The Global Politics of the Environment

Abstract

There has clearly been no lack of attention to the global environment in the years since the Rio Conference. Thousands of committed people have worked hard to keep environmental issues on the agenda. Since June 1992, negotiation and debate on environment-related issues have continued apace. There are, within the UN system and outside it, any number of committees, working groups, expert panels, subsidiary bodies, workshops, commissions and other fora, convened by governments, intergovernmental organisations and NGOs, which have focused and continue to focus on a wide range of transboundary and global environmental issues. Much has also been made in those years of the imperative for a global partnership (as Agenda 21 has it) in support of our common future (as the World Commission on Environment and Development described it). As the President of the Republic of the Maldives reminded the industrialised countries in a speech in 1995, ‘environmental security is a common good that we share together or forfeit forever’ (Gayoom, 1995, p. 10).