From the Editors-in-Chief

Abstract

In our call for papers on ‘international environmental governance’ (IEG), we had noted two significant trends in addressing the role of international institutions that provide platforms for international environmental cooperation: the creation of regime-specific institutions that cater to sectoral regulatory frameworks, popularly known as multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), and institutions that are set up as a follow-up to global environmental conferences or assigned with a specific environmental task. These processes, cumulatively, reflect the ‘institutionalization’ in the environmental field. These proliferating institutions, in turn, play a crucial role in the law-making process in the environmental field. International institutions in the field have been made and un-made over the past decades, comprising efforts to upgrade the United Nations Environment Programme as the United Nations Environment Assembly with universal membership, the gradual greening of the existing United Nations (UN) organs, and the creation of new organs such as the Commission on Sustainable Development, the Global Environment Facility, and now the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. In addition, a significant number of MEAs in the areas of ocean, atmosphere, nature, waste, and fisheries have been concluded with institutional arrangements that have set up a Conference or a Meeting of the Parties with decision-making powers, a secretariat, and specialist subsidiary bodies. Several of those ‘autonomous’ institutions have moved in recent times into negotiating further conventional arrangements, which further reinforce their ambit and normative powers, a compliance mechanism included.