Change in Global Environmental Governance

A revised version of this working paper has been published as: Biermann, Frank. 2012. Greening the United Nations Charter: World Politics in the Anthropocene. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. May / June 2012. A constitutional turn is needed to bring the UN system in line with the urgent needs of planetary stewardship and earth system governance in the 21st century. Yet how this could be organized in practice remains a challenge and subject to political and scholarly debate. This paper contributes to this debate by outlining four reforms of the UN system that would advance global decision-making by addressing major shortcomings in the current system: Lack of integration of economic and environmental policies in the UN system; institutional fragmentation and weakness of the environmental pillar of sustainable development; lack of high-level regulatory competence and oversight regarding areas beyond national jurisdiction; and insufficient integration of scientific insights into political decision-making. The reforms proposed would together create an Earth Alliance in the UN system, consisting of a high-level UN Sustainable Development Council, a World Environment Organization, a UN Trusteeship Council for Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, and an UN Global Environmental Assessment Commission.

Global environmental governance serves to address two inter-related governance issues: common interest problems and the South-North context. Addressing common interest problems, including the protection of the environment, requires cooperative action, common rules and standards, and continuous decision-making among relevant actors. (1) The South-North context, under the influence of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, moreover, largely accounts for the complexity of the institutional framework within which global environmental governance unfolds. In terms of the South-North context, most of the rules and standards are adopted within MEAs (2) but other institutions, in particular, funds managed by the World Bank, such as the Global Environment Facility, administer part of their implementation in the South. (3) International institutions involved in global environmental governance both participate in the development of common rules and standards and in decision-making in individual situations. (4) The latter, in particular, through determining the eligibility for funding of projects to be executed in developing and economy in transition states and through compliance procedures. It is, moreover, noteworthy that most of the rules, standards, and decisions adopted within the framework of global environmental governance are legally not binding, even if they affect the rights and duties of states and other actors. For example, by recommending that trade in certain products be restricted. Both CITES (i.e., Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) notifications and decisions of noncompliance taken within the framework of the Montreal Protocol on the Protection of the Ozone Layer provide relevant illustrations. A CITES notification, for instance, led the Court of Justice of the European Communities to conclude that importing goods that had been the object of such a notification was illegal in the European Union, with consequences for the traders involved. (5) In engaging in global environmental governance, international institutions through normative development and decision-making in individual situations have moved beyond the interstate paradigm, central to the traditional doctrine of international law. In so doing a body of law has emerged that shares characteristics with national public law, and administrative law in particular, (6) rather than national private law, a body of law with which traditional interstate law shares many traits. (7) As a result contemporary IEL, but also international law in general, can be characterized as a legal system that is undergoing systemic change and in which two normative patterns exist side by side and interact with each other: what I have referred to elsewhere as the interstate normative pattern and the common interest normative pattern. (8) In the interstate, or traditional, pattern of international law formal state consent plays a pivotal role; it brings into being rules and standards of international law and legitimizes those rules and standards or their application in individual situations. (9) In the common interest pattern, states no longer formally consent to many, if not most, of the rules and standards developed and their application in individual situations. Instead, in the case of global environmental governance, states formally consent to the treaties that establish the relevant treaty based bodies and UN specialized agencies. I suggest that, by implication, state consent at most can be regarded as states consenting to a process of normative development, the outcome of which is unknown when that consent is given. In the process, state consent has lost the function of legitimizing the rules and standards that result from the process of normative development and their application in individual situations. As a result, other sources of legitimacy have to be identified. One source of legitimacy, I suggest, is to be found in ensuring the accountability of international institutions and more particularly by focusing on the legitimacy of the decision-making processes and procedures used by these institutions. …

1. Global Environmental Governance and International Organizations: Setting the Stage Frank Biermann, Bernd Siebenhuner, and Anna Schreyogg Part 1: Intergovernmental Organizations 2. The Impact of International Organizations on the Environment: An Empirical Analysis Axel Dreher and Magdalena Ramada y Galan Sarasola 3. Setting Standards for Responsible Banking: Examining the Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Emergence of the Equator Principles Christopher Wright 4. OECD Peer Reviews and Policy Convergence: Diffusing Policies or Discourses? Markku Lehtonen 5. Socialisation, the World Bank Group and Global Environmental Governance Susan Park 6. The European Union and the 'External' Dimension of Sustainable Development. Ambitious Promises but Disappointing Outcomes? Camilla Adelle and Andrew Jordan Part 2: International Environmental Programmes and Secretariats 7. The Role of the United Nations Environment Programme in the Coordination of Multilateral Environmental Agreements Steinar Andresen and Kristin Rosendal 8. UNEP as Anchor Organization for the Global Environment Maria Ivanova 9. Treaty Secretariats in Global Environmental Governance Steffen Bauer, Per-Olof Busch, and Bernd Siebenhuner Part 3: New Private-Public Hybrid Organizations 10. International Organizations Inc. Patterns of Environmental Partnerships Liliana B. Andonova 11. Private Governance Organizations in Global Environmental Politics: Exploring their Influences Philipp Pattberg 12. Agility and Resilience: Adaptive Capacity in Friends of the Earth International and Greenpeace Vanessa Timmer 13. International Organizations in Global Environmental Governance: Epilogue Bernd Siebenhuner and Frank Biermann

In the face of global environmental change, a key question for the social sciences is how to organize the co-evolution of societies and their natural environment. In this context, a new long-term research program, the Earth System Governance Project, proposes several key issues to be examined: architecture, agency, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation and access. The contributions to this special issue have focused on the analytical problem of agency. For example, they have examined newly emerging or understudied agents of global environmental governance, or offered a fresh assessment of agency in the context of existing governance mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. This concluding article outlines several insights provided by the contributions to this special issue regarding four key questions underlying the study of agency in global environmental governance. First, they call attention to the ingredients or processes that characterize agency in the first place and thus distinguish actors from agents. Secondly, the authors highlight the differences among agents and how they interact with each other. Thirdly, they point toward variation in the ways that agents may acquire authority. Finally, the contributions to this special issue suggest that there may be several approaches to evaluating agency, with different consequences. Thus, taken together, the contributions to this special issue provide a starting point for broadening our understanding of agency in earth system governance.

As regionalism proliferates, so does regional environmental cooperation, which constitutes an important layer within the multi-levelled structure of global environmental governance. Affected by a range of institutions and politics at the national, regional and international levels, its characteristics, effectiveness, and contributions to global environmental governance vary from region to region. To examine the relations between regionalism and global environment governance, this chapter first provides an overview of the most influential theories in the field of environmental policy and international environmental cooperation. It then describes the global architecture of environmental governance, highlighting major issues confronting environmental cooperation at both the global and regional levels. To illuminate the prospects and challenges of global and regional environmental governance, the achievements and arrangements of the two most advanced regional organizations, namely the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), are reviewed as examples. Major issues discussed are summarized in the conclusion.

Global environmental governance in the Anthropocene is fundamentally different from older conceptions of environmental policy-making and sustainable development. Environmental problem-solving is no longer concerned with isolated problems, but rather with reorganising the overall relation between humans and natural systems. Empirically, this is reflected in the ever greater attention to questions of institutional interactions (e.g. between the issue areas of economics and environment) and functional overlaps between parallel governance approaches. Normatively, environmental governance in the Anthropocene is concerned with questions of equity and fairness on a finite planet. This article scrutinises the theoretical interregnum in global environmental governance by first sketching the key empirical trends in global environmental governance; secondly, discussing theory-building with regards to four broad areas of inquiry: the questions of agency and authority; the structural dimension of global environmental governance; the related normative questions about legitimacy, accountability, equity and fairness in the Anthropocene; and finally the integration of governance research into formal approaches and the related incorporation of non-social science concepts into environmental governance research. In our conclusions, we propose some initial ideas on how to move forward in the study of global (environmental) governance.

�� ��� The question of what forms of governance are required to address global forms of ecological degradation has risen in profile over the course of the last decade. However, there has been a tendency in this literature to emphasise the significance of global environmental governance—the international environmental regimes and treaties, and global forms of governance relating to the environment—without examining of the role of the state in this configuration. The potential role of the state within global environmental governance has been largely downplayed, except for a few notable exceptions. 1 This article will argue that deeper thought needs to be given to the potential role of the state in addressing environmental degradation and impending environmental harm. However, it is not sufficient to merely argue that the power of the state must be brought to bear on environmental issues and neither is it useful to argue that the state is a replacement for effective global environmental governance. In what follows I will contend that the primary reason we need to emphasize the role of the state in addressing global environmental issues is because of the state’s ability to draw their public into the governance of global environmental problems and thereby strengthen global environmental governance. Underpinning this account is neo-roman republican political theory. In contrast to many strands of liberal and cosmopolitan thought, republican thought emphasizes the importance of the state, constitutional frameworks and the role of citizens in addressing social problems. I contend that republican principles and institutions could develop a strong rationale that enables the state and citizens to politically interface with global governance to more consistently address global problems such as environmental degradation. As a prospective approach to governance, republicanism seeks to reclaim the state as an agent of public interests in order to fashion a liberty against powerful private interests that in a liberal world are allowed to create conditions of subordination and vulnerability. This essay contends that this promotion of liberty will necessarily have to consider global ecological forms of domination if it is to be at all reasonable. This argument develops in three steps. First, I relate the nature of republican thought to ecological degradation, then I examine the main elements of a republican engagement with environmental issues, and lastly, outline how republican citizens could interact with global environmental governance.

The Earth System Governance Project is an interdisciplinary research network on global environmental governance that presents a proposal organized around contextual issues and analytical lenses. This work aims to apply the five analytical lenses for global governance by Earth System Governance Project in a carbon credits negotiation case in 2011 between an Irish company – Celestial Green Venture PLC – and the Munduruku indigenous people in Brazil. Based on this case, we identify the scope and challenges of applying these analytical lenses in governance processes at the local level and with specific groups, such as indigenous peoples.

This article argues for the analysis of global and transnational environmental governance as administration to shed light on some important but neglected themes in international environmental law scholarship. First, it outlines several basic administrative concepts that call for analysis under such an approach (delegation, accountability, deliberation and reason giving, dynamic effects, general versus specific norms), then sets forth an analytical framework of five structures of administration in global governance, namely: distributed administration, international administration, inter-governmental network administration, hybrid administration, and private administration. Normative appraisal in administrative law is often conducted by reference to basic public law values, such as legality, proportionality, rationality, accuracy, effectiveness, efficiency, and respect for basic rights. Political theory inquiries into democracy and legitimacy in global governance may be given more applied purchase by distilling normative values and implicit trade offs, embodied in such legal-administrative components as transparency, notification, participation, reason giving, and review. Inflections in the design and operation of different administrative systems may have impacts on distributive outcomes, procedural fairness, and other elements of justice.

Environmental policymaking has been equated with the art of making the right decisions based on an insufficient understanding of the underlying problems. Given the tremendous complexities of the earth system, effective global environmental governance must rely on scientific information on both the kind of problem at stake and the options for decisionmakers to cope with it. Some global environmental problems, notably stratospheric ozone depletion, climate change, and biodiversity conservation, have thus sparked off formidable increases in scientific research. Remarkable too is the enormous expansion of international scientific cooperation for assessing this accumulated knowledge and for synthesizing it in a form accessible and useful to decisionmakers. About 2,500 scientists, for example, have been working with the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its three-volume assessment report Climate Change 1995, (1) and the Global Biodiversity Assessment of 1995 (2) involved roughly 1,500 experts in this field. The immense networks of scientists, experts, national governments, private bodies, and international organizations engaged in these major global environmental assessments can be understood as distinct international institutions within the larger endeavor of global environmental governance, consisting of internationally accepted general principles for producing, synthesizing, and legitimizing expert knowledge; international norms and rules regulating this synthesis and the evaluation of knowledge in specific cases; and pertinent decisionmaking procedures. The main function of these institutions is not environmental protection as such, but comprehensive and reliable scientific advice on the state of the environment and on policy options, which reduces transaction costs for governments. (3) In a world society that is becoming increasingly interlinked and interdependent, science and expert advice is needed to inform decisionmakers on the complex problems they face, leading to a likely increase in the relevance of scientific advisory institutions in international relations. But although enormous efforts are undertaken in these scientific advisory institutions, political scientists need to question their actual effects both on national decisionmaking and on international politics. It is not yet fully understood what exact role the existing advisory institutions play in the course of global environmental governance and how this influences international politics and national decisionmaking. The debate on regimes and institutions in global governance has long concentrated on the general effects of institutions on national decisionmaking, (4) but only recently has the specific impact of scientific advisory institutions received attention from students of international relations. In the early 1990s, for example, it was shown that an epistemic consensus about the interpretation of science reached within international assessment processes influences negotiations and may help create international environmental regimes. (5) More generally, political scientists have worked on the role of ideas in international relations, (6) on information systems within environmental regimes, (7) and on the social construction of science for policy in global environmental regimes. (8) Likewise, substantial research has been directed to the impact of international scientific advisory institutions on the political process in industrialized countries in the areas of climate change and regional air pollution. Most of this research has indicated a generally significant impact of advisory institutions on the behavior of actors in the North. (9) Another interesting finding of this research is that noticeable differences in effectiveness exist between Western industrialized countries and the countries in transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe. …

Preface Introduction Ulrich Petschow, Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IOW), Germany, James N. Rosenau, The George Washington University, USA, and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, Bundestag Environment Committee, Germany Part I. Governance and global sustainability: setting the stage 1. Globalisation and governance: sustainability between fragmentation and integration James N. Rosenau, The George Washington University, USA 2. Governance and sustainability in a dynamic world Ulrich Petschow, Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IOW), Germany 3. Globalisation means new challenges for sustainability Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, Bundestag Environment Committee, Germany 4. Developing a global partnership for development: critical issues and proposals for trade and finance Martin Khor, Director, Third World Network Part II. Cross-cutting issues 5. The role of social learning on the road to sustainability Bernd Siebenhuner, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany 6. What role for politics in the governance of complex innovation systems? New concepts, requirements and processes of an interactive technology policy for sustainability K. Matthias Weber, ARC Systems Research, Austria 7. Gender mainstreaming: pathway to democratisation? Claudia von Braunmuhl 8. Governance and participatory approaches in Europe Angela Liberatore, European Commission, Directorate General for Research, Belgium 9. Partnerships and networks in global environmental governance: moving to the next stage Jan Martin Witte and Thorsten Benner, Global Public Policy Institute, Charlotte Streck, Global Public Policy Institute and Climate Focus BV Part III. Actors in global governance and their changing roles 10. The role of the nation-state in environmental protection: the challenge of globalisation Martin Janicke, German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) Freie Universitat Berlin 11. Governance and integrated product policy Frieder Rubik, Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IOW), Germany 12. The role of voluntary initiatives in sustainable corporate governance Jens Clausen, Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, Germany, Kathrin Ankele and Ulrich Petschow, Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IOW), Germany 13. Good company citizenship: does governance change the role of companies in society? Mark Wade, Shell International Ltd 14. The UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative: where principles meet performance Cornelis T. van der Lugt, UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE), France 15. Global governance: challenges for civil society and democracy Nicola Bullard, Focus on the Global South 16. Civil society plus global governance: what can we expect? Dieter Rucht, Social Science Research Centre (WZB), Germany

Oberthür, Sebastian, and G. Kristin Rosendal, eds. 2014. Global Governance of Genetic Resources: Access and Benefit Sharing after the Nagoya Protocol. New York and London: Routledge.

Global environmental governance is centered around actor, issue, and norms that affect environmental and human security on a trans-planetary scale. A study on differing perspectives of how our environmental governance has been changed can direct us moving forward while confronting environmental problems such as climate change. This book review will discuss five books on global environmental governance. The first book is the main book of the review, The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism by Dr. Steven Bernstein, whose focus is on norms and discourses. The second book is The Environment and International Relations by Dr. Kate O’Neill, a book that contains a theoretical framework on global environmental governance. The third book is Environmentalism of the Rich by Dr. Peter Dauvergne, a narrative stance on mainstreamed environmentalism of current days. The fourth book is Power in a Warming World by Dr. David Ciplet et al., which calls for a radical shift of historic bloc on the direction of global climate governance. The fifth book is Ending the Fossil Fuel Era edited by Dr. Thomas Princen et al., which discusses that fossil fuels are the origins of social and ecological problem beyond their impacts on climate change. The book review will discuss different perspectives on global environmental governance with an analytical framework of methodology, tone, and scale of governance actors and see if these perspectives are heterogenous in guiding on our direction with insights on environmental issues. I choose these elements to discern if Bernstein’s style was effective in capturing both realistic practicality and conceptual contribution to the existing literature. The book review is composed of several parts. First, I will describe the summary of the main book by Dr. Bernstein, including its key features and arguments. Second, based on my reaction to the first book, I will link my arguments to the key themes and perspectives of the other four books. I argue that all five books employ different methodologies in supporting their argument. I also explain that all five books have different perspectives and tone in discussing global environmental governance. Then, I propose that each of five books centered around different scales of governance. Finally, I will bring five books together and discuss their implications as the conclusion. The conclusion will include the prospect for global environmental governance based on five books with differing perspectives and methodologies and lessons that can be drawn from their discussion and analysis.

This paper explores linkages between policy coherence, global environmental governance, and poverty reduction. It begins with a few thoughts on what these terms mean, and how they are linked. It then provides some perspectives on how the linkages might be improved over time. The paper takes the view that the most coherent institutional framework for both poverty reduction and environmental protection is likely to be one that is relatively decentralised, and based on a modular (networking) structure. The implication is that this framework should rely mainly on domestic and regional governance institutions, rather than on global ones. Effective management of environmental problems (both national and international) also implies a judicious mix of strong government institutions, smooth-functioning markets, and well-targeted infrastructure investments. The business and labour communities are therefore crucial. Other elements of civil society, notably the NGOs, also have important roles to play. Global environmental governance will have to overcome significant resistance insofar as the interests of the developing countries are concerned. Developing countries will need to be convinced that it is in their best interest to participate in global environmental institutions. The best way of making this case is to link (local) poverty reduction objectives explicitly to (both local and global) environmental protection goals. Bringing greater coherence to international trade, investment, and development co-operation policies could make an important contribution to strengthening these linkages. Investment is particularly important here – in the future, investment governance will likely prove to be more important for poverty reduction than environmental governance. Focusing on global environmental governance will not be enough.

Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent environmental issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle. The book is comprised of 101 entries, each defining a central concept in global environmental governance, presenting its historical evolution, introducing related debates and including key bibliographical references and further reading. The entries combine analytical rigour with empirical description. The book: offers cutting edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance, raises an up-to-date debate on global governance for sustainable development, gives an in-depth exploration of current international architecture of global environmental governance, examines the interaction between environmental politics and other fields of governance such as trade, development and security, elaborates a critical review of the recent literature in global environmental governance. This unique work synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts in the field of global environmental governance. Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars and practitioners alike.