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The Organization of Global Environmental Governance

Gunilla Reischl, 9 March, 2015

Introduction• What has the global community done to tackle

environmental problems?

• The history of global environmental governance is affected by wider developments in global political economy

• …and a history of international cooperation, diplomatic efforts, institutional creation, treaty making and negotiations

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Outline of the lecture

• Environment as political issue• Interstate regimes global governance• Practice and functions of GEG/GEP

1960s and 1970s

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1980s

1990s

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The emergence of the environment as an issue area

• International environmental issues have become part of the public agenda in the past four decades

• Gradual expansion of scientific knowledge enabled to verify environmental degradation

• The rise of environment-oriented civil society associations

The UN Framework

• UN has played an important role in the international response of environmental problems

• Problems with participation and implementation, the lowest common denominator

• The state that have the least interest in achieving an agreement sets the agenda

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Global conferences (summits)Stockholm 1972

UN Conference on the Human

Environment

•Tension between environment and development –developing countries viewed it as a problem for the developed countries

•Principle of national sovereignty over natural resources

•Creation of UNEP

•’Awareness-raising’

Rio de Janeiro 1992UN Conference on Environment and

Development

• End of Cold war –’window of opportunity’

• Environment and development. Developing countries saw opportunities for ODA

• Political success?

• Agenda 21 – ’To do list’

Johannesburg 2002World Summit on

Sustainable Development

•Follow up of Rio

•Marked by 11 September – war on terrorism

•Focus on social development -’poverty eradication’

•Implementation

Rio de Janeiro 2012UN Conference on

Sustainable Development

Green economy

Institutional framework

Environmental problem International agreements (e.g.)

Climate change UNFCCC (1992)Kyoto Protocol (1997)

Depletion of ozone layer Vienna Convention (1985)Montreal Protocol (1987)

Biological diversity Convention on Biological Diversity(1992)Cartagena Protocol (2000)CITES (1973)

Deforestation IPF (1995-97)IFF (1997-2000)UNFF (2000-)

Desertification UNCCD (1994)

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Interstate cooperation and regimes• When the international dimension of environmental problems was

first being considered seriously, there was a dominant academic concern: international cooperation as a mean to their solution

The problem :

“Can a fragmented and often highly conflictual political system made up of over 170 sovereign states and numerous other actors achieve the high levels of cooperation and policy coordination needed to manage environmental problems on a global scale?”

(Hurren and Kingsbury 1992: 1)

International cooperation • Approached from an institutional angle, i.e.

international treaties, organizations and other arrangements

• Political science and IR: the field of regime theory and more recently on the field of global governance

• The primacy of states was usually taken for granted

• Assumption of international anarchy and the need to provide something comparable to a world government

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Source of confusion

• International institution• International regime• International organisation

International institutions• Though a range of usages exists, most scholars in this

context have come to regard international institutions as sets of rules meant to govern international behavior.

• For example: ‘sets of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other’ (Mearsheimer1994/95) (ironically a neorealist who doesn’t believe that institutions are effective)

(Rules are often conceived as statements that forbid, require, or permit particular kinds of actions (Ostrom1990:139). )

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International Regimes: definition

• International regimes can be defined as sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations. (Krasner, 1983, p2)

International Regimes

• Response to the demand of governance in a specific issue area

• Institutional frameworks with formal rules and informal practices

• Shape and constrain actors behaviour

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Interstate cooperation and regimes

• Intellectually based on the works that had emerged in the field of international political economy since the 1970s

• The regime concept was used to understand how cooperation under anarchy could occur in international economic relations

• The concept of a regime often attributed to Ruggie (1975) and developed and defined by Krasner (1983) as means of describing and analyzing international cooperation

• The regime centered liberal institutionalist approach provided means to comprehend the rapid development of MEAs during the 1980s and 1990s

Non-regimes• One debate has focused on if an issue area is a regime or not. This

discussion has been particular prominent in the context of environmental issues.

• The concept of ‘non-regimes’ has emerged:

• “A public policy arena characterized by the absence of an interstate policy agreement where states have either tried or failed to create one, or when governments have not even initiated negotiations”(Dimitrov, 2006: 9).

• Example: deforestation, but contested

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Regime complexes

Keohane and Victor 2010

International organisations

• Most international organizations are embedded in larger international regimes.

• International bureaucratic structures connected to norm and rule systems

• Characterized by: permanent headquarter, secretariat, members, budget

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International institutions

• International institution: Though a range of usages exists, most scholars have come to regard international institutions as sets of rules (explicit and/or implicit)meant to govern international behavior.

• International regime: describes principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures within an issue area.

• International organization: international bureaucratic structures connected to norm and rule systems: characterized by: permanent headquarter, secretariat, members, budget.

Within international politics the term international institution increasingly is used as an umbrella term for all forms of institutionalized cooperation at international level

Rise of Global Governance

2 major trends over past 50 years:

1. Gradual loss of national sovereignty

2. Rise of complex policy problems

Increased focus on global governance

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Global governanceA key theme in international environmental politics

Capture the overarching set of arrangements, which goes beyond individual issue areas

Connects IEP to more general patterns of global politics

Variation in how the term global environmental governance is used.

Global governance as characterized:

• Multi-actor

• New mechanisms of organization alongside the traditional system

• Multilevel

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Who?

• Economically powerful TNCs tend to have more access points

• Among civil society actors: well organized and well funded NGOs tend to be overrepresented whereas marginalized groups tend to be highly underrepresented

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How?

• Formal participation by transnational actors in decision-making bodies remains extremely rare

• Transnational actors increasingly enjoy access and contribute to agenda setting, implementation, and enforcement but largely remain excluded from the core of international cooperation: the decision-making stage

Influence of non-state actors• The increase of influence by other actors does

not ipso facto mean a decreasing influence by states.

• The increasing influence of other actors should be seen as causing changing dynamics of politics, rather than in terms of a power transfer.

• TNCs, NGOs and governments can sometimes form coalitions So the point here is that states and transnational actors share “the stage”, and this creates new dynamics of politics.

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Actor strategies

• States: coalitions

• NGOs: networksOrganization of NGOs and sub-national actors, self-organization. Important for implementation , innovative mechanisms such as benchmarking

Actors

STATES

EU

G77

JUSCANZUmbrella GroupEIG

NON-STATE

INDUSTRY ENV.

HUMAN RIGHTS

INTERGOVERNMENTALORG. (IGOs)

FAOUNEP

WTO

WORLD BANK

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A negotiation process

Conference of the Parties (CoP)

Generally once a year

EU-coordination on spot. EU speaks with one voice

EU-coordinationMeetings in Brussels Formation of a common EU position.

Swedish preparationWithin the government offices with actors concerned. Formulation of a Swedish position

Intersessional meetings

Technical/scientific meetings

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Discussion

• How can we take account of environmental challenges that do not fit the existing patterns of cooperation?

• How would the ideal way to organize global environmental governance look like?