international diplomacy. Environmental agreements are often negotiated in stages. A common negotiating process for environmental treaties is the convention–protocol method (Susskind 1994, pp. 30–7). A framework convention sets out the nature, scope, and cause of the problem, directions for future negotiations, and minor obligations on states, such as reporting requirements.10 In subsequent stages, member states negotiate more detailed protocols or amendments, which set up concrete goals and targets that are binding on signatory states. For example, the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was followed two years later by the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. While the Convention simply laid out the general problem, in particular that CFC emissions were damaging the stratospheric ozone layer and must be reduced, the Montreal Protocol laid out specific targets for phasing out CFC production worldwide. The climate change regime followed a similar pattern: while the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change does not contain specific targets or timetables for greenhouse gas reduction, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol does impose differential obligations on states to reach particular targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Treaties may also evolve through amendment: the Basel Convention and MARPOL have both been amended – the latter many times – by signatories. The main advantage of the step-by-step process is that it eases collective action and commitment problems on the part of states, and allows participants to take account of new knowledge or information about the 9 10

See www.iisd.ca. To demonstrate that there is no fixed border between hard and soft international environmental law, framework conventions have been described as “soft law in hard law form,” given that they rarely lay specific obligations on states (Hunter et al. 2002, p. 349).

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problem (Joyner 2001). States do not have to sign on to a complex mix of potentially costly obligations all at once, but they may participate in the initial stages of the negotiations. Then, once a state has taken part in this first stage, treaty supporters hope that moral or other sorts of pressure can be exerted to ensure its participation in subsequent stages. General ground rules for negotiating international treaties are laid down in the 1969 and 1986 Vienna Conventions on the Law of Treaties. In UN-sponsored negotiations, participation is open to all UN members.11 While there is no prescribed process for initiating treaty negotiations, various actors, including individual states, NGOs, and the UN have played this role (Hunter et al. 2002, p. 293). Once a call for international action has been issued, state representatives (“parties” to the negotiation) convene – often over a lengthy time frame – to discuss the content of the treaty. These discussions take place on an informal level among government officials, experts, and sometimes other interested or affected parties, a process sometimes called “Track II” diplomacy. If agreement is reached on the draft text, high-level government representatives convene to negotiate the final text of the treaty. At this stage, the process is highly vulnerable to last-minute disputes over exact language.12 Often, time constraints imposed by the convening organization (and the willingness of the official running the meeting to keep delegates in the negotiating chamber till all hours of the morning) have often proven decisive in reaching last minute compromises.13 Once participants agree upon – adopt – a final text, the treaty is opened for signature by nation states. Next, signatory states must ratify the treaty by enacting it into domestic law. While sometimes this can be done by central government directive, often it entails ratification by the national legislature, which can be time-consuming, and may even fail. For example, opposition in the US Congress to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Kyoto Protocol meant that neither treaty was ever submitted for ratification. In case of the Kyoto protocol, the US famously withdrew from the agreement in 2001. A treaty enters into force once it has been ratified or acceded to (joined) by an agreed upon number of signatory states. All conventions, protocols, 11 12

13

This has the effect of excluding states that are not recognized by the UN, such as Taiwan. Very few treaty websites maintain public copies of all treaty drafts, complete with comments from negotiating parties. The best way to follow the transition form draft text to final document is through meeting reports, such as those supplied by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin. See Benedick 1987, for an account of how these tactics were used in ozone regime negotiations.


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and amendments associated with the treaty process are subject to individual ratification before they enter into force. States may also leave a treaty they have ratified without facing formal punishment. The number of ratifications or accessions required for a treaty to go into force varies, and sometimes the bar can be set extremely high. Table 4.1 (above) shows ratification requirements and times between treaty adoption and when it enters into force. For example, the MARPOL Convention of 1973/78 did not enter into force until 1983, as it required ratification by states representing more than half of the world’s merchant shipping, by weight. While the UNFCCC took only two years to enter into force, the Kyoto Protocol took nearly nine years. Even when ratification thresholds are more straightforward, this process can take a comparatively long time, as with the Cartagena Protocol of the CBD, or the Basel Ban amendment, often as a result of intense lobbying by groups or countries opposed to the measure. Bargaining, negotiation, and compromise: The politics of treaty construction The construction of international environmental treaty regimes rests on a complex process of bargaining and negotiation among nation states. Several factors complicate this process. States often have different, frequently conflicting interests around a particular issue area. They may not always trust their negotiating partners to follow through on an agreement, or they may be unwilling to make concessions in cases where a rival state might do better than they do. Government representatives are concerned about domestic costs – political and economic – of signing on to an international environmental agreement, especially one that might be unpopular with powerful domestic constituencies. Multiply all these factors by the number of states involved in negotiations, and it may seem surprising that any cooperative agreements are agreed upon in the first place. Global environmental problems create additional complications, as they are often characterized by a good deal of uncertainty over causes and impacts, long time horizons, or a need to constrain powerful corporate actors. In the following section, we examine a number of factors that help explain why we see the negotiating outcomes that we do. Some are factors common to most international relations approaches to international cooperation (for example, crises, leadership, the mediating role played by institutions, and the role of domestic politics). Others – such as North– South relations, the role of non-state actors, and the role of scientific knowledge and expertise – have received a lot more attention in studies

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of environmental cooperation, but may also be applied to other arenas of international politics.14 The role of crises, leadership, and institutions in international environmental negotiations The course and outcomes of international negotiations are to a large part driven by the complex interplay of often radically different national interests. Countries, or, more accurately, their national representatives, come to the bargaining table with their own sets of objectives, and usually with some knowledge of what they are prepared to give up to reach a compromise, and what sources of leverage they can draw on to attain their desired outcome. Only in very rare situations do these interests coincide: in such cases, international negotiations are usually about coordinating already agreed-upon goals. More often than not, interests clash, and the bargaining process will result in winners and losers. Sometimes, national differences are wholly intractable, and negotiations fail, as in the case of the global forests convention, when differences around what forests to regulate, and how to respect sovereign control over forest resources led to the collapse of multilateral talks in the run-up to the Rio Earth Summit (Davenport 2005). Other negotiating processes have teetered on the edge of failure – such as the climate or biodiversity conventions – while others – over ozone, or long-range transboundary air pollution – proceeded relatively smoothly. In all these cases, the presence or absence of various mediating factors have helped determine success, failure, or points in between. Such factors may work to determine or change states’ own calculations of their national interests; they may also help ease collective action problems, and make the negotiation, and post-negotiation, processes easier. We now discuss some that have been particularly in international environmental negotiations. (a)

Crises and awareness

First, there is nothing like a crisis to get countries looking for a way to solve a shared problem. The perception that a crisis is under way or imminent, or the identification of particular focal points for action, has been critical to the success or failure of many international negotiations (Young 1991). Where, as with the near collapse of the global whale population, the threat of rising skin cancer rates in many countries as a result of ozone layer 14

Some important general works on international bargaining and diplomacy are Schelling 1960; Stein 1982; Axelrod 1984; Jervis 1978.


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depletion, or the death of forests in northern Europe from acid rain, such focal points are easily identifiable, it has been easier to get countries around the table, and to cut through complexities and uncertainties to generate consensus. When effects are uncertain, or due to occur only in distant generations or places (e.g. climate change and desertification respectively), negotiations are correspondingly less likely to proceed quickly and smoothly. Of course, identifying a problem is not the same as identifying its cause, or possible solutions. Here, processes of framing by lead actors (state and non-state) or the work of scientists has often been critical in forging a workable, and often a stronger, agreement. An alternative means of capturing international concern – in the absence of an actual crisis – is to raise awareness of global problems, and the possibility of global solutions underwritten by a joint commitment to overarching goals. For example, the UN’s three “earth summits” – Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, and Johannesburg 2002 – were designed to accomplish just that, and to initiate new eras of global governance for the environment and for sustainability. At Rio, for instance, governments signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity, and agreed to an ambitious global action plan, Agenda 21, for sustainable development (Gardner 1992). However, the Rio Conference, despite the differences between key players at the conference, could be said to be the peak of such shared endeavors: the 2002 Johannesburg Summit saw no such grand state-led achievements, but rather smaller-scale initiatives and calls for broader participation from civil society and private sector actors, and for harnessing the global economic order to the cause of sustainable development (Von Frantzius 2002; Seyfang and Jordan 2002). (b)

Leadership and leverage

Leadership plays a critical role in determining the outcomes of environmental negotiations (Young 1989; Underdal 1992; Skodvin and Andresen 2006). Approaches to understanding leadership in international environmental politics adopt an eclectic approach to the basis for leadership, and who can exercise it. Leaders may be individual states, or groups of states, or international organizations, or even key individuals within the negotiating process. Leaders may exert a positive influence, pushing states to adopt stronger solutions than they otherwise would have done, or a negative one. So-called “veto coalitions” of states have often derailed or watered down treaty provisions (Chasek et al. 2006): the pro-whaling states (Japan, Iceland, and Norway) have consistently fought against a total moratorium on global whaling, while GMO-exporting states (the USA,

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Canada, Argentina, and others) attempted to weaken the 2000 Cartagena Biosafety Protocol. On the other hand, many countries have helped to strengthen treaty regimes. African countries played a critical role in pushing the Basel Convention towards a complete ban on North–South waste trading, and in the creation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, while Scandinavian countries helped establish a demanding form of “toteboard diplomacy” around acid rain (Levy 1993). There are several different ways in which states, organizations, and individuals exercise leadership (Young 1991; Skodvin and Andresen 2006). A typical distinction is between power-based and entrepreneurial leadership. Power-based leadership means using sources of power or leverage to attain desired goals, and to bring recalcitrant actors along. In conventional terms, sources of such power include economic resources, to offer side-payments or threaten sanctions. But they might also include more unconventional forms of leverage, such as control over much of the resource in question, as was the case with southern countries and biodiversity. Entrepreneurial leadership, on the other hand, is the ability to forge creative solutions and overcome opposition, even without visible material resources. Oft-cited cases are officials chairing negotiations: Mustafa Tolba, who chaired the Montreal Protocol negotiations (Benedick 1987) or Tommy Koh, who chaired UN Law of the Sea negotiations in the late 1970s (Skodvin and Andresen 2006). Through a combination of leadership position and personal charisma, both these men were able to help forge agreements that might not otherwise have happened. However, such outcomes are hard to predict, and rest on highly individual situations, not easy for the social scientist to factor in.15 (c)

The rules of the game

We have already examined some of the institutional features of multilateral environmental negotiations. At a broad level, coordinating organizations such as UNEP and convention secretariats play a critical role in environmental negotiations, providing a forum for ongoing negotiations, ensuring participation, and monitoring the ongoing performance of individual regimes. They help increase transparency, and reduce the transactions costs associated with large-N negotiations. At a more micro level, specific features of negotiation rules and practices also make a difference in bargaining outcomes, from the iterative, convention-protocol process, 15

Other forms of leadership in negotiations include moral (e.g. the role played by the Association of Small Island States in climate negotiations), directional (setting an example), and intellectual (Young 1991).


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allowing countries to make ever-stronger commitments over time and to interact continuously with each other, to the specific rules about treaty drafts and voting. While these rules and institutions were designed to bring, and have had considerable success in bringing, a large number of states into the international environmental negotiating process, others argue that they are less effective with respect to actual environmental protection. Lawrence Susskind has argued that the upshot of this process is that “in the final analysis, only agreements that are politically acceptable to national leaders will be approved” (Susskind 1994, p. 12). He highlights in particular the weaknesses of an international negotiation process that takes far too long, and which encourages the development of “lowest common denominator” agreements – i.e. those which conform to the preferences of the most reluctant participants. Negotiations themselves may often take more than ten years, then another several years for conventions; then protocols to be ratified and enter into force, during which time environmental conditions are likely only to have worsened. Susskind also criticizes the dominant approach for its lack of imagination. International leaders have applied the same blueprint to issue after issue, without considering other more innovative forms, such as regional arrangements, or inviting non-state actors in as participants, not just observers, which may depart from the basic model of international diplomacy, but may lead to more effective environmental policy. (d)

Domestic Politics

It is not only what happens at the negotiating table that is important in determining interests and outcomes. Negotiators are also accountable to their domestic constituencies, be it legislatures, the voting public, or industry or other lobbying groups. There are many examples of ways in which domestic politics have shaped national interests over time, and affected the course of international environmental negotiations, whether it relates to perceptions of national vulnerability (for example, the small island states – and the big oil producers – in the climate negotiations), structure and type of government, or interests and access to the policy process of corporate or environmentalist lobbying groups.16 As far as democracies are concerned, left–right differences appear to matter less than whether or not a government or administration believes 16

For studies of the role of domestic politics in international environmental politics, see Schreurs and Economy 1997; DeSombre 2000; Sprinz and Vaahtoranta 1994; Harrison and Sundstrom 2007.

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in multilateral approaches to global problems. For example, in the USA, the administrations of Presidents Nixon (a Republican) and Clinton (a Democrat) each supported global environmental initiatives, and UK Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s “u-turn” on ozone depletion is considered an important factor in the Montreal Protocol negotiations (Vogler 2000, p. 202). Authoritarian governments also do not demonstrate any particular pattern in international environmental negotiations, apart from a few determinedly isolationist regimes. Sometimes, authoritarian regimes participate in international cooperation as a way of gaining favor as a global “good citizen,” despite their records at home. Also, democratizing states are often likely to join international regimes, as a way of participating in (and being socialized by) the international community.17 However, most authoritarian states are part of the global South and often benefit from the terms and financial mechanisms of MEAs, a fact that probably goes a long way to explain their participation, over and above other explanations. In later sections, we examine how non-state groups – such as environmental activist and corporate organizations – participate directly in international environmental negotiations. At the domestic level, they also lobby their governments to take particular positions at the negotiating table. Famously, the decision by key US chemical producers, notably DuPont, to come out in favor of international controls on CFC production is seen by many as instrumental in the success of the Montreal Protocol (Parson 2003; Kaufmann 1997). As the dominant member of the US-based Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy, it was instrumental in pressuring the US government to seek international regulation of ozonedepleting substances, switching its position in 1986 (Parson 2003, pp. 125–7).18 This had the effect of leveling the international playing field for its products, and, given its leading position in developing substitutes for CFCs, strengthened its position against smaller competitors. Finally, because treaties always need to be ratified, negotiators often pay particular attention to the interests and preferences of the ratifying body, especially of elected legislatures, which may have a very different set of priorities compared to national leadership, or government officials. Sometimes, national representatives can use the preferences of their legislature as a reason not to support strong measures (the “two-level 17 18

For example, following the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghanistan quickly joined a number of international environmental regimes. The Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy was formed in the USA in 1980 in order to combat stricter CFC regulations at the domestic level, and was made up of the main CFC producers and many CFC users. It switched its attention to the international level in 1986, during negotiations towards the Montreal Protocol (Parson 2003, p. 58).


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games” strategy explored by Putnam 1988). Sometimes, they bring home an agreement that will never be ratified by the existing Congress or Parliament. Either way, not only can the preferences of elected officials affect the outcome of international negotiations, they can also help determine whether or not a country continues to actively participate in any given regime. North–South politics and environmental cooperation Indisputably, one of the most important driving forces in shaping international environmental regimes has been the ongoing debate (some might say confrontation) between countries of the “developing” South and the “developed” North over global environmental priorities, negotiating practices, and the distribution of treaty obligations and their associated costs. In a theoretical discipline that has focused on the interactions, and concerns, of the “great powers” as the determinants of international politics, the actions, concerns, and potential agency of actors in the “Third World” have often been marginalized (Thomas and Wilkin 2004). In international environmental politics, however, these concerns have been front and center from the outset, and are now reflected in other international negotiating forums, notably within the WTO. While some argue that differences in interests and priorities between rich and poor countries has been a major obstacle to reaching agreements (e.g. Susskind 1994, pp. 18–21), others argue that the “North–South dialogue” has transformed global environmental governance in important ways, notably by integrating principles of distributional equity and sustainable development into the underlying framework of global environmental governance and into individual negotiating processes (Miller 1995). Chapter 3 outlined the major parameters and key players and alliances in North–South debates over the global environment, including the emergence and role of the G77 group of developing countries. Now we examine some of the specific ways this “divide” has shaped international negotiations. First, the South has powerfully influenced the shape of particular international environmental regimes. In negotiations over the CBD, southern country representatives effectively reframed the entire issue. While initial drafts of the Convention sought to define biodiversity as a “global commons” issue, southern countries, concerned over the extent to which this designation might remove sovereign control over valuable resources, fought successfully to maintain sovereign jurisdiction over biodiversity. One of the results of this reframing has been to set the CBD up as a countervailing arena for contesting the international intellectual property

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rights regime established under the WTO, which emphasizes far more the rights of multinational actors to assert intellectual property rights across national jurisdictions. The Basel Ban Amendment too would likely not have been proposed had it not been for the 1991 Bamako Convention and other regional agreements signed by countries in Africa and Central America that banned any waste imports under any circumstances. Along with pressure exerted by southern and northern NGOs, this regional action by southern governments was instrumental in pushing the Basel Convention towards strengthening its regulation of the waste trade. At the same time, some developing country governments – India among them – are among the leading opponents of the ban, on the grounds that the Convention unfairly limits their right to import wastes for recycling in order to obtain valuable metals and other components. Further, the 1994 Convention to Combat Desertification was proposed, negotiated by, and chiefly affects some of the world’s poorest countries (Najam 2004b), while southern opposition – notably from Malaysia – helped derail international forest convention negotiations in the early 1990s (Agarwal et al. 1999). Another area in which the South has wielded significant influence is through the incorporation of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” into major environmental agreements (Najam 2004). In practice, this means the incorporation of different targets and obligations, for less developed countries, and the creation of mechanisms for the transfer of aid and technology for poorer countries, including the creation of the Global Environment Facility, or GEF (Miller 1995). In turn, some Northern governments – often the USA – who argue for a more even distribution of costs have opposed these practices. Under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, developing countries obtained a ten-year extension on the deadline for phasing out the production of CFCs, and pushed for and obtained a multilateral fund to aid adoption of less harmful substitutes. This fund provides grants and other forms of aid, and is funded by levies placed on developed country parties to the protocol. The principle of differential obligations under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was far more contentious. The USA and its allies in this process (Australia, Japan, and Canada) argued that as countries such as Brazil, China, and India were likely to gain on them in their share of global greenhouse gas emissions, they should not be given major concessions. Nonetheless, ultimately the Protocol called only for emissions reduction commitments from industrialized countries. There are still obstacles, however, to southern participation at global environmental meetings. The sheer number of international environmental


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meetings, conferences, and so on has put a strain on under-staffed and under-funded Southern bureaucracies, as the title of Joyeeta Gupta’s monograph “On Behalf of My Delegation …” A Survival Guide for Developing Country Negotiators suggests (J. Gupta 2000). Similar problems exist in ensuring southern representation on key scientific panels and technical working groups, although in 2002 the IPCC appointed an Indian scientist as its new chair. Some have argued that serious inequities have existed, and often remain, in how Southern concerns and experiences are reflected on international scientific agendas (Kandlikar and Sagar 1999; Karlsson 2002). There is no doubt that global environmental politics looks different from the perspective of many southern countries: often “poles apart,” in fact (Agarwal et al. 1999 and 2001). Yet, as Adil Najam argues, the South has shifted from a position of contestation at Stockholm in 1972 to one of participation at Rio, to active engagement in the aftermath of the 2002 Johannesburg Summit (Najam 2005b). Paul Wapner has also noted a shift in the traditional positions of northern and southern countries towards global environmental protection (Wapner 2003, pp. 4–6). While at Stockholm and Rio southern governments were more likely to speak out in favor of sustainable development and northern governments were seen as champions of environmental protection, at Johannesburg their positions reversed. Southern representatives were far more likely to speak out in favor of environmental protection as “the grounding for economic well-being and development,” while many northern governments instead firmly embraced economic development and globalization as the key to both poverty alleviation and environmental improvement (Wapner 2003, pp. 5–6). NGOs, the corporate sector, and state-led global environmental governance Another major area of scholarship in the study of international environmental politics is the role of non-state actors in influencing the course of international cooperation (O’Neill et al. 2004; Betsill and Corell 2007). Traditionally, non-state actors have been perceived as playing a relatively peripheral role in international politics, but this view has changed. Mainstream theoretical perspectives on international cooperation have moved away from a state-centric position and the number of non-state actors seeking to engage international policymaking directly has increased exponentially since the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Focusing on the environmental NGO and corporate sectors, this section examines several critical questions regarding their role in the negotiation of environmental treaty regimes.

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The global environment is not the only international policy arena in which non-state actors have participated. NGOs have, for example, played a key role in the evolution of international human rights law and standards (Burgerman 2001), and corporations have been active in a number of economic regimes, from trade to telecommunications regulation (Sell 1999). However, environmental negotiations, by engaging both sets of actors, whose interests often conflict, provide a rich set of case studies in order to gauge some answers to the above questions, particularly that of influence. Further, the call for more direct participation, especially from civil society actors, in processes of international environmental policymaking has spilled over into other, more insulated arenas of global governance, notably those of international trade and finance. In turn, these calls have called into question the legitimacy of dominant modes of global governance, and challenged the “diplomacy as usual” model of global governance that has been in place since World War Two. Ultimately, it is in making international organizations rethink the ways in which they take into account broader societal interests – both activist and corporate – in their activities and deliberations, and in remaking global governance in new, more “privatized” forms, that non-state actors have wielded the most influence in international politics, environmental and otherwise. (a)

Channels of access to the international policy process

Both NGOs and corporate sector actors are able to exploit several channels of access to the international policy process, although none involves formal participation (in the sense of actual decision-making power). Most traditionally, non-state actors are able to lobby national governments to take particular positions at negotiations, or whether or not to ratify an international agreement. Access to government officials varies by national context, and by type of actor (O’Neill 2000). Corporations are perhaps more likely to lobby government officials directly, but both private sector and activist groups increasingly target broader constituencies, using all available means at their disposal – the media, the internet, and so on – to inform and mobilize public opinion around a given position. The rules that govern international treaty-making allow non-state actors to register and attend international negotiations as official observers. They must, however, officially apply to meeting organizers for observer status as NGOs. In other words, individual firms cannot represent themselves at negotiations. Instead, they are represented by business and industry associations (BINGOs, in UN parlance) who advocate for a collective industry stance (Pulver 2002). Observer status gives registered NGOs access to


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the building in which negotiations are taking place, and the ability to sit in on most – but not all – deliberations.19 Non-state actors may also sit on technical working groups and expert panels, submit policy briefs directly to UNEP or other negotiations – and, sometimes, serve on national delegations, especially those of smaller countries, which are typically hard put to find enough personnel from their bureaucracies. Finally, non-state actors are restricted only by their resources, their imagination, and local laws about public assembly in terms of activities outside the conference hall. Thus, protests, parallel summits and meetings, and other events designed to attract the attention of the media, the negotiators, and the wider global public are all hallmarks of non-state efforts to participate in international environmental diplomacy. (b)

Activist and NGO participation in international environmental negotiations

NGO participation in the process of international environmental cooperation began to receive serious attention following the Rio Summit, where no fewer than 18,000 NGOs attended a parallel “Earth Summit” (Friedman et al. 2005, p. 36). However, the activist community has always paid keen attention to global environmental governance, and has performed several critical functions across negotiating processes (Yamin 2001; McCormick 1999; Princen and Finger 1994).20 First, NGOs have played key roles in agenda setting – bringing problems to the attention of the international community, and pushing for particular solutions. NGOs such as Greenpeace used protest actions and political persuasion to highlight problems such as whaling and the hazardous waste trade (Wapner 1996). The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN, now the World Conservation Union) was instrumental in mobilizing international concern over biodiversity, even composing the first draft of the CBD. Second, NGOs have served as the “conscience-keepers” of the international community (Yamin 2001) – highlighting not only the moral and ethical imperatives to solve global environmental problems, but also constantly pushing for wider participation in these deliberations, reminding negotiation organizers and participants of their wider audiences. They also provide a critical connection between local communities and global 19 20

To view a list of NGOs, including business associations, represented in the ongoing climate change negotiations, see www.unfccc.int/resource/ngo/ngo.html. For examples of NGO influence in specific issue areas, see Humphreys 2004 (forests), Skodvin and Andresen 2003 (whales), and Betsill and Corell 2007.

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governance, where the interests of those communities may not be represented by their own governments. Third, they bring a good deal of expertise to bear on global environmental problems and their impacts. By providing information and ideas to negotiators, they help broker agreements on difficult issues, and illuminate global understanding of particular problems. In fact, NGOs have been known to play a critical role in easing the transactions costs and increasing the transparency of international negotiations. They lobby delegates to take particular positions, circulating draft treaty language (which, according to anecdotal evidence, sometimes finds its way into the final text), and produce daily – and sometimes hourly – reports of meeting activities, which are quickly and widely disseminated. Their activities don’t end with the signing of the accord. As we shall see in Chapter 5, NGOs are now taking on ever more important roles in monitoring and implementing the terms of international environmental agreements. In this way, they provide an invaluable assisting role to UNEP and other IGOs, who are often overstretched. Nonetheless, NGOs continue to face significant challenges in engaging in international environmental negotiations. Many environmental NGOs have very few resources – in terms of financial resources and personnel – to meet all the commitments they would like to. This is particularly true of NGOs from southern countries. As a result, several “umbrella” NGO groupings – such as the Climate Action Network – represent many NGOs at negotiations. In turn, the NGO sector often has to cope with clashes of opinion and ideas among its members, and navigating alliances between NGOs from rich and poor countries. For a long time, most of the NGOs in attendance were from the North. However, more recently – with Johannesburg a case in point – more southern NGOs have been able to attend and participate in parallel summits and at meetings (La Viña et al. 2003). (c)

Corporate participation in international environmental negotiations

Corporate actors have important incentives to attempt to influence the outcomes of international environmental negotiations. In particular, environmental agreements are often seen as “market closing,” cutting off economic opportunities via, for example, restricting trade in wastes, CFCs, or endangered species (Levy and Prakash 2003). But MEAs also generate economic opportunities for some firms, which they are anxious to realize. Despite these incentives, corporate actors were relative latecomers in the global environmental arena. They saw global environmental


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governance at first as weak, and far less important than other negotiating forums, such as the WTO (Sell 1998). It took the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which had a powerful impact on the operations of a range of industries, to wake industry up to the potential of global environmental governance. The broadest industry association engaged in international environmental politics is the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), formed in 1991 just prior to Rio.21 With over 170 members across multiple industrial sectors, it advocates involvement of the business sector in sustainability issues (Schmidheiny 1992). The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), which also represents many different sectors, is another key industry player at international negotiations. Other sectors are represented by several BINGOs. Examples of climate change BINGOs include the Global Climate Coalition (GCC, now defunct), the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and the International Emissions Trading Association (Pulver 2002, p. 39). However, industry collective action, especially across national boundaries, is not always successful, as the climate example demonstrates (Pulver 2002).22 First, corporate interests in this sector diverged sharply in the late 1990s. British Petroleum (BP) and Royal Dutch Shell both reversed their positions on climate negotiations in the late 1990s – a result of shareholder pressure and industry foresightedness in seeing strategic opportunities in moving “Beyond Petroleum” (BP’s new slogan) – while US firms, such as Chevron-Texaco and Exxon-Mobil maintained their opposition. Second, the range of business associations representing the industry suffered from internal splits and external conflicts. Within the GCC, member countries differed over the role the association should play – advisory or lobbying – and competition between different BINGOs was a problem in presenting a unified industry front. Therefore, while the fossil fuel lobby may have succeeded in changing the position of signatory governments, they were less successful in affecting the outcome of climate change negotiations. Industry actors have been very successful in gaining representation on the advisory panels and technical working groups that do a lot of the behind-the-scenes, highly technical work that critically affects regime outcomes. Industry participation in the IPCC, the international scientific advisory body of the UN climate change process, has increased in recent years (Levy and Newell 2005). Both the ICC and the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR), which strongly oppose the Basel Ban

21

See www.wbcsd.ch.

22

See also Levy and Kolk 2002; Kolk and Levy 2001.

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Amendment, participate in the technical working group (TWG) of the Convention. The TWG’s task is to decide which wastes are to count as hazardous, and therefore not to be traded. In September 1996, of the 159 representatives attending the TWG meeting, 49 were from industry organizations (Clapp 1999, p. 14). Unlike NGOs, industry groups tend to have larger budgets and other resources that enable them to devote time and personnel to these processes, to the extent that some are concerned about possible “regulatory capture” by industry of this area (O’Neill 2001). (d)

Comparing and assessing non-state actor influence

There are some interesting similarities and differences in how the NGO and corporate sectors engage in the international environmental policy process. Environmental NGOs have probably gained the greatest advantage from the relatively open nature of international environmental negotiations, where they have found a better venue than their home governments to express opinions and communicate with each other. Corporate interest groups, slower to engage directly at the international level, have tended to keep a lower profile than NGOs, although that has changed somewhat as, for example, several of the leading oil companies have staked out very public positions regarding climate change. But both sectors have had to navigate the complexities of achieving formal observer status, with NGOs perhaps better suited to the “umbrella” form of representation in deeply political forums (Pulver 2002). The key question, though, for scholars of international politics is to what extent we can say that non-state actors actually influence the outcomes of international environmental negotiations. Certainly they attend in large numbers, but do they actually alter outcomes? Ascertaining influence of non-state actors on international negotiations poses several methodological challenges (Betsill and Corell 2001). Not only do all parties have a stake in claiming influence (or denying the influence of others), the informal nature of much non-state actor lobbying and other activities makes paths of influence hard to identify. Still, it seems clear that NGOs have a very critical role at the agenda-setting stage of the policy process, and we will see in later chapters how they influence later stages of treaty implementation and monitoring. Also, work on the role of corporate actors, particularly working with their home governments, suggests many cases where the corporate sector has wielded influence, for better or worse. Yet, examining the broader framework of global environmental governance reveals one dynamic that is hard to deny. Civil society actors and


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corporate actors, both critical in their own ways of traditional processes of environmental diplomacy, have been instrumental in advocating new forms of global governance, and new alliances, not necessarily with governments, but with each other, and/or in partnership with IGOs, and in connecting local concerns with global action. It is these forms of “nonstate,” or privatized, global environmental governance that we will turn to in Chapter 7, and it is in this arena that non-state actors probably wield the greatest influence. Science and the politics of environmental diplomacy This section examines perspectives on the role of knowledge – specifically, expert knowledge in the environmental sciences – in the process of treaty regime construction. It is widely accepted that scientific and technical expertise plays a critical role in defining global environmental problems and our responses to them: “it is through science that the scale of the problems, the ground for conflicts and the scope of solutions are defined” (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002, p. 78). This reliance on scientific input is common across environmental policy domains (Bocking 2004, pp. 3–4). More than this, it is only through scientific research that we are even aware of major global problems, such as climate change, the hole in the ozone layer, or the cumulative loss of biological diversity worldwide. Science has been critical in demonstrating complex cause and effect relationships across most, if not all, global environmental issues, especially when these relationships are hard to see without expert interpretation. While most (although not all) scholars accord science, or, more broadly, expert knowledge, a critical role in the construction and ongoing development of international environmental treaty regimes, there is considerable debate about how science and scientists actually shape treaty regimes, and under what conditions. The scope of these debates is not limited to global environmental governance, and has broader ramifications for the field of international relations theory. The complexities of many global problems have generated their own expert communities, including scientists, economists, lawyers, and engineers, and it is hard for international relations theorists to ignore either the role of these groups as actors, the role of knowledge in the policy process, or how perceived interactions between expert and policy communities shape the regime’s legitimacy and effectiveness. Further, many of the insights generated by this field resonate strongly with work on the role of ideas and norms in international relations theory, from both neoliberal institutionalist and constructivist perspectives.

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(a)

Channels of access to negotiation processes

Science is incorporated into the construction of treaty regimes through a number of channels. In fact, the negotiation process – specifically, the iterated convention-protocol method – was in part designed to be able to consider new knowledge in later negotiating rounds (Williams 2005b, p. 407). First, science often plays a critical role during the process of issue definition and agenda setting. Scientists, by publishing research results, and advocating specific courses of action, can profoundly influence how, and when, particular problems make it onto the international policy agenda. Second, scientists have played formal advisory roles to international organizations, national governments, and even non-state actors, such as NGOs and corporations, during the process of regime construction, from draft conventions onwards. Third, many MEAs set up formal scientific advisory panels as part of the set of institutions associated with the regime. These panels assess and incorporate new scientific knowledge into regime negotiations, make policy recommendations, and assess the overall performance of the regime (Farrell and Jäger 2006). The most well known of these panels are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), part of the CBD, and many other regimes have ad hoc or permanent scientific advisory bodies. The impact of science varies from regime to regime (Dimitrov 2003). While atmospheric scientists are critical players in the climate, ozone layer, and LRTAP regimes, and conservation biologists in the CBD and associated conservation agreements, in others, such as the waste trade regime, scientific assessment has played far more of a backseat role compared with other concerns. Still, it would be hard to find a case of an environmental treaty regime where scientific findings had no place in inter-state negotiations. (b)

Perspectives on science–politics interaction in environmental treaty regimes

The role of science in the international environmental policy process remains contested (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002). Some argue that scientific knowledge shapes regimes: “environmental regimes are not only driven ‘by state power, but by the application of scientific understanding about ecological systems to the management of environmental policy issues’” (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002, p. 81, citing Haas 1997, p. 200). Scientific input, in particular, can override normative and political conflicts, and generate “legitimate” solutions to complex transboundary environmental problems (Gupta 2004, p. 130).


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Others argue that while scientists have a critical “fact-finding” role, their input into actual negotiations is minimal. Rather, actual regime outcomes are driven by inter-state bargaining processes (Susskind 1994, p. 65). Science is only one input among many, and is open to political manipulation or subjugation to national interests. It is one step from this argument to the argument that “all science is political”: that issues of funding, political prerogatives, and the way that scientists themselves take on advocacy positions means that separating a domain of knowledge or expertise from that of politics is a fruitless exercise. A third set of perspectives, emerging from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), argues that science can be seen neither as independent of politics, nor as wholly subsumed by them (Jasanoff 1997; Gupta 2004; Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002; Forsyth 2003). Further, the process through which science is “made” and taken up into the policy process itself forms a valid area of study for social scientists. The STS approach is guided by three general propositions (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002, pp. 84–6). First, science does not move freely. The social and political context in which it is generated shapes both critical decisions about the science or knowledge itself, and how it is disseminated through the public sphere. Second, the value of scientific knowledge “is not given by the content of science, but is negotiated by scientists in social processes where other actors are also involved” (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002, p. 84). Third, scientific knowledge and the political order are “co-produced”: “policy influences the production and stabilization of knowledge, while the knowledge simultaneously supports and justifies that policy”; both gain – or lose – legitimacy or strength through this process (Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002, p. 84). Thus, knowledge can indeed be critical to evolution of international regimes, but its influence cannot be accurately ascertained by looking at the content of that knowledge or at scientific consensus alone. Instead, one must examine the interaction of science and politics as an ongoing, non-linear process in which each shapes the other. These approaches lend themselves towards far more interpretive, or constructivist (and even ethnographic) methods, which have yielded important results, especially in cases of political and scientific conflicts and uncertainty (Jasanoff 1997). (c)

Transnational epistemic communities, and beyond

The most influential model of the role of expert knowledge in regime construction is the epistemic community model, most closely associated with the work of Peter Haas (1990a, b, 1992), though the concept has a longer history in the social sciences (Haas 2001b). This model

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corresponds most closely to the first perspective outlined above, that expert knowledge can shape regimes. Epistemic communities are “transnational networks of knowledge-based communities that are both politically empowered through their claims to exercise authoritative knowledge and motivated by shared causal and political beliefs” (Haas 1990a, p. 349). In Haas’s model, first applied to the Mediterranean pollution regime, scientists in influential policy positions in their respective countries work as a network to influence their governments to accept a common solution to a transboundary problem. By exercising their claims to authoritative knowledge, they may be in a better position to resolve political conflicts among negotiating states, generate successful regime outcomes, and facilitate policy learning than are more politically motivated actors, such as NGOs. A couple of features of this model are worth noting. First, membership in the epistemic community is transnational, and the model is agnostic about what types of scientists – government, academic, or others – belong. Second, there is a strong normative component to the actions of the epistemic community: they want change, and are not simply transmitting research results. Third, this model is driven by consensus among the members of the community reached independently of the political process. Epistemic communities have been identified in several environmental issue areas, for example around the Mediterranean pollution regime, the ozone regime, and others; in other cases, such as climate change, the absence of an epistemic community, particularly during critical early phases of negotiation, may well have hampered the regime’s evolution. This model has also been quite influential in other areas of international relations where scholars have sought to demonstrate how different expert communities can influence international cooperation.23 Some scholars are critical of the epistemic communities model. Susskind, for instance, finds it “worrisome” that an unelected group of bureaucrats and scientists could play a key role in determining crucial global decisions (Susskind 1994, p. 74). Others, especially scholars in the STS community, argue that its emphasis on consensual science, external to political processes, glosses over the very real normative conflicts and uncertainties that characterize much of the science of global environmental change. Critiques of the epistemic communities model opened up several new avenues of research into the role of science, or knowledge, in the 23

See the special issue of International Organization (46.1, 1992), which applies the epistemic communities to issues as diverse as economic reconstruction, food aid, and the trade regime.


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construction of international environmental regimes. Climate change as a science/policy arena has, in particular, been a focal point for scholars interested in these questions, given that the world has had to take political action despite serious conflicts of national interest, scientific uncertainties, and (until recently) the relative absence of scientific consensus over its causes and impacts (Miller and Edwards 2001; Jasanoff and Wynne 1998). First, at a macro level, one approach examines how the UN, and subsequently UNEP, facilitated the emergence of the global environmental change community across borders, and across traditional disciplines. In Chapter 3 we saw how large-scale, collaborative scientific programs (such as the first International Geophysical Year of 1957–8) helped initiate serious, interdisciplinary research into the human dimensions of global environmental change. This “globalization” of environmental science, along with the emergence of new disciplines or academic fields, such as conservation biology, reinforced the political agenda that the UN was establishing around global environmental governance over the same time frame. In turn, the needs of international environmental diplomacy – notably for policy-relevant knowledge about specific global or transboundary problems – helped drive scientific research agendas, and legitimize the input of particular groups of scientists (Miller 2001). In this way, science, or knowledge, proved to be a critical normative input into the evolution of global environmental governance, but, at the same time, one that itself was shaped by the evolving diplomatic framework of global environmental governance. Second, these approaches tackle the very critical question of how science shapes regime outcomes under conditions of scientific uncertainty or disagreement, as is the case with most environmental treaty regimes. Lack of scientific consensus, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, along with deep political conflicts has, without a doubt, hampered the evolution of the climate regime (Williams 2005a, p. 414). Yet, the fact remains that even under conditions of scientific uncertainty, states were able to negotiate both the 1992 UNFCCC and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, basing obligations on science-based understandings of the emission and impact on greenhouse gases. Karen Litfin introduces the concept of “knowledge brokers” to explain how science influences regime construction even under conditions of uncertainty and conflict (Litfin 1994). Knowledge brokers, often lowerlevel government or IGO officials (in Litfin’s account) function as “intermediaries between the original researchers or producers of knowledge, and the policymakers who consume that knowledge, but lack the time and training necessary to absorb the original research” (Litfin 1994, p. 4). The

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work these officials do highlights or frames particular scientific findings, and influences how they are taken up into, and shape, negotiation processes. Using the ozone regime – the 1985 Vienna Convention and the 1987 Montreal Protocol – as a case study, she challenges conventional wisdom that it emerged out of scientific consensus. She points out that the 1985 Vienna Convention was negotiated while there was still a high degree of uncertainty as to the exact causes of ozone layer depletion. Moreover, the strength of the 1987 Montreal Protocol cannot be wholly ascribed to material factors (the role of powerful or entrepreneurial states), advocacy by industry – nor the discovery of the “hole in the ozone layer” over the Antarctic (a finding first published in 1985, two months after the Vienna Convention was opened for signature). Rather than ascribing this regime outcome to an objective fact of crisis, or advocacy by atmospheric scientists, she argues that two factors mediated the ability of knowledge to facilitate cooperation. First a group of knowledge brokers with strong ties to UNEP and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were able to frame and interpret the relevant science. Second, the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer, rather than simply driving political consensus, was used to determine the acceptable range of political outcomes (Litfin 1994, p. 10). In other words, she charts not a linear movement from scientific certainty/consensus to political outcomes, but a far more iterated, interdependent evolution of science and politics that has high applicability to other areas of regime construction. A third avenue of research examines the politics of participation by scientists in expert communities: who gets to participate, how are they chosen, who is left out? And what difference does this make in regime outcomes? There have, for example, been lengthy political battles over the composition of the IPCC, which, for many years, consisted primarily of scientists from northern countries, omitting scientists working in or trained in the South. The exclusion of southern scientists has had the effect of weakening the profile, impact, and legitimacy of environmental treaty regimes in Southern countries (Biermann 2002). Once the IPCC expanded its membership to include more Indian scientists, the issue of climate change began to gain more currency in domestic political debates, feeding back into the Indian government’s negotiating position (Biermann 2002). Similar lines have been drawn between “expert” and “lay” knowledge in setting up scientific advisory institutions for international negotiations, rendering “those without the requisite technical expertise voiceless in the framing of the issue or its resolution” (Gupta 2004, p. 131). Again, this is changing, as several negotiating processes, notably the CBD, are explicitly including local or indigenous knowledge holders in negotiations.


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Together, these two sources of political conflict over the composition of expert communities imply (at least) two things. First, the politics of the formation of these expert communities is an important object of study in and of itself, particularly as the operation and legitimacy of international treaty regimes can be seriously challenged if they appear to exclude important sources of knowledge in negotiating processes. Second, these perspectives challenge a technocratic assumption that knowledge, or science, is universal: that good science has only one face, no matter who produces it. Instead, the insight that there are, in fact, many perspectives on environmental impacts, at different levels and scales, is opening up the field of global change science, shifting away from global models of atmospheric change or biodiversity loss towards local assessments of change and impacts, including socioeconomic vulnerabilities and adaptations to global change (Forsyth 2003; Martello 2005). Next steps The “state-led” mode of global environmental governance – through cooperation and treaty negotiation – has its critics. To some, it represents the art of the possible, reconciling as much as possible the interests of the most powerful players in the international system in order to make significant progress towards combating global environmental degradation. To others, to quote the Scottish Play, it is all “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” The next chapter addresses the issue of the impact and effectiveness of treaty regimes. But the negotiation processes have importance in and of themselves. In reality, without ongoing processes of environmental cooperation, which have seriously engaged many governments, it is likely we would have made far less progress in learning about or combating global environmental problems over the past three decades. From an analytical perspective, studying international environmental cooperation has generated many new insights into international cooperation more broadly. Dynamics between countries of the North and of the South, the role of NGOs and corporations, and the take-up of science and other forms of expert knowledge into the international policy process are all significant contributions made by international environmental politics analysis to our broader understandings of contemporary international politics. They touch on serious theoretical questions about power and influence, about access and equity, and about knowledge and policy. We move on now to different sets of questions – some normative (how do we make global governance work better?), some methodological (how can we tell what impact regimes have?), and others more analytical

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(is international environmental cooperation helping to reshape how global governance works?). Discussion questions

This chapter has outlined some of the rules that govern international

environmental negotiations, and some of the ways they have been criticized. What changes would you suggest in order to make them work better? What are “epistemic communities”? What does Haas suggest about their role in shaping environmental negotiations? How would you critique this model? In 1997, the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol but did not ratify it. In 2001 it withdrew from the Kyoto process entirely. What domestic political factors explain the USA’s position at, and subsequent to, the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol? Copies of most environmental treaties are available at the treaty’s own website, or at www.untreaty.un.org. Choosing one of those listed in Table 4.1, read the full text and identify: (a) how the treaty defines the problem; (b) the obligations placed on signatory states; (c) the institutional mechanisms set up by the treaty to manage the regime, and meet obligations, such as funding and technology transfer.

suggestions for further reading Agarwal, Anil, Sunita Narain, and Anju Sharma, eds. Green Politics. New Delhi: Center for Science and Environment, 1999: international environmental cooperation from the perspective of a highly influential southern NGO. Betsill, Michele M., and Elisabeth Corell, eds. NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007: an edited volume with several case studies that focuses on identifying and assessing NGOs’ influence on international environmental negotiations. Haas, Peter M. “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination.” International Organization 46.1 (1992), pp. 1–35: this entire special issue of International Organization is devoted to discussions of epistemic communities in international politics, covering a range of issue area. Levy, David L., and Peter J. Newell, eds. The Business of Global Environmental Governance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005: the essays in this volume cover private sector engagement in international environmental politics at all levels, from a range of theoretical perspectives. Mitchell, Ronald B. “International Environmental Agreements: A Survey of Their Features, Formation and Effects.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28 (2003), pp. 429–61: Mitchell’s survey article examines the factors


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that explain why we get the environmental regimes that we do, and their impacts. Najam, Adil. “Developing Countries and Global Environmental Governance: From Contestation to Participation to Engagement.” International Environmental Agreements 5 (2005), pp. 303–21: Adil Najam is a leading author on the role of the South in international environmental politics; this piece traces the changing attitudes of developing countries to the agenda of global environmental governance. O’Neill, Kate, Jörg Balsiger, and Stacy VanDeveer. “Actors, norms and impact: Recent international cooperation theory and the influence of the agentstructure debate.” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004), pp. 149–75: a review of the study of international cooperation in international relations theory, and new directions it is taking; a particularly authoritative and accessible discussion of the concepts of agency and structure and related debates (written by Balsiger). Parson, Edward A. Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003: a detailed narrative case study of the ozone regime that challenges some conventional wisdom as to why that regime has proven so successful. Susskind, Lawrence E. Environmental Diplomacy: Negotiating More Effective Global Environmental Agreements. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994: a critique, with prescriptions for reform, of existing modes of negotiating multilateral agreements; remains the most authoritative study of this subject.

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In Chapter 4, we examined the factors that influence the negotiation of environmental treaty regimes. In this chapter we turn to the question of regime effectiveness. Do states actually comply with multilateral environmental agreements? Do existing MEAs actually help solve the problems they are designed to address? Why are some treaty regimes more effective than others? What sorts of broader impacts do international environmental regimes have? The field of international environmental politics leads within the discipline of international relations in generating research on the impacts and effectiveness of international cooperation (Zürn 1998; O’Neill et al. 2004). Part of the reason for this is the problem-driven nature of the field. However, it is also the case that with such a large number of environmental treaties, many of which have been in place for many years, scholars began moving beyond the question of what makes states cooperate in the first place to examining the impacts of environmental treaty regimes as they mature. This work has helped drive research in other areas of international relations theory and global governance. In fact, many of these same issues and concerns apply to other mechanisms of global environmental governance, such as the private regimes we examine in Chapter 7.1 This chapter addresses the following major questions within this subfield of international environmental politics, questions that apply equally well to other arenas and modes of global governance: How do we define “regime effectiveness” and classify the impacts of a treaty regime? How can we overcome the methodological challenges of demonstrating the causal impacts of international regimes?

1

See Downs et al. 1996; Simmons 1998; Chayes and Chayes 1991, 1993; Hasenclever et al. 1997; Simmons and Oudraat 2001; Simmons and Hopkins 2005.

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What factors determine regime effectiveness, or make one regime more effective than another?

How do regimes – or regime actors – assess their performance and learn from experience? How do they, or can they, exploit linkages across regimes or avoid inter-regime conflicts? What impacts can regimes have on participating actors and their roles and interests? The questions raised by scholars and practitioners in this field are critical for normative and theoretical reasons, and speak to a number of important debates. From a problem-solving perspective, we want to know how, and to what extent, international environmental diplomacy slows down, halts, or even reverses global environmental degradation. If treaty regimes appear to be ineffectual, we want to know how to improve their performance. Some variables that have important causal impacts on regime effectiveness – such as the structure of the international system, or domestic political structures – are relatively fixed, and hard to change. Others are far more malleable, and thus can be used to make policy recommendations. One of these is regime design, or the specific institutional characteristics of treaty regimes. Thus, much work in this subfield has concentrated on these factors, with the aim of influencing the development of existing treaty regimes or the design of future ones. Second, this work speaks to debates in international relations theory over the utility and impacts of international cooperation and resultant institutions. Does international cooperation work? Does it change the behavior of states over the long term? Do international institutions really matter, and if so, how?2 Empirical findings in the literature to date tell a somewhat positive, albeit mixed, story about regime effectiveness: while the uniform consensus is that regimes do matter, their performance varies considerably across regimes, across national contexts, and over time (Young 1999; Weiss and Jacobson 1998; Miles et al. 2002). While countries frequently comply with the obligations they take on, this does not necessarily add up to effective problem solving (Victor et al. 1998, p. 661). To some, this means a glass that is half-empty, to others, a glass half-full (Simmons and Oudraat 2001, p. 719). Which perspective one chooses depends a good deal on one’s expectations – and how one defines the object and fields of study, and the potential alternative actions and outcomes. It is to these questions we turn in the sections that follow.

2

See, for instance, Mearsheimer 1994/5; Martin and Simmons 1998.

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Defining effectiveness: Compliance, problem-solving, and regime effects “Regime effectiveness” is a complex and multi-faceted concept, encompassing how well regimes work across different dimensions and the impacts it has on a range of outcomes and variables. Discussions around identifying these different dimensions of effectiveness have been informed by perspectives from international relations and political science, legal theory, environmental studies, and policymakers. Two leading scholars offer definitions of effectiveness that capture multiple dimensions of this often difficult concept. Thomas Bernauer identifies successful regimes as “those that 1. Change the behavior or states and other actors in the direction intended by the cooperating parties; 2. Solve the environmental problem they are designed to solve, and 3. Do so in an efficient and equitable manner” (Bernauer 1995, p. 338). Oran Young identifies no fewer than six distinct dimensions of regime effectiveness: problem-solving, goal attainment, and behavioral, process, constitutive, and evaluative effectiveness, taking into account how regimes solve problems or reach their goals, change participants’ behavior in meaningful ways, and whether their results meet criteria such as equity or efficiency (Young 1994, pp. 143–9). In practice, scholars have tended to focus on two main dimensions of regime effectiveness: compliance and problem-solving.3 Compliance is usually defined as “the extent to which the behavior of a state – party to an international treaty – actually conforms to the conditions set out in this treaty” (Faure and Lefevere 2005, p. 164). Do states implement domestic laws and regulations in order to fulfill their obligations, and do these legal changes induce behavioral changes in the actors they target, such as polluting firms? Do states exceed compliance expectations, or do they stick simply to the letter of the agreement. Studies of compliance have dominated the IEP field.4 Behavioral and political changes are easier to identify and measure than other sorts of regime impacts. Further, this area of research conforms most closely to central questions in the study of international cooperation in the broader discipline, in particular with 3

4

For a discussion of relevant terminology, see Faure and Lefevere 2004. While terms such as “implementation,” “compliance,” and “effectiveness” are often used interchangeably, there are important analytical distinctions between them. “Implementation” usually refers to the laws and regulations states enact in accordance with their treaty obligations, and is, therefore, a subset of compliance, the set of behavioral changes triggered by regime obligations. Effectiveness is more of an umbrella concept, encompassing the elements outlined by Young and Bernauer, but often refers primarily to environmental problemsolving. See Spector and Korula 1993; Mitchell 1994; Weiss and Jacobson 1998; Haas et al. 1993.


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Table 5.1 Dimensions of compliance* Types of compliance Related obligations

Related state activities

Procedural

Substantive

Spirit of the Treaty

Obligations to treaty Obligations to cease/ Adhere to normative process control activity framework of Treaty Example: Examples: Example: reporting emissions reductions accept and act on requirements targets consensus problem definition fisheries quotas trade controls and permits Problem reflected in policy Assign responsibility Implement domestic laws rhetoric for compiling and Related policy planning, submitting report Enforce laws Succeed in changing activity across policy areas Report in a timely behavior of target Exceed treaty obligations fashion actors and targets Report is accurate, comprehensive

* Adapted from Weiss and Jacobson 1998, Table 1.1 (p. 5)

its focus on the behavior of states, the central political unit in the international system. Table 5.1 outlines some of the different dimensions of compliance and related state activities according to the depth of state commitments required, from shallow to deep. Following Weiss and Jacobson (1998), we note three different types of compliance related behavior. First, procedural compliance means that state actors fulfill their obligations to the treaty process, for example by preparing national reports. Second, substantive compliance refers to actions taken to fulfill treaty obligations. Finally, compliance with the “spirit” of the treaty refers to actions that fulfill the broad normative framework of the treaty, often spelled out in the treaty’s preamble, for example a country’s commitment to placing biodiversity protection in the context of broader goals of conservation or sustainable development. In each case, compliance may occur at any one of several levels. A shallow level of procedural compliance means, for example, assigning responsibility to a government agency for compiling a report, while a deep level of substantive compliance implies enforcing laws that succeed in changing the behavior of target actors, such as polluting firms. For many (and particularly for analysts with a more interdisciplinary focus), studying compliance is not enough. For example, regimes with the highest rates of compliance may simply be the weakest ones, with the fewest binding obligations, or those that most closely mirror the existing

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Box 5.1

Dimensions of problem-solving effectiveness

1. Goal attainment a. Specific regime targets Are they met in a timely fashion? To what extent? Do they satisfy criteria of equity or cost-effectiveness? b. Overarching goals Do specific treaty obligations meet regime goals laid out in preamble? 2. Problem-solving a. Absolute change in environmental quality Has the problem been eliminated? If not, has relevant environmental quality improved to a measurable degree? Has the overall pace of environmental degradation slowed? To what extent can these changes be ascribed to the regime? b. Relative change in environmental quality Is the problem better than it would have been in the absence of the regime? If there is no overall change, can absence of deterioration be ascribed to the regime? If environmental quality has deteriorated, would it have deteriorated further in the regime’s absence?

status quo. Thus, they urge a focus on problem-solving effectiveness, covering Young’s dimensions of problem-solving and goal-attainment.5 Do international environmental regimes actually help slow down, prevent, or even reverse processes of global environmental degradation? Do regime members actually meet the substantive goals of the regime? What would the state of the environment be like in its absence? Measuring changes in global environmental problems, and showing that at least part of that change is caused by the existence of the regime, are both difficult but important tasks. Box 5.1 outlines different dimensions of problem solving effectiveness: goal-attainment addresses the extent to which the regime’s goals and targets are reached, while problem-solving recognizes the possibility that the regime’s actual goals may not be the most appropriate for solving the problem. Note that there is some overlap between goal attainment and the dimensions of compliance outlined in Table 5.1 (see also Mitchell 2001). Box 5.1 outlines the sorts of questions analysts ask when trying to determine a regime’s problem-solving effectiveness. Many raise quite 5

See, for example, Bernauer 1995; Bryner 1997; Young 1999; Miles et al. 2002.


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difficult methodological issues, as discussed in the next section of this chapter. Less independent attention has been paid to the final element of both Bernauer and Young’s definitions, namely the extent to which the regime fulfills criteria of efficiency (cost-effectiveness) and equity. These aspects play an important role in both behavioral and problem-solving notions of effectiveness. Rates of compliance, for example, tend to be far lower if the regime is perceived as inequitable, or to impose an unfair share of the costs on particular parties (Weiss and Jacobson 1998). It is also possible to identify separate sets of regime effects, or impacts, which operate independently of but may, ultimately, feed into regime effectiveness. Regimes may generate distributive effects (changing wealth distribution between rich and poor countries), learning effects (new information and research that changes our view of the global environment), process effects (e.g. resolving existing, but not necessarily directly related, conflicts between parties), or unanticipated side-effects (Young 2001, pp. 113–14). One example of a malign “side-effect” of an international regime was the illegal trade in CFCs from southern countries to (usually) small enterprises in northern countries, which emerged during the decade southern countries were still allowed to produce CFCs under the provisions of the Montreal Protocol (Clapp 1997). A regime may also have unexpected consequences on societies as governments enforce treaty obligations. A particularly egregious example of governments using international treaty obligations to pursue other goals were the policies put in place by the Kenyan government in the 1980s to protect wildlife, which involved oppressive measures against local communities, who happened to be members of a minority group opposed to the government at the time (Peluso 1993). Research on regime effectiveness – in terms of both compliance and problem-solving – has tended to focus on individual regimes, either as single or comparative case studies, in essence treating environmental regimes as autonomous units. Studies which focus on the cumulative or systemic impacts of the growing number and density of environmental treaty regimes have been notably scarce in the literature – although this is changing as interest grows in the study of regime linkage (see below). Individual regimes may overlap with each other, in ways that may enhance or detract from overall effectiveness. Positive linkages enhance the regimes’ joint problem-solving capacity. But linkages may also be negative: measures that encourage the growth of plantation forests as carbon sinks under the climate regime undermine efforts to protect old-growth forests under the biodiversity regime.

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Finally, a deeper set of issues concerns how the construction of and participation in environmental regimes might, collectively, be changing, or transforming, wider practices of global governance and actor roles and identities. These sorts of questions are most closely associated with constructivist research agendas in international relations theory (O’Neill et al. 2004; Wendt 1992; Finnemore 1996). For example, does participating in international treaty regimes help change the basic interests and preferences of states themselves? These are difficult questions to answer, particularly as relevant empirical data is hard to acquire, and open to multiple interpretations. In other words, this sort of analysis does not lend itself well to positivist methodologies, which focus on uncovering direct cause and effect relationships in world politics. Methods, measures, and studying effectiveness This section focuses on the methodological discussions that have emerged in the IEP field around the study of regime effectiveness. Many studies of regime effectiveness adopt a positivist methodological framework (Hochstetler and Laituri 2004; Mitchell and Bernauer 1998). In other words, they seek to demonstrate direct cause and effect relationships between the existence of an environmental treaty or particular treaty characteristics and observed outcomes. Explaining the causal impact of environmental regimes on compliance or problem-solving outcomes is a complex task, given the range of dependent variables (what one is trying to explain), independent variables (competing explanations of observed changes), and intervening factors (Bernauer 1995; Young 2001). However, the IEP field has made considerable progress in developing methodological tools to answer broader questions of regime effects and effectiveness.6 Data collection, comparison, and analysis One of the major problems in studying effectiveness is that it is often hard to collect adequate and reliable data on the state of the global environment (Haas et al. 1993, p. 7). Recent advances in satellite and imaging technology, as well as emissions measurement technology, have vastly increased experts’ ability to measure environmental change, and, 6

For specific discussions of methodological issues in studying regime effectiveness, see Underdal 1992; Bernauer 1995; Young and Levy 1999; Helm and Sprinz 2000; Young 2001; Mitchell 2002; Hovi et al. 2003a, b; Young 2003. For general discussions of methods in IEP, see Mitchell and Bernauer 1998; Hochstetler and Laituri 2004.


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particularly through the internet, the public’s access to environmental data and images. Statistical and modeling techniques have also made it easier to predict environmental outcomes under a variety of scenarios (Edwards 2001). However, much of the available data on environmental changes is gathered by regime secretariats and relies on self-reporting by individual states, which may lack the capacity or will to accurately report results. Such data, too, is often not standardized across countries, making it hard to draw accurate comparisons. Hazardous waste collection statistics are notorious in this respect, as countries define “hazardous wastes” very differently, making it hard to compare generation, import, and export data in the absence of a well-defined set of international standards (O’Neill 2000). Some of the problems associated with gathering accurate and reliable environmental data help explain the focus in much of the relevant literature on compliance and other behavioral changes on the part of regime participants and other actors. In some cases (e.g. Haas et al. 1993), this is a deliberate choice as proxy for problem-solving impacts, as political changes in response to a regime are easier to detect and measure than environmental impacts. It is possible, for example, to follow how a state enacts new rules in order to comply with an international agreement, and follows up on reporting requirements, or asks for assistance, etc., and to compare progress across countries and across regimes. The main critique of choosing compliance as the dependent variable is that it fails to control for the possibility that states create regimes they can comply with most easily, and thus may be the most shallow, in terms of changing the behavior of polluting actors or moving towards solving an environmental problem (Downs et al. 1996; Bernauer 1995). Exogenous factors and counterfactuals Even when data has been gathered, establishing the causal impact of a regime means addressing problems of exogenous impacts and counterfactuals, especially given the often lengthy time lag between regime implementation and change in the relevant environmental problem. First, how do we separate the effects of a treaty regime from those of other factors that affect the state of the environment, such as economic shocks, natural changes in the environment, or technological changes (Young 2001, p. 100)? For example, the countries of the former Soviet Union were able to reach targets under the climate change and ozone regimes primarily because of the economic collapse the region experienced in the 1990s.

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Second, studies of effectiveness often have to consider what might have happened if the regime had never existed. It may be the case that the problem might have become far worse in the absence of the regime; alternatively, countries may have chosen unilateral or other solutions to the problem. Thus, studying regime effectiveness often entails the use of counterfactuals, or thought-experiments, asking “whether the treaty caused environmental improvements that would not have happened otherwise, even if they fall short of completely solving the problem” (Mitchell 2001, p. 222). This is, however, a difficult methodological technique to use in a rigorous way. Analysts have to demonstrate that the counterfactual they choose is the most likely alternative (Fearon 1991). Qualitative vs. quantitative methods In turn, the above dilemmas feed into analysts’ choice of quantitative or qualitative methods to determine exactly how treaty regimes are effective. Studies of regime effectiveness to date have relied primarily on in-depth, qualitative case studies to establish causal relationships between regimes and their political or environmental impacts. Authors use methods of “process-tracing” or “thick description” to tell a detailed story that traces out and analyzes the links between the operation of the regime and the chosen dependent variables.7 Such studies have yielded rich results, and have greatly enhanced our understanding of how international regimes operate. This choice of method is also very demanding. It is hard for any single scholar to acquire the necessary in-depth knowledge of more than one or two international regimes to be able to compare them, or to draw general conclusions that apply to a number of regimes. Therefore, comparative studies of regime effectiveness more often than not take the form of edited volumes.8 These volumes set out a common theoretical framework, which guides analysis of individual cases, a method known as structured focused comparison (George and Bennett 2005). For example, the essays collected in Young (1999) examine the behavioral pathways “through which regime rules, decision-making procedures and programs influence behavior and create roles for relevant actors” (Young 2001, p. 105), across three different regimes: vessel source oil pollution, regional fisheries, and acid rain. The authors represented in Weiss and Jacobson’s 1998 edited 7 8

For a discussion of different qualitative methods in political science, see George and Bennett 2005. See, for example, Miles et al. 2002; Young 1999; Weiss and Jacobson 1998; Haas et al. 1993; Victor et al. 1998.


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volume examine the performance of seven countries, plus the European Union and the Russian Federation across five environmental treaties. The problem, of course, with using “small-N” (where N refers to the number of cases), qualitative studies is that it is hard to generalize results across regimes, identify widely applicable causal mechanisms, or rank regimes in terms of their effectiveness (Young 2001, pp. 103–4). As Ronald Mitchell argues, “quantitative techniques offer the promise of replacing claims that ‘this strategy worked in this historical case’ with more convincing policy-relevant and contingent prescriptions of which strategy is likely to work best to address a given problem under given conditions” (Mitchell 2003, p. 59). Thus, while qualitative methods have dominated this subfield to date, a number of scholars are examining ways to utilize quantitative, or statistical, methods to observe regime impacts across a wider universe of cases (e.g. Mitchell 2003; Breitmeier et al. 2006; Young and Zürn 2006). As the number of environmental regimes and component legal instruments has grown, and data collection, coding, and management tools have become more sophisticated, quantitative analyses of environmental regimes, comparing features and outcomes of environmental treaty regimes across a large number of cases, are becoming far more feasible than they have been in the past (Mitchell 2006). Determining regime effectiveness – and designing effective regimes Analysts have identified a range of factors – independent variables – that determine the impacts and effectiveness of environmental treaty regimes. Analysts’ choice of independent variable depends on the questions that they want to answer. If they are interested in how a treaty regime changes the behavior of member states, they may focus on factors associated with regime design. Those interested in broader issues of problem-solving, or the more constructivist questions identified in the introduction to this chapter, may focus more on how treaty regimes incorporate mechanisms to assess performance, incorporate new information, and learn from past experience. Work in this field is very much, though not wholly, motivated by scholars’ desire to help improve regime performance in practice. Policy recommendations – based on what fails to work about a given regime, or what has worked in other similar situations – are a major part of this literature. Structural obstacles to regime effectiveness Structural obstacles to regime effectiveness include the structure of environmental problems themselves, the structure of the international

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system, and factors operating at the level of individual countries (Weiss and Jacobson 1998). Some environmental problems are more complex, and solving them involves controlling a wider array of activities – and actors – than others. While careful problem-framing can help mitigate these factors, at a basic level, it is harder to achieve compliance when multiple actors or firms are involved in a targeted activity than when only a handful are involved (Mitchell 2006), or where uncertainties are pervasive. Miles et al. (2002) distinguish between malign and benign problem structures – where malign problems are those characterized by asymmetries of interests and values, and where actors are in competition with each other. The anarchic structure of the international system provides incentives for states to cheat or free-ride on regime obligations: with so many countries involved, and so little enforcement capacity, compliance would appear to be the exception, rather than the rule. The use of mechanisms to promote transparency, including “naming and shaming” tactics, can help increase compliance. International agencies have also empowered civil society actors, including environmental NGOs, to play an important role in regime implementation – from “whistle-blowing” on non-compliance to active partnership roles in funding and aid projects. Further, the ongoing process of global environmental governance provides a context where cooperation becomes the norm rather than the exception, and creates forums where states can be held to account for their actions over the longer term (Weiss and Jacobson 1998, pp. 528–9). At the domestic level, characteristics of individual countries pose many different challenges to effective compliance and problem-solving (Weiss and Jacobson 1998; Schreurs and Economy 1997). Beyond basic differences in national revenues between rich and poor countries, factors such as whether or not the country is a democracy, the state of its environmental movement, its population size, and the ability of its government to control often far-flung activities or politically powerful corporate actors all bear on levels of compliance. International treaties are never nuanced enough to be able to account for all these differences – but the use of differential obligations and aid and technology transfer mechanisms – so-called “capacity-building measures” – at the very least assists some governments willing, but less able, to comply with treaty obligations. Of course, effective compliance does not always add up to effective problem-solving if the terms of the regime are relatively weak, as a result of the compromises made during the negotiating process, or the goals it establishes turn out to be inappropriate. Effective problem-solving, in a very immediate sense, means diagnosing the problem, its causes, and the correct steps to take towards solving it. Ideally, too, a treaty should solve


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one problem without making others worse, or shifting the problem elsewhere: measures to combat air pollution should not, for example, lead to increased water or soil pollution. However, given the uncertainties, complexities, and politics of many global environmental problems, it is hard to achieve optimal outcomes at the outset of a regime’s operation. Therefore, another important factor in shaping problem-solving effectiveness is the ability of regime actors to assess performance, incorporate new information, revise goals and practices, and to learn from experience. We turn now to examine in more depth the factors identified by scholars and practitioners as critical in determining regime impacts and effectiveness. First, we examine how environmental treaties provide incentives that alter both the will and capacity on the part of states to comply with treaty obligations. Second, we look at the extent to which regimes incorporate mechanisms for assessment and learning over time, particularly important for enhancing problem-solving effectiveness. Third, we turn to a deeper set of impacts: how the process of global environmental governance may actually change the preferences of participating actors. Changing incentives: Altering the will and capacity to comply Evidence demonstrates that in the context of environmental treaties, states frequently exhibit a range of preferences for compliance, and a single state’s compliance often varies over time (Weiss and Jacobson 1998). When states perceive compliance with the terms of a treaty regime as both in their direct interests and within their ability to meet, compliance is non-problematic. Such situations are relatively rare in world politics. Non-compliance, on the other hand, results from one (or more) of three factors: a lack of political will or intent to comply, a lack of capacity, or ability to comply and inadvertent non-compliance (Mitchell 1994). While states may want to comply with an agreement, they may find themselves unable to do so, due to lack of resources or little control over the actors whose behavior is the ultimate target of the regime. Alternatively, they may lack the political will to comply, and may have signed the treaty for other reasons (for example, to forestall criticism from domestic or international constituencies, or to shape the subsequent evolution of the regime). Both will and capacity may wax and wane over time, as governments change hands, or a country’s economic conditions change. Therefore, many studies of regime compliance examine how measures such as sanctions, positive incentives (such as environmental aid), transparencyenhancing practices, and the scope and fit of regime obligations help alter states’ will and capacity to comply with treaty obligations over time.

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The study of international environmental regimes has also triggered debate between “constructivist” and “political economy” (alternatively, “management” and “enforcement” perspectives on regime compliance; see Downs 2000; Downs et al. 1996). Political economy perspectives, derived in part from study of international trade and security regimes, posit that international regimes are most effective when obligations on states are precise and binding, and backed by decisive sanctions for noncompliant behavior. By contrast, a more constructivist approach posits that in fact non-binding and less precise obligations (soft law) coupled with positive incentives to comply (rather than punitive sanctions) can be equally, if not more, effective than their opposite. This approach enables states to comply according to their own ability, and ascribes compliance failures more to lack of ability to comply than lack of will. This debate is far from settled (Victor 2006; Skjaerseth et al. 2006). (a)

Treaty obligations: Legitimacy, fit, precision, and scope

Different treaties evoke different levels of compliance. Sometimes, these variations can be directly related to the terms of an agreement, and how it is perceived by signatory states. Here we focus on four characteristics of treaty obligations: their legitimacy, fit, precision, and scope. First, states are more likely to comply with an agreement, even when compliance is quite costly, when the obligations are seen as legitimate and fair, and when the regime’s decision-making processes are seen as open and equitable, fulfilling a shared understanding of appropriate behavior and expectations. For example, there was broad consensus during negotiations of the ozone regime that poorer countries should receive additional assistance from the international community (in terms of funding and an extended deadline for phasing out CFCs). Further, the ban on dumping hazardous wastes from North to South, especially for disposal, was widely supported on the basis of broad principles of environmental justice. By contrast, the USA has refused to implement the Kyoto Protocol because it does not impose greenhouse gas emissions reductions requirements on less developed countries – which leading government officials perceive as unfair. The concept of regime “fit” can be understood in two ways: first, that regime obligations are not too radical a departure from existing practices, technologies, and policies of environmental regulation, and second, that regime attributes are “compatible with the bio-geographical systems with which they interact” (Young 2002, p. 55). That regimes should “fit” as well as possible, in both senses, in order for a regime to be effective, seems self-evident. However, here we see a possible contradiction between


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factors that enhance compliance and those that enhance problem-solving. Some argue that it is precisely because international environmental treaties “fit” by departing so little from existing business-as-usual models and practices that they are so weak (Speth 2004). For example, the terms of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which emphasize national sovereignty over biodiversity, could be argued to be a poor fit with leading theories of ecosystem management and conservation. On the other hand, the CBD is a far better political fit with the practices of dominant states in the regime. There is more disagreement over how degrees of precision and scope of regime obligations affect compliance. Precision refers to the clarity of obligations: do states know exactly what they have to do, and by when, or are regime obligations relatively ambiguous? For example, while the Montreal Protocol set out exact targets and timetables for eliminating CFCs, other treaties, particularly framework conventions, are far more vague, offering no more than a set of criteria countries should aim for. The scope of the regime refers to the breadth of activities it regulates. Some regimes seek only to regulate a narrow range of activities, with the intent of having broader impacts over the long term, while others are far broader. For example, both the Basel Convention and CITES address issues of hazardous waste generation and disposal and wildlife conservation respectively in their treaty preambles, but seek only to control international trade in wastes and endangered species. Certainly the greater the precision or the narrower the scope of treaty obligations, the easier it is to ascertain and measure compliance (Weiss and Jacobson 1998, p. 524). In their study of the relationship between the precision of obligations and compliance, Weiss and Jacobson (1998, pp. 524–5) do find that in general, where obligations are more precise, compliance rates are higher. Nonetheless, important qualifications apply, and precision cannot fully explain variation across regime cases. First, when states agree with the terms of an agreement, compliance tends to be high, even when the terms are ambiguous. Second, “precise and relatively simple obligations are easier to comply with than precise and complicated ones” (ibid. p. 524). Third, precision is not on its own sufficient to ensure regime compliance. There have been fewer studies on the relationship between regime scope and compliance. The justification for narrowing the scope of a regime to something like international trade is that such activities are far easier to regulate from the international level, and may ultimately have upstream effects within national borders (Conca 2000). Taking both hazardous waste generation and wildlife conservation as examples, evidence demonstrates that while the Basel Convention and CITES have

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worked to control (albeit imperfectly) trade in wastes and wildlife, they appear to have had little direct impact on their respective broader problem contexts. (b)

Coercion and Sanctions

One perspective on compliance argues that non-compliant actors may respond to sanctions, or other enforcement mechanisms. If the agencies in control of the regime or powerful member states have the ability to detect and punish non-compliant behavior, or at least can make a credible threat to do so, compliance is more likely. Sanctions and the threat of punishment are, of course, common under domestic laws, and have been incorporated into other areas of global governance. Countries found to be in violation of trade or weapons control regimes can be subjected to economic sanctions, for example. However, the impacts of international sanctions, be they economic, political, or military, are controversial at the best of times (Drezner 2003), and there is little international political will to apply them to the environmental arena, although some argue that this seriously undermines regime effectiveness (Jenkins 1995). Nor have there been moves to bring treaty violators in front of international courts. Sanctions are, however, not entirely absent from international environmental regimes. Both CITES and the Montreal Protocol contain provisions for sanctions in the event of non-compliance, although they have not been used, and appear chiefly to be present as weapons of last resort (Weiss and Jacobson 1998, p. 548). Further, on at least two occasions, the USA has used the threat of unilateral sanctions against Norway and Taiwan in cases of violations of the IWC and CITES respectively, citing US environmental law (Jenkins 1995, p. 225). Yet, such unilateral use of sanctions is not likely to be compatible with existing international trade rules. (c)

Transparency and reputation

Rather than relying on traditional enforcement mechanisms, such as sanctions, environmental treaty regimes have relied on a variety of “softer” mechanisms to enhance compliance. Regime members are more likely to comply in a social setting when they perceive that they may suffer significant social sanctions or loss of reputation within that setting if they are seen not to comply. They may also want to comply, but need the regime to incorporate ways to ensure other states are also complying, and to reduce the transactions costs of enforcing and monitoring cooperation (Young 1999, p. 261).


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Thus, many environmental regimes contain mechanisms to enhance transparency, in this case the ability to tell if a state is fulfilling or reneging on its obligations. Such “sunshine” mechanisms include regular national reporting requirements, independent monitoring (by scientific bodies or NGOs) of environmental quality, and media access and public education programs (Weiss and Jacobson 1998, pp. 543–6). Many treaties require countries to submit annual reports on their progress. These reports are made available to the public, usually via the Convention’s website. The main problem with relying solely on national reporting for creating transparency is that governments may misreport or simply fail to report their progress, and the information requirements may be too shallow to ascertain real progress. Therefore, treaty secretariats also employ other mechanisms to enhance transparency. For example, some conventions require independent, on-site monitoring of progress. The World Heritage Convention is one example: independent international experts visit designated heritage cites to ensure that they are being managed in accordance with regime goals. The emergence of GIS technology, which enables monitoring of changes in environmental quality at scales from regional to extremely local, has provided a very effective tool that monitoring officials and scientists can use to trace environmental impacts over time. NGOs, both transnational and local, have proven highly effective allies in the effort to enhance regime transparency, and to publicize policy failures or successes, playing a vital role as “whistle-blowers” (McCormick 1999). By monitoring state behavior, engaging in public education, and working with the media to publicize results, they have, in many cases, succeeded in changing state behavior in situations where regime officials would have little success.9 (d)

Improving the ability to comply: Capacity-building, environmental aid, and the global environment facility

Another perspective on regime effectiveness examines how states respond to positive incentives to comply with international treaty obligations. In a direct sense, mechanisms such as environmental aid and technology transfer improve a country’s capacity to comply with an agreement. They can also help alter the will to comply on the part of recipient nations, and, especially over the longer term, enhance 9

On the role of transnational environmental coalitions in enforcing the provisions of CITES in Kenya and Zimbabwe, see Princen 1995, and more generally in wildlife and conservation regimes, see Lanchbery 1998.

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environmental problem-solving. Many environmental treaties contain measures to provide financial aid and technology to poorer countries. Formal efforts to build capacity in order to help countries comply with international environmental treaties have focused primarily on the global South, but also include the transitional economies of the former Soviet bloc. Over the course of twenty years experience with treaty-related capacity-building initiatives, billions of dollars have been channeled to various actors and projects. The term “capacity-building” has been part of the development literature since the 1950s, but has recently enjoyed a revival in popularity (Sagar 2000; VanDeveer and Sagar 2005). In a general sense, capacity building can be defined as “efforts and strategies intended to increase the ‘efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness of government performance’” (VanDeveer and Dabelko 2001, p. 20, citing Grindle 1997, p. 5). In the environmental context, the term capacity has been used to refer to “the ability of non-governmental organizations and domestic political institutions to translate concern about environmental effects into policy” (Keohane and Levy 1996, p. 12). “Capacity” itself has multiple dimensions (Grindle 1997; VanDeveer and Dabelko 2001). The first, most obvious dimension of capacity is material. Do government or private sector agencies have adequate financial resources at hand to meet their obligations? Do they have access to trained personnel, expertise, and technology? Is there adequate physical infrastructure (roads, electricity, etc.) to support environmental projects? On a more micro level, organizational dimensions of capacity refer to the way individual organizations and agencies are run, their leadership or management style, their organizational culture, and the incentives provided to personnel (employees, agents, volunteers) to carry out their jobs. At a broader, institutional level, capacity-building activities are also targeted at the basic political institutions of the country: improving the government’s ability to make policy work through, if necessary, broad reforms of the country’s constitution and economic and political systems. Finally, some also point to “societal capacity”: a strong network of NGOs and other civil society organizations who are able to help a government carry out policy, or effectively criticize it if it does not (Weinthal and Parag 2003). Clearly, a lack of capacity across all the above dimensions is a major obstacle to the effectiveness of environmental regimes (Weiss and Jacobson 1998), and it became abundantly clear during the negotiation of early international environmental agreements that implementation of their obligations would be costly. Southern countries therefore made it part of their demands that international agreements contained provisions


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for financial aid and/or technology transfer to cover adjustment costs. The 1987 Montreal Protocol was the first agreement to establish a Fund to provide developing countries with financial and technological assistance to end the production and use of CFCs (DeSombre and Kauffman 1996). Other agreements followed suit. In 1991, the UN approved a three-year pilot program, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), with the mandate of funding developing country projects with global environmental benefits. By the mid 1990s it was established as the agency to coordinate financial obligations associated with international treaty regimes. Funded by the World Bank, and administered by UNEP and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the GEF provides aid or loans on favorable terms for small-scale projects which combat particular global environmental problems: ozone depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and pollution of transnational waters. In 2002, projects related to land degradation (or desertification) and persistent organic pollutants were added to the GEF portfolio. As of the end of 2005, GEF had allocated $6.2 billion, supplemented by more than $20 billion in co-financing, for more than 1,800 projects in 140 developing countries and economies in transition (GEF Draft Annual Report, 2005). The political development of the GEF, as a hybrid international agency, has taken some interesting turns.10 In 1993, the GEF was restructured as a result of lessons learned during the Pilot Program and the demands of G77 and NGO actors (Streck 2001). While keeping the tripartite administrative structure, a governing council, made up of representatives from 32 countries (18 recipient and 14 donor countries) now meets every three years. Decisions are made according to a complicated majority voting system: 60 percent of donor and 60 percent of recipient nations must agree for a decision to be passed. The restructuring also allowed for greater participation of NGOs not only as observers, but also as participants in GEF council meetings and other governance activities, effectively a conduit between the agencies running the GEF and the projects it funds on the ground. In terms of funding, the GEF’s trust fund is replenished every four years. In 2002, 32 donor countries pledged almost $3 billion, a considerable amount, but low in comparison to expert assessments of what is needed to fully combat many global environmental problems (Horta et al. 2002, p. 11). The sorts of projects the GEF finances include the development of renewable energy sources in Mexico and the Philippines, projects to 10

On the GEF, see Streck 2001; Agarwal et al. 1999; Z. Young 1999; Gerlak 2004; Fairman 1996; Clémençon 2006.

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reduce pollution in marine ecosystems in East Asia, the development of environmentally sound alternatives to DDT to control the spread of malaria across sub-Saharan Africa, integrated pest control measures in Ukraine, efforts to conserve heirloom seed varieties in Jordan and Vietnam, and the introduction of clean fuel cell buses in Beijing.11 The GEF’s strengths include its role as a bridging organization between UN development and environment agencies, the NGO sector and the World Bank, the diversity and number of projects funded, often at the grass-roots level, and its relative openness as an organization, and its willingness to learn. It represents an unusual effort to streamline, rather than complicate, the administration of global environmental governance. Nonetheless, criticisms remain. For one, the GEF funds only the “global benefits” of proposed projects, namely the incremental, or addition, costs associated with transforming a project with local benefits to one that will have global benefits in one of the six programmatic areas. Not only is this a somewhat opaque principle to implement in practice (and open to some creative interpretation), it reflects what some see as an overly technocratic approach to funding environmental projects, relying as it does on strict quantification of benefits (Horta et al. 2002). This in turn has the effect of excluding some potential applicants, especially NGOs not trained in the “global language” of development aid (Young 1999), and has contributed to the growing complexity of the GEF project cycle (Streck 2001, p. 92). Another criticism, especially given the growing trend towards corporate engagement in global environmental politics, is that the GEF, while relying on NGO expertise, has no role for the private sector, particularly as a source of often needed co-financing (Streck 2001). It also has paid less attention than it might to issues that cut across its programmatic areas. More broadly, criticisms of capacity-building efforts on the part of environmental treaty regimes point out that they remain narrowly focused on material and technical aspects of capacity-building in the context of individual issue areas and projects, ignoring important macro considerations to do with creating an effective political and institutional context for environmental management (Sagar and VanDeveer 2005). Another cogent critique that has been directed at compliance-related capacity initiatives is, if capacity-building is targeted at translating “concern into action,” whose concern are we talking about? The GEF, especially prior to 2002, focused on projects related to environmental issues of overwhelmingly northern donor country concern: climate change, biodiversity 11

These examples are drawn from Draft 2005 GEF Annual Report. Further, and detailed, examples are available at the GEF’s website, www.gefweb.org.


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protection, etc. Only after much lobbying from representatives of recipient countries did it add land degradation (along with POPs) to its core funding initiatives. Finally, work on capacity building suggests that existing approaches ignore two important dimensions of capacity: northern capacity problems, and the capacity of international donor agencies to adequately identify and assess projects, taking into account local knowledge and perspectives (Sagar 2000; Sagar and VanDeveer 2005). In sum, capacity-building efforts on the part of international environmental regimes have been critical to the relative success to date of several international regimes – including ozone, biodiversity, and climate change. They have also, however, been quite narrowly targeted towards specific problems, issue areas, and projects within poorer countries. The opportunity to benefit from this new source of international aid has certainly enhanced compliance on the part of these countries. It is, however, less clear that these efforts add up to significant, and lasting, improvement of global environmental problem-solving capacity and governance infrastructures, North and South. Regime agency: Exploiting linkages, and learning International regimes are a complex mix of organizations, actors, rules, and processes. However, the internal politics of international environmental regimes are relatively understudied, especially in the context of improving performance and effectiveness over time. Regime actors – particularly secretariats, but also other bodies and related organizations – do more than passively fulfill their immediate mandate. First, most regimes contain processes for assessment of performance and learning from experience over time. Second, environmental regimes, while often studied as individual units, do not exist entirely independently from each other. In fact, they often overlap in many ways, and may even conflict. Increasingly, regime secretariats are looking for ways to exploit positive linkages and minimize conflicts between individual environmental regimes, and even with other areas of global governance, such as trade (Jinnah 2008). This section therefore examines these two important dimensions of regime activity, and their implications for the effectiveness of international environmental regimes. Regime linkage: Systemic effects and effectiveness A small but growing number of scholars in the field of international environmental politics are starting to examine the question of regime linkage: the “politically significant connections between or among institutional

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arrangements” (Young 1996, p. 2).12 This interest reflects the recognition of the growing density and maturity of international institutions (Raustiala and Victor 2004). It also reflects the realization that these linkages are being recognized and acted on in international policy circles. For example, the various treaties associated with conserving biodiversity are already working very closely together (Jinnah 2008). Understanding regime linkages and conflicts captures important dimensions of effectiveness that are missed by analyzing regimes solely as stand-alone institutions. In some cases, exploiting linkages may lead to synergistic gains across regimes; in others, ignoring potential conflicts could significantly hamper how the regimes work (Rosendal 2001a). Variously described as regime linkage, overlap, and interplay, this concept differs from the dominant use of the term “issue linkage” in international relations theory more generally, where it refers to a specific negotiating tactic of getting states to sign on to an agreement in return for favors rendered in another issue area. Rather, scholars in this field are concerned with how regimes overlap and interact with each other once they are established. In this section, we focus on linkages between different international environmental regimes. Chapter 6 addresses linkages between environmental regimes and international economic regimes, particularly the trade regime. There are many ways in which regimes interconnect or overlap. Linkages may be horizontal, across similar levels of social organization, such as between the climate change and ozone regimes, or vertical, across levels of organization, such as the relationship between conventions and protocols, or international and regional arrangements (Selin and VanDeveer 2003, pp. 17–18; Young 2002, p. 23). They may be “accidental” or purposeful, the result of deliberate design on the part of regime actors. Some scholars use the notion of “regime complex,” “a collective of partially overlapping and non-hierarchical regimes” across an issue area (Raustiala and Victor 2004, p. 277).13 Given the interconnected nature of the world’s ecosystems, there are, of course, multiple ways in which environmental problems affect each other. Climate change is likely to lead to further loss in biodiversity, desertification, and loss of arable land and forest ecosystems. Further, how these problems are framed within international regimes generates 12 13

See also Jinnah 2008; Young 1996 and 2002; Selin and VanDeveer 2003; Rosendal 2001a and b; Stokke 2000, 2001; Raustiala and Victor 2004; Oberthür and Gehring 2006. Raustiala and Victor examine the regime complex for plant genetic resources, which includes regimes developed under the CBD, the FAO, and the 1961 International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), and TRIPs, among others.


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further linkages, both synergistic (mutually reinforcing) and conflictual (Rosendal 2001a). For example, the common ground in terms of underlying rules and norms has already lead to functional cooperation among the various component treaties of the biodiversity regime and the marinerelated conventions under the framework of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The emphasis on ecosystem preservation within the CBD has led to strong interactions between the CBD and the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests, with the potential for the CBD being used to enact international rules on forest preservation (Rosendal 2001b). On the other hand, as Rosendal points out, regimes may also conflict with each other (Rosendal 2001a). For example, the ozone regime relies on the use of HCFCs as a less damaging substitute for CFCs, yet HCFCs are also a greenhouse gas, regulated under the climate regime, which has called for their restrictions. Also, while measures in the climate regime call for the creation of carbon sinks from reforestation activities, the plantations that are acceptable under Kyoto will damage the ecosystems needed for biodiversity to thrive. Other kinds of regime linkages are referred to as “political,” whereby “the content and design of one regime, or interests and capabilities of regime actors, affect the formation or operation of another” (Selin and VanDeveer 2003, p. 19). For example, there may be considerable overlap between regimes in the ways they approach environmental problems. Many, for instance, advocate the use of the precautionary principle as a guideline for action. Others may draw upon very similar bodies of scientific knowledge, or impact similar industrial sectors, or local communities. Five different international regimes – ozone, climate, biodiversity, forests, and oceans – are linked together through the Global Environment Facility, which itself links three agencies: the World Bank, UNEP, and UNDP. There has also been a considerable growth in the number of participants – both individuals and organizations – in international environmental regimes (as well as related organizations), and there is considerable evidence that these participants interact with each other across different regimes (or venues), often in purposeful and strategic ways (Selin and VanDeveer 2003, p. 20). Convention secretariats and other administrative organizations (especially those under the UNEP umbrella, and often literally sharing the same building) maintain contact with each other. Individuals may work for a number of international organizations (from UNEP through the FAO to the EU or the World Bank) over the course of their careers, and carry those experiences and personal networks with them. Individual NGOs often work across a number of issue areas. Finally, states are frequently members of more than one regime or organization, and if rules conflict among these regimes, they may often press for

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standardization. They may also “venue-shop,” seeking the international regime that best suits their interests in a given issue area (Raustiala and Victor 2004). For example, the property rights regime set up under the CBD is preferred by many southern participants over that laid out in the WTO’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement. What does the recognition of these linkages mean for the theory and practice of international environmental politics? First, acting, or failing to act, or recognize linkages (or the potential for linkages) has significant implications for the day-to-day operations and overall effectiveness of individual regimes (Rosendal 2001a; Stokke 2001). In synergistic situations, significant economies of scale can be realized through pooling expertise and combining regime activities (Young 2002). Ignoring conflict has the potential to undermine the effectiveness (or legitimacy) of one or more of the regimes involved, and may provide opportunities for regime opponents to exploit. Second, the rising density of international institutions may affect processes of regime development: “extant arrangements in the various elemental regimes will constrain and channel the process of creating new rules” (Raustiala and Victor 2004, p. 279). What happens at the “joints between regimes” has important implications for how regime change occurs, and at what level (ibid., p. 306). The existence or creation of regime linkages underlies many calls for organizational integration of international environmental regimes, up to and including a World Environment Organization. Some advocate issuebased clustering different agreements under one functional umbrella – as has been suggested in the case of the chemicals-related agreements (Downie et al. 2005). Others suggest creating a single scientific organization to serve a number of regimes (Biermann 2001). Either way, ignoring existing or potential linkages and conflicts across regimes omits both an important dimension of global environmental governance that is already being practiced and a critical avenue for improving overall regime effectiveness. Assessment and learning in international environmental regimes Given the complexities of both global environmental problems and international politics, it would be wrong to assume that regime participants “get it right” at the outset. Instead, most treaty regimes provide mechanisms to assess their progress, incorporate new information, learn from experience, and adjust policies, practices, and goals accordingly. The ability to incorporate new information or learn from experience is a crucial component of treaty regimes if they are to be effective over the long term. The very fact that international negotiation processes take place over


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many years provides a context in which such assessment and learning can occur. In addition to such “intra-regime” learning, treaty regimes may foster “extra-regime” learning, namely learning by communities or actors that leads to behavioral or preference adjustments outside the immediate boundaries of the regime and its obligations, allowing the spread of knowledge, ideas, and information within states, and across different constituencies (Haas and McCabe 2001, pp. 340–2). For an example of how regimes learn, take the case of the major agreements governing intentional oil pollution at sea: OILPOL (1954) and its successor, MARPOL (1973) (Mitchell 1994; Mitchell et al. 1999).14 Both were created with the intention of preventing or controlling the deliberate discharge of oil and other pollutants by marine vessels. Amendments to these regimes have both widened the scope of the marine pollution regime (from oil to a range of other pollutants) and substantially improved compliance by shipping companies (and their home governments), following earlier failures in controlling ballast discharges. A shift away from discharge limits towards equipment standards (the installation of double hulls on ships, which keep dirty ballast water separate from a ship’s cargo of oil), beginning in the 1970s, is credited with a good deal of the improvement in compliance rates. Rather than having to figure out whether or not a ship has illegally discharged its ballast in coastal waters, regulatory agencies can instead, and far more easily, check whether ships are adhering to equipment standards. Ships violating MARPOL standards can be barred from entering ports. In a major study of how different regimes manage the task of reviewing performance in the contest of implementation, Victor et al. (1998) find that many regimes in fact contain active “systems for implementation review” (SIRs), operating through formal and formal channels. SIRs are “institutions through which the parties share information, compare activities, review performance, handle noncompliance, and adjust commitments” (Victor et al. 1998, p. 3). They include the basic decision-making processes of the regime – protocols and amendments, and conferences of the parties, rules for submitting reports and carrying out on-site inspections, the work of scientific and technical bodies associated with the regime, and, at a more informal level, work carried out by NGOs and similar actors on the ground. Regime SIRs are nearly always decentralized, and emerge more through practice than by design, but in several cases, they have greatly enhanced the adaptability and capacity of regimes. The ozone regime is a case in point (Greene 1998). Its SIR operates both 14

OILPOL: 1954 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil; MARPOL: 1973 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.

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through dedicated regime review processes (e.g. the formal reporting process) and through agencies and institutions that have taken on these functions over time, even though some, including the EU and various NGOs, are not directly part of the regime. Greene notes that the most important part of this process is that these disparate actors and processes began at a certain point to operate as a “system,” with an allocation of responsibilities and mechanisms for coordinating tasks and passing on information from one branch to another, greatly enhancing problemsolving effectiveness in this particular case. Other studies focus on how regimes themselves, or actors within those regimes, generate or shape new knowledge, and the processes through which that knowledge is generated and disseminated (Walsh 2004). Others emphasize the institutional constraints that can block new knowledge, or knowledge that differs from the regime’s dominant frame (Jasanoff 1998; Martello and Iles 2006). On a deeper level, these issues raise the question of whether or not, and how, international organizations, regimes, and their participant actors engage in processes of collective, or social, learning (Haas 1990; Haas and Haas 1995; Siebenhüner 2006). Oran Young distinguishes between two different types of learning in the context of international environmental regimes.15 On one level, learning is “fundamentally a matter of devising new means through which to pursue unchanging objectives,” as in, for example, the changes in the marine pollution regime cited above. On another level, “a more far-reaching form of social learning … occurs in cases where the operation of a regime leads to major changes in how the problem a regime addresses is understood, and as a result, ideas about how to cope with it” (Young 1999, p. 262). Examples of this sort of learning are more rare in international environmental politics. Young cites the example of LRTAP, which, at time of signing in 1979, reflected a far less sophisticated understanding of acid rain and its impacts. In part due to research and information gathering activities sponsored by the regime, understandings of the impacts of acid rain on ecosystems has grown, and in turn, this changed understanding has been reflected in changes in the scope of the regime, and commitments to it by its member states (Young 1999, pp. 262–3). 15

These types of learning correspond to “single” and “double-loop” learning. Adaptation, or “single-loop” learning, is a more routine form of problem-solving or error correction that doesn’t challenge existing beliefs about cause and effect. “Double-loop” learning incorporates changes in underlying understandings of the problem (Haas and Haas 1995, p. 262; Siebenhüner 2006, pp. 167–8). Further, it is also possible to identify a process that Siebenhüner calls “deutero-learning,” or the process of learning how to learn (and recognizing the need to learn). See also Haas 1990.


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Finally, Joanna Depledge identifies three important dimensions of learning within environmental treaty regimes (Depledge 2006, p. 2): the input and processing of new technological information, the evolution of concepts and ideas (some of which may be incorporated, others discarded), and the strengthening of relationships among participants. By the latter, she means that as governments continue to interact, they learn more about each other’s motives and concerns, developing a shared collective perspective, and new individual outlooks on the world. She contrasts learning with regime ossification: the failure to learn or evolve across all three of these dimensions, a condition she argues currently afflicts large parts of the climate change treaty regime. The ability to learn on the part of regimes (as organizations) and their participants (individuals, states, secretariats, and the like) is usually a positive indicator of effectiveness. Therefore, many studies focus on why some regimes or international organizations are better at learning or at fostering learning than others, or why learning processes are uneven across different parts of an international regime. The GEF (discussed above) is often cited as an example of an IGO that exhibits successful learning. On the other hand, the IPCC, despite being made up of scientists, has been slower to learn: some cite the over-politicization of the climate issue and the rigid limits imposed on the Panel by national governments as one reason for this (Haas and McCabe 2001, p. 340). Others cite the learning abilities – and openness to learn – of key individuals within the IPCC core groups as a key factor (both a constraint and an opportunity) in understanding the evolution of the IPCC (Siebenhüner 2006). Yet, as scholars working in STS and local knowledge traditions argue, learning per se is not always good, if it privileges particular sources of information or problem-framing over others or attempts to “impose known truths onto recalcitrant or dissident actors” (Jasanoff 1998, p. 86). In this perspective, successful regimes are those that “leave room for negotiation among competing views of the world – a negotiated and networked compliance, promoting a horizontal politics of the global environment” rather than those relying on “a compliance that is too firmly imposed and monitored from above” (ibid.). In part this is a call to integrate different voices, and knowledge-holders, into global environmental governance, and in part it is a call to recognize that processes of learning and regime evolution are open-ended, and that regime goals should not be fixed according to any one particular world-view or frame.16

16

See also Jasanoff and Martello 2004.

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Constructivist notions of effectiveness: Role redefinition and socialization effects of international regimes A final perspective on the impacts of international regimes focuses less on environmental outcomes, and more on questions of how the existence of such regimes can have deeper impacts on participants. Rather than taking state and other actor preferences, roles, and even identities as a given, newer generations of effectiveness scholars ask how these are themselves shaped by the process of engaging in global governance (e.g. VanDeveer 1997). In part because these changes are hard to identify and trace empirically, this perspective is still in its infancy (O’Neill et al. 2004). Nonetheless, it is possible to identify some important regime effects in these areas that again can feed back onto regime effectiveness. A first perspective opens the “black box” of the state, examining how domestic politics – and sub-state actors – interact with international regimes. Young and Levy discuss the process of internal realignment, whereby regimes “affect behavior by creating new constituencies or shifting the balance among factions or subgroups vying for influence within individual states or other actors” (Young and Levy 1999, p. 26). For example, domestic environmental groups are often empowered by the existence of international treaties, and evoke the norms and obligations of a treaty, to put pressure on their home governments – or even on other governments – to meet their obligations. In the USA, state governments, particularly those in the west and north-east of the country, have created their own policy programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in part because of the refusal of the US Administration to participate in the Kyoto Protocol (Selin and VanDeveer 2005). Erika Weinthal links regional cooperation over shared water resources in Central Asia in the 1990s to processes of political transition and state-building, as political elites looked for ways of stabilizing and strengthening political institutions in these former Soviet Republics, particularly as a condition for receiving foreign aid (Weinthal 2002). A second perspective on role redefinition focuses more explicitly on the changing roles of non-state actors within environmental treaty regimes. As we saw in Chapter 4 and throughout this chapter, non-state actors have been allocated or taken on increasingly significant roles at different stages of the diplomatic process. In terms of regime implementation, NGOs have been more formally incorporated into roles of monitoring compliance and receiving and channeling environmental aid. Generally, there seems to be a shared expectation on the part of all regime participants that these responsibilities should indeed be “farmed out” to other actors. This practice relieves states of some immediate burdens, though may expose


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them to more “third party” monitoring than they might have expected. Perhaps unexpectedly, the corporate sector has been less directly involved in processes of regime implementation, other than being seen as the ultimate “targets” of regulatory action. In turn, this increased exposure to the processes, strengths, and weaknesses of international environmental diplomacy has been a driving factor behind the emergence of “nonstate” environmental governance regimes, where non-state actors take on the governance roles traditionally accorded to states (see Chapter 7). Another approach to the transformative impacts of international cooperation examines how participation in regimes leads to the socialization of individual states. Scholars who study socialization processes in international relations theory are interested in how, as states and their leaders develop deeper links with international institutions and regimes, “these interactions help shape their perceptions of the world, and their role within it” (Cronin 2002, p. 138; Finnemore 1996). This process involves the internalization by states of international norms, both procedural (e.g. problems are best solved through cooperation rather than conflict) and substantive (e.g. sustainable development supplanting environmental protection, or the importance of free trade). Sometimes these are “new” norms, sometimes they are changes in existing norms. Further, while often socialization processes are talked about with respect to states new to the international systems (e.g. the former Soviet bloc), they can also apply to states that have long participated in the mainstream of international diplomacy. Studying these processes is complex: it involves identifying the content and origin of international norms, their paths of diffusion through the international system, and how they are internalized in national political systems (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Yet, in cases where this does or can happen, the implications are quite profound. If it can be shown that normative force (VanDeveer 1997) can change states’ interests or preferences, as well as their understanding of their role in the international system and their interactions with other actors in that system, such approaches challenge dominant perceptions in international relations theory of the relatively unchanging nature of the international system. It also means that the impacts of regimes – in this case, environmental treaty regimes – go well beyond immediate questions of compliance and problem-solving. Work in this area of constructivist international relations theory has examined socialization processes within the European Union (Checkel 2001; Cronin 2002), norms around human rights (Klotz 2002; Risse 2000) and other areas of international interaction. There is also a (perhaps surprisingly) small but growing body of literature in the field of IEP on

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global environmental norms at the systemic level (e.g. Bernstein 2000, 2002) and as they diffuse, and are internalized (or not), across and within individual states (e.g. Epstein 2006). Epstein’s study examines how global norms around protecting endangered species emerged and evolved in the international community, starting in the nineteenth century, and how a general norm in favor of such protection became the rule for political decision-making (and regime construction) worldwide, rather than the exception, thus prescribing “appropriate” behavior for states wanting to be considered “good global citizens.” She argues that the next step – towards a global norm protecting ecosystems rather than simply species – has been far more contested, perhaps because the species norm has become, particularly in northern countries, too entrenched. Global environmental challenges and processes of globalization may also be transforming the understandings and practices of territorial sovereignty, with implications for preferences for and engagement in international cooperation (VanDeveer 1997; Eckersley 2005). Certainly we see a shift in understandings of sovereignty – away from seeing it as a fixed property of states, and more towards a “bundle” of rights and responsibilities that may change over time. By participating in environmental regimes (and indeed other governance regimes), states often give up certain powers and autonomy, linking them further to a global society of states (and thus changing their interests and perceptions). Eckersley suggests that the traditional notion of states’ exclusive rights to territorial control are being modified in response to environmental pressures in the same way that traditional conceptions of property rights (exclusive rights to control and exploit resources) at the domestic level have been modified by environmental concerns (Eckersley 2005, p. 178). These perspectives – on the role of international regimes in role redefinition and socialization processes – sit somewhat uneasily with the dominant approaches to international environmental politics, namely the dominant neoliberal institutionalism perspective in international relations theory, and the problem-solving perspective of many in scholarly and policymaking communities. They do not generate easy policy recommendations, are hard to operationalize and measure, and certainly don’t take place within most political time frames. This goes some way to explain why these approaches have received relatively little attention in the field. Yet, they are important, as they bring a significant normative (ideational, or even ethical) dimension to the study of global environmental governance. They also point towards potentially fundamental transformations of the international system, transformations that may be compatible with environmental protection and sustainability.


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Next steps Identifying when and how international environmental regimes are effective raises some difficult – but interesting – questions about methodologies and definitions, and about how to design effective global environmental governance regimes. Over thirty years’ experience with some regimes, the international community has learned a lot about what makes regimes work, or fail to work. This process has both deepened our understanding of the workings of international cooperation over time, and generated numerous policy recommendations. Assessments of regime effectiveness have also generated different perspectives on making the existing state-led system of global environmental governance work better – from integrating existing treaty regimes, either to take advantage of linkages and overlap between them or bringing them together under a world environment organization, or, the more pessimistic perspective, scrapping them and starting over. Yet, this latter perspective ignores the political realities of the international system, and while results may not be ideal from an environmentalist viewpoint, the progress that has been made in terms of setting up international institutions, creating mechanisms that enhance transparency and accountability, and creating mechanisms that encourage reflection and learning within regimes has been impressive. More, our experience with international treaty regimes, and their strengths and weaknesses, has enabled the rise of alternative modes of global environmental governance. We return to broader questions of system reform in Chapter 8. Next, in Chapter 6, we turn to another critical site of global environmental governance, one that has only recently been recognized as critical to the global environment: the international economic order, and the institutions that govern international trade, finance, and development aid, more generally, economic globalization. Discussion questions

Discuss and give examples of the differences between “problem

solving” and “compliance” dimensions of effectiveness. What are some of the challenges involved in measuring each? What are the arguments for and against incorporating more punishment or enforcement mechanisms into international environmental regimes? What light does the distinction between “constructivist” and “political economy” perspectives on regime enforcement throw on this debate? Many countries fail to meet their international obligations because they lack the capacity to meet them. What does “capacity” mean in

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this context? What are some of the criticisms of capacity-building initiatives, both as they are practiced in global environmental governance, and more generally? suggestions for further reading Bernauer, Thomas. “The effect of international environmental institutions: How we might learn more.” International Organization 49.2 (1995), pp. 351–77: this article describes the conceptual and methodological challenges in measuring the effectiveness of environmental regimes. Clapp, Jennifer. “The illegal CFC trade: An unexpected wrinkle in the ozone protection regime.” International Environmental Affairs 9.4 (1997), pp. 259–73: an insight into an unintended consequence of the Montreal Protocol. Clémençon, Raymond. “What future for the global environment facility?” Journal of Environment and Development 15.1 (2006), pp. 50–74: an overview of the history, activities, and future prospects of the leading international finance institution for the global environment. Gupta, Aarti, and Robert Falkner. “The influence of the Cartagena protocol on biosafety: Comparing Mexico, China and South Africa.” Global Environmental Politics 6.4 (2006), pp. 23–5: this article examines how the Cartagena protocol has influenced domestic policies on genetically modified organisms across three countries, and the ways in which it has exerted this influence. Mitchell, Ronald B. Intentional Oil Pollution at Sea: Environmental Policy and Treaty Compliance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1994: an exploration of why regime design matters for effective compliance with environmental treaties. Sagar, Ambuj D. “Capacity development for the environment: A view for the South, a view for the North.” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 25 (2000), pp. 377–439: a comprehensive overview of work on capacity development for the environment that examines its ideological underpinnings, its effectiveness in practice, and recommendations for future capacity building efforts. Weiss, Edith Brown, and Harold K. Jacobson, eds. Engaging Countries: Strengthening Compliance with International Environmental Accords. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1998: a classic study of compliance that examines state behavior across five treaties and ten countries. Young, Oran R., ed. The Effectiveness of International Environmental Regimes: Causal Connections and Behavioral Mechanisms. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1999: as with Weiss and Jacobson, a qualitative comparative analysis of regime effectiveness that identifies causal pathways through which regimes may exert a range of influences, with a good range of empirical cases.

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The relationship between economic globalization and the environment has engendered much debate across the fields of economics, sociology, international relations, international law, and other social science disciplines allied with international environmental politics (e.g. Clapp and Dauvergne 2005). Is economic globalization, and the political structures that support it, intrinsically bad for the global environment? Is it, as some argue, a net positive for the environment, as the additional wealth generated by globalization is channeled into environmental protection and technological innovation? Or, is globalization compatible with a sustainable future as long as we build in institutions and processes that enable environmental – and social – protections? As Clapp and Dauvergne point out, there is no definitive answer to these questions. However, they continue to inform how scholars, activists, and policymakers address the ways in which the global economic order intersects with global environmental politics. In this chapter, we focus on the three main international economic governance institutions: the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sometimes known collectively as the Bretton Woods institutions, after the 1944 conference where they were founded. As the main international organizations governing trade, finance, and development assistance, they have been critical in defining the path of economic globalization in the decades since World War Two. More recently, however, they have become focal points for critics of the environmental and social impacts of globalization. We examine the origins and trajectory of the post-war global economic order, and how trade, aid, and global finance are seen both as causes of global environmental change, and – potentially – as part of a transition to a more sustainable global economy – in other words, how they have emerged as a new site of global environmental governance. Scholars give different weight to the role of the global economic order in international environmental politics. In Chapter 1, we discussed the difference between scholars of international environmental politics who 135

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approach the global environment from a collective action (international anarchy) perspective and those who argue, by contrast, that global environmental degradation needs to be seen in the context of global capitalism. For one group, the problem is one of issue linkage. The Bretton Woods institutions sit somewhat uneasily with global environmental governance norms and practices, and linkages between the global economy and the environment, and between global economic governance regimes and environmental regimes, are important and potentially conflict-laden. For either set of regimes to be effective, these linkages must be recognized and addressed. For the second group, the relationship between economic globalization and environmental change is central, and its omission in a great deal of the neoliberal institutionalist literature on IEP is a problem: Unless international relations theory sets out explicitly to tackle the set of questions which arise for the interaction between the economy and the ecosystem, it will instead merely find itself co-opting environmental analysis and accommodating ‘green’ issues within the prevailing conception of international relations (Williams 1996, p. 43).

The WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF are critical sites of global governance (Paterson 1999), where powerful states and corporate actors work to maintain and reproduce the norms and structures of global capitalism, with corresponding pressures on the global environment and social justice concerns. According to this perspective, rather than focusing on environmental treaty regimes, we need to pay more attention to harnessing international economic institutions to a more environmentally and socially responsible agenda, or on potentials for restructuring the global economy to one that is (perhaps) more localized and (certainly) recognizes environmental and societal sustainability. Thus, the visibility of, and political responses to, linkages between the politics of the global economy and the global environment have served to galvanize several new lines of inquiry into the relationship between international relations and the environment. This chapter begins by outlining the emergence of the global economic order and its basic trajectory since World War Two. We turn then to a discussion of three major global economic governance issues that are seen to have a major impact on environmental politics and change: trade liberalization, development funding, and debt, and how the WTO, World Bank, and IMF respectively have responded to environmental criticisms. The final section of this chapter addresses four cross-cutting themes which pull together research across this area, and which have wider relevance for international relations theory:


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The role the environment plays in changing ideologies of global economic growth and development;

The management of linkages and conflicts between the global economic and the global environmental governance orders;

The emergence and role of transnational activist networks in response to globalization;

Pressures on the Bretton Woods institutions to maintain their legitimacy and broaden participation in the wake of societal pressures and inter-state rivalry. The post-World War Two economic order and the Bretton Woods institutions In July 1944, 750 representatives from forty-five Allied nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to discuss the creation of a post-war economic order. At that point in time, Europe and Asia had been devastated by World War Two. Although the war was not to end for another year, Allied leaders had already begun plans for reconstruction, for easing the transition to independence of many colonized nations, and, over the long term, for providing a framework for stable, and peaceful, economic growth and development worldwide. The ideational underpinnings of the new economic order born at the Bretton Woods Conference were quite clear. Allied leaders were intent on avoiding the economic mistakes made in the years following World War One, which led to the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and contributed to the rise of totalitarian and extreme nationalist ideologies in Europe and Japan (Hobsbawm 1995; Wood 1986). They saw economic growth, an open global economy, a system of safeguards to protect against financial crisis, and open cooperation among nation states as essential to a more peaceful world. The delegates to the Bretton Woods conference were concerned with three main areas of the global economy: trade, economic reconstruction and development, and international financial stability. To that end, delegates agreed to establish the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which became the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IBRD’s role was to funnel money into postwar reconstruction, and, later, to the development of poorer or newly independent countries. The IMF was designed to aid countries with severe balance of payments problems, and underwrite the stability of the new international monetary system. In addition, Roosevelt pushed for an International Trade Organization, which would govern movement of goods and services around the globe. However, the US Senate never

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approved it. Instead, in 1947, twenty-three countries, meeting in Havana, Cuba, signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an agreement mooted at Bretton Woods, and designed to lower barriers to global trade in goods and services. Only in 1995 did a formal international trade organization, the World Trade Organization, come into being. Some general points about the evolution of this new global economic order are worth noting. In 1944 environmental concerns were simply not part of the political or economic agenda. With the exception of one article of the GATT, the environment is not mentioned in any of the founding documents of the World Bank, the GATT, or the IMF. This is not surprising: awareness of resource limitations and global environmental degradation did not emerge in a real, political sense at the global level until the late 1960s. Second, the period from the 1940s through to the 1970s marks an era of US leadership in underwriting and maintaining international cooperation, and international economic regimes, a period, many argue of US hegemony, when the USA was both willing and able to support the global economic order (Keohane 1984). In part, this US leadership was driven by the Cold War, when halting the spread of global communism and containing the Soviet Union were central among Western concerns. Many decisions about development aid, in particular, were made with the aim of keeping newly independent nations out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Third, the story told here, of a liberal global economic order set up to foster worldwide peace and prosperity, looks quite different from the neoliberal globalization that causes so much outrage today, even though the cast of characters remains the same. In fact, the Bretton Woods leaders – and their post-war successors – were quite aware that an open global economy, while carrying the promise of greater economic growth and international interconnectedness, also carried risks. Open economies are vulnerable economies. Whole economic sectors can be destroyed as domestic buyers shift to cheaper imports. In other cases, countries can become dependent on producing one or a few raw materials, which are then shipped overseas for sale or processing. In practice, the post-1945 settlements were more aware of economic vulnerability than of dependency. The GATT had built into it, for example, safeguards that allowed countries to protect certain industries, but little to protect against global price volatility. This era also marked the rise of welfare states in North America and western Europe: governments took on responsibility for their populations by providing pensions, unemployment insurance, and health care. John Ruggie refers to this bargain – an open global economy backed up by international and domestic safeguards


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to protect the vulnerable – as the “compromise of embedded liberalism” (Ruggie 1983). By the early 1990s, the terms of this bargain had changed (Stiglitz 2002). Many factors contributed to a rise of a far more free market type of global capitalism, one that stressed economic efficiency, small government (and small welfare states), property rights, and privatization of industry, especially the “big” sectors of transport, energy provision, and resource extraction that had often been government property. These principles, most commonly associated with the work of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, were taken up by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan, who came to office in 1979 and 1981 respectively, and other national leaders. They embarked on vigorous programs of privatization, increasing efficiency, and dismantling welfare states in their own countries – with positive results for economic growth, but negative impacts on many sectors of society, certainly increasing income inequality in the US and the UK. It did not take long for these ideas to permeate international financial and development organizations. Following the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, leading economic policy makers in the USA and at the IMF and World Bank contributed to formulating the so-called “Washington Consensus,” a set of guiding economic principles that has come to underpin contemporary neoliberal globalization, and described by some as “market fundamentalism” (Stiglitz 2002; Williamson 2000; Gore 2000). The Washington Consensus stresses the need for structural adjustment in the developing world in order to promote efficiency and economic growth (Liverman and Vilas 2006). Both the IMF and the World Bank began to promote a series of policy adjustments, including rapid privatization, market liberalization, open economies (to trade and foreign direct investment), the allocation of property rights, tax reform, and fiscal discipline, and the elimination of many government support programs and subsidies. Loan recipients – often turning to the IFIs as a last resort – had to agree to, and rapidly implement, these reforms as a condition for receiving aid. From Latin America to the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe to struggling governments in Africa, rapid adjustment and market reforms became a central feature of political life, trickling down to affect the lives of even the poorest and most marginal communities. As the ideas of neoliberal globalization spread, so criticism of the impacts of these reforms became more systematic and widespread, especially following the 1997 East Asian financial collapse (Stiglitz 2002; Wade 2003). Critics focused on how these reforms were undertaken (too rapidly, and with little account taken of different national contexts),

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their impacts on poverty, debt, and income inequality, and their impacts on key indicators of social and environmental quality. By the late 1990s, tens of thousands of protestors were showing up at meetings of international financial institutions, and many more individuals and groups – from Nobel Prize winners to rock stars – were voicing their concern about the social and environmental impacts of globalization, with the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF as key targets. And, perhaps surprisingly, these institutions began to listen – admittedly, in their own fashion, but definitely listening. In this process, environmental concerns have emerged as focal points in calls for global economic reform, aiding a push towards a “post-Washington Consensus,” whereby the tools of neoliberalism can be used to create a more sustainable (and equitable) global economy. What this actually means in practice, and even whether it can be achieved, is still unclear. Trade, the GATT/WTO, and the global environment The largest literature on the relationship between global economic governance and the environment addresses debates over links between global trade in goods and services and the environment. These debates began in the early 1990s, and continue to this day, engaging economists, political scientists, scholars of international law, and others. At first, the primary concern was the extent to which free, or liberalized, trade harmed environmental quality. The debate rapidly moved on to the question of whether or not the rules associated with the GATT/WTO regime could be used to undermine domestic environmental regulations. More recently, many have raised the possibility that the rules associated with environmental treaty regimes could themselves conflict with WTO rules, leading to the possibility of the global trade regime – usually considered more powerful than environmental regimes – overriding, and possibly striking down, hard-won gains in the arena of environmental diplomacy. From GATT to the WTO: The international trade regime The main agreement governing international trade is the GATT, subsumed by the WTO in 1995. The GATT coexists (sometimes uneasily) with a number of regional trading agreements, including the 1994 North American Free Trading Agreement (NAFTA), the European Union, and bilateral agreements. These more focused agreements often go beyond GATT rules in eliminating barriers to free trade; some also contain more advanced arrangements for handling environmental or labor-related


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impacts. In this section, we will focus primarily on the GATT/WTO regime.1 The GATT entered into force in 1948. It established a rules-based international trade regime, designed around principles of trade liberalization, non-discrimination, and reciprocity among member states, and transparency in trade rules and practices (Gilpin 2001, p. 219). Trade liberalization under GATT rules meant the gradual reduction and ultimate elimination of tariffs, duties imposed by an importing country on other countries’ goods. The theory behind trade liberalization is that import tariffs distort the global economy. Instead, countries should be allowed to specialize according to their comparative advantage, by producing the goods that best match their overall endowments of resources, capital, and labor. Then, they can trade those goods for other goods they need at little extra cost. Overall global welfare and efficiency will improve, trade volumes will expand – and all countries will benefit from economic growth. By institutionalizing the principle of reciprocity, the GATT required all signatory states to agree not to discriminate among other countries through trade controls or import decisions (Article I of the GATT). Any trade concessions negotiated with one member state must be applied to all other members. It also required states not to discriminate between goods produced domestically and the same goods produced by other countries (the “national treatment” rule). The GATT also built in a system of dispute adjudication, in the event of disagreements among member states over the application of national laws or GATT rules. In addition to these principles of trade liberalization and reciprocity, the GATT also had built into it certain safeguards, or circumstances where tariffs or other trade restrictions could be justified. Most important for subsequent conflicts over environmental protection, Article XX of the GATT contains “general exceptions,” which allow for trade discrimination or trade restrictions under a number of scenarios: to protect “public morals,” when goods are produced by prison labor or are “national treasures.” Most pertinently for the relationship between economic and environmental governance, two subsections of Article XX allow actions “necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health” (Article XXb) or actions “relating to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources if such measures are made effective in conjunction with restrictions on domestic production or consumption” (Article XXg), as long as they “are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary 1

On NAFTA and the environment, see Audley 1997, Gallagher 2004, and Deere and Esty 2002.

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or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade.” From 1948 to 1994, the GATT achieved some significant successes. In the 1950s and 1960s, global trade volumes grew an average of 8 percent per year, due at least in part to tariff reductions. By early 1995, GATT membership had grown to 124 nation states. But the GATT and its supporters also ran into a number of serious challenges. First, the GATT had little organizational capacity, run instead by a tiny secretariat based in Geneva. More, it had little autonomy in terms of decision-making. Instead, major trade policy decisions, concessions, and amendments had to be negotiated directly by member states in a lengthy, and cumbersome, series of negotiating rounds. An early problem, and one that deeply taxed its somewhat weak dispute settlement system, was that of non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs), which remained legal under GATT and limited the gains made by tariff reductions. A number of different practices count as NTBs. Import quotas or government subsidies are common forms of NTBs. Less obviously protectionist are national rules on labeling or packaging, or health and safety requirements (Dicken 1998, p. 93). These requirements may have real practical use in the home country, but can also function as a barrier to trade if a country’s trade partners cannot, or will not, comply. To that extent, some argue that governments can use a food labeling requirement, for example, to protect domestic producers of that good. NTBs soon became the subject of bitter disputes between member states. Further, the GATT was quite limited in scope. It had no authority to deal with agriculture, intellectual property rights, or foreign direct investment (Gilpin 2001, p. 218), yet all of these emerged during the GATT years as important issues on the international trade agenda. Thus, in the 1986–94 Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, GATT members, led by the USA, embarked on an ambitious series of reforms, aimed at increasing the scope and predictability of the global trading system. The most important result of the Uruguay Round was the creation of the World Trade Organization, which came into being on January 1, 1995. The WTO brought together a range of trade-related treaties under a single organizational roof (Krueger 1998). It incorporated the GATT, and expanded it to include agriculture, textiles, and clothing, and a number of new or recently concluded agreements, in total approximately 26,000 pages of agreement text. These new agreements include the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and agreements on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs), Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary


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Measures (SPS) (Dicken 1998, pp. 95–6). Members, and potential members, must implement the full package of WTO agreements into national law in order to join the organization. Despite the wider conditions, membership in the GATT/WTO grew to 151 by 2008. The WTO’s mandate is to administer the trade agreements that make up the WTO, to provide a forum for multilateral trade negotiations, to administer arrangements for dispute settlement among member states, and to review national trade policies, with the overall goal of maintaining predictable, rules-based governance of international trade. It differs from its predecessor regime in a number of important respects. First, the WTO’s scope is significantly greater than was the GATT’s, covering services, intellectual property rights, and other issues not included under the basic GATT framework. Its mandate also reflects an internalization of some principles of the Washington Consensus. Notably, the WTO committed itself to gradually phasing out agricultural subsidies, Article XIX safeguards, and other arrangements that had allowed protectionist policies by member states over the longer term. Second, the WTO is an actual organization, with the same legal and organizational standing as the World Bank and the IMF, and a permanent staff of roughly 700. While it retains the basic principle of consensual decision-making (backed up by a one member, one vote system) and the negotiating rounds that were the hallmark of the GATT, the WTO has greater powers of self-governance than did the GATT. The highest authority within the WTO is the Ministerial Conference. It is made up of trade ministers from each member country and meets at least every two years. On a day-to-day basis, countries are represented by national delegates, or ambassadors to the WTO, who are based in Geneva, making ongoing discussion and negotiation of trade issues far more practical than under the GATT. Another area that saw substantial reform in the shift from the GATT to the WTO that has proven particularly important for environmental concerns is the organization’s dispute settlement procedure. Under GATT, if a country wished to dispute another’s trade practices, it was able to lodge a complaint before a panel of experts (usually three to five experts in trade law, from different countries). The WTO maintained the basic panel system, but instituted several reforms. Perhaps most critically, it instituted automaticity, whereby the panel’s report must be adopted unless it is rejected by a consensus of the membership, and, to balance this, an Appellate Body to oversee the disputes procedure and hear appeals from parties that had been ruled against. Finally, in 1994, the WTO established a Committee on Trade and the Environment (CTE), whose mandate is to study the impacts of

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environmental policies on trade, and make relevant recommendations to the organization, though as more of a consulting forum than a regulatory body it is not a strong component of the trading order. The WTO came into being in January 1995. No similar international organization has comparable powers (on paper, at least), and the expansion of the WTO agenda to include issues like intellectual property rights appeared to many to represent a victory for the forces of global capital, and for the economic superpowers – notably the USA and the EU – who were certainly the most powerful voices within the organization. The WTO’s enforcement powers are far superior to those of, say, international environmental treaties, and it appears to be backed by more powerful, and often anti-environmental, interests. Yet, the WTO’s trajectory since 1995 has been far from smooth. First, southern countries have pushed for greater voice within the organization, and, in particular, for the WTO to confront developed countries over issues such as agricultural subsidies, which have acted as effective barriers to trade for their agricultural goods. Second, the combination of critiques over the WTO’s apparent disregard for social and environmental issues have led the organizers of the Doha Round of negotiations, launched in 1999, to focus more on using trade to achieve social and sustainable development – although so far not to great effect. Finally, its resources have been severely stretched, in part by a series of disputes between the USA and the EU, most critically over the EU’s refusal to accept imports of genetically modified organisms from the USA. Some argue that the WTO is facing a serious legitimacy crisis, which it will need to overcome if it is to maintain its identity, even its existence (Narlikar and Wilkinson 2004). How the WTO confronts issues of environmental change and sustainable development are key in these debates. We turn now to examine the ways in which the global trade agenda intersects with the global environment. Trade and the environment: The contours of the debate The trade-environment debate has its roots in studies, largely by economists, on the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality (Zaelke et al. 1993). As one of the main engines of post-World War Two economic growth, trade liberalization plays an important role in these studies. A second part of this debate examines the impact of trade liberalization more generally, and the rules of the GATT/WTO more specifically, on environmental regulation at the national level. More recently, debate has turned to whether or not the rules of environmental treaty regimes may, in fact, clash with GATT/WTO rules and, in the event of a dispute, which side would prevail.


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(a) Trade liberalization and environmental quality Economists have noted both positive and negative impacts of trade liberalization on environmental quality. One set of contrasting arguments concerns the impact of economic growth – the primary goal of trade liberalization – on environmental quality. On the negative side, of course, economic growth leads to more resource exploitation, and more pollution. On the other hand, some studies have noted the possibility of an ultimately positive relationship between GDP growth and environmental quality, or dispute the link between trade liberalization and environmental damage (Bhagwati 1993). For example, GDP growth may enable countries to enact and implement effective systems of environmental regulation. Related, as countries grow, they are able to afford more environmentally friendly technologies, or even to shift their economic base away from environmentally damaging production.2 Some claim that environmental problems arise from the global trading system not being liberal enough, pointing, for example, to agricultural subsides in developed countries, which lead to environmental damaging over-production (Esty 2000, p. 250). Other arguments isolate the impacts of higher volumes of trade on environmental quality. The actual transportation of goods often thousands of miles across the globe, by ship, plane, truck, and (to a lesser extent) rail, also has environmental effects, through additional pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions. One unanticipated side effect of greater trade volumes has been an exponential increase in the number of invasive species arriving in new ports, often with drastic impacts on local ecosystems (Tzankova 2006). Further, the liberalization of global trade has helped enable various forms of “toxic” trade, including the global trade in hazardous wastes and dangerous chemicals, partly through lower transportation costs and partly through the assumption that such trades were “goods” unless proven otherwise (Strohm 1993; O’Neill 2001). (b) Trade liberalization and environmental regulations Yet another set of arguments addresses the impact of trade liberalization and GATT/ WTO rules on national standards of environmental protection. These impacts can be direct (in the sense that the GATT/WTO has the power to directly overrule national environmental rules if they are deemed a non-tariff barrier to trade), and indirect (shaping the development and 2

These arguments are associated with the “environmental Kuznets curve,” which posits an inverse U-shaped relationship between GDP growth (x-axis) and pollution levels: as income grows, pollution levels rise, then level off and start falling at a certain point. This hypothesis has generated a good deal of empirical research, which has found that while this relationship works in certain cases – air pollution being one example – it does not always hold, or is quite weak. See Grossman and Krueger 1995; Harbaugh et al. 2001.

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implementation of national environmental regulation). Higher levels of environmental regulation typically raise the costs of production for the average firm, making their products less competitive than the same goods produced under lower standards abroad. This, some argue, can lead to a ratcheting down, or “race to the bottom,” as countries dismantle regulations to maintain even a narrow advantage, or to countries getting “stuck at the bottom” (Porter 1999), unable to implement environmental or other regulations. By contrast, others argue that under certain conditions – for example, when the market is dominated by region with high environmental standards – free trade can lead to higher environmental regulations, as firms in other areas decide to meet the standards of the largest market (Vogel 1995). Concerns that the GATT/WTO has the power to strike down national environmental regulations arise from several high-profile cases brought before GATT/WTO dispute settlement panels in the 1990s. In 1991, Mexico accused the USA of discrimination when the US banned imports of Mexican tuna, on the grounds that the Mexican tuna fishing industry did not take adequate measures to prevent dolphin by-catch when harvesting tuna. Dolphin-unsafe fishing practices had been banned in US waters under the Marine Mammals Protection Act 1972, following extensive lobbying by environmental groups. In ruling for Mexico, the GATT panel argued that the US had unfairly discriminated between like products – thus reinforcing the product–process distinction, namely that how goods are produced is irrelevant if the product is to all intents and purposes the same. Further, the panel concluded that the US had not exhausted “all possible options” to protect dolphin prior to banning Mexican tuna (a narrow interpretation of Article XX). The “Shrimp– Turtle” case, brought by several South-East Asian countries against the USA in 1996 (this time under WTO dispute settlement procedures), was sparked by a similar problem: the US had banned shrimp imports from these countries due to excessive turtle by-catch. Again, the disputes settlement panel ruled against the USA in 1997, on the grounds that it had not offered the same assistance to South-East Asian countries in implementing turtle-friendly shrimp harvesting practices as it had to countries in the Western hemisphere. These cases, along with several others, alarmed environmentalists and those concerned about the ability of the GATT/WTO to strike down domestic laws without considering environmental impacts.3 The implications of the product–process distinction were also potentially serious: if 3

Other trade-environment cases of note include one brought by Venezuela in 1995 against the USA over gasoline additives and by Canada against France in 1998 over an asbestos


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countries could not, except under the most narrow of circumstances, restrict imports of goods produced in environmentally damaging ways, then one major weapon to change environmental (and other behaviors) in other countries would be gone. However, the ultimate outcomes of both the Tuna–Dolphin and the Shrimp–Turtle cases are more complex. First, the Tuna–Dolphin decision was never enforced, because Mexico did not press for its adoption, as was required under the GATT. It also played a key role in prompting companies to adopt voluntary labeling practices – in this case, the well-known “dolphin-safe” label, enabling consumers to decide what they wanted to buy, without governments – the target of GATT/WTO rules – entering into the equation (Murphy 2006). Second, the Appellate Body ruling on Shrimp–Turtle effectively overturned the initial decision, provided the US made a “good faith effort” to work towards multilateral measures to protect sea turtles (O’Neill and Burns 2005, p. 326; DeSombre and Barkin 2002). Not only did the WTO in this case effectively recognize that how something is produced matters, it also acknowledged that it has a role in protecting the environment – and, in the course of the appeal, accepted for the first time an amicus curiae (“Friend of the Court”) brief submitted, in this case, by the World Wildlife Fund.4 (c) The WTO and multilateral environmental agreements Trade restrictions have played a critical role in environmental diplomacy. At least two agreements – the Basel Convention and CITES – are almost wholly based on trade restrictions. Many other agreements, including the Montreal Protocol, the Kyoto Protocol, the Cartagena Protocol of the CBD, and others contain trade-restrictive measures. The possibility that these restrictions might conflict with WTO rules has given rise to a good deal of concern in policy-making and academic circles (O’Neill and Burns 2005; Conca 2000). Most immediately, countries negatively affected by any of these measures might bring a complaint to the WTO, and may well win, especially given the GATT/WTO’s track record and general perceptions that it is much more powerful than environmental counterparts, with the support of significant states and private sector actors. Over the longer term, the threat of trade disputes might lead to a “chilling effect” on ongoing and new environmental negotiations (Conca 2000; Eckersley 2004).

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embargo. In 2005, the EU initiated proceedings against Brazil’s ban of retreaded tires. See Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, pp. 138–40, and the WTO’s disputes settlements page, at www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_e.htm. An amicus curiae brief is an informational document submitted to a court case by a third party, sometimes an advocacy organization, not directly connected to the case.

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Trade measures have traditionally been successful means of enforcing environmental agreements, and their loss would undermine the overall effectiveness of international environmental cooperation. As of early 2008, no such challenge to an environmental agreement had been issued. However, analysts agree that several agreements are vulnerable, including CITES, the Basel Convention, the Cartagena Protocol of the CBD, and even the Kyoto Protocol. The Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention, for example, bans all imports of hazardous wastes – for both disposal and recycling – by non-OECD countries and non-members of the Convention, and is strongly opposed by several governments and the international recycling industry. The Amendment relies on what is currently a “closed list” of importing countries. There are no criteria established by which a country could join this list. A WTO panel could quite easily interpret this as an unfair trade restriction. If such a challenge were brought, it is not clear what the outcome would be. In very basic terms, the WTO has a far greater legal and enforcement capacity than most, if not all, MEAs. Its dispute settlement process is also geared more towards trade law than environmental law, making the WTO an attractive venue for bringing such a dispute. On the other hand, several practical and legal obstacles militate against such a challenge succeeding. From a legal perspective, it is unclear what the WTO’s jurisdiction over other multilateral treaties would be. In Tuna–Dolphin and Shrimp–Turtle, it ruled specifically against unilateral measures by the USA, while a decision about an MEA would affect an agreement with at least as many members as the WTO. International law also contains measures and procedures for dealing with inter-treaty conflicts, notably provisions of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which also guides WTO disputes settlement procedures (Hudec 1999). MEA supporters could in some cases invoke the principle of lex posterior, which states that the later treaty supplants an earlier one unless specified, or that of lex specialis, which states that the treaties more specific to the subject matter at hand should prevail (Sinclair 1984). Being international law, both principles are open to interpretation and application, but the chances are that the combination of these principles of the Vienna Convention in addition to the multilateral nature of environmental treaty regimes could provide adequate legal protection. Nonetheless, such a conflict could prove damaging to both MEAs and the WTO. Both UNEP and WTO officials have expressed a desire to avoid or mitigate lengthy, and costly, disputes, and have set up several formal and ad hoc procedures to do this. Trade-environment issues were prominent at both the Doha Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in 2001 and at the WSSD in Johannesburg in 2002, with participants


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declaring the need to find ways to make trade liberalization and sustainable development more compatible (O’Neill and Burns 2005). Some advocate bringing MEAs together under a World Environment Organization that could counterbalance the WTO (see Chapter 8). MEAs have moved, for their part, towards adopting more WTO-friendly market mechanisms (incentives rather than rules), in part to avoid conflicting with the trade regime. (d)

Environmental impacts of broadening the WTO: TRIPS, SPS, and other agreements A final, and relatively recent, strand in the debate over the WTO and the global environment examines the environmental impacts of the broad set of agreements that constitute the WTO, over and above the liberalization and growth of global trade in goods. The WTO “family” of treaties includes agreements over trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS), sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS), and trade in services (GATS). All of these agreements present concerns and opportunities for environmentalists, and many of the concerns have crystallized in global debates over patent issues, biotechnology, and trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs), over the use of the precautionary principle in international law, and over the privatization of historically commonly held resources. One of the main motives for setting up an international framework for the adoption and protection of intellectual property rights under the WTO was to end (or attempt to end) “piracy” of patented products – from medicine to computer software – in countries where domestic legal frameworks are inadequate to prevent such infringements. The TRIPS Agreement requires signatory states to adopt a model of patent development and enforcement, whereby rights to develop and market a product are restricted for a number of years to a single individual or corporation. A side effect of this set of rules is that patent rights are open to anyone able to claim them, generating two related concerns. First, this system trumps other sorts of property rights systems, e.g. communal or customary property rights, in force in many parts of the world for centuries. Second, it grants a huge advantage to large corporations, often based in the North, with the financial and legal resources to file a patent application. To that end, the TRIPS agreement is seen as part of the broader neoliberal agenda of privatization and commodification of nature and natural resources, a move that has generated much resistance from local and transnational civil society organizations (Shiva 1997). Many of these conflicts have played out in negotiations over the Convention on Biological Diversity. For example, resistance to large multinational corporations – particularly pharmaceutical firms – patenting

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plants or wildlife in remote parts of the world without compensating the local community has generated new and careful (but not always successful) approaches to bioprospecting and benefit sharing on the part of the Western scientific community (Scholz 2004). The Convention on Biological Diversity emphasizes the role of local and indigenous communities as agents of biodiversity protection, with specialized knowledge about protecting biodiversity resources, and sovereign rights to protect national biodiversity and control access to genetic resources. As some see it, this sets the CBD up in potential opposition to the harmonization of intellectual property rights urged by the TRIPS agreement (Flitner 1998). The issue of biotechnology and trade in GMOs has cropped up across a number of international regimes, including the CBD, and the WTO, specifically its SPS Agreement, which addresses differences in national public health standards with respect to imported produce and meats (Kastner and Powell 2002). Concerns that GMOs might have long-term impacts on ecosystems and human health that have not yet been adequately explored or quantified have led many consumers, civil society groups, and even governments to call for moratoriums on their use, including imports of GM seeds and agricultural produce. These arguments are often based on the precautionary principle, which argues for cautionary policy in the face of scientific uncertainties. While the precautionary principle has been integrated into environmental agreements, it is the subject of some dispute in trade law. The SPS agreement allows countries to maintain different health and food safety standards as long as they are justified by scientific risk assessment and data (Winickoff et al. 2005). In the eyes of GMO supporters, the precautionary principle does not meet that standard. Thus, in 2003, the USA and Canada, both lead exporters of GM products, launched a high-profile dispute against the EU following its moratorium on all GMOs, and extensive consumer boycotts. As this case made its way through the decision and appeals process, arguments focused on how, and what sort of, scientific risk assessments were necessary to justify restrictions on GMO imports – thrusting the WTO into one of the major scientific/environmental controversies of the twenty-first century. Ultimate rulings are likely to affect biotechnology politics in other international arenas, such as the CBD, and debates over scientific evidence and uncertainty in other issue areas, such as climate change. The agreements associated with the WTO have also opened up opportunities for environmental protection that did not exist under the original GATT framework. Under the GATS agreement, which addresses trade in services, the international community has the opportunity to “hyperliberalize” trade in environmental goods and services, enabling faster


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and cheaper transfer of environmentally friendly technologies across national borders (Esty 2000; Carpentier et al. 2005). While “environmental goods and services” is a category yet to be fully defined under international law, it could include waste disposal facilities and services, solar panels and other renewable energy components, air pollution control technology, and other products and services designed to reduce pollution and conserve resources (Carpentier et al. 2005, pp. 228–9). Eliminating barriers to this trade could be a win-win-win situation for the corporate sector, consumers, and the environment, but is not without potential political pitfalls. In particular, the WTO would have to resolve its stance on process and production methods (PPMs, i.e. allowing discrimination on how a product is made, not only what it is), an issue that came up in the Tuna–Dolphin and Shrimp–Turtle cases, and reach a mutually agreed upon list of what exactly counts as environmental goods and services under trade rules. The debate over the impacts of trade, and the GATT/WTO on the global environment, remains very much that: a debate to which there are no firm answers, but plenty of evidence to demonstrate that the real world picture is complicated, and that these linkages (positive and negative) are being taken seriously by international policymakers. As Daniel Esty argues, trade–environment linkages are now recognized as a fact, and the WTO needs to address them clearly – both for reasons of economic efficiency (addressing externalities) and political legitimacy (Esty 2000). Whether one agrees that “the WTO has proven to be profoundly anti-environmental, both procedurally and substantively, handing down environmentally damaging decisions whenever it has had the chance to do so” (Conca 2000, p. 484) or that “the WTO’s rules on environmental exceptions, clearly articulated throughout the past decade, should be seen not as favoring trade over the environment, but as a check on bad or incompetent legislation” (DeSombre and Barkin 2002, p. 18), the connections are irrefutable. In recent years, the WTO has faced some unexpected challenges, from huge street protests at its meetings to deep splits between its two most powerful members, the USA and the EU, to deep opposition from G77 members to continued agricultural subsidies in northern member states. Some even argue that the WTO is facing a crisis of legitimacy (Narlikar and Wilkinson 2004; Wolfe 2004). To that end, it has started to embrace the concept of sustainable development as part of its mandate, as evidenced in the 2001 declaration that kicked off the Doha Round of negotiations.5 Whether these steps represent a sort of greenwashing, global 5

The full text of the Doha Declaration can be found at www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/ minist_e/min01_e/mindecl_e.htm.

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elites capturing a key concept for their own benefit, or a real step towards using trade measures as a way of improving the global environment remains to be seen, as does whether or not the WTO will be able to win over alienated constituencies, including member governments and non-state actors. Global development, finance, and the environment: The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund The participants at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference recognized that post-war recovery, stability, and development would depend on global flows of development aid and loans, and that these large capital transfers would require careful coordination and governance. This section examines how the World Bank and the IMF operate, the debate over the environmental (and social) impacts of their activities, and the extent to which each has responded to criticisms. The World Bank is best known for funding government-led development projects in developing and emerging economies, and the IMF for structural adjustment lending, again to governments. Of the two, the World Bank has been more of a focal point for critics and opponents. It has also been more responsive to criticism from environmentalist constituencies. Yet many still wonder if either organization has fully taken on board the implications of the full range of their activities for environmental protection and sustainability worldwide. The World Bank, the IMF, and post-war development Both the World Bank and the IMF are funded and directed by, and lend almost wholly to, national governments. Both are membership organizations, operating under weighted voting systems (compared with the “one member, one vote” operating principles of the WTO and the UN), and funded by a combination of member contributions and financing on international capital markets. Voting rights in the World Bank governing council are allocated according to financial contribution to the Bank. Thus, the USA, Japan, and the EU control over half the vote in the World Bank, with the USA alone holding between sixteen and seventeen percent of the total votes.6 Voting power in the IMF is allocated according to countries’ relative GDP (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, Table 3.1).

6

See the World Bank’s website, www.worldbank.org.


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The Bank and the IMF are not the only sources of international development aid and lending (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, pp. 190–6). Most developed countries have bilateral aid agencies and programs in place, although almost all fall below the 0.7 percent of GDP level established as a baseline for developed countries’ giving levels established by the UN in 1970. Governments can also borrow money from private financial institutions and from other governments. However, the Bank and the IMF are often the main port of call for large-scale loans or financing, and for refinancing once countries are in financial crisis. Their decisions often influence directions taken by other global financial institutions, and they are an authoritative source of information on the state of the world’s economy.7 The World Bank’s chief mandate is global poverty alleviation. Along with other regional development banks in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, it makes loans and channels aid and development assistance from developed to less developed countries. Its two largest agencies lend or grant money to governments. The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) issues loans at the market rate, and funds itself through investing in international financial markets. It accounts for roughly eighty percent of World Bank lending. The International Development Association issues loans at zero or low interest, and is funded by donations from member countries. A third arm of the Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), engages in private sector lending. The World Bank is best known for funding large-scale development projects. It has, historically, funded large dams, roads, power plants, large-scale agriculture, and other sorts of projects aimed at national infrastructure development. In recent years, it has shifted its project portfolio more towards environmental aid (partly through the Global Environment Facility) and smaller-scale development projects, such as micro-lending initiatives. The IMF was created to supervise the international monetary system and engage in short to medium term lending to countries experiencing temporary balance of payments problems arising from the fixed exchange rate system set up after the war. When the international monetary order switched from fixed to floating exchange rates in 1973, this part of the IMF’s mandate was undercut. The Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, when several countries threatened to default on loans issued by private lenders, with a potentially devastating knock-on effect on private lending institutions in developed countries (Gilpin 2001, pp. 313–16), led 7

See www.worldbank.org. The World Bank’s World Development Indicators, published annually, is an authoritative source of data on development.

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to a new role for the IMF as the main proponent of structural adjustment lending programs, as outlined above, to forestall future economic crises. Increasingly, the IMF and World Bank have coordinated their activities, with the Bank taking on a wider role in structural adjustment lending. Although they are far from the only agencies engaged in development assistance, the World Bank and the IMF have always been at the forefront of development debates (Stiglitz 2002). In the following sections, we focus on two types of development assistance that have been highlighted in debates about the relationship between global finance, development, and the environment: the funding of large-scale development projects, such as big dams, and debt relief in the form of structural adjustment lending, practiced by both the IMF and the Bank. Project lending and the World Bank Large-scale infrastructure and development projects, proposed by governments and frequently funded by the World Bank, emerged in the 1980s as a flashpoint for debate around development goals and trajectories. From Egypt’s huge Aswan Dam project, begun in the 1950s, onwards, projects such as large dams (providing hydroelectric power and irrigation), modern highways, coal and nuclear power plants, and the introduction or expansion of industrialized agriculture were designed to meet goals of rapid development and to enhance the strength and prestige of governments and their leaders. Yet the environmental and social impacts of these massive projects – from relocating affected communities (more often than not marginalized or indigenous peoples) to the destruction of valuable ecosystems to the waste of many resources for a far smaller gain than anticipated – were frequently devastating. International attention has focused specifically on large dam projects around the world, as they have been among the most visible of these projects. Starting in 1949, the Bank’s first loans to fifteen developing countries were to fund the construction of large dams, and the funding of dams remains a large part of the Bank’s portfolio (Khagram 2004, p. 190; see also McCully 2001). In the 1980s, emerging transnational activist coalitions began specifically targeting the World Bank. A series of such projects – notably the Polonoroeste resettlement project in Brazil, begun in 1981 and which included the construction of a major highway through the Amazon rainforest, the Narmada Dam project in India, first authorized in 1978, and the Arun III Dam Project in Nepal – came under particular scrutiny (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 199; Fox and Brown 1998). Two factors made World Bank-funded projects attractive targets for opposition. First, activists could point to visible and persuasive evidence of social and


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environmental harm, particularly the impacts on relocated communities, often forcibly moved to substandard (even non-existent) housing in lands that barely suited their skills. Second, the political structure of the Bank made it an especially vulnerable target. Because of the preponderance of power held by the USA and other OECD countries in World Bank decision-making processes, activist groups were able to lobby elected representatives in these countries to get them to withhold funding to the Bank until it became more accountable to these constituencies. Often, northern activist groups were able to work on behalf of, or in coalition with, partners in the affected areas (Fox and Brown 1998). In 1985, the World Bank pulled out of the Polonoroeste project, and in 1987, it established an environment department. In 1991 it set up an independent panel – the Morse Commission – to investigate the Narmada Dam project. The 1992 report of the Commission was highly critical of both the project itself, and the World Bank’s efforts to ensure environmental and social protections. The Bank withdrew from the project, and in 1993 it established an Inspections Panel, an independent appeals process that allows citizens adversely affected by Bank projects to file claims regarding Bank policies. All projects the Bank now funds are required to submit to an environmental impact assessment, and the Bank has increased its portfolio of “good” projects, namely those related to environmental protection, small-scale projects, and greener production or energy generation. Further, since 1991, the Bank has administered the finances of the Global Environment Facility and the Montreal Protocol Fund (see Chapter 5). In 1998, the Bank launched the World Commission on Dams (WCD), a panel of twelve commissioners drawn from government, academia, NGOs, and industry. It included the leader of the Narmada Dam campaign, Medha Patkar. In some ways, the WCD reflected a different approach to global governance, based on the Eminent Persons Commission model of inquiry used by many governments, an approach that incorporated the concerns of non-state actors as well as governments. Its report, released in 2000, was highly critical of procedures of dam construction, and the extent to which the full range of potential impacts had been assessed in the course of existing projects.8 The WCD’s findings have influenced the decisions and actions of many agencies engaged in funding dam projects worldwide, including the Bank, although many activists have argued that its findings have not yet been fully implemented (Dubash et al. 2001). Yet it has generated a lot of interest as a potentially new hybrid (or multi-stakeholder)

8

For the full text of the report, and other information on the WCD, see www.dams.org.

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approach to global governance (Conca 2002, 2006; Brinkerhoff 2002; Khagram 2004; Ottaway 2001; Dingwerth 2005). Despite implementing a number of significant reforms in a short period, it has not all been plain sailing for the World Bank. As a large international institution with many shareholders, interested observers, and a variety of mandates, the Bank has been subject to different preferences and incentive structures at different phases of its policy process – from defining objectives to implementing specific projects and policies on the ground – making it hard to translate environmental goals into outcomes (Gutner 2002). The Bank has struggled to “mainstream” environmental concerns into all of its activities: several critical sectors of Bank activity, including structural adjustment lending and drawing up country assistance strategies, have yet to incorporate environmental concerns (Hunter 2001). Some argue that the Bank has not done a good job of integrating NGOs into its policymaking process, others that it has effectively co-opted activist groups (Sheehan 2000). Others have pointed out that the overall portfolio of bank projects remains biased towards large-scale and environmentally damaging projects (especially energy projects with large greenhouse gas emissions), and that environmental lending remains a tiny fraction of overall lending (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 202). Further, while the Bank has been praised for pulling out of, or refusing to fund, some big, environmentally damaging projects, such as China’s Three Gorges Dam, the loss of Bank funding does not always mean that governments cancel the projects. Instead, they often turn to bilateral or private sector alternatives, from export credit agencies to venture capital funds. Export credit agencies from Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland have all funded the Three Gorges Dam (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 214). These sources of funding are considerably less transparent and accountable than the World Bank, and offer far fewer opportunities for international review. In turn, China’s funding of development projects in Africa in return for access to oil and other resources (and African countries’ acceptance of this aid, with fewer strings attached) has worried the international community (Traub 2006). Finally, a provocative study by Michael Goldman (Goldman 2005) posits that the “greening” of the World Bank has led to the development and implementation of a new ideology of development, a sort of “green neoliberalism.” In responding to critics and setting up organizational and policy structures to cope with environmental and societal demands, the Bank, relying on its vast financial resources and on a transnational network of experts and government employees, has reshaped the terrain of sustainable development. By, for example, demanding the “marketization”


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of natural resources – including electricity generation and water supplies – and by training or employing its own “cadre” of experts, who control the generation, credibility, and use of knowledge related to environmental policies and impacts, the Bank has reshaped the architecture, substance, and trajectory of the environment/development policies of many of its recipient states. Goldman argues that this represents the work of a tiny global capitalist elite, and is leading to policies and practices vastly divergent from the preferences and daily life of the communities they are supposed to serve. Debt, structural adjustment lending, and the environment One of the areas of global economic governance that has received much attention in recent years is that of debt – and the social and environmental impacts of particular lending programs, notably of the structural adjustment lending programs implemented by the IMF and, more recently, the World Bank, developed in part to get countries out of serious fiscal crises. Unlike the Bank, the IMF’s connections to environmental degradation are seen as less direct: almost “side effects” of its lending programs. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) require governments to implement a series of reforms designed to liberalize and open their economies, and eliminate many government support programs and subsidies; we discuss the environmental impacts below (see also the discussion of the Washington Consensus earlier in this chapter). In its own policies and publications, the IMF has maintained general support of environmental objectives, especially when directly affected by macroeconomic policies, but has not gone much further (Gandhi 1998). It has, for example, not developed any in-house environmental unit in the way the World Bank has. However, as part of broader critiques of neoliberal development and structural adjustment lending, and in specific issue areas, such as debates over water privatization or deforestation, its impacts have more recently come under more scrutiny. The amount of external debt held by developing countries has increased exponentially in recent decades. A country’s external debt includes money owed to governments, to the World Bank and the IMF, and to private financial institutions. Loan amounts are compounded by the interest payable on that debt, known as debt servicing payments. In the immediate post-war years, it was expected that the World Bank and other international organizations would coordinate and control most lending to developing countries. However, this turned out not to be the case (UNDESA 2005). Bilateral lending programs proliferated rapidly over the 1960s, often with little coordination or control, and, from the early 1970s onwards,

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private capital flows overtook government loans, with little attention paid to overall debt totals or interest rates. While the debt crises of the 1970s and 1980s led to increased attention by leading governments and multilateral institutions to the external debt challenge, by the 1990s, the ratio of private and official debt to national income in low and middle income countries had risen sharply. For the poorest countries, their debt peaked at 200 percent of their national income in the mid 1990s (UNDESA 2005, Figure 12.1), and the most indebted countries were, on average, only paying forty percent of their debt service obligations annually. In order to meet these obligations, many countries have been obliged to channel other sorts of financial assistance into debt service payments, drastically reducing the amount of money available for development goals. Further, large external debt encourages deforestation, mining, and other economic activities designed to raise hard currency through export. Yet for some, the cure – multilateral lending programs from the IMF and the World Bank – has been worse than the disease (Ambrose 2001). Following the Latin American debt crises of the early 1980s, both the IMF and the Bank agreed to step in and take over large amounts of nationally held private debt, in return for recipient countries signing on to strict SAPs. Structural adjustment models have subsequently been applied, to varying degrees, to the emerging economies of central and eastern Europe and, more recently, to the Highly Indebted Poorer Countries (HIPCs) in exchange for debt relief. Most agree that large amounts of external debt are likely to have an adverse impact on sustainability and environmental protection programs at national and local levels. There is far less agreement over the impact of neoliberal reforms through SAPs (and neoliberalism in general) on the environment, and the debate is bitter (Liverman and Vilas 2006; Clapp and Dauvergne 2005). On the one hand, some argue that the impacts of marketizing (or privatizing, and therefore pricing) natural resources, such as water, forests, and land, are likely to be positive for the environment, in that they lead to more efficient use of those resources, or help reform and restructure agricultural and land management and practices (Hecht et al. 2006). Likewise, foreign direct investment might improve environmental quality, if developed country multinational corporations import better technology and hold more closely to the standards of their home countries. On the other hand, by reducing accountability and oversight programs, and creating incentives for rapid resource exploitation and industrialization, particularly for export, many argue that these reforms are just as likely to lead to severe environmental damage (Friends of the Earth 1999). For example, one study of Bank/IMF-led restructuring of the energy sector in Bolivia finds that the facilitation of the entry of


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multinational corporations, such as Enron and Shell, into the national market had a detrimental effect on local environments and communities, impacts that the Bank and the IMF failed to take into account (Hindery 2004). Large-scale cross-national/cross-sector empirical studies are, unfortunately, scarce on the ground. A recent survey of the process of neoliberal reforms across Latin America in water, forestry, fisheries, and agriculture demonstrates that the actual impact is varied and quite complex – but that more studies are needed (Liverman and Vilas 2006).9 On the other hand, the design and impact of SAPs has catalyzed a strong alliance between environment and human rights (or social justice) groups and local communities whose livelihoods have been particularly affected by these changes. For example, IMF-driven water privatization programs have generated fierce opposition at the local level (including the “water wars” of Cochabama, Bolivia) and a nascent transnational activist network (Conca 2006). Still, the combined social and environmental impacts (real and perceived) have galvanized enough political opposition to these actions that both the IMF and the World Bank have begun to rethink debt-amelioration strategies. In recent years, both the Bank and the IMF have shifted away from models of debt sustainability towards models of debt forgiveness, especially for the most indebted countries. In 2006, the Bank announced a Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, which would cancel all debt owed by the Highly Indebted Poorer Countries (HIPCs) to the IDA, and would institute debt sustainability initiatives for low-income countries. While it is too early to assess the effectiveness of these programs, it does demonstrate that the Bank is looking to shift from focusing on individual projects to the bigger picture of long-term sustainability. Global economic governance and the environment: Theoretical frames In this chapter, we have seen how discussions about global environmental change and governance increasingly have to take into account the workings of the global economic order. It is impossible to avoid the extent to which trade liberalization, development finance and debt, and the ways they have been managed by the Bretton Woods institutions have considerable environmental impacts. We have also seen how the extent and

9

Other overviews show similar results, in particular, that data establishing, say, the links between deforestation and debt, is hard to find, and that real-world causes of these problems are complex (e.g. Angelsen and Kaimowitz 1999).

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nature of these impacts remain objects of debate among polarized political communities. At the same time, and through the same set of debates, environmental questions have firmly inserted themselves into the broad field of international political economy (IPE), which has traditionally confined itself to the “big” issues of trade, finance and development, and international power politics, rather than the “softer” issues of environmental protection and social justice. Nonetheless, each of these has emerged as a central focal point of conflict over the nature and trajectory of economic globalization, both currently and into the future, and each illuminates some of the central problems with global economic governance to date. For scholars of IEP and IPE (and, indeed, more broadly, of development studies, social movement theory, and international law and economics), a number of pertinent cross-cutting themes emerge from this chapter. The environment and the politics of economic globalization First, what role does the environment play in understanding the “bigger picture” trajectories and impacts of economic globalization and development? In 1945, environmental concerns were barely on the radar screen of the post-war economic order. By the 1990s, they were impossible to ignore, to a large part due to the rise of global environmental governance, and the emergence of transnational expert and activist communities with an interest in environmental protection. On the one hand, environmental problems were recognized as significant market failures associated with global free markets, notably with liberalizing trade. On the other, discourses of sustainable development became central to critiques of models of external development aid and lending based purely on facilitating economic growth. The WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF have all sought to integrate some notion of sustainable development into their agendas, meeting with a variety of responses. Some are optimistic, arguing that reforming global economic governance and harnessing global liberalization to the task of environmental protection is the most efficient way to address global environmental problems over the longer term. Other, more pessimistic responses dismiss these changes as window dressing, serving only to perpetuate the interests of global capital. Others argue, perhaps more fundamentally, that we are witnessing a normative shift though integrating governance of the global economy and the environment. Goldman identifies this shift as “green neoliberalism” (Goldman 2005), whereby global political and economic elites are able to control the generation of knowledge and provision of financial


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aid and policy mechanisms for environmental protection. To some extent, this is a co-optation model: international institutions are able, essentially, to set the agenda for, and control the allocation of resources (both financial and knowledge-based) to, state and civil society actors at national and local levels. Bernstein (2002) also identifies a normative shift at the global level towards some notion of sustainable development, or “compromise of liberal environmentalism.” Again, this represents more than a problemsolving approach – improving the environment without sacrificing the economy – or mere rhetoric. Rather, he argues that global institutions – the WTO, the Bank, and the UN – have internalized a series of ideas that integrate environmental protection and a liberal economic order, and that have altered the course of both economic and environmental governance at the global level. In scope, this notion matches Ruggie’s concept of the compromise of embedded liberalism (Ruggie 1983; see above). If so, then the environment’s role in the evolution of the global economic order is quite central. Further, it implies that global environmental governance’s center of gravity has shifted – to encompass not only the UN’s agencies, but also the Bretton Woods institutions. Managing conflict between environmental and economic regimes A second, more focused set of theoretical issues specifically addresses the ability of environmental treaty regimes to manage linkages and potential conflicts with economic regimes, and for the main economic and environmental IGOs to work together to resolve conflicts or to exploit synergies. These linkages and conflicts have been most clear-cut in debates over trade and the environment, but have also emerged in discussions over global environmental financing and the functioning of the Global Environment Facility. Governments have been able to use the disputes settlement procedure of the WTO and its predecessor, the GATT, to contest environmental regulations of other states as barriers to trade. There is also significant concern that global trade rules could be used to challenge key provisions of environmental treaties – from the Basel Ban on hazardous waste trading to energy taxes used to forestall climate change. Further, given the proliferation of overlapping international regimes – which some refer to as “regime density” (Raustiala and Victor 2004), there is some concern about “venue shopping” when it comes to solving conflicts – that governments are likely to choose the international disputes resolution process most likely to rule in their favor. One of the findings in this area to date is that assumptions that the WTO is “stronger” (particularly in a legal sense) than the collectivity of environmental agreements may be wrong. However, this finding is yet to be fully tested – either

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theoretically or in front of a disputes resolution panel, and, as we saw, some fear the “chilling” of global protective measures for the environment simply for fear of a legal challenge in front of the WTO. That the literature on linkages between global economic and environmental governance is growing rapidly in many ways reflects the maturity of both global governance institutions themselves and our understanding of global governance as an enduring – and complex – phenomenon. Work is proceeding on how international organizations can manage interdependence – from strengthening and integrating global environmental regimes to creating more effective “boundary” institutions to enable coordination, and ease potential conflicts (Jinnah 2008). Transnational movements and contentious politics: Linking the environment and social justice Third, in recent years, the WTO, the Bank, and the IMF have become the targets of significant pressure for change from civil society actors, transnational and local, who have begun to bypass traditional modes of pressuring state actors, shifting instead to the high-profile meetings and activities of IGOs. Compared to civil society participation in international environmental negotiations, concerns over the environmental and social impacts of neoliberal globalization have generated different forms of activism. These issues have also gained greater traction at local and community levels than has traditionally been the case around the “traditional” international environmental problems (Conca 2006). Activism around the activities of the Bretton Woods institutions is characterized by higher levels of contentious strategies, particularly protests, greater grassroots (community-level) mobilization, and more explicit framing of concern around human rights and social equity issues. The actions and policies of the Bretton Woods institutions have generated strong counter-movements. These include the protests in Seattle in 1999, which drew 30,000 activists from around the world to the WTO Ministerial, and similar protests at the meetings of the Bank, the IMF, and other regional economic organizations, and thriving transnational activist networks around dams, mining, external debt, and other issues (O’Neill 2004; Conca 2006; Khagram 2004). These diverse groups are unified by trenchant critiques of neoliberal globalization and a commitment to ecological and social justice (Cavanagh and Mander 2002) and they have been hard to ignore. While transnational activist groups have not always achieved immediate objectives, IGOs have started to respond, for example by granting them a place at the table (as was the case with the World Commission on Dams) or reframing


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their mandates or policies in social justice terms (the WTO’s Doha Declaration). There are a number of explanations as to why these particular movements, targeting the Bretton Woods institutions, flowered during the 1990s. The rise of the internet as a mobilizing tool, and the spread of ideas, tactics, and connections among movements previously separated by international borders and limits on communications, provides a partial explanation. But, more critically, these movements have been strongest when addressing issues, such as dam construction or mining, that have clear, adverse, and visible impacts on particular (and often indigenous or already marginalized) communities. In other words, these groups have been able to make and exploit connections between decisions and policies at the global level and impacts at the local level that have had a great deal of global resonance. Finally, movement actors perceive international financial institutions as the key sites of global governance, where the interests of global politics and global capital intersect. The environmental movement – broadly defined – has played a lead role in the anti-globalization/global justice movement. It has also learned a good deal from the experience. There is some evidence that many mainstream northern NGOs have taken the framings and tactics of the global justice movement on board in redefining campaigns around environmental treaty regimes and in shaping national policies (O’Neill and VanDeveer 2005). Climate change has been a particularly fertile arena for this “reframing.” Activist campaigns are shifting their focus to vulnerable communities worldwide (for example, the Inuit and Pacific Island states), more contentious strategies (international lawsuits against Kyoto laggards), and a wider framing of climate change as a human rights issue, as well as an ecological catastrophe. Legitimacy and global governance Fourth, and finally, the challenges facing the Bretton Woods institutions highlight central questions in global governance theory: how do IGOs achieve and maintain legitimacy, and to whom are they accountable? Until recently, these questions were considered relatively unproblematic: IGOs were accountable only to, and their legitimacy depended solely on, their member states. Now, as their authority and effectiveness is challenged by transnational activist networks, calling for more transparency and participation, and by growing rifts among their member governments, they themselves are looking for ways of addressing these problems. Academic literature on this issue addresses the WTO (Smythe and Smith 2006; Atik 2001; Esty 2000; Howse and Nicolaidis 2003; Coicaud 2001), the IMF,

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and World Bank (Woods 2006; Woods and Narlikar 2001), and global governance as a whole (Zürn 2004; Bernstein 2005). Several factors have precipitated these debates. The collapse of embedded liberalism and the rise of the Washington Consensus created globalization processes that reach deeply into the lives of individuals and communities with no apparent recourse to the international organizations responsible (Howse and Nicolaidis 2003). The scope of IGOs – particularly the WTO – has widened, and their efficacy is no longer measurable purely in economic terms (Esty 2001): no longer is the WTO responsible only for coordinating inter-state relations and dealing with obscure, technocratic issues, and it has far wider powers of enforcement not easily constrained by member states. Its actions affect, for example, access to AIDS medications in Africa, community property rights over biodiversity resources, subsidies to farmers and access to seeds, and subnational programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In these areas, the WTO suffers from a lack of “output legitimacy” (Smythe and Smith 2006). Others point to a lack of procedural legitimacy: decision processes among the Bretton Woods institutions are opaque and ad hoc, in the sense they are not based on any constitutional framework. Wider societal groups have little access to decision-making processes, and even many member states – notably southern states – argue that their voices are rarely heard (Atik 2001). Solutions proffered to these problems are complex, and difficult to implement. As we have seen above, the Bretton Woods institutions are working hard to incorporate notions of sustainability into their policies and practices, widening processes of consultation with NGOs and other civil society actors, and increasing transparency (notably via their websites). Some see hope for the creation of a “green public sphere” in WTO dispute resolution processes in the decision to permit amicus curiae briefs in the USA–EU biotechnology dispute (Eckersley 2005). Overall, despite a perception that the Bretton Woods institutions are all-powerful organizations capable of maintaining a free-market capitalist world order, these institutions have run up against a serious disjuncture with global public opinion in their handling to date of societal and environmental issues. The extent to which they are able to negotiate a global social contract over the next decades, one that brings in member governments as well as societal groups, will be critical in determining their long-term survival. Next steps The extent to which global environmental governance and global economic governance have become intertwined was unanticipated by the


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architects of either governance order. Now, however, environmental and social issues are quite firmly on the agendas of the Bretton Woods Institutions, and UNEP and other environmental governance institutions are looking for ways to work with, and not against, global trade and finance regimes. Sustainable development is a critical component of ideological frameworks that seek to counter global neoliberalism. Even though strong disagreements remain as to whether the Bretton Woods institutions can be effective engines of environmentalism, or whether they should be thoroughly restructured (even dismantled), there is little argument that they have become important sites of global environmental governance. Their actions strongly affect the state of the environment as well as the welfare of many communities and the policies of many governments, and they have the financial capacity and legal force to implement national and local level change quite quickly. At the same time, they are perceived (and perceive themselves) to be suffering from a loss of legitimacy, particularly in the wake of transnational protest, and criticism from many leaders and scholars. The 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development laid the groundwork for harnessing the Bretton Woods institutions to the causes of environmental protection and sustainable development. How this new form of global cooperation will work out over the next few decades will be one of the central research areas of international environmental politics. We return to these themes in Chapter 8. Next, we turn to the third pillar of the post-war global economy, after trade and finance: the governance of, and increasingly governance by, the private sector. Discussion questions

Summarize arguments for and against the proposition that economic

globalization is bad for the environment. What sorts of evidence would you look for on both sides of the argument? Why, and how, are multilateral environmental agreements vulnerable to challenges under global trade rules? What are some of the ways such challenges may be avoided? What might “legitimacy” mean for international governmental organizations like the WTO or UNEP? Legitimacy in whose eyes? Discuss what “increasing legitimacy” might entail in the context of global governance.

suggestions for further reading Clapp, Jennifer, and Peter Dauvergne. Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005: a highly accessible and thorough text on the relationship between economic

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globalization and the environment that assesses these debates from four different perspectives. Gilpin, Robert. Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001: a classic international relations text that covers the evolution of international political economy since World War Two, applying a range of theoretical approaches. Gore, Charles. “The rise and fall of the Washington Consensus as a paradigm for developing countries.” World Development 28.5 (2000), pp. 789–804: an influential article about the impact of the Washington Consensus on the theory and practice of global development. Liverman, Diana M., and Silvina Vilas. “Neoliberalism and the environment in Latin America.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31 (2006): an excellent survey on what we know and how we know it about the impact of neoliberal globalization across different resource sectors in Latin America. Murphy, Dale D. “The tuna-dolphin wars.” Journal of World Trade 40.4 (2006), pp. 597–617: perhaps the last word on the tuna–dolphin dispute; an indepth analysis of the political economy of the tuna industry, the GATT’s decision, and its impacts. Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002: from a Nobel Prize-winning economist, why the IMF went so wrong in the 1990s, and a strong critique of neoliberal globalization. Vogel, David. Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995: a very influential argument as to why free trade could lead to a “ratcheting up,” rather than a dismantling, of environmental regulations.

7


In October 1993, 130 representatives from twenty-six countries met in Toronto, Canada, to inaugurate a governance regime designed to protect the world’s forests. Participants agreed on ten principles for sustainable forest management, from controlling harvests to ensure steady timber yields over time while protecting fragile ecosystems, to protecting the rights of local forest-dwellers. The implementation of these principles would not be cost-free, and monitoring compliance hard to achieve. Nonetheless, participants agreed that this program represented a significant step forward in global forest conservation, while still allowing forest owners to benefit economically. This governance institution – the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – now covers 67 million hectares of forest across sixty-five countries. In many ways, it looks something like the treaty regimes we have examined in previous chapters. But, in many more ways, it is critically different. First, none of the participants at the Toronto meeting were government representatives. Instead, the driving force behind the establishment of the FSC was a coalition of NGOs, forest owners and timber companies, and forestdwelling communities, led by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a leading international NGO. Second, the FSC achieves its goals through the transmission of information and the power of the market. If a timberproducing firm signs up to its standards, it agrees to allow an independent auditor to certify its compliance with FSC principles. If it qualifies, the firm can then affix an eco-label to its products, which tells purchasers and consumers further down the supply chain that the wood they are buying was grown and harvested sustainably. Purchasers can then signal their support for these measures by buying products with the FSC logo – often at a significant price premium. The FSC is only one example of a whole host of global environmental governance initiatives that harness the energies of civil society and industry for environmental protection and sustainability, not as targets of regulation or supporting or opposing lobby groups, but as agents of governance in their own right. From certifying forests, coffee, fisheries, 167

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or chemicals production as sustainable or environmentally friendly, to encouraging “socially conscious” investment strategies, NGOs and corporations are working together to create and maintain governance regimes that perform many of the same functions as intergovernmental regimes, without relying on traditional governmental authority. These initiatives coexist with existing intergovernmental institutions, and have sometimes stepped in where treaty negotiations have stalled or failed – as in the case of protecting the world’s forests. Increasingly, too, intergovernmental organizations are starting to involve non-state actors in decision-making processes – from the World Commission on Dams to the Type 2 Partnerships embraced at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. In some ways, these developments represent the “flip side” of globalization. In Chapter 6, we saw how economic globalization has at best complicated and at worst harmed the state of the global environment. In this chapter, we highlight another important dimension of globalization: the increased ability of civil society actors worldwide to ally with each other, exchange information, and engage the public in their activities, in ways that make environmentally damaging corporate practices more visible, and make the actors behind them more accountable to a broader audience. Because of the globalization of production, even quite localized efforts can have an impact on production and supply chains around the world, creating incentives for industry to change its behavior, but not necessarily with serious loss of profits or economic efficiency. This chapter traces the emergence and proliferation of private governance initiatives for the global environment. We examine the factors underlying growing demand for non-state governance, and which have increased the capacity of civil society and industry to work together in this area. We then assess the impacts of these schemes, from normative and theoretical perspectives. Many of the questions asked about the FSC, or socially responsible investment funds, or hybrid initiatives such as the World Commission on Dams, mirror those asked about international treaty regimes. Do they actually solve large-scale environmental problems? Who participates, and who does not? Are private sector–civil society partnerships enough, or is official, governmental enforcement of environmental regulations still necessary? In fact, some of the same debates we have examined in the context of state-led global environmental governance, such as north–south conflicts and the impact of governance regimes on state behavior, are starting to appear in this field of study (Dingwerth 2008; Cashore et al. 2007). More generally, what does the emergence of non-state governance mean for global environmental governance, and global governance writ


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large? Are non-state governance arrangements supplanting or reinforcing existing intergovernmental modes of international environmental politics? How do non-state actors acquire the authority and legitimacy to undertake governance activities, and what does this means for the role of the state, and inter-state cooperation, in the international system? While we cannot answer these questions definitively in this short chapter, it is clear that non-state governance initiatives have injected some needed energy and ideas into international environmental politics. They carry their own problems, but are becoming an important part of the international political system, and are an important part of a new, more hybridized perspective on the part of scholars on what constitutes this field of study. The demand for non-state global governance of the environment The sphere of global environmental politics has proved particularly fertile for the emergence of a range of types of “non-state,” or private, governance. For many, especially those frustrated with the slow pace and obstructive politics of international treaty negotiation, these developments are highly welcome, and represent a wide and exciting array of new, and experimental, governance tools and techniques. For others, turning to the private sector to essentially police itself (with or without the aid of global civil society) overcomes some major obstacles to centralized (state-led) governance of global production in the twenty-first century. In this section, we examine the reasons why demand has increased for non-state environmental governance initiatives, focusing on structural changes in the global economy, and on the reasons why specific groups of actors favor new directions in global governance. Structural factors: A changing global economy Without a doubt, the governance of global capital flows and production has become harder in recent decades. Foreign direct investment has increased exponentially since the 1970s. In 2006, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) identified roughly 77,000 multinational parent companies worldwide, with over 770,000 foreign affiliates, compared with 7,000 in 1970 (UNCTAD 2006, p. 10; Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 159). As corporate activity has globalized, corporate structures have become more complex, with ownership and control often highly diffused across global supply chains. At the same time, governance of global investment and production by governmental or

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intergovernmental actors has become more challenging as the will and capacity of governments to regulate global capital has declined. The rise of multinational corporations since World War Two has generated significant challenges for environmental governance. For example, getting MNCs to maintain adequate on-site protection in vastly different national contexts and in situations where they can use exit threats to some effect if regulations change (or are enforced) can be difficult.1 Further, structures of corporate ownership and control (both within and across national borders) have shifted away from traditional hierarchical models of ownership by the parent company of the firms operating along its chain of production towards more flexible models of production and control. These models are based on contracting work out to local or smaller firms on a cost basis (Haufler 2003, p. 239). These arrangements are flexible: contracts can be rapidly switched from one vendor to another, and compliance and monitoring along the production chain may be weak, if purchasing firms lack the ability or will to gather the necessary information about the environmental or social activities of vendor firms (O’Rourke 2003). This growing flexibility of contemporary production means that the obstacles for wellmeaning firms to fulfill social or environmental goals can be formidable, and the opportunities for less well-inclined firms to avoid regulation are greater. The challenges of regulating corporate activity worldwide have grown more complex at a time when the will and capacity of states to engage in such regulation has waned, in part a function of the rise of neoliberalism as a governance ideology. In many developed countries, traditional “command and control” tools of environmental regulation have given way to more flexible, often voluntary market-based mechanisms, such as emissions trading or government-sponsored labeling schemes designed to meet goals of environmental protection without the costs and inefficiencies of traditional regulation. Multilateral and bilateral agreements governing corporate activity and FDI have always been weak in terms of environmental or social protection. They are designed to encourage FDI, rather than control it, although voluntary guidelines for MNCs issued by the OECD call for implementation of the Rio Principles (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 185). Despite incentives to focus on profit above all else, many (though far from all) corporations are taking social and environmental opportunities seriously, and developing governance tools and practices to address them. In part, these developments can be traced to a different set of global 1

The literature on the pollution haven hypothesis, which posits that MNCs based location decisions on environmental factors and environmental laws, is particularly pertinent here. See, for example, Clapp 2002; Strohm 2002.


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structural changes. The growing availability of global communications tools and technologies, and the emergence and diffusion of new ideas and norms about sustainability and equity in production (e.g. Hawken et al. 1999) have made it much easier for civil society actors to gather and disseminate information about how goods are produced, and what needs to change to make that production more sustainable and equitable. We turn next to factors driving the demand for environmental governance mechanisms on the part of major stakeholders: firms themselves, civil society actors, states, and IGOs. Actor-based perspectives: Demanding non-state governance Starting with the corporate sector, many firms and trade associations have expressed a high level of dissatisfaction with the pace and extent of traditional, intergovernmental cooperation and regime formation. Private sector actors, especially MNCs, feel excluded from the direct decisionmaking process, and unhappy with the extent to which national interests trump their own commercial interests. As Haufler puts it, “the process of negotiating intergovernmental agreements can be slow, clumsy, often wrong-headed, and highly political, which means the design of rules – even rules that the private sector desires – can be fraught with risk” (Haufler 2001, p. 22). The prime corporate movers in non-state environmental governance initiatives are MNCs from industrialized countries. These firms are particularly prone to transnational activist pressures, and operate across multiple regulatory jurisdictions, facing regulation from host countries, their home countries, and the international level (Haufler 2001, p. 10). By embracing environmental and social governance principles, they protect or enhance their brand-name reputation and minimize risks and uncertainties associated with multiple and shifting governmental and inter-governmental rules. They also reduce transactions costs by signing up to explicit standards, providing information that is clearly understood from firm to firm that would, on an individual basis, be costly to obtain and unreliable (Cutler et al. 1999, p. 336). Firms may also be looking to take advantage of existing vacuums in global environmental governance. Where international law is almost wholly absent, as in the case of global deforestation and the international trade in tropical timbers, firms seek to populate the area with regulatory schemes, and thus shape (and possibly supplant) future governmental action in these areas.2 2

On the absence of a forests regime, see Humphreys 2003; Gulbrandsen 2004; Davenport 2005.

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Second, NGOs and other activist groups heavily involved in international environmental politics are also highly dissatisfied with the pace and direction of international cooperation, and with governance vacuums in important and high-profile issue areas. By exerting moral pressure on corporate interests to get involved in environmental regulation on their own behalf (using threat of sanctions or consumer boycotts, working with shareholders and investment companies, or by working directly with corporations), they have provided incentives for firms to start greening their activities. Many NGOs now work with major corporations to improve environmental performance: the World Wildlife Fund has worked with the Coca-Cola company to assess its water use practices worldwide, the Sierra Club has advised Ford Motors, and Environmental Defense, another US-based NGO, has used McDonalds to pressure chicken suppliers to cut antibiotic use in poultry (Deutsch 2006). More than these individual initiatives, NGOs have worked hard to establish broader systems of environmental governance, shaping the forms of governance that have emerged, their transparency, and, to some degree, their perceived legitimacy. NGOs have established and now help run certification and labeling schemes, identifying which products meet certain social or environmental standards, from clothing to timber and wood products to coffee, seafood, and gold and diamonds. This level of collaboration with the corporate sector can pose something of a dilemma for civil society actors (Falkner 2003). On the one hand, there are many advantages to working directly with corporations, the source of many environmental problems. On the other hand, they run the risk of being co-opted into corporate agendas they, and their supporters, do not agree with. Finally, many governments and IGOs support these forms of environmental governance. Many states, rather than feeling threatened by possible usurpation of their authority, benefit by avoiding the political and economic costs of imposing government regulation on key sectors of the economy, especially transnational sectors, where control is difficult. For IGOs, there is an emerging consensus that voluntary forms of regulation are more consonant with the overall goals of a liberalized world economy than compulsory regulations. The WTO, for example, after some debate on this subject, has, so far, not opposed voluntary eco-labeling schemes, although similar schemes applied by governments could violate its rules on not differentiating among products on the basis of how they were produced. UNEP and other UN agencies are, for their part, moving towards a “partnership” model for environmental protection, as evidenced at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)


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held in Johannesburg, 2002, which recognized close to 300 such partnerships (von Frantzius 2004). Varieties of non-state global environmental governance Non-state initiatives in global environmental governance began in the 1980s, with not wholly successful experiments in debt-for-nature swaps engineered between financial institutions, NGOs, and developing countries, and a number of high-profile deals concerning biodiversity resources and pharmaceutical companies.3 Despite these relatively inauspicious beginnings, there currently exists a wide array of governance schemes and mechanisms set up and run not by governments, but by civil society and private sector actors, often as agents of governance in their own right, responsible for establishing and enforcing their own rules. As with inter-state cooperation, participation in non-state global environmental governance is voluntary. Unlike inter-state cooperation, these governance regimes they aim for broader participation by a range of actors in important governance decisions, creating horizontal and vertical linkages (e.g. between multinational corporations and transnational NGOs, or partnering local community groups with global actors). Partnership initiatives involve a range of state, IGO, and non-state actors in governance decisions; certification schemes, on the other hand, are usually alliances between corporate and civil society actors, or between corporate actors alone. Beyond these basic similarities, they differ extensively. For example, efforts focusing on using insurance or investment to change incentives, and hence behavior, use the market as a disciplinary mechanism: firms that violate certain standards may face higher insurance premiums or be excluded from popular investment funds. Certification systems, on the other hand, are all about using markets, and information, as opportunities for participating firms to harness particular segments of the market, notably those purchasers or consumers who are willing to pay a premium for goods produced in an environmentally sound manner. In rare cases, some certification schemes – by far the most successful type of non-state global environmental governance – are taking on characteristics of fully fledged governance regimes, with institutionalized governing bodies, rules and procedures for learning, change and strengthening, and strong associated norms. This emerging form of governance regime has been termed “non-state market-driven governance” (NSMD; Cashore 2002; Cashore et al. 2004; Bernstein and Cashore 3

On debt for nature swaps, see Jakobeit 1996. On the 1991 Merck-InBio agreement in Costa Rica, see Zebich-Knos 1997.

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2004, 2007). The guidelines and processes developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC, discussed below) to ensure sustainable forest management comprise the ideal type of NSMD governance; other models include the Marine Stewardship Council and the Fairtrade Labeling Organization (Bernstein and Cashore 2007). By contrast, schemes limited to single firms or industries, which often do not demonstrate change or learning over time, do not necessarily hold the same authority or legitimacy, or status as international governance regimes of a new and different type. We return to this distinction in the concluding section of this chapter. “Multi-stakeholder participation” in global decision-making One way in which non-state actors are participating at higher levels in global decision-making is through the adoption by IGOs of multi-stakeholder participation, or partnership, models of governance. Chapter 6 examined the World Commission on Dams as an example of this trend. Convened by the World Bank, the WCD brought together government, dam, and hydropower industry and civil society actors to assess experience with and impacts of large dams, and to make (non-binding) recommendations for future development. On a smaller scale, delegates at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit recommended the creation of “Type 2” partnerships for sustainable development, a model already used by the Global Environment Facility (Joyner 2005; Andonova and Levy 2004). Such partnerships, usually at a local level, could receive funds to engage in small-scale conservation and development projects, and display the nimbleness or creativity not usually associated with large-scale government-led initiatives. Examples of such partnerships unveiled in Johannesburg include a bicycle refurbishing initiative, led by a Dutch NGO, a forest management and conservation initiative for the Congo Basin, led by South Africa, and the Andean BIOTRADE program, led by UNCTAD (Andonova and Levy 2004, p. 24). While partnership initiatives and multi-stakeholder commissions certainly increase participation in important global decision-making processes, this approach has its critics. Marina Ottaway, for example, compares the WCD model to corporatist modes of government, often adopted by countries in Europe and elsewhere in times of economic crisis (Ottaway 2001). Corporatism is shared governance by peak associations – a so-called “Iron Triangle” of state, business, and labor representatives – that has worked best over the short term. The problem at the global level is that NGOs and corporations by no means have the breadth of support or representation of their domestic counterparts – trades unions and industry associations.


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Therefore the “triangle” lacks the balance of the traditional model – and the participants do not necessarily have the same legitimacy in the eyes of broader publics. More specifically, the Type 2 partnership model has been criticized by NGOs as a way for governments to avoid the responsibilities inherent under “Type 1” international environmental agreements.4 Others are more supportive of partnerships between IGO, government, industry, and civil society representatives in the implementation of international environmental agreements, as they are likely to be more effective, and more sensitive to local impacts and concerns (Joyner 2005). Joyner cites the International Coral Reef Action Network (led by the governments of the UK, France, and the Seychelles, and including many NGOs and UN groups, as well as leading philanthropic foundations as partners) as just one example of a diverse partnership engaged in sharing knowledge and policy ideas, and building capacity for coral reef protection (Joyner 2005, p. 110). At the same time, he notes that this mode of governance remains experimental, and could be subject to the sorts of power dynamics and lack of transparency and accountability that often plague organizations and coalitions not grounded in a strong legal framework.

Financial market discipline: Insurance and investment A second set of private governance mechanisms involves harnessing the disciplinary power of the insurance and investment industries to change corporate behavior. Members of climate change activist and scientific communities have targeted the insurance industry as potentially a powerful force in changing firms’ behaviors, arguing that the destruction wrought by climate change could bankrupt the entire industry, and that this process is already underway, citing the rise of hurricanes, droughts, and similar catastrophes (Leggett 1996). Similar arguments apply to investment. “Socially responsible” investment firms are under a mandate to direct their funds only to firms that satisfy particular ethical requirements, such as environmental responsibility or treatment of their workforce. This movement began gathering steam in the 1980s with the global campaign to persuade investors to disinvest from South Africa’s apartheid regime, and has grown to encompass a whole range of social and environmental impacts of investment decisions. Green venture capital and “cleantech” investment firms are looking for ways to improve the environment while still maintaining a high rate of return on investments. They

4

See Friends of the Earth Australia, “Voluntary Partnerships Not Enough,” September 1, 2002, press release, at www.foe.org.au/media-releases/2002-media-releases/mr_1_9_02.htm.

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are, for example, playing a large role in developing alternative energy technologies, from solar power to biofuels (Randjelovic et al. 2003).5 These activities, aimed at directing basic choices by firms about investment and production, have met with both enthusiasm and skepticism. Advocates of using the insurance industry to help mitigate the impacts of climate change define climate change as a problem that is both preventable and political, resulting in “losses due to actions, or inactions by governments or other political entities” (Haufler 1999, p. 204). To that end, activists argue, by changing its requirements for adequate coverage or switching investments away from fossil fuels, the insurance industry could bring about changes in firm behavior that could help ameliorate global warming. It could also lobby governments to enact regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, a political clout amplified by the fact the insurance industry alone accounts for ten percent of global financial flows (Paterson 2001a, p. 19). Studies so far of the insurance industry demonstrate that it has not lived up to environmentalists’ expectations (Paterson 2001b; Brieger et al. 2001). While the insurance industry has worked with scientists to improve long-term climate change prediction models and to quantify risks, attempts to harness its market power have been largely ineffective, and could, if successful, prove profoundly inequitable. For example, some insurers, particularly US companies, have remained more skeptical than European counterparts over the risks posed by climate change, and government lobbying by the industry has been minimal. Second, the industry as a whole has moved to protect itself, rather than change the behavior of its clients. Insurance firms have withdrawn coverage or raised premiums in coastal areas (Paterson 2001a, p. 27). Reinsurance markets, by developing innovative mechanisms such as catastrophe bonds, have also helped minimize the insurance market’s exposure to risk (Paterson 2001a, p. 27; Jagers and Stripple 2003). Ultimately, as Paterson argues, actions by the insurance industry could lead to profoundly inequitable outcomes, as wealthy clients who can afford coverage or meet the standards to receive coverage are privileged over a large class of people in developed and developing nations who cannot (Paterson 2001b, p. 37). Discussion of how “socially responsible investment” (SRI) can help redirect firms’ choices has been dominated by debates over how criteria for social responsibility are determined, and how that information actually translates into positive social and financial outcomes. Important players in this field include large-scale institutional investors (such as universities or

5

See, for example, www.newenergyfinance.com and www.cleanedge.com.


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large mutual funds) and ratings firms, who supply information and assessments of corporate social responsibility across the corporate sector. One of the most important of the ratings firms is Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini Research Analytics Ltd. (KLD), whose database of over 3,000 companies across 280 categories related to all aspects of CSR is a critical source of information for individual and institutional investors. SRI covers a broad range of screens and indices of corporate behavior: many funds screen out any firms engaged in production of arms, alcohol, and tobacco products, for instance. After that, any or all of a broad range of criteria may be used to assess corporate performance, such as community relations, hiring practices, human rights, and environmental performance. According to the 2005 Report of the Social Investment Forum, a leading SRI research and advocacy organization, nearly one out of every ten dollars under professional management in the USA (9.4 percent of $24 trillion) is involved in socially responsible investing, an 18.5 percent increase over 2003 (Social Investment Forum 2006, p. iv).6 This is certainly a growing movement, albeit one that is still experiencing some teething problems (Entine 2003; Schepers and Sethi 2003). Some question whether or not this proportion is actually enough to change the behavior of corporate actors, especially those excluded from SRI funds – for example, the success of SRI so far could be due to “cherry-picking” of the corporate actors that easily comply with CSR requirements. Others question the link between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance.7 After all, the point is still to make a healthy rate of return for investors. Finally, some question how ratings firms such as KLD actually determine which firms are “in” and which are not, and whether or not these decisions represent an objective set of ethics or are, instead, paternalistic, and subjective (Entine 2003). Nonetheless, the growth of socially responsible investment funds demonstrates that there is a high demand for such methods of ensuring responsibility at this very fundamental stage of firms’ decision-making. Certification schemes: From corporate social responsibility to non-state, market-driven governance The most visible development in the area of private global environmental governance has been the emergence since the 1990s of a wide variety of certification, or labeling, schemes: the voluntary adoption by firms of environmental (and labor) standards and practices which they then 6 7

See www.socialinvest.org. For a discussion of relevant studies, see Orlitzky et al. 2003.

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broadcast to investors, shareholders, and consumers.8 These labels are not restricted to the environmental arena: clothes stores claim their products are not manufactured under sweatshop conditions; vegetables, milk, and other foods may be labeled natural, hormone-free, or organic, and so on. These labels and standards are usually not mandated by government rules and regulations. Instead, firms themselves voluntarily undergo certification, often accepting significant costs in the process, but also benefiting from consumers and investors who place a premium on ethically produced goods. Many of these schemes are transnational, even global, in membership. They are designed to be adopted in a variety of national contexts. Others are nationally based, but owing to extensive import/export markets may have an international reach. Certification schemes can be found across forestry, chemicals production, agricultural production, ecotourism, and fishery sectors, to name but a few (Gulbrandsen 2005). Primarily, they trade in information and reputation. By participating, firms signal their environmental commitment to potential customers and investors, using their own reputation and often that of an independent certifying body to provide credibility. The proliferation of international certification institutions in the 1990s has its roots in changing NGO strategies, the growing desire of particular corporations to build or capitalize on a “green” reputations, and a favorable international economic context (Bartley 2003). For their part, many leading NGOs were growing frustrated both with the slow pace of inter-governmental environmental regulation (particularly in the forestry sector, but also in other sectors with high industry dominance), and with the relative failure (and unintended impacts) of confrontational tactics such as boycott campaigns in dealing with industry. Instead, they began to shift towards cooperation with the corporate sector. Some leading corporations, for their part, saw strategic advantages in adopting a “greener” persona, particularly if they themselves could choose the terms. At the same time, the international economic context was highly receptive to the adoption of voluntary measures by industry to address environmental and social concerns. The WTO, for instance, in its various decisions on unilateral trade-related environmental measures, indicated that it would not consider the adoption of voluntary labeling by industry a violation of global trade rules. Labeling and certification schemes share three main components: the development of standards, certification (the process firms go through to 8

For an overview of the emergence of environmental standards for industry – whether third party, industry led, or developed by international organizations, see Angel et al. 2007.


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show that they meet the required standard), and accreditation, or “certifying the certifiers,” ensuring the organization that carries out certification is competent and credible (FERN 2004, p. 9; Meidinger et al. 2003). Some schemes certify individual firms. Others include “chain of custody” certification – certifying the product as it moves from firm to firm along the supply chain, from extraction to final consumption. There are two main types of certification standards. Management system standards require firms to establish processes and management systems to ensure that environmental goals are developed, assessed, and met. Performance standards, by contrast, specify the level of performance required across various criteria, including level of environmental protection. Certification schemes also vary according to the degree of independent monitoring. Under first party certification, corporations themselves make their own claims about their products and standards, backed by their own reputation and credibility, and not verified by an independent authority. Corporate codes of conduct, for example, proclaim a firm’s commitment to social or environmental stewardship (Haufler 2003, p. 238). Under second and third party certification, industry actions are monitored and verified by outside actors. Second-party certification “is conducted by industry-related entities, such as trade associations, which establish guidelines or criteria for making such environmental claims,” while third-party certification “is performed by either a governmental agency, a non-profit group, a for-profit company, or an organization representing some combination of these three” (Lipschutz and Fogel 2002, p. 134). A good example of second party certification is the chemical industry’s Responsible Care Program, adopted in the 1980s first by the Canadian Chemical Producers Association, then by the US Chemical Manufacturers Association following the 1984 Bhopal Disaster (Garcia-Johnson 2000, 2002). As the large US-based multinational corporations, such as Dow and DuPont began requiring Responsible Care certification across their global subsidiaries, the program began diffusing to domestic chemicals manufacturers in developing countries in the 1990s. By 1998, Responsible Care covered 87 percent of the production of global chemicals by volume (Garcia-Johnson 2002, p. 7), though with some regional variation. GarciaJohnson, for example, found that Mexico adopted Responsible Care far more readily than Brazil (Garcia-Johnson 2000), while other studies find similar variation in uptake, depending on domestic context (Espach 2005). Typically, third-party certification schemes have developed more complex governance organizations, bringing together stakeholders from a variety of sectors. The International Organization for Standards (ISO) is a private organization whose decision-making body consists almost wholly

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of industry representatives and representatives of national standardsetting organizations (Raines 2003, p. 53). It offers a single, cross-sectoral set of standards to any firms wishing to participate. The most important of its environmental standards, the ISO 14001 EMS Standard, was adopted in 1996. ISO 14001 requires firms to formulate and implement a corporate environmental management system, and monitor and review its progress at the highest level. Audits are carried out by accredited national or international bodies (Clapp 2001, p. 28). The largest single sectors seeking ISO 14001 certification worldwide are the electronics, chemicals, and mechanical sectors, and participating firms cite “environmental improvements,” “corporate image,” and “marketing advantage” as their main motivations for seeking certification (Corbett et al. 2003, pp. 33–4). Still, global uptake of ISO 14001 is uneven. By December 2005, ISO 14001 certification had been extended to 111,162 firms in 138 countries (ISO 2005). Of these, nearly 90 percent were EU-based and Asian-Pacific (primarily Japanese) firms, with the remainder split between North America, Latin America, and Africa/West Asia.9 In the forestry sector, where state-led governance has traditionally been weak, at least twenty-five different certification schemes compete worldwide: an “unstoppable certification craze,” in the words of one analyst (Smouts 2003, p. 197). The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) was established by the World Wildlife Fund in 1993, and is governed by a council consisting of NGO, timber industry, and forest community representatives. Other forest certification schemes, such as the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC; formerly the Pan-European Forest Certification Scheme), the US-based Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) are industry-run. In part because of the relative absence of international law on forest management, the range of schemes existing (and the competition between them), and the size and importance of forest ecosystems from environmental, economic, and sociological perspectives, forest certification schemes have generated a lot of interest from academics, activists, and international organizations. The FSC was founded as a more effective way of protecting tropical forests than an NGO-led boycott of timber products. Its role is to accredit organizations who then certify firms across the forestry sector. Firms seeking FSC certification must adhere to ten performance-based principles of sustainable forest management (including respecting the rights of forest-dwellers). The FSC also offers the option of chain-of-custody

9

See Delmas 2002 for more detailed discussion of ISO 14001 participation.


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certification, allowing products to be verified along the supply chain. As of 2005, over 67 million hectares of forest in sixty-five countries had been certified under FSC standards, mostly in industrialized countries (FSC 2005). It scores highly across several criteria, including ecosystem-based science, representation in decision-making, accountability, and transparency (Gale 2002, p. 296), and has served as the model for other NGO-run certification regimes, including the Marine Stewardship Council and the Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (Gulbrandsen 2005; Pattberg 2005). Given the breadth and stringency of its standards, the FSC is unpopular with dominant firms in the timber industry, who saw its entry as a “declaration of war” on large-scale tropical forest logging operations (Smouts 2003, p. 205). Small forest owners too do not like the scope (and cost) of its standards. In response, industry actors began forming their own certification schemes during the 1990s, including the Sustainable Forests Initiative of the American Forest and Paper Association (SFI), the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), and others in Malaysia, Finland, Australia, and so on. 1999 saw the founding of the PEFC, originally an umbrella organization for smaller European firms. Based more on management system standards, the PEFC accredits national certification systems, and is in the process of expanding its reach beyond Europe, with member organizations from five continents (Meidinger et al. 2003). By December 2004, 56 million hectares of forests were under PEFC certification; by the end of 2005, over 187 million hectares of forest area worldwide was under PEFC certification (PEFC 2005), a rise in large part due to its endorsement of the two North American, industry-led schemes, SFI and CSA. In total, industry-led forest certification schemes claim a greater share of this market, primarily in developed countries and plantation areas (Gulbrandsen 2004, p. 90). However, despite original differences in terms of standards, reporting requirements, participation, and the existence of chain-of-custody certification and labeling (see particularly FERN 2004, pp. 28–9), the intensity of competition among forest certification schemes has meant they have adapted in response to each other’s presence in the market (McDermott et al. 2008; Hansen et al. 2006). Currently, the two transnational accreditation organizations, FSC and PEFC, dominate the global market. As of early 2008, the FSC had certified over 100 million hectares of forest land across seventy nine countries, with over 200 million hectares in thirty-six countries under FSC or PEFC member certification. Each of these schemes originally reflected different perceptions of the scope and role of sustainable forest management, representing different constituencies and competing visions

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of balancing environmental protection with economic development.10 However, some have already detected a shift in how the FSC approaches different national markets, particularly those with a high presence of industry-led forest certification (Cashore et al. 2004). In turn, some industry-led schemes, such as SFI, have introduced third-party certification and chain-of-custody labeling. Take-up of certification systems varies by national context (Cashore et al. 2004; Espach 2005, 2006). Corporations in some countries are more willing to participate in transnational certification than others. Export-dependence is one critical factor, especially when products are exported to developed country markets. But so are structural factors, such as the strength of the domestic economy, the capacity of governments to monitor firm behavior, and the ways that companies at a very local level perceive the costs and benefits of membership. One study finds, for example, that Argentinean companies are far less likely than their Brazilian counterparts to participate in FSC and similar plans, despite similar incentives: the answer lies in part in the relative absence of strong national corporate and NGO networks in Argentina who can help support firms’ participation in transnational private governance schemes (Espach 2006). Further work in this field is starting to examine how certification and labeling schemes are evolving as they grow and gain in stature. Are they becoming more like traditional treaty regimes, or are they a very different form of global governance? Are they learning and responding to pressures for change? How is the diffusion of private environmental standards such as ISO 14001 affecting corporate environmental performance worldwide? We return to these questions in the final sections of this chapter. First, we assess how well non-state global environmental governance initiatives work (and how we can tell), before moving on to some of the theoretical debates in this field. Assessing non-state global environmental governance: How well does it work? Strengths of private governance: Speed, flexibility, and support The strengths of private governance are significant. Harnessing private sector actors as partners in developing and implementing environmental governance schemes potentially creates a “win-win” situation, where

10

See Cashore et al. 2004 on variables explaining differential uptake of these schemes.


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firms can continue to benefit economically, while working to make production more sustainable. Corporations bring considerable knowledge and expertise to environmental governance, which would not be as available if they were merely the objects of regulation. Second, private regimes have emerged in areas where significant gaps exist in regulatory coverage – in the gaps between negotiation and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements, and in areas such as forestry, where international regimes have failed to converge on a set of legally binding international rules. These mechanisms are faster than MEAs to set up and to implement, and are significantly more flexible, adaptable to changes in business or environmental conditions (Detomasi 2002, p. 304). Management system standards, such as ISO 14001, are noted for this adaptability (Meidinger et al. 2003, p. 6). The process of developing private standards and regimes engages industry in a way that standard governmental regulatory processes have not. Even when in direct competition with other certification systems, as in the case in the forestry sector, industry is often pushed to take further measures than it otherwise would have done. By harnessing the power of market-based incentives, and actively engaging a range of stakeholder groups, arguably more can be accomplished, and far more efficiently than otherwise. The use of market-based incentives is by no means antithetical to government-driven governance processes, as the Kyoto Protocol demonstrates – but they have yet to encourage full participation by non-state actors. Private governance regimes also step in when capacities of state and international regulatory authorities are low or when they are unwilling to intervene in industry practices. Garcia-Johnson’s study of the positive impacts of Responsible Care in Mexico, Brazil bears this out (GarciaJohnson 2000). Economic globalization has in fact aided, rather than hindered, the diffusion of private environmental standards: one study finds that trade liberalization and linkages have enabled the global diffusion of ISO 14001, creating a “ratcheting up” effect, rather than a race to the bottom in environmental regulations (Prakash and Potoski 2006). In fact, frequently, standards developed by certification regimes have found their way into national legislation. South Africa and Mexico, for example, have developed national forestry policies that draw heavily on FSC principles and practices (Pattberg 2006, p. 261). Limitations: Participation, information, and effectiveness There are also several limitations readily identifiable in existing practices of private governance. Some apply to all forms of non-state market

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driven governance, others apply primarily to purely private sector initiatives, or to certification schemes, making it hard to generalize. This section focuses on concerns around participation in private governance, information provision to consumers and others, and questions over effectiveness (in particular, problem-solving effectiveness, as defined in Chapter 5). Participation in private governance regimes can be measured across several dimensions. First, participation by firms across an industry may be uneven. Given that these are voluntary regimes, many firms may choose not to participate, and these may well be the firms with the worst pollution record; certainly, they are likely to be ones that are less vulnerable to outside pressure: illegal logging companies are a good example. Even within firms, participation may be uneven: a timber corporation may certify forestland near a national park, but nowhere else. Second, participation varies by country and by GDP; smaller firms and firms in poorer countries may find themselves excluded from regime participation. Data on participation in ISO14001 is very clear on this point: this regime is dominated by northern firms (Delmas 2003; Clapp 2001). Authors cite cost of certification as one of the barriers to entry, in turn, excluding non-certified firms from particular markets. Costs of ISO 14001 certification vary from $50,000 for smaller firms to over $200,000 for larger firms (Delmas 2002, p. 95). The forest sector shows similar results: “the share of certified forestland in developing countries in the world’s total certified area is only about 10 percent,” and certification schemes are overwhelmingly perceived as northern (Gulbrandsen 2004, p. 90; Humphreys 2003a, p. 48). Third, not all private governance schemes engage a broad range of stakeholders, including NGOs, and local communities in standard setting and decision-making processes. Persistent patterns of exclusion lead to perceptions of inequity among potential participants, which may undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of the regime. One study of perceptions of equity in the ISO14001 decision-making process found that there was indeed a perception of inequity among late-entry firms, primarily from developing countries, in particular, that the standard would not be able to meet their specific needs (Raines 2003, pp. 71–2). In terms of information – the main currency of certification regimes – serious questions remain about how purchasers and consumers acquire, assess, and act upon information available to them. Many critique the very mechanism – purchaser choice – on which private governance schemes rely. Given the proliferation of eco-labeling and certification schemes, how do consumers gain enough information to decide which to support?


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What happens when certifications conflict? These are serious problems, especially in the forestry sector. There is not much to differentiate one label from another on the face of it (they are all quite attractive logos), although they represent very different sorts of standards. It is complex and time-consuming for consumers to look for the relevant information to enable them to choose. A lack of transparency and formal reporting requirements as to how standards are decided on and enforced plagues many certification schemes and other forms of corporate governance.11 There is some concern that this may work to the advantage of key players, providing a disincentive to improve standards, and confusion among schemes may dilute the consumer pressure needed to sustain eco-labeling schemes. Second, assuming that consumers can distinguish between different labels, some analysts question the willingness to pay a premium for sustainably produced goods, suggesting that, at best, this is a niche market, and that overall consumers are willing to pay only a small premium (Gulbrandsen 2004, p. 93; see also Veisten 2002).12 A study of consumers in Germany found that while “half of German consumers pay attention to eco-labeled products, but only a third would pay 5 percent more for them. This is inadequate to effect changes required for sustainable forest use” (Freris and Laschefski 2001, p. 6, citing Brockmann et al. 1996). Third, some authors question the assumptions behind a strategy of harnessing consumers to the project of environmental conservation. They argue that environmental problems are more a consequence of structures of globalization and corporate power, and that to rely on individual choices in the absence of a strategy targeting these structures is likely to fail, especially given resources at the disposal of corporations through advertising and pricing to combat environmentalists’ efforts. Marie-Claude Smouts refers to this as “the cult of the self in the West today” (Smouts 2002, p. 203).13 Consumption decisions “soothe one’s environmental conscience,” but do little else. In recognition of these problems of demand-side penetration, FSC, in particular, has

11 12

13

For example, websites of many certification organizations do not post regularly updated information as to who belongs, and how certifications are monitored. Evidence of consumer willingness to pay is more decisive in the labor standards arena, especially in terms of preventing child labor, on the basis of opinion polls. However, that result has not yet been replicated in surveys of actual decisions. See Elliott and Freeman 2001. Michael Maniates makes a similar point in his essay on the individualization of environmental responsibility: “plant a tree, buy a bike, save the world?” (Maniates 2002).

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switched strategies to target high-profile purchasing firms, the companies which buy wood products to manufacture or process in order to sell to the general public. By getting such large firms as Home Depot or Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA to agree to buy FSC certified products, they argue they can wield more effective market power in this arena. In fact, the ultimate effectiveness of private governance regimes has come into question, after over a decade of experience with the major schemes. Ways of defining and measuring the effectiveness of private governance regimes parallel those of intergovernmental regimes. Are standards implemented? How are they monitored? Do actors comply, or can they cheat on their obligations? Finally, do these schemes actually result in environmental protection? Alternatively, do they adequately balance economic and environmental needs, thus at least meeting sustainability criteria? There is considerable skepticism among academics and practitioners that these schemes are better for the environment than alternatives, and many recommend that they would work best if grounded in a universal and widely accepted set of international principles (Detomasi 2002). First, in terms of scope, voluntary environmental protection schemes cover only a small percentage of world industrial production, much of it concentrated in the North. For example, of all tropical timber producing countries, only roughly 2.8 million hectares are FSC-certified, out of an estimated surface area between 1,090 and 1,220 million hectares (Smouts 2002, p. 200). Firms whose practices are most environmentally damaging do not participate in these regimes. Peter Dauvergne, in a study of the logging industry in the Asia-Pacific region, finds that “[t]imber firms weave themselves into webs of financial and trade ties that obscure environmental accountability. These corporate ties also contribute to widespread illegal activities … Intricate and obscure connections among firms … have also made it extremely difficult to hold companies accountable for environmental mismanagement” (Dauvergne 2001, p. 107; see also Sears et al. 2001). Second, more research needs to be carried out on the relative effectiveness of performance and management system standards, and the capacities of certification and accreditation bodies. Management system standards, such as ISO 14001, are criticized because they do not entail improvement in environmental performance, only effort, and thus can be met rather too easily. Performance standards, on the other hand, may be too demanding or inflexible, and involve on-the-ground monitoring that certification bodies do not have the resources to carry out. The FSC has been heavily criticized on this score (Freris and Laschefski 2001). Related,


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chain-of-custody certification, namely certifying firms along the supply chain (e.g. from forest to store), is fraught with additional needs for monitoring, and problems of asymmetrical information. It is hard for outside bodies, or indeed purchasing firms, to obtain full access to all information from supplying companies, who may well have an incentive to keep the information private. Some analysts are concerned that the standards put forward by firms and by independent bodies represent not a floor, but a ceiling for international environmental standards. They cite WTO criteria for allowing such standards as an important contextual variable, as more stringent EMS standards could be perceived as a trade barrier (Clapp 2001; Gulbrandsen 2004, p. 86). As with many treaty regimes, there is little hard data on the impact of private governance regimes on the state of the global environment, or even on efforts to achieve sustainability. Certainly, these schemes have stepped in where international and national laws have failed, and studies show that member companies cite improvements in environmental efficacy as a result of membership (Raines 2003, p. 70). However, more research is needed to understand exactly what the environmental impact of private governance regimes has been. Perhaps the most serious criticism that private governance regimes have to overcome is that of external accountability (Cutler 2002). Unlike democratically elected governments, corporate and NGO actors have no mechanisms to ensure their accountability, nor are voluntary measures subject to enforcement and control. Firms not wishing to comply may simply exit the regime. NGOs question the accountability of industryled schemes, while industry actors question that of NGO-led schemes, such as FSC (Gulbrandsen 2004, p. 92). Accountability is important as a component of legitimacy, which, arguably, is necessary for a regime’s efficacy and survival. But, it is unclear to what extent many of these schemes achieve accountability over and above to their own members, even those with heavy NGO involvement. There is no elected representative body or other electoral mechanism through which the public can register its opinion about standards or procedures, nor are there sanctions that can be imposed on schemes that are unpopular or even harmful. Transforming global environmental governance? Theoretical debates over non-state governance Literature on private authority in global governance is growing, in part as a response to what many analysts see as an overwhelmingly state-centric focus of existing theories of global governance and international

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cooperation.14 This literature sees global governance not purely as a realm of intergovernmental action, but as a hybrid mix of new and not so new initiatives and institutions existing – sometimes uneasily – alongside each other. It identifies a wide range of actors – from corporations and financial market institutions to NGOs, transnational religious organizations and even organized crime – who are taking on authoritative roles in global politics: They claim to be, perform as, and are recognized as legitimate by some larger public (that often includes states themselves) as authors of policies, of practices, of rules and of norms. They set agendas, they establish boundaries or limits for action, they certify, they offer salvation, they guarantee contracts, and they provide order and security. In short, they do many of the things traditionally, and exclusively, associated with the state (Hall and Biersteker 2002, p. 4).

Direct involvement of the private sector in international standardsetting is not new. Some standard-setting regimes, such as telecommunications and informational technologies, are highly technical, and draw extensively on the special expertise of private actors, although, as empirical work has shown, the standard-setting process itself is often highly political (Mattli and Büthe 2003). Other sets of negotiations involving the private sector have occurred in national and international forums that have historically been insulated from broader societal input: the TRIPS agreement was negotiated with strong private-sector involvement under the auspices of GATT / WTO (Sell 1999). Yet these regimes are still ultimately ratified and implemented by governments. Instead, the examples in this chapter show how attention has shifted to governance regimes that are negotiated, implemented, and enforced across national borders by nonstate actors, wielding what many see as new forms of authority in global governance. In essence, theorists of global governance are broadening their perspective, to take into account a wide range of governance activities above and below, and around, nation states.15 Governing global production: Bringing commodity-chain analysis into international relations theory One of the most important aspects of these new forms of non-state global governance is that they put the governance of production front and center 14 15

For overviews, see Hall and Biersteker 2002; Haufler 2001; Cutler et al. 1999; Falkner 2003; Cashore 2002. See Paterson et al. 2003; Conca 2002b; Detomasi 2002; Murphy 2000.


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in discussions of global governance. Traditionally, multilateral controls on foreign direct investment and production of goods and services have been weak, designed more to facilitate economic growth through investment and production than to minimize environmental and social impacts. Early activism, in the form of awareness campaigns and boycotts, helped highlight these impacts. Calls to govern global production focused both on the actions and intentions of individual corporations – particularly large multinationals – and on the ever longer and more complex commodity, or supply, chains that carry raw materials and goods around the world. Under contemporary global capitalism, vast distances – geographical and cultural – separate decisions about resource extraction, production, and consumption (Princen 2002, p. 116). Recent work on “food miles,” the distance food travels from point of production to point of consumption (and final disposal), graphically illustrates this distancing (Iles 2005). Commodity-chain analysis “brings into focus the technological, commercial and organizational networks that link the various stages of production and exchange for a particular commodity, be it an automobile, and orange, or a pair of tennis shoes” (Conca 2002b, p. 139). All these different stages, including packaging, marketing, advertising, and so on, create a set of linkages that are increasingly globalized, and increasingly complex: it is rare that the same corporate entity manages all these stages (Conca 2002b; Gereffi et al. 2005). In turn, these extended commodity chains generate asymmetries of information and power, helping to obscure environmental and social impacts of production. Commodity-chain analysis is a relatively new way of looking at global production. It certainly highlights its complexities. But it also demonstrates opportunities to change production decisions. Exerting pressure on key points along the supply chain can have both upstream and downstream impacts on the entire chain, and providing consumers with information about the extent and impacts of distancing can help shape their own decisions, sending signals back along the chain. This logic underlies the approach of many certification and labeling schemes, and has generated new possibilities for global environmental governance. For example, if a large buyer of wood products, such as the hardware/ DIY chain Home Depot, starts accepting certified wood products, producers will pay attention, and pass this information on to forest owners. As so many commodity chains cross national borders, it is easier for non-state actors than it is for governments to push for these sorts of controls.

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Non-state actor agency in global environmental governance – and the role of the state The emergence of civil society and corporate sector actors as agents in their own right in setting up and managing governance schemes challenges state-centric perspectives on international environmental politics. No longer lobbying from the sidelines, non-state actors are starting to prove that they have significant autonomy and influence on the extent and shape of global environmental governance. As some argue, this hybridization of global governance is not new; rather, the theoretical frames employed by many analysts simply excluded it from the overall picture (Conca 2005a). The interrelationships between corporate and civil society actors (termed by some the “NGO-Industrial Complex” – see Gereffi et al. 2002) are often quite complex, and can be conflictual. Sometimes, as in the case of the PEFC, private governance emerges in an antagonistic context, in this case, in competition with the more civil society-based FSC. Sometimes, relationships break down: even after endorsing Ford Motors’ new hybrid vehicles, the Sierra Club strongly condemned their overall efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, though the two continue to work together (Deutsch 2006). Over the longer term, more studies are needed as to how industry–NGO partnerships work, and why some actors (corporate or civil society) stay out of them, or leave. Another area in which more work is needed is how corporate and environmental groups change as they work together: Do NGOs become more “corporate” in ideology and practice? Do corporations internalize norms and practices from the NGO sector? The environmental movement is itself somewhat split over the desirability of cooperation with industry, with some groups maintaining that confrontation remains the most effective strategy. Related to the above, questions continue to be asked over whether and how non-state actors acquire the legitimacy and authority – internal and external – to maintain and broaden global environmental governance regimes. Internal authority or legitimacy is the extent to which a regime is viewed as legitimate by its members. It determines whether members will comply with their obligations or remain within the regime. External authority or legitimacy is the extent to which it is perceived as legitimate, or authoritative, by outside actors: states, civil society actors, international organizations, and the court of public opinion. A lack of external legitimacy will lead to other actors seeking to remove or replace the regime, loss of confidence in the effectiveness of the regime, and ultimately threaten its survival. Some worry that democratic accountability is far


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harder to maintain in the private governance sphere than in public (Cutler 2002, p. 4). Evidence on internal legitimacy on many private governance schemes shows that it is quite high, perhaps not surprisingly, as participation is entirely voluntary (see, for example, Raines 2003 on ISO 14001). External legitimacy is more complex, and tied up with issues of credibility, efficacy, and transparency. Benjamin Cashore argues, in effect, that the legitimacy of non-state governance regimes is measured by their actions (Cashore 2002): How credible are certification processes over time? How well do they reflect societal values, and encourage participation? He suggests that regimes that include a wider range of stakeholders, such as the FSC, are more likely to achieve external legitimacy. However, these may be the schemes most likely to be rejected by industry actors if alternatives exist. Finally, legitimacy and authority also derive from efficacy. If these regimes actually “get the job done” in terms, for example, of protecting forest areas and communities, they will derive further standing in the eyes of other actors. So far, the data suggests that this is not yet the case, but that many are gaining ground. Turning to the role of governments, just because many of the governance initiatives examined in this chapter are “private,” this does not imply that the state is entirely absent. Strictly speaking, very few of the initiatives we have examined in this chapter are wholly private, in the sense that they occur entirely outside the sphere of state influence (Falkner 2003). Government actors are frequently involved (even in a very abstract sense) in the development, take-up, and implementation of standards, and, as we have seen, national contexts matter in explaining why some firms participate and others do not. Nonetheless, questions remain about the possible changing role of the state in international politics resulting from the emergence of private authority in international politics. Does the emergence of these forms of governance undermine state sovereignty? Does it imply that states have diminished capacity or will to manage a globalized world order? In other words, are these new governance regimes in competition with the nation state for global authority, or are they stepping into a political vacuum? There are no simple answers to these questions. If there could be said to be a majority consensus in the environmental literature, it is that nonstate governance regimes are essentially complementary to state and inter-state activity in the environmental arena, in that they have emerged in areas largely not covered by international and national legislation (Falkner 2003). The relationship between non-state governance and state capacity is more complex, however: third-party certification schemes have emerged not where state capacity is considered low, but where it is

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high. The standards regimes considered in this chapter have taken hold not in the South, where governments are weaker, but in the North, notably in the EU, where states and the EU itself are quite strong. Finally, a more critical perspective on state–corporate–civil society relations asks whether corporate actors have crowded out (“chilled”) state action, and the extent to which states may be complicit in this. This view would be consonant with a neo-Gramscian perspective on the role of private interests in international politics (see Levy and Newell 2002). According to this account, “capitalist forces are seen to be engaging in alliance building processes with a variety of state and civil society actors in an effort to realign the ideological and material bases of the dominant hegemonic order” (Falkner 2003, citing Cox 1987). In other words, corporate interests are reshaping global environmental governance in a way that co-opts rather than overpowers other actors, and reinforces the ideology of market liberalism in this sphere. The implications of a neo-Gramscian perspective are disturbing for anyone interested in global environmental governance that is both participatory and effective. Comparing non-state governance regimes and treaty regimes Scaling up, we now observe a global environmental governance universe that encompasses different types of governance activities. How do nonstate governance initiatives compare with international treaty regimes? How do they interact with each other? While some analysts contrast one with the other, and in some cases suggest that treaty regimes could be replaced by more decentralized, hybrid governance activities, in many instances we find that governmental and non-governmental governance initiatives coexist quite well, and could potentially work to strengthen each other. In important ways, several (although not all) of the non-state governance initiatives listed in this chapter fit the definition of international regimes applied primarily to intergovernmental regimes: “principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge” (Krasner 1983, p. 2, cited in Cutler et al. 1999, p. 13). First, they transcend short-term or strategic cooperative arrangements among firms or between firms and NGOs, instead, representing “interaction that is institutionalized and of a more permanent nature” (Falkner 2003, p. 73; Pattberg 2006, p. 245). Second, as with international cooperation, participation is voluntary – but anchored in, and institutionalized by, a range of transnational organizations, particularly certification and accreditation bodies. Finally, many of these regimes are transnational,


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or global, bringing together participants across national borders, and addressing global environmental problems, such as deforestation. At the same time, non-state governance regimes allow for participation by a broader range of stakeholders, and use different steering mechanisms: market forces and distribution of information, rather than the force of law. They also have a tactical advantage, in that they are far less likely to conflict with global economic regimes: so far, for example, the WTO has remained friendly to voluntary eco-labeling practices, while trade restrictions designed to achieve the same goal could run foul of global trade rules. Finally, non-state initiatives move beyond the relatively narrow framing of global environmental issues as collective action problems, embracing instead the complexities of a globalization frame on environmental problems. Certainly, non-state governance regimes and initiatives enjoy more popularity in many quarters compared with traditional treaty regimes. They have generated a lot of excitement among and support from NGOs, corporations, and scholars. As these systems mature, however, they are coming up against some of the problems that have plagued their governmental counterparts, for example proving that they have made significant inroads in solving difficult environmental problems, engaging actors who strongly resist efforts to change their behavior, and ensuring some equity between northern and southern participants. Some even argue that particular forms of non-state global governance – particularly “non-state market driven” (NSMD) governance regimes, such as the FSC – are becoming a real “soft law” alternative to traditional international treaty regimes, in a way that other forms of private environmental governance are not (Bernstein and Cashore 2007). NSMD governance differs from traditional intergovernmental governance in several key respects (Cashore and Bernstein 2004, p. 36). First, governments are not involved in policymaking or enforcement; authority instead rests in actors within the global marketplace. Second, this authority is diffuse: producers and consumers along the supply chain grant it as the product moves from production or extraction to end-use. Legitimacy is derived not only from the active participation in and support of the regime by various stakeholders, but also from the extent to which the regime draws on, or fits with, authoritative international norms. In essence, NSMD is unique – and challenging – because it not only uses market mechanisms to enforce compliance, it also contains “purposeful social steering efforts,” in Rosenau’s terms (Rosenau 1995), whereby “actors purposely guide themselves towards collective goals or values” through participatory decision-making and active learning (Bernstein and Cashore 2007).

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While some argue that non-state governance initiatives represent the future of global environmental governance (e.g. Speth 2004), others point out that intergovernmental regimes and cooperative arrangements are able to accomplish tasks beyond the scope and authority of non-state regimes (Vogler 2005). They have a greater capacity to finance large-scale scientific research, to help build the capacity of poorer states to meet environmental goals, and, if necessary, to threaten rule violators with sanctions (and, potentially, force). Early generation and diffusion of global environmental norms was driven by intergovernmental meetings (notably the environmental mega-conferences). Many of the norms that underpin forest certification systems were generated through intergovernmental consultative processes (Gulbrandsen 2004). At the same time, many intergovernmental regimes are adopting the sorts of market mechanisms encouraged by non-state counterparts: the Kyoto Protocol, for example, relies heavily on market mechanisms for its enforcement. Rather than one form of governance dominating the other, it is likely that these governance forms will continue to coexist in a hybrid system of global environmental governance. The important lesson to learn now is how to use these different sorts of initiatives to strengthen each other, working together rather than competitively. Some issue areas, for example water, forests, and conservation efforts, which have resisted efforts to craft interstate regimes, appear to be particularly amenable to mixed forms of global governance (Conca 2005a). Others, for example, trade in hazardous waste and endangered species, require the force of law for their enforcement. Next steps It is clear that the emergence of non-state global environmental governance challenges traditional state-centric perceptions of the architecture of global governance. In a 2006 essay, Sanjeev Khagram identifies a range of alternative models of global governance architectures, including multilateralism, grass-roots globalism, multiple regionalisms, world statism, networked governance, and institutional hierarchy (Khagram 2006, p. 98). He argues that we currently live in a world with a hybrid governance architecture, where elements of all these systems exist, often in conflict with each other, a world which may or may not coalesce to a new equilibrium where one of these models dominate. An overview of the state of global environmental governance at the start of the twenty-first century demonstrates this hybridity, with various non-state, multi-stakeholder and state-led governance regimes and initiatives all laying claim to effective environmental protection. Some of these initiatives work better than others. Arguably, however, conformity is not what we should strive for.


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Coherence and cooperation may be a better goal over the longer term. In the meantime, this chapter has outlined some of the critical questions that need to be examined in order to understand and guide the complex new world of global environmental governance. Chapter 8 will pick up on these themes. Discussion questions

Take a look around your local supermarket and see what different labels

on food products tell you, beyond the nutritional values. Do you find them credible? If so, why? If not, why not? Do you feel you have enough information to make an informed decision? Non-state environmental governance regimes face many of the same problems as state-led regimes. What are some of the problems they share? Are there major differences in the way either type of regime can overcome these problems? What challenges do non-state governance regimes face in establishing legitimacy and authority? In what ways does their emergence challenge the centrality of states in global governance?

suggestions for further reading Bartley, Tim. “Certifying Forests and Factories: States, Social Movements, and the Rise of Private Regulation in the Apparel and Forest Products Fields.” Politics and Society 31.3 (2003), pp. 433–64: a theoretical explanation of the emergence of non-state environmental governance, comparing apparel and forest products, and focusing on the institutional context enabling the emergence of these new forms of governance. Cashore, Benjamin, Graeme Auld, and Deanna Newsom. Governing through Markets: Forest Certification and the Emergence of Non-State Authority. New Haven CO: Yale University Press, 2004: a prizewinning book that examines factors explaining where and how FSC standards are taken up in different developed countries, with a critical discussion of issues of legitimacy and authority in non-state market driven governance. Garcia-Johnson, Ronie. Exporting Environmentalism: U.S. Multinational Chemical Corporations in Brazil and Mexico. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000: GarciaJohnson’s path-breaking study of when multinational corporations are able to improve environmental performance in the countries where they locate, comparing Mexico and Brazil. Hall, Rodney Bruce, and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds. The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002: a theoretical examination of all forms of private authority in the international system – from certification schemes to privatized security. Ottaway, Marina. “Corporatism goes global: International organizations, nongovernmental organization networks, and transnational business.” Global

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Governance 7 (2001), pp. 265–92: a critique of the partnership approach to global governance, specifically the World Commission on Dams. Prakash, Aseem, and Matthew Potoski. “Racing to the bottom? Trade, environmental governance, and ISO 14001.” American Journal of Political Science 50.2 (2006), pp. 350–64: an empirical examination of when ISO 14001 rules make a positive difference in environmental quality. Princen, Thomas. “Distancing: Consumption and the severing of feedback.” Confronting Consumption, edited by Thomas Princen, Michael F. Maniates, and Ken Conca. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2002: a chapter that examines why, in a globalized world, effective regulation of investment and production is so difficult.

8

Conclusions: The environment and international relations in the twenty-first century

In December 2007, delegates from 191 countries met in Bali, Indonesia, at the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to draw up a road map towards a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012. With climate change high on national and international agendas in the months leading up to Bali, ideas and energy flowed around the shape of “Kyoto 2.0” as a potentially new model of global environmental governance. Would this be an opportunity to begin moving beyond an explicitly state-centric model of global environmental governance, and the inevitable compromises and disappointments that creating a consensus agreement among nearly 200 governments requires? Worldwide, initiatives to combat climate change and greenhouse gas emissions had proliferated and diversified. From guides to individual consumer behavior to emerging carbon markets and biofuels development to local government-led efforts to combat climate change, climate change has engaged civil society actors, entrepreneurs and investors, corporate actors, and politicians across national borders and traditional scales of governance. Although at least one critical climate laggard–Australia – ratified Kyoto in late 2007, some argued that the rigid, diplomacy-based model should be abandoned, or seriously restructured, to better fit the complexities of the problem, the diversity of viable options to address it, and the full community of stakeholders in climate debates (Prins and Rayner 2007; Amen et al. 2008). In the end, the main outcome of the Bali conference was characterized less by an embrace of new initiatives and new participants than by ongoing debates and divisions among leading nation states. Divisions between the USA and the greener EU, and then between developed and developing nation over the need for binding targets and commitments from developing countries, threatened to derail the talks on several occasions during the ten-day meeting. After the EU had agreed to back down on setting mandatory targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions, India, backed by China and other G77 members, asked that mitigation actions 197

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by developing countries be linked to capacity building and technology transfer measures, a move opposed by the USA (Clémençon 2008, p. 76). As the conference dragged on an extra day, the UN Secretary General and the Indonesian President did their best to broker a compromise. The meeting ended with the sort of dramatic moment that makes studying international negotiations so interesting. The Papua New Guinean delegate, directly addressing the US delegation, “captured the sentiment of the conference when he pleaded that ‘the world is waiting for the US to lead but if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way’” (Clémençon 2008, p. 77). Then the US delegation leader took the floor and, in a remarkable U-turn, stated that the USA would indeed join the global consensus. After a moment of shock, the convention hall erupted in applause: the meeting had been a success, and the “post-Kyoto road map” established. International relations theory and the theories of inter-state bargaining and cooperation we studied in Chapter 4 are critical in enabling us to follow and understand this outcome. Several elements of international cooperation theory are present: the interests of a powerful “laggard” state (the USA), strong divisions between North and South, and bargaining rules that allowed for a last minute extension of negotiations, and a good deal of brinksmanship before reaching a conclusion. At the same time, below this highly state-centric narrative, much else was going on not so readily captured by international relations theory. The climate regime, as with the problem of climate change itself, is extremely complex. The Bali negotiations also encompassed some highly technical negotiations over mechanisms for leveraging funds from carbon trading to fund mitigation projects, over reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, and over restructuring various policy and financing mechanisms – such as the Clean Development Mechanism – that are part of the regime. Over 10,000 people attended Bali: in addition to the main meetings, there were numerous subsidiary meetings and workshops, as well as side events convened by NGOs, corporate actors, and others. The Earth Negotiations Bulletin ran a separate set of daily reports on side events alone, and in its summary report, highlighted this very complexity as one of the biggest challenges for the climate regime going forward (ENB 2007, pp. 18–19). How the climate regime evolves in the post-Kyoto era will be a central concern for scholars and practitioners of global environmental governance. Yet, climate change is not the only global environmental problem, nor is climate governance the sole focus of analysis for all theorists of international environmental politics. The most salient point to arise out of the Bali negotiations is that global environmental governance is complex, and beyond the control of any one set of actors. It is not easy to predict

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paths of change in global environmental governance, except that in the absence of a fundamental shock to the international system, it is likely to be shaped by its past. This final chapter pulls together some of the main narrative threads that have guided this book so far, and examines new frontiers of research and practice in global environmental governance. The focus is on the book’s findings about the changing architecture of global environmental governance, and the emergence of new sites and modes of global environmental governance beyond the ones already discussed. International relations and the environment: Analytical themes Theoretical pluralism: The need for a broader theoretical lens The emergence of the environment onto the international political agenda has provided a rich set of cases for scholars of international relations, and particularly for the study of international cooperation. We have seen how the study of state-led global environmental governance through the negotiation and implementation of treaty regimes has led analysts to highlight factors that had been marginalized or overlooked in mainstream international relations theory. These include North–South relations, the role of science and expertise in international politics, and the role of nonstate actors. The study of regime impacts and effectiveness recognizes the fact that international regimes are a durable international phenomenon, and has led to the development of tools and methods to understand their impacts, and how well they work. Trade–environment debates have helped foster a shift away from examining different global governance processes in isolation. Rather, how global governance orders interact with each other has, as with regime effectiveness, come to the fore as global governance institutions mature and grow in density and complexity. The rise of private authority in the international system is a relative new frontier in international relations theory: the fact that so many instances of such authority occur in the environmental arena has helped push these research agendas further than they might otherwise have gone. International relations theory in turn provides a helpful set of tools for understanding the dynamics of global environment politics. Insights over the nature and scope of international interdependence in the absence of an overarching sovereign international authority highlight a particular set of causes of global environmental degradation, and the pervasiveness of collective action problems in a world of territorially sovereign nation states where environmental problems refuse to stay within national borders.

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Theories of international regimes and institution-building help us understand the conditions that make international cooperation possible, and the ways in which institutional design can help overcome divergent national interests and collective action problems. Realist insights about the ways in which power is exercised in international politics, and constructivist insights about the role of norms, ideas, and knowledge and how they move around the international system, help us understand particular outcomes and the ideational or knowledge-driven components of global governance regimes. Constructivist insights about how actors’ interests, identities, and roles in international politics may change over time provide a foundation for understanding some of the deeper impacts and practices of global environmental governance, beyond the immediate concern of effective problem-solving. Critical as these insights and theoretical approaches are, a full appreciation of global environmental politics requires taking in a broader range of theoretical insights from different fields, including sociology, globalization studies, science and technology studies, even ecology. Sometimes, these fields yield dramatically different, even conflicting, questions and findings to those we would expect from more mainstream international relations approaches. They direct the eye to different driving forces, actors, and levels and units of analysis. There is a strong case from both analytical and normative perspectives on global environmental governance for theoretical pluralism. Not only does it enhance our knowledge and understanding of critical forces in global politics, it also increases the range of actions that can be taken to address global environmental degradation. To illustrate, Chapter 1 highlighted how theories that come out of a focus on economic globalization and the structures of global capitalism generate very different insights as to the political causes of global environmental degradation, what counts as a global environmental problem, and the primary sites and targets of global governance. For example, an institutionalist approach from international relations theory tends to view WTO–environment relations as a problem of linkages, but a global political economy approach adds the perspective that many global environmental problems are in fact a function of neoliberal globalization, of which the WTO is a key component. Similarly, the neo-Gramscian perspective on corporate involvement in global environmental governance, discussed in Chapter 7, highlights the importance of delving further into questions of whose interests are served by a voluntary, non-state approach to environmental regulation, and the power relations that underlie such a system. As a final example, STS approaches towards the incorporation and sources of knowledge and expertise in global environmental governance has opened up the academic field to an appreciation of the role of local


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and contingent (or lay) knowledge in achieving effective global environmental governance. Such knowledge holders are already playing an important role in international environmental regimes. At least two international regimes – the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification – formally incorporate indigenous and local knowledge holders in regime decision-making processes, and there are signs that local forms of expertise and understandings (for example, among the Inuit) are being taken increasingly seriously in global efforts to combat climate change. The changing architecture of global environmental governance Focusing solely on state-led global environmental governance – the negotiation and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements – fails to capture the full picture of global environmental governance existing in the world today. In this book, I have argued that there are, in fact, several different sites and modes of global environmental governance, and I have focused on three in particular: state-led governance, though the negotiation and implementation of international cooperative agreements, the emergence of the global economic order – particularly trade and finance regime – as a critical site of global environmental governance, and the emergence of non-state global environmental governance initiatives and regimes. Even so, there is much I have left out that could be termed global environmental governance. I have, for example, focused mostly on global level activities around relatively identifiable institutions and organizations, paying less attention to less institutionalized transnational networks of communities, activists, and even local governments and bureaucracies who address global environmental problems (see Conca 2006). From an analytical standpoint, the coexistence of these different sites and modes of global environmental governance tells us that global governance is far more vibrant and multidimensional than might ever have been assumed. It is also a durable and complex phenomenon: if nothing else, this book has demonstrated the sheer number of international environmental institutions, many of which have been in existence for several decades, and which often operate well beyond their state-determined mandates. Global governance is also capable of changing, particularly as new participants enter a field traditionally reserved for government actors and take on new roles, even creating their own governance regimes and initiatives. More broadly, this discussion speaks to growing debates about the overall architecture of global environmental governance, and global governance more generally. Until recently, the architecture of global governance was considered relatively unproblematic: for scholars of

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international relations, for example, it consisted of international cooperation by sovereign states, supported by the work of intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations, and using instruments of international law, such as treaties. Now, however, it is far more common for scholars to talk about “global governance” rather than “international cooperation,” and to step back to examine structures of global governance at a broader level (Dingwerth and Pattberg 2006). Several developments have encouraged this focus on a more macro level of global governance. First, regime theory has advanced beyond the study of individual regimes to include regime linkages and networks of various kinds (see Chapter 5). Second, the emergence and recognition of different modes of global environmental governance – such as non-state market-driven governance – and the different sites where it is occurring, has broadened theoretical perceptions of the range of governance types and participants, and engendered a debate about how global governance orders are changing and adapting over time. Frank Biermann, for instance, advocates for a research focus on what he terms “earth system governance”: “the sum of the formal and informal rule systems and actornetworks at all levels of human society that are set up in order to influence the co-evolution of human and natural systems in a way that secures the sustainable development of human society” (Biermann 2007, p. 329). Within this analysis he defines the architecture of “earth system governance” as “the interlocking web of principles, institutions and practices that shape decisions by stakeholders at all levels” (ibid., p. 332). Sanjeev Khagram (2006) identifies no fewer than six possible future models of global governance architectures, from “world statism” to “grass-roots globalism,” and makes a strong case for the shifting nature of global governance architectures over time and the possibility of several types of governance order coexisting, sometimes uneasily. A focus on more macro-level analyses of governance architectures has several advantages. First, we can use the concept to ask if existing global governance practices in fact add up to more than the sum of their parts. Are they adequate to cope with global interdependence and the complexities of many problems facing the international community? Second, it enables us to ask questions about issues of deeper structural change and adaptation in the international system. Does the involvement of non-state actors as agents, not merely subjects or supporters, of global governance initiatives or the apparent growing autonomy of international organizations signal a shift away from an international system dominated by nation states? The various components of the global environmental governance architecture presented in this book have more in common than might at


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first appear. They share a similar cast of characters – albeit with the actors playing different roles – and a shared normative commitment to global action through established organizations and rules and to sustainable development (albeit with slightly different interpretations in practice). At the moment, however, it is hard to argue that they are working together as a system of global environmental governance. Conflicts remain – particularly at the intersection of global environmental and economic regimes. It is also not certain which direction this set of institutions is taking. Some argue that global environmental governance is moving (and should move) away from the dominant state-led models that have been so important to date (e.g. Speth 2004). As many point out, the international cooperation model is not always appropriate for solving some problems, such as deforestation or fresh water management (Conca 2006). Nor is it necessarily effective, in the problem-solving sense, or even equitable: global environmental governance is still largely the province of global political and economic elites. Real-world developments have also signaled a shift away from largescale environmental diplomacy and global summits. Compare, for example, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. Rio marked a high point for environmental cooperation, with the signing of two major accords – on climate and biodiversity – and ambitious roadmaps for achieving sustainability in the twenty-first century. Johannesburg, on the other hand, turned out to be far more low key, with a new emphasis on smaller scale partnerships as a leading governance mechanism. Further, in the six years since Johannesburg, there have been no further summits or even preparations for new summits, such as marked the years between Stockholm and Rio, and Rio and Johannesburg (Death 2008). Nor are there any new multilateral environmental agreements in the pipeline, and, with the exception of climate change, less progress has been made towards significantly strengthening existing agreements through amendments and protocols than might have been expected. Nonetheless, governments and their interests and priorities are not going away, as the discussion of the Bali conference that opened this chapter demonstrated. A critical question for the future will be how best to use the strengths of the international system of sovereign states to foster and improve global environmental governance in all its forms. As has often been said about the corporate sectors, governments need to become part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. John Vogler (2005) observes that national governments hold significant resources that no other actor on the international stage has as yet. Over and above the

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legitimate use of coercion to enforce international law (as yet, not a factor in global environmental governance), these include the legitimacy granted to most governments as the elected representatives of their peoples, a legitimacy that NGOs, corporations, and even IGOs cannot yet approach, and the capacity to make rules and implement change at the domestic level. Governments are also the primary funding agencies for scientific research, particularly for science for its own sake. For these reasons, a rapid shift away from involving governments as central actors in global environmental governance would be a mistake, even if it were possible. Similarly, the existing network of negotiated international environmental regimes, especially when viewed as a totality, is a flawed but invaluable support system for all efforts to protect the global environment. When looked at from this perspective, the loss of the organizations, expertise and knowledge, and rules and decision-making procedures embedded in international environmental agreements if this system were to change radically would be a tremendous blow. It is also a mistake to assume that the “way things are done” at the international level has remained unchanged in the decades since Stockholm. In fact, the international environmental establishment has been receptive to the involvement of non-state actors and the adoption of new tools and methods of regulating the environment. It has been particularly receptive to any ideas around exploiting linkages between existing regimes. From Stockholm to Rio to Johannesburg, several shifts are evident. One is a normative shift, which occurred quite early on, away from environmental protection and towards sustainable development as an underlying norm of global environmental governance. Another is the exponential growth in participation of non-state actors at the major summits. A mere 255 accredited NGOs attended Stockholm in 1972; by comparison, 1,420 NGOs were accredited at Rio in 1992 and another 17,000 representatives attended a parallel NGO forum (Brühl and Simonis 2001, p. 21; Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 64). 8,000 civil society representatives attended the Johannesburg summit, again not counting those NGOs and others involved in parallel events (Clapp and Dauvergne 2005, p. 68). The embrace of partnership initiatives at Johannesburg also signals a change in thinking about how to tackle environmental problems both locally and globally. Individual environmental regimes – from the ways the various biodiversity conventions are working together to the Basel Convention’s partnering with the mobile phone industry to combat electronic wastes – indicate adaptive thinking on their part. In other words, one key challenge for scholars and practitioners going forward will be the extent to which existing global environmental


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governance mechanisms can be integrated in a common framework, mutually supportive rather than conflicting. This will be particularly challenging given both that it is not easy to steer or control global politics and the fact that environmental challenges and crises are likely to mount over the decades to come. With this in mind, we turn to a discussion of debates that are driving current research in the field of international environmental politics. Global environmental governance: Emerging sites and modes As concern over global environmental degradation remains high, and as efforts to date to govern the global environment remain imperfect, new sites, or institutional locations, and modes, or practices, of global environmental governance are going to emerge. In this final substantive section, we examine two that have the potential to generate new institutional configurations and encourage different sorts of participation in global environmental governance. The first, the creation of some form of world environment organization, speaks most directly to international relations theory, particularly its institutionalist variants. The second – a decentralization, or localization, of global environmental governance – connects less directly to the central concerns of international relations theory, but is nonetheless a significant global movement, at least partly associated with various forms of contentious politics. For scholars most closely concerned with the global politics of the environment, the interest that these new movements or potential “cross-scaling” of governance has generated is not surprising. There are also a number of reasons why international relations scholars should pay attention. For one, many of the actors involved in supporting “bottom-up” initiatives in global environmental governance highlight the lack of democracy, and potential legitimacy, of global governance institutions, from the WTO to the World Bank to UNEP, as they are currently configured. For another, these initiatives are bringing new sets of actors onto the global stage – notably, local and municipal governments, which can often exert a powerful influence on the actions of consumers and corporate actors under their jurisdiction. Finally, many of these movements are transnational in nature, and are working hard to generate and disseminate new or altered norms of global environmental governance. In particular, we are seeing something of a rhetorical shift away from the somewhat worn-out concept of sustainable development to couching environmental protection in terms of basic human rights or human security, norms that (unlike sustainable development) challenge the neoliberal paradigm of globalization.

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Global institutional reform: A world environment organization? Debates around reforming existing international environmental institutions are ongoing (Young 2008). One debate that has had a lot of traction is that over the potential to create some form of World Environment Organization (WEO), a debate that goes back to George Kennan’s early arguments in the lead-up to Stockholm (Kennan 1970). In a sense, this debate represents the centerpiece of arguments around centralizing or streamlining global environmental governance, particularly state-led governance, but potentially encompassing other forms of governance. Certainly, part of the debate is about making global environmental governance stronger, but arguments are couched primarily in technocratic terms – what institutional forms would work most effectively and efficiently – as opposed to a political argument about some form of world government for the environment, and a concomitant loss of state sovereignty. The central argument for a WEO is that it could unify the existing, very piecemeal system of global environmental regimes and governance initiatives, in a way that would enhance efficiency and effectiveness, and allow global environmental governance to compete on an equal footing with other powerful international orders, such as the World Trade Organization (Biermann 2001; Biermann and Bauer 2005).1 The idea has received support from influential policymaking quarters, including WTO officials, and heads of state, including former French president Jacques Chirac. There are several different forms such an organization could take on. It could mirror the World Trade Organization, in the sense that it would bring existing multilateral environmental agreements under a single institutional roof. On a smaller scale, it could be configured as UN agency, rather like the World Health Organization, which has considerably greater status, budget, and enforcement powers than does UNEP, the closest existing institutional equivalent to a WEO. Alternatively, it could be centered on specific functions required across regimes or issue areas, such as scientific advice or enforcement and monitoring, similar to the way the Global Environment Facility provides a funding mechanism across six regimes. The idea of a WEO is not universally supported. Detractors argue that we do not need another unwieldy global bureaucracy, nor the political complications and costs involved in setting one up (e.g. Najam 2003; von Moltke 2001). Nor would a WEO necessarily be responsive to concerns of 1

The first issue of Global Environmental Politics (1,1) contains an excellent symposium of four short articles on the arguments for and against a WEO.


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southern countries or local communities. It might be very hard to craft an organization that would meet the demanding criteria of equity, efficiency, transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. Nor, some argue, would institutional reform fix some of the underlying issues that hamper effective global environmental governance, such as the degree of concern about the environment, or the fact that firms still have incentives to continue polluting (Young 2008). Nonetheless, the idea remains an important one, and the most ambitious proposal for reforming state-led global environmental governance to date. Connecting to the local, and contentious politics A common critique of all forms of global environmental governance is that they tend to be divorced from the lives and concerns of people and communities at the local level, in terms of both deliberation processes and impacts. Therefore, efforts to “bring in the local” through bottom-up rather than top-down governance, and develop governance initiatives that cross traditional political scales, have become part of both scholarly and policy-oriented debates, often with quite radical implications for global environmental governance. Few argue for complete “localization” of environmental governance, nor are these arguments simply for including “local communities” at the negotiating table as yet another set of stakeholders. Instead, they argue that focusing purely on interactions among states at the global level ignores a lot of governance activities going on “beneath” states, activities that are supported by, and generate their own, transnational networks of concerned actors (state and non-state). They also point towards the danger of applying universal models to global environmental problems that vary extensively across time and space in terms of their impacts, causes, and perceptions (see Conca 2006; Jasanoff and Martello 2004; Adger et al. 2005). Scholars and activists pay the most attention to the local politics of issues where international negotiations have never started, have failed, or are perceived as being weak or failing, such as freshwater management, deforestation, climate change, and biodiversity protection, or issues that are characterized by a high degree of local contention in a number of different countries, as with mineral or oil extraction or the construction of large dams. On one level, this turn to the local means examining actions being taken at the sub-state, or local, level towards addressing global environmental problems, notably climate change. For example, focusing simply on inter-state politics of the Kyoto Protocol does not capture the full dimensions of governance activity around climate change. One process

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that has captured the attention of many scholars is the extent to which local governments in countries as different as the USA and China are beginning to address climate change on their home turf, with global implications (Koehn 2008). Many of these actions are supported by global programs and organizations, including Local Agenda 21 (a result of the Rio Summit), and related bodies, such as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). California, for example – the world’s eighth largest economy – has enacted plans to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the twenty-first century. Governors of states and provinces in the north-eastern USA and Canada have worked together as a region to address climate change problems (Selin and VanDeveer 2005). The emergence of Cities for Climate Protection as a transnational network of cities committed to a step-by-step program to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions has also elicited a lot of attention (Betsill and Bulkeley 2004). These sorts of measures and initiatives fall into the sphere of institutionalized politics. Stakeholders and policymakers are working through established political channels – albeit ones that are unconventional in terms of global politics – to meet goals related to global environmental change. On another level, the turn to the local means examining some highly contentious environmental issues and politics. Global environmental change – through climate change, ecosystems loss, to air pollution and the transport and disposal of toxic substances – has unequal impacts around the world. Some communities are particularly vulnerable to these impacts and changes, be it through politics or geography. The Inuit peoples, living in and around the Arctic Circle, for example, have found themselves on the frontline of global environmental change: threatened not only by climate change but also disproportionately affected by the global circulation of persistent organic pollutants (Martello 2004). Thus, some scholarship focuses on how these communities can themselves take action to change global politics around environmental issues, and how global environmental governance mechanisms can be designed or challenged to take their interests into account. These insights have also fostered increasing interest in linking global environmental degradation to human rights and security discourses (Sachs 2003; Conca 2005b; Paris 2001; see Chapter 2). By seeking to define environmental protection as a basic international human right, advocates seek to embrace a wider range of, often more contentious, resistance-based, political action. Such contentious actions include lawsuits against corporations or even countries violating the terms of international agreements, or protests against the actions of multinational corporations, particularly those involved


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in mining or other forms of resource extraction (Gupta 2007; Dunning and Wirpsa 2004; Peluso and Watts 2001). Other issue areas that have attracted strategies of contention include genetically modified crops, the shift away from food producing crops to ones grown for ethanol and other biofuels, and the construction of large dams (Khagram 2004; Osgood 2001). These issues, like deforestation and freshwater provision, tend to fall outside the mainstream of international environmental diplomacy (Conca 2006). For example, growing concern over the privatization of freshwater resources worldwide, often putting them in the hands of large multinational corporations, and imposing greater costs (actual and environmental) on already impoverished communities, has generated its own resistance movement. Such resistance has taken place largely at the local level, but, as with the transnational anti-dam movement, is solidifying into a transnational network of civil society groups who are developing and sharing the strategies, resources, and allies to resist privatization and create global “watershed democracy” (Conca 2006). In sum, these “localized” initiatives, measures, and conflicts challenge global politics as usual on several levels. For one, they suggest that national governments are not the only governmental actors who can have a significant voice at the international level. They also challenge the elite-driven nature of global governance more generally, and “top-down” styles of global governance, based on a critique that links great power politics to neoliberal globalization and the interests of global capital (Conca 2005b; see also Cavanagh and Mander 2002). In other words, they highlight a serious democracy deficit at the global level. What this means – whether it is the early flowering of new, transnational forms of grass-roots governance for the global environment, or whether these voices will be subsumed into existing structures of global environmental governance – remains to be seen. Nonetheless, these developments pose important challenges for scholars and practitioners of global environmental politics. Final words It is very hard to end a book like this with a few pithy words designed to send the reader off to explore these fascinating and complex issues of global environmental politics on her or his own. In March 2008, I was on a round-table discussion at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, on The Future of Environmentalism, where one of the topics of discussion was how to engender a sense of optimism in our courses, particularly in the last lecture of the term or semester.2 There was no 2

With thanks to Paul Wapner of American University for organizing this panel.

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real consensus among the panelists – all professors in the International Environmental Politics field – as to how to do this, except that we know our students are on to us. After fifteen weeks or so of doom and gloom, efforts to strike a positive note tend to fall a bit flat. Global environmental challenges remain serious and complex, and sometimes we all feel that political efforts to address these at the global level are too small, too slow, and too late. Still, there are some positive messages to convey. First, the emergence of the environment as an area of study in international relations theory has challenged many of the traditional assumptions of the discipline, bringing in new actors, new types of decision-making processes, rules and norms, and offering some potential for transforming the ways that global governance is done. Second, this book has provided an analytical framework for understanding why global environmental governance has evolved in the way that it has, and the diverse forms it has taken on; understanding the lessons of the past can only help guide us in the future. Finally, this book contains some invaluable resources for the reader: use the references in the bibliography, track the journals, websites, and other resources cited. Ten years ago, I would have written a very different book. In ten years’ time, it might be a different one again. I can only hope that that book will be a story of success. suggestions for further reading Bernstein, Steven. “Legitimacy in Global Environmental Governance.” Journal of International Law & International Relations 1,1 (2005), pp. 139–66: a discussion of the concept of legitimacy as applied to global environmental governance: what it is, what forms it takes on, why it might be missing, and how it could be achieved. Biermann, Frank, and Steffen Bauer, eds. A World Environment Organization: Solution or Threat for Effective International Environmental Governance? London: Ashgate Publishing, 2005: a collection of essays from all sides of the debate over a WEO. Conca, Ken. Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2006: this book begins by unpacking the concept of international regimes, exploring why international cooperation has worked in some issue areas but not in others, and how new global and transnational–local initiatives are forming around problems related to water. Jasanoff, Sheila, and Marybeth Long Martello, eds. Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2004: this edited volume explores connections between the local and global in environmental politics, based on the production, dissemination, and use of knowledge. Vogler, John. “In Defense of International Environmental Cooperation.” The State and the Global Ecological Crisis, edited by John Barry and Robyn


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Eckersley. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005: an argument as to why state-led global environmental governance remains of central significance in contemporary international environmental politics. Wapner, Paul. “World Summit on Sustainable Development: Toward a PostJo’burg Environmentalism.” Global Environmental Politics 3,1 (2003), pp. 1–10: a discussion of the changing nature of environmentalism – in particular, how southern environmentalism appears to be becoming more like northern environmentalism, and vice versa. Also, a timely reminder that the environment may not always be at the top of international agendas.

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Index

Absolute gains 10, 49 Accreditation 179 Acid rain 25, 34, 84 see also: Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution as transboundary issue 32 Afghanistan 86 n. 18 Agenda 21 (1992) 29 Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy 86 n. 17, 86 Amicus curiae briefs 147, 147 n. 4, 164 Anarchy 9, 10 Andean Biotrade Program 174 Antarctica 31, 78 n. 7 Argentina 84, 182 Arrhenius, Svante 26 Asbestos 146 n. 3 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 51–2, 54 Australia 67, 197 Austria 25 Bali Climate Change Conference (2007): see UNFCCC Bamako Convention 88 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal 40, 74, 79, 84 Ban Amendment 74, 81, 88, 93 and regime scope 117 and the WTO 147, 148 Bernauer, Thomas 106 Bernstein, Steven 161 Bicycle refurbishing 174 Biermann, Frank 202 Biofuels 21, 176, 197 Biological diversity 15, 34 see also: Convention on Biological Diversity and associated industries 62 as local cumulative issue 33

242

Biological Invasions: see invasive species Biodiversity: see biological diversity Bioprospecting 150 Biosafety 62 see also: Cartagena Protocol, GMOs BINGOs (Business International NGOs) 90, 93 Bolivia 158, 159 Boomerang Model 60 n. 12 Brazil 51, 179, 182 and retreaded tires dispute 147 n. 3 Bretton Woods Conference 137–8 Bretton Woods Institutions 135 see also: World Bank, World Trade Organization, GATT, International Monetary Fund and legitimacy 164 and transnational protest 162–3 British Petroleum 93 Brundtland, Gro Harlem 68 Brundtland Report (1987) 29 Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) 93 California 208 Canada 83 Canadian Chemical Producers Association 179 Canadian Standards Association 180 Capacity 120 Capacity Building 120 and regime effectiveness 119–23 Capitalism and the environment 18, 19 Carson, Rachel 68 Cartagena Protocol 75, 81, 84 see also: biosafety, Convention on Biological Diversity, GMOs and the WTO 147 Cashore, Benjamin 191–2 Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) 44, 45 Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) 52 n. 3

Index Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 44, 45 Certification 177–82 see also: forest certification Chad 51 Chernobyl Disaster (1986) 41 Chevron-Texaco 15, 62, 93 China 51, 55, 156, 197 and development funding in Africa 156 Chirac, Jacques 206 Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 63, 86, 125 illegal trade in 109 Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) 208 Civil society 57–8 see also: global civil society Clapp, Jennifer 135 Cleantech investment 175 Climate Action Network 58, 60, 92 Climate change 26, 34 see also: Kyoto Protocol, UNFCCC and associated industries 62 as global commons issue 31 and global justice movement 163 and human security 45 and links with other problems 43, 124 and local politics 207 and science–policy interface 99 surprises and tipping points 39–40 Clinton, Bill 86 Coca-Cola Corporation 172 Cognitivism 10–11 see also: constructivism and the environment 12 variants of 10 n. 5 Collective action problems 19, 72, 199 Commodity chain analysis 188–9 Common but Differentiated Responsibility, Principle of 88 Compliance 106–7, 114, 116 see also: regime effectiveness regime design and 116–23 will capacity to comply, compared 115 Conferences of the Parties (COPs) 78 Congress of Vienna, 1815 25 Constructivism 67, 110, 116, 131, 200 see also: cognitivism and international regimes 76 Consumption 42 Contentious politics 162–3, 208–9 see also: protest, transnational protest movements Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 36, 59, 72, 75, 91 see also: Cartagena Protocol and local knowledge 66, 68 and North–South politics 87

243 and regime fit 117 and regime linkages 125 and TRIPs 149–50 Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) 72, 75, 84, 88 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) 73 and regime scope 117 and sanctions 118 and the WTO 72, 147 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) 96, 128 Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) 72 Convention-Protocol method 79–80 Cooperation, international 8, 10, 13, 14 Corporate sector 61–3 see also: multinational corporations access to international policy process 90–1 composition 62 and international environmental negotiations 62–3, 92–4 and NGOs 190 and non-state governance 171 Corporatism 174–5 Counterfactual analysis 112 Crises, as catalyst for environmental negotiations 82–3 Critical theory 17 Daily Grist, The 37 Dams and dam construction 42, 154–5, 163 see also: World Commission on Dams Danube River 25 Dauvergne, Peter 135, 186 Debt 157–8 environmental impacts of 158 Debt relief 159 Debt-for-Nature Swaps 173 Deforestation 33, 35, 72–6 and associated industries 62 Depledge, Joanna 129 Desertification 35, 52 see also: Convention to Combat Desertification Doha Declaration, Round: see World Trade Organization Domestic politics 85–7, 114, 130 Dow Chemicals 179 DuPont 63, 86, 179 Earth Day, 1970 26 Earth from space, pictures of 26

244

Index

Earth Negotiations Bulletin, The (ENB) 79, 198 Earth Summit: see UNCED Earth systems governance 202 Eco-labels 147, 167, 177 and the WTO 178 Effectiveness: see regime effectiveness Electronic wastes (e-wastes) 40 Embedded liberalism, compromise of 139, 161 Endangered species, trade in 32 see also: CITES England: see United Kingdom Enron 159 Environmental activism: see NGOs, environmentalism Environmental Change and Security Project 44 n. 14 Environmental Defense 172 Environmental security: see war and the environment; human security Environmentalism 58 Epistemic Communities 12, 65, 97–101 critiques of 98–101 Epstein, Charlotte 132 Eurobarometer 67 n. 16 European Union 54, 140, 197 role as leader in international environmental politics 50 Expertise 16, 65–6 see alsoknowledge, science Externalities 32 Exxon-Mobil 93 Fairtrade Labeling Organization 174 Focal points 82, 83 Food miles 189 Ford Motors 172 Foreign direct investment (FDI) 158, 169–70 governance of 170 Forest certification 180–2 effectiveness 184–7 participation in 184 Forest-dwelling communities 68, 167 Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) 68, 167, 174, 180–2 Forests and forest management: see deforestation Framing 31, 114 France 55 Friedman, Milton 139 Gallup Organization 67 n. 16 Garcia-Johnson, Ronie 179, 183

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 54, 57, 140–3 see also: WTO, trade liberalization Article XX of 141–2 formation 138 principles 141–2 safeguards 138 shift to WTO 142–3 weaknesses 141–2 General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 142, 150–1 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 45, 150 see also: Cartagena Protocol Global civil society 18, 59–60 see also: civil society Global Climate Coalition (GCC) 93 Global commons issues 31–2 and environmental negotiations 36 Global economic governance 7 and international environmental politics 135–6, 159–64 and links with global environmental governance 161–2 as site of global environmental governance 7, 136 Global Environment Facility (GEF) 52, 56, 88, 121–2, 125, 129, 161, 206 Global environmental problems causes 19–20, 25–6 concern over 26–7 data sources 37–8 scale and scope of 25–6 science and 26 trends over time 37–40 types of 29–31 Global environmental governance 3, 4–7 see also: state-led, non-state global environmental governance architecture of 201–5 links with global economic governance 161–2 modes and sites of 3, 6, 201–9 shifts in 203–5 Global Environmental Politics (field of): see International Environmental Politics Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Series 30, 38 Global governance 201 architecture of 27, 194–5, 201–5 compared with international cooperation 201–2 Global political ecology 18

Index Globalization 18, 26 see also: Washington Consensus, Structural Adjustment and the environment 160–1, 168 neoliberal globalization 139–40, 158–9 Globalization theory 18, 41, 200 Goldman, Michael 156, 160 Gore, Al 37, 50, 68 Great Britain: see United Kingdom Green neoliberalism 156, 160 Green political theory 18 Greene, Owen 128 Greenpeace International 15, 58, 91 Group of 77 (G77) 51, 197 see also: North–South politics, the South Gupta, Joyeeta 89 Haas, Peter M. 12, 65, 97 Hardin, Garrett 31 Hayek, Friedrich 139 Hazardous wastes, trade in 30, 35, 111 see also: Basel Convention and associated industries 62 and electronic wastes 40 as transboundary issue 32 Health and the global environment 45 Highly indebted poorer countries (HIPCs) 51, 158, 159 Home Depot 189 Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change 64 Human rights 21, 42, 45, 162, 208 Human security 43–4, 45, 208 Iceland 83 IKEA 186 Inconvenient Truth, An 37 India 51, 56, 197 Indigenous knowledge: see local knowledge Individuals, role in IEP 68 Insurance and environmental governance 176 Intellectual property rights 88, 149 see also TRIPs Intergovernmental Forum on Forests 125 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 64, 89, 93, 96, 100 and learning 129 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 41 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 137, 153 see also: World Bank International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) 62, 93

245 International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) 73 International Coral Reef Action Network 175 International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) 208 International Development Association (IDA) 153 see also: World Bank International environmental law 77–8, 79 n. 10 International Environmental Politics (field of) 1 n. 1, 7, 8–9, 11, 12, 104, 135–6 International Finance Corporation (IFC) 153 see also: World Bank International Geophysical Year, 1957–8 64, 99 International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) 53–7 autonomy of 54 legitimacy 54 and non-state governance 172–3 International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) 79 International Maritime Organization 73 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 54, 56, 137, 152–3 see also: debt, debt relief, structural adjustment and the environment 157 mandate 153–4 voting rules 152 International Organization for Standards (ISO) 179 see also: ISO 14001 International political economy 5, 160 International regimes: see regimes International relations theory 8 see also: realism, neoliberal institutionalism, cognitivism, constructivism compared with alternative approaches 18–20, 200–1 and the environment 1–3, 7–17, 71, 198–200 International Trade Organization (ITO) 137 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 59, 91 International Whaling Commission 73 International Whaling Convention (IWC) 73 Inuit peoples 68, 163, 208

246

Index

Invasive species 145, 146–7 ISO 14001 standards 179–80, 183, 184 Issue Linkage 43–5

Local-cumulative problems 33 environmental negotiations and 36 Local knowledge 16, 66, 68, 100, 200

Japan 83 Johannesburg Summit: see WSSD Jordan 122 Joyner, Christopher 175

“Localizing” global environmental governance 21, 207–9 Logging: see deforestation Lomborg, Björn 39 Long-range transboundary air pollution: see acid rain, Convention on LRTAP Lowest common denominator agreements 85

Kennan, George 4, 206 Kenya 109 Khagram, Sanjeev 21, 194, 202 Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini Research Analytics Ltd. (KLD) 177 Knowledge 63–6 see also local knowledge, scientific knowledge and international environmental negotiations 95–101 and international environmental politics 16 lay vs. expert knowledge 66, 100 Knowledge brokers 99–100 Koh, Tommy 84 Kuznets Curve 145 n. 2 Kyoto Protocol 5, 74, 79 see also: UNFCCC “Kyoto 2.0” 197 and market mechanisms 183, 194 ratification 81 and Southern obligations 88 and the United States 80, 116, 130 Lawsuits 163, 208 Leadership 68, 83–4, 84 n. 15 Learning 126–9 single vs. double-loop learning 128 n. 15 Legitimacy 163–4 and Bretton Woods institutions 164 and IGOs 54, 163–4 and NGOs 58 and non-state governance 190–1 and state-led governance 203 and treaty obligations 116 and the WTO 144, 164 Leiserowitz, Anthony 67 Lending: see capacity building, debt, World Bank, IMF Levy, Marc A. 130 Liberalism: see neoliberal institutionalism Linkages: see issue linkages, regime linkages Litfin, Karen 99 Local Agenda 21 208

Malaysia 88 Management system standards 179, 186 Maniates, Michael 185 n. 13 Marine ecosystems: see oceans Marine Stewardship Council 174, 181 MARPOL 79, 81, 127 see also: International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships McDonalds 172 Mega-conferences 27 Mexico 121, 146, 179, 183 Miles, Edward L. 114 Millennium Development Goals (2000) 29 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report (2005) 65 Mining 42, 163 Mitchell, Ronald 113 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer 74, 79, 86 and capacity building 121 and regime precision 117 and sanctions 118 and scientific knowledge 100 and Southern obligations 88 and the WTO 147 Multi-stakeholder participation 174–5 Multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) 5, 72, 73 see also: treaties, regimes and the WTO 147–9 Multinational corporations (MNCs) 169–70, 171, 208 see also: FDI Najam, Adil 89 Narmada Dam Project 56–7, 154 National interests: see states National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 37 Neo-Gramscian approaches 17, 192, 200 Neoliberal globalization: see globalization

Index Neoliberal institutionalism 10, 49 and the environment 12 and international regimes 76 Neorealism: see Realism New International Economic Order (NIEO) 51 Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) 51 NGO-Industrial Complex 190 Nigeria 44, 45 Nike 61 Nixon, Richard 86 Non-Aligned Movement 51 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 15, 56 see also: transnational activist networks and access to international policy process 90–1 and corporate sector 61, 172, 190 and environmental negotiations 59, 91–2 influence of 58, 94–5 legitimacy of 58 and non-state governance 61, 172 parallel summits 59, 91 and regime effectiveness 119, 130 types of 57 Non-state actors 15 see also: NGOs, corporate sector, epistemic communities and environmental negotiations 89–95 influence of 94–5 and international environmental politics 15–16 and non-state governance 190–2 and regime effectiveness 130–1 Non-state global environmental governance 6–7, 168–87 compared with state-led governance 192–4 demand for 169–73 and international relations theory 187–8 legitimacy 190–1 strengths and weaknesses 182–7 theoretical perspectives on 187–94 varieties of 173–82 Non-state market-driven governance (NSMD) 173, 193 Non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs) 142 Norms 11, 12, 131–2 norm internalization 131 Normative shifts 67 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 54, 140 North–South politics 15, 50–2 see also: the South, G77

247 and environmental negotiations 87–9 and scientific expertise 89, 100 terminology 51 n. 2 Norway 83 Nuclear production 41 Oceans 36, 62 Oil 42, 44, 45 Oil industry 63 OILPOL 127 see also: International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 170 Ottaway, Marina 174 Ozone layer depletion 26, 34, 100 see also: CFCs, Montreal Protocol, Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and associated industries 62 as global commons issue 31 Pacific Islands 40, 45, 163 Partnership initiatives 174–5 Patkar, Medha 155 Pentagon, The 44, 45 Performance standards 179, 186 Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) 35, 36, 208 see also Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and associated industries 62 Pew Global Attitudes Project 67 n. 16 Philippines, The 121 Planet Ark 37 Political economy and the environment 17–18, 200 and compliance 116 Pollution Haven hypothesis 170 n. 1 Population 42 Precautionary Principle 150 Private governance: see non-state global environmental governance Problem-solving effectiveness 107–9, 114 see also: regime effectiveness Product–process distinction 146, 151 Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC) 180, 181–2 Protest 59, 61, 162, 208 see also: contentious politics, transnational protest movements Public opinion 66–8

248

Index

Reagan, Ronald 139 Realism 9–10, 49, 67 and the environment 11–12, 197–8 and international regimes 76–7 Reciprocity, Principle of 141 Regimes 13, 72–7, 200 components 77–8 formation and development 13, 78–81 functions 76–7 learning and assessment 126–9 negotiation of, factors affecting 82–7 state and non-state regimes compared 192–4 theoretical perspectives on 76–7 Regime effectiveness 13, 14, 104–32 see also: compliance, problem-solving, regime impacts and capacity building 119–23 data on 110–11 definitions 106 n. 3, 106–10 methodologies for studying 110–13 and legitimacy 116 obstacles to 113–15 quantitative cf. qualitative approaches 111, 112–13 and precision 117 and regime design 113–23 and regime fit 116–17 research questions 104–5 and sanctions 118 and scope 117–18 and transparency 118–19 Regime impacts 109 and role redefinition 130–1 socialization impacts 131–2 unintended impacts 109 Regime linkages 14, 109, 123–6 Relative gains 10, 49 Resource curse, the 44, 45 Resource extraction: see mining, oil Responsible Care Program 179 Rhine River 25 Rio Summit: see UNCED Rivers 25, 35 as transboundary issue 32 Royal Dutch Shell 15, 61, 62, 93, 159 Rudd, Kevin 67 Ruggie, John G. 138 Russia 55 see also: Soviet Union Sanctions, regime effectiveness and 118 Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, Agreement on the Application of (SPS Agreement) 142, 150

Scandinavia 50, 84 Scenario analysis 38 Schneider, Stephen 65, 68 Science and Technology Studies 97, 98, 200 Scientific Knowledge 16, 26, 63–6 see also: epistemic communities, knowledge and international environmental negotiations 95–101 science–politics relationship, perspectives on 64–5, 96–7 Scientists and scientific organizations 65–6 access to international policy process 96 advisory panels to MEAs 96 see also: epistemic communities Seattle 61, 162 Secretariats 56, 78, 84 Shell Oil: see Royal Dutch Shell Shrimp–Turtle Dispute 146–7 Sierra Club 172 Smouts, Marie-Claude 185 Social Investment Forum 177 Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) 175, 176–7 Somalia 51 South, The 15, 51–2 see also: North-South politics, G77 and participation in international negotiations 88–9 at UNCHE 28 South Africa 174, 175, 183 Sovereignty 9, 132 Soviet Union 111, 112–13 Speth, James Gustave 5 State-led global environmental governance 52–3, 71–7, 101, 199 see also: cooperation, regimes, multilateral environmental agreements critiques of 5–6, 21–2 States 49–53 as actors in international environmental politics 49–50 decline of ? 52–3 leaders and laggards 50 and national interests 49, 82 and non-state governance 172, 191–2 Stockholm Conference: see UNCHE Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants 75 Strong, Maurice 56, 68 Structural Adjustment 154 Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) 157 environmental impacts of 158–9

Index Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) 65, 96 see also: CBD Susskind, Lawrence 85, 98 Sustainable development 12, 28–9, 52 and Bretton Woods Institutions 160 and compromise of liberal environmentalism 161 Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) 180 Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council 181 Systems for implementation review 127–8 Taiwan 80 n. 11 Technical Barriers to Trade, Agreement on (TBT) 142 Technological Fixes 4, 21 Thatcher, Margaret 139 U-turn on ozone depletion 86 Third party certification: see certification Third World Network 15, 58 Three Gorges Dam 156 Tolba, Mustafa 68, 84 Track II diplomacy 80 Trade, environmental impacts of 139, 140–52 Trade liberalization 57 and environmental goods and services 151 environmental impacts of 145 and environmental regulations 145–7 principle of 141 Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) 126, 142, 149–50, 188 Trade Related Investment Measures, Agreement on (TRIMS) 142 Traditional knowledge: see local knowledge Tragedy of the Commons 26, 31 Transboundary environmental problems 32–3 and environmental negotiations 36 Transnational activist networks 41, 59–61, 162–3 and North–South dynamics 60 Transnational protest movements 20, 61, 162–3 see also: contentious politics, protest Transparency 114, 118–19 Treaties 77–8 Convention-Protocol method of negotiating 79–80 entry into force 80–1

249 obligations and effectiveness 116–18 ratification 80–1, 86 Tuna–Dolphin dispute 145, 146–7 Turkey 25 Tuvalu 68 Two-level games 86 Type 2 partnerships 174, 175 Ukraine 41, 122 United Kingdom 25, 55 United Nations (UN) 15, 24, 54 membership 55 political entrepreneur, role as 27, 73, 99 UN Commission on Environment and Development: see Brundtland Report UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) 55 UN Conference on Environment and Development, 1992 (UNCED; Rio de Janeiro) 27, 83, 203, 204 NGO participation 204 UN Conference on Humans and the Environment, 1972 (UNCHE; Stockholm) 4, 25, 27–8, 51, 82, 83 NGO participation 204 UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 169, 174 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 73, 78 n. 7, 125 UN Development Program (UNDP) 41, 55 and GEF 121 UN Environment Program (UNEP) 4, 55, 73, 84, 99–100 formation 28 and GEF 121 and linkages 125 role as anchor institution 55 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) 55–6 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 72, 74, 79 see also: Kyoto Protocol 13th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (Bali, 2007) 197–8 UN General Assembly 55 UN Security Council 45, 55 United States 50, 55, 83, 197 as hegemon 138 and Kyoto Protocol 50, 80, 116, 130 United States Chemical Manufacturers Association 179 Venezuelan Gasoline Dispute 146 n. 3 Veto coalitions 83 Victor, David 127

250

Index

Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 80, 148 Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer 74, 79, 100 Vietnam 122 Vital Graphics 38 Vogler, John 22, 203 Wapner, Paul 60, 89 War and the environment 16–17 environmental change as cause of conflict 44 Water 41, 52 see also dams and dam construction privatization of 159, 209 Washington Consensus 139 critiques of 139–40 “Post-Washington Consensus” 140 Weinthal, Erika 130 Whaling 36, 83 see also: International Whaling Convention World Bank 15, 41, 54, 56–7, 152–3 see also: debt, debt relief, structural adjustment environmental reforms 155, 156 and GEF 121 and legitimacy 164 mandate 153 and NGO lobbying 155 and project lending 154–7 voting rules 152 World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) 62, 93 World Commission on Dams (WCD) 155–6, 162, 174

World Conservation Union: see IUCN World Environment Organization (WEO) 20, 126, 149, 206–7 World Health Organization (WHO) 55, 206 World Heritage Convention 72 and transparency 119 World Resources Institute 38, 52 n. 3, 58 World Social Forum 20, 61 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2002 (WSSD; Johannesburg) 27, 41, 83, 89, 165, 174, 203 NGO participation 204 World Trade Organization 54, 57, 142–4 see also: GATT, trade liberalization Committee on Trade and the Environment (CTE) 143 dispute settlement procedures 143, 146 Doha Declaration 151, 163 Doha Round 144 environmental disputes: see Tuna–Dolphin, Shrimp–Turtle formation 138, 142–3 legitimacy 144 mandate 143–4 membership 57 and MEAs 147–9 organizational structure 142–4 and WEO 206 World Watch Institute 38 World Wildlife Fund (now Worldwide Fund for Nature; WWF) 58, 147, 167, 180 Young, Oran 106, 128, 130

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